Take one cheap Japanese plastic fan, snap the front off, trim the blades to fit the duct, zip tie the duct to the fan and walla forced air duct for a small server room.

This idea at first didn’t do much. I had the fan on the floor with the ducting blowing out the bottom of the door. Seemed to just take the cool air from the floor of the server room and blow it around with the cool air of the hallway and let it drift back in. The room hung out at around 103* with that setup (video below).

After that setup I moved the fan to the top shelf of the computer rack, stretched the duct out to match the door, cut a hole, trimmed one of Emily’s food bowls to fit in the door and it all slides together now when you shut the door. The best thing is that it dropped the temp from 103* to 86* in about 30 minutes.

Still debating some more ideas, but for now; this seems to be keeping up with the 12 odd computers running in there (most are just doing SETI@Home, Einstein@Home, Cosmos@Home and MilkyWay@Home). I’m also putting bugs in Emily’s ears to let me purchase some “real” servers and get rid of these old ones. Then again, I really like using old computers so who knows .. what ever ..

Take care and check back again,
Justin

Although it doesn’t always go the way it is supposed to, this site is basically for Linux users. I try to post a few things I’ve done with Linux or in Linux in the hopes I can help someone that is experiencing the same issues.