Please do not laugh. Put G5 in a freezer?
 

Need help on a cooling/noise issue and looking for a low budget approach.

I want to put my quad G5 in a chest freezer to cool it and to silence it.

Am I being irrational?

eValuone.

The freezer would blow up, the compressor would go out trying to keep it at the right temperature because the computer would generate too much heat inside the fridge.

The G5s are already have some sort of water cooling system in them. I suggest you reset your power management and recalibrate your thermal sensors which requires a copy of ASD, which is only obtainable by AASPs if I recall.

Even assuming you get an industrial freezer so it can handle the heat output with no problem, your biggest concern is going to be condensation and frost buildup.
I can't think of a realistic way to combat this.
Mixing "low budget" with "computer cooling" always leads to interesting catastrophes.

A friend of mine has an electrical closet near his setup and put his G5 in there. To avoid overheating the closet, he installed a vent to the outside of his house.

Thanks to all of you.

NS: I thought about this, but our closest closet is a bathroom which has humidity, et al., problems.

I love this G5. It has served me oh-so-well since late 2005. It has that big 1kw power supply and 4 2.5GHz cpus. Plus 10GRAM.

During winter it heats the room! During summer it roasts ME! I've tried fans (big ones), opening windows, etc.

Seems like there ought to be a way that is just local to G5 itself, that's what made me think of a freezer-refrigerator. But clearly, in retrospect, that solution would need its own environmental controls just to protect G5.

A room AC won't work due building restrictions.

Attic is too hot in summer.

Crawl is probably too humid.

It just sounds like a common problem without a decent solution.

Thanks anyway,

eValuone.

There are some relatively small portable air conditioners that don't stick outside a window. Instead, there are a pair of hoses that go to a barrier that goes under the window. Most building restrictions don't want you hanging a conventional AC outside.

Google: ductless air conditioner

Somewhat offtopic:
Is it true that you can possibly recover files off of a dead HDD by placing it in a freezer first?

Old trick and it does work I have done it, but no it doesn't always work.

Works if the hard drive is failing when it gets warm. The overnight rest in the freezer gives you more time to copy things off before it fails again. Won't fix a drive that is dead for non-thermal issues.

eValuone:

Do you pay for water separately or is it included in the rent? You could install a small radiator inside the G5's case or in front of the air intakes (look in junkyards for a sub-compact's heater/ac core) and run cold tap water through it.

Oh yeah, you can also monitor your Mac's temperature sensors by using an app like Temperature Monitor.

One cheap solution is to buy some really long cables and literally put the computer outside of the room or (as mentioned) in a closet.) It reduces heat and noise. They do it a lot in home recording studios...

It seems to me that your problem is not that the G5 is overheating, but that it is heating up your room? Is that so? In which case your options are more limited, as with any cooling, there has to be some heat exchange going on...and where does that heat go? For instance, a freezer is cold inside, but is pumping at least some heat out the back where the compressor and elements are....so you are back where you started... putting heat into your room.

Probably the easiest suggestion here is the long cables - G5 outside the room option. Otherwise any radiator-style cooling isn't going to move the heat from the case outside the room...unless you run the pipe outside your room too! You could always get a few icepacks, put them in a freezer in another part of the house, then bring them out and lay them on the case - but that's only going to work for a limited time. And you'd want to put them in plastic bags to make sure the condensation doesn't drip on your machine!

Interesting conundrum

Putting the G5 in a freezer would not make the room cooler, but actually make the room hotter. The freezer has to put the G5 heat somewhere. It'll put it into the room and now the heat that the freezer's motors and compressors make will be added. NovaScotian and CWT have the best ideas I think.

Blubber and Navaho, et al.,

You people are really good. Clearly, I didn't rethink my physics! Some of that classical stuff is still a tad useful.

OK, OK, now that I have had time to ponder all of your responses, I see that small AC with hoses through a window sill as possible.

Others mentioned long cables. This option opens some big doors, but not perhaps as you are imagining.

I'm on a LAN, and its peak rate is about 1GHz.

If I could move G5 to another room further away in facility, that could work, trouble is I need about 10GHz of LAN bandwidth. (Main reason is I would be VNCing to G5 from a MBP 17" with a 30" cinema attached. Lots of BW to refresh that cinema. Lots of my stuff needs real time video or nearly rt. I am 900/20 (limit max in diopters) in both eyes so I need to be able to scroll screen up to what I can read easily, that's why the 30" cinema...also I do a lot of video recording directly to G5...MBP doesn't store at as high picture quality as G5...)

What do you think? In my view this is better since it moves machine's nearly 1kw operating heat and noise to another, more friendly, locus.

One of those two options now appears to be where I am headed.

And thank you so much for persisting at this...

For those of you whom I may have mislead...there isn't anything wrong temp wise with G5...it's fine...problem is me. LOL. (Now a G5 analog which runs on 10W might be something useful. Doubt that is gonna happen within next few years...)

eValuone.

hey eValuone - I'm sorry, but I did laugh.

My gut feeling about the long cables is that VNC over a lan isnt going to give you a satisfactory experience - fine for excel and low graphics work, but Im not sure your LAN will be able to feed video to you comfortably. I would suggest that if you are using long cables, you make them the video and usb ones so you are plugged directly into the G5.

I like the idea of an air-con water cooling option for the case...

I agree with you Chris.

I will start working on that approach first.

Thanks again, and I am glad I got someone to laught!

eValuone.

I agree. I regularly use a 30 metre (100 foot) VGA cable with no problems at all. I imagine that DVI would cope with that as well. USB.org tells me that full speed, you can only use USB cables up to about 5 metres (over 16 feet). You can always have fun drilling through walls etc to get the shortest run possible!

wouldnt a usb hub act as an extender uf you wanted more than 5m?

Maybe the cheapest and easiest solution is to sell the G5 and buy a Mac Pro in its place. I'm fairly confident that the heat output from the newer Mac Pros is much less than the G5s. The liquid cooled G5s have a high rate of failure due to the cooling systems leaking, but in some cases Apple has been replacing those failed units with Mac Pros.

Jasen: The solution to eliminating condensation might be to vacuum seal the G5 inside of an airtight material like mylar or plastic. Eliminating the air would also eliminate any moisture and prevent condensation and ice crystals from forming. It would probably also wreck the CPU since there would be no air to help transfer heat away from the heat sinking.

Is liquid nitrogen not a realistic alternative? XD

dry ice would be better, easier to handle and still -80oC.

...and would you expect better performance once the chips were super-cooled?? ;-)

I'd expect them to crack, then fail.
;)

I remember the days when I had a noisy G4 tower, then bought an ibook. the peace and quiet was worth the drop in power. I saw no reason to ever buy a desktop again and haven't!