Cooling Strategies For Tech-Powered Businesses
Does your company use servers, design workstations, gaming and streaming computers, or any technology that operates at high temperatures? Maintaining safe temperatures is not just a matter of avoiding long-term wear and tear or surprise burnouts, but it also involves maintaining a high level of performance during daily tasks. Here are a few problems that arise in tech-powered or tech-centric businesses that lack proper cooling strategies, along with ways to solve the problem.
Multiple Levels Of Overheating Danger
The modern computer operates by sending all information, activities, and background supporting processes through a processor. A processor is not just a chip soldered onto a board like in some technologies; these modular chips have an entire industry and hobbyist culture surrounding proper performance.
Processors can get hot enough to start a fire, although the more common problem is burning the internal components and hissing with a bit of smoke. To reduce heating problems, modern computers won't start without a fan connected to a set of power pins as a safety feature. Although you could circumvent this feature, it's not a good idea; a heat sink draws heat away, the fan moves air through the heat sink to push hot air through, and cooler air usually starts the process all over again. It's a smart and easy way to be safe.
Modern computers also have a speed throttling system designed to make critical processor burns less likely. Processors will slow down in speed in order to reduce temperature, but that means your systems will move slower as well.
Even without critical heat levels, there will be some wear and tear to the system. Processors can last for decades, but processors that have reached critical heat in the past may burn up more easily if their temperatures reach critical too many times.
Commercial Cooling For Comfort And Precision
For businesses, cooling an entire room of servers in a server room or full data center warehouse can be a challenge. It's a big investment, but many people aren't aware of some of the waste that happens with incorrect cooling.
The average individual--or even the average computer technician--may think that air conditioning is good enough. If the room is chilly, that's more air to be pulled into the system by the fan and ambient room temperature to constantly combat the heating problems. Although that does help a bit, the intensity of high-performance systems can create a nest of heat that is still a problem for the computer, with the only benefit being a room temperature that stays stable.
Many businesses and even military missions incorrectly drop their temperatures even lower to compensate high heating problems. "It's for the gear, not the person," you may hear in some situations, but a basic air conditioning is unintentionally only for the people. The servers will be at an okay temperature, workers will be freezing, and your power bill will be outrageous.
Instead, install a direct air delivery system to your servers. This doesn't need to be as elite or expensive as Google, Amazon, or Disney servers; a wide exhaust hose that points over your servers, or a pipe system that feeds cool air slowly into a computer intake vent will suffice.
Contact a commercial air conditioning professional, or visit websites like http://www.associatedmechanical.com, to learn about available cooling layouts for your technology.