Keep Your Systems Cool

By David Gilbert

January 15, 2007

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System builders dread receiving a phone call about a failed server. And often the failure is due to excessive heat build-up inside the computer. Heat is the number one enemy of a computer system " it is the root cause of more problems and failures than just about anything else. By learning how to design your systems for optimum cooling, you will be increasing the longevity of the system and reducing the amount of time spent servicing that system. This translates into the ability to successfully field more systems to more customers " thereby increasing your revenue opportunities as a system builder, and increasing customer satisfaction.

To get started, you may want to take a look at my related article Select the Right Power Supplies for Your Servers. In that article, I show you how to calculate a system's power requirements, and the figures you arrive at there will plug in to the formula in this recipe for determining cooling requirements.

Elementary Computer Cooling Principles

Typical computers are cooled by what is called "forced convection" using fans to move air throughout the system. The size and speed and number of cooling fans will depend on how much heat you need to remove from your system. Generally speaking, a larger slower fan is more efficient at moving air than a smaller faster fan, and it will also be quieter.

You should pay attention to the direction of airflow (intake and exhaust) while making sure to always move hot air away from the computer and its components. The effectiveness of any forced air convection cooling system is dependent upon the ambient air temperature (the temperature of the air in the room), so environmental control of your computer room will be a factor.

Furthermore, since we cannot cool our system below ambient temperature, then the lower we get our ambient temperature, the cooler we can get the system without condensation formation. Cooler air is denser than hot air, which means we have to move less volume of air to move the same mass of air, and remember it is the mass of air that cools our computer, not the volume.

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