[KarathKasun]

I'm putting together a small cluster of computers in a home made rack which will be water cooled.

The cluster will contain 7-8 systems with processors in the 80W-120W TDP range. One of the systems will have a ~140W CPU and 2 GTX 470's. (~1350w total TDP)

My prospective heat exchanger measures (in inches) 23x29x3. I have another heat exchanger that is approximately 24x56x2 (its actually circular, the measurements are if it was unrolled) that can be used in the loop as well.

The heat exchangers will be outside of the building in a shaded area with forced airflow controlled by a thermostat in the coolant.

I need to know how the loop should be logically configured.

My initial thought is to have a large reservoir with two high flow pumps feeding a manifold that distributes coolant to each system. Then each system has its own return line to the reservoir. With this configuration it would be fairly easy to install valves to eliminate part of the system to resolve an issue without bringing the whole cluster down.

Any ideas, suggestions, or experiences welcome.

 

[billbartuska]

Ground loop cooling. Google Computer ground loop cooling for a start.

That's a very ambitious project. Some hurdles you'll have to cross:
You'll have to design cooling based on the expected hottest day of the year.
You'll have to control flow rates, either passively or actively. Parallel loops would be a nightmare to do this without a pump for each loop. Series would be a lot easier.

Basically, the standard way, Rez > Pump(s) > rad(s) > "load" > rez.

 

[KarathKasun]

One thing with a loop this big is that I have enough room to do all sorts of nice things. I have the space to put finely adjustable valves on each system's input or output.

I also take no issue with sitting around for a few days to tweak flow rates under max load conditions when summer rolls around.

The main goal is quality and modularity over simple or easy. I'm also not sure serial would work well with a loop consisting of 10 high output nodes. I would have to make sure the largest load is first, would I not?