Update: Foundation PC Cooling

August 31, 2009 by James Munns 30 Comments

coolupdate

[gigs], whose foundation-based PC cooling project we covered earlier, has posted his initial test results. There was a large debate going back and forth in the comments as to whether or not this would work, and hopefully this should clear most of it up. He used a 150W fish tank heater to simulated his system’s heat output, and used a quiet fish tank pump to keep the water flowing. Over 8 hours, he was able to maintain a constant temperature 16° C (61° F). While not quite frigid, this would definitely provide ample cooling for normal operation with some headroom for overclocking.

Chart of results after the jump.

[thanks to gigs for getting back with real data so soon]

Continue reading “Update: Foundation PC Cooling” →

Custom Cable Management

August 31, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 19 Comments

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You would be hard pressed to find a hacker who doesn’t have in some form a rats nest of wires and cables behind their computer desk. [Antoine] decided to tackle the problem and came up with his custom built cable management system. There is little info, but he does say his setup uses Ikea Antonius coat hangers and some hollow tube. Its quick and wont leave a residue like some cable solutions, so long as you don’t mind a screw hole or two. We especially like how if you need to change your setup you wont have to re-zip tie everything.

Beef Up Your UPS

August 28, 2009 by Mike Szczys 54 Comments

[Surferdude] was unhappy with the decreasing life of his aging uninterruptible power supply. He decided to beef it up using marine batteries. He extended the battery connections outside of the UPS case using #10 wire and swapped the two 12 volt gel cells with the heavy duty lead-acid batteries. Doing so upgraded the device from 20 amp-hours to 84 amp-hours at a cost of about $160. If you’re thinking about taking this on yourself, pay attention to the countinuous output rating of your UPS to prevent a fire risk.

XMPP And Home Automation

August 28, 2009 by Matt Schulz 9 Comments

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[Matthias] from Intuity Media Lab put together a nice bit on controlling office lights with XMPP from his Android phone. In the article, he explains the components involved in the project, why he chose XMPP, and lists everything you need to replicate it. The project makes use of a wide variety of tools and libraries, weaving together code from multiple languages to achieve its goal. Overall, his project is a welcome change in a world full of Twitter–based solutions.

Energy Efficient Fridge Hack

August 27, 2009 by James Munns 39 Comments

Green_Freezer

We’ve already covered a pipe bomb mini-fridge this week, but inventor [Tom Chalko] provides us with today’s fridge hack. He noticed that chest-style (laying down, see above) freezers were more energy efficient when compared to normal stand up refrigerators at the same size, despite the colder temperatures involved. This is largely due to the fact that these chest-style freezers keep cold air in like water in a bowl, even if the lid is open. He has written a very thorough report on his findings (pdf), as well as a detailed walk through of the manageable task of converting a chest-style freezer into a chest-style fridge. In the end, his fridge only used 103 Wh of electricity on the first day to reach and maintain between 4° and 7° C (39° to 45° F), and he noted that 30% of that was just getting it up to temperature. After that, the fridge only turned on for roughly 90 seconds an hour, making it a very quiet fridge as well.

Foundation Cooling

August 26, 2009 by James Munns 67 Comments

Foundation with Copper

Overclockers are always trying to come up with new, colder, and quieter ways to keep their PCs cool. [gigs] was so dedicated to this, he decided to lay 6 meters of copper pipe to use as a radiator in his new house’s foundation. As of now, the foundation is laid (copper pipes and all), and the forum posts come complete with finished slab pics, though there is no house to speak of yet.

[via Slashdot]

Open-Frame Digital Clock

August 26, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

Here’s an interesting project from several years ago. The clock design itself isn’t too noteworthy, but the construction is definitely inspired. You’ll notice that there is no breadboard or PCB, the frame actually is the circuit. The tubes he’s using are Numitron tubes, which aren’t as high voltage as Nixies or even VFDs. This means that there is only 12V maximum going through the exposed rails. He discusses some possible future upgrades such as LED or Nixie or VFD, but since this project is a few years old, who knows if he is still working with it.

[thanks Agent420]