Wiki tells me that the flash point of Transformer Oil (a type of mineral oil) is 140 C; does that sound safe in a server room? I'm a worse chemist than I am a physicist so I can't tell if you're serious about OSHA not liking mineral oil in server rooms (I'm **pretty** sure you're not serious about frying chicken in the cpu box :-) I just don't feel that power-gamers should be able to get away with anything unavailable to HPC. Peter
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 9:16 AM, Robert G. Brown <r...@phy.duke.edu> wrote: > On Mon, 3 Sep 2012, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote: > > > I'll bet they have to change it more often than that. This isnt > something > > like a pole transformer. > > Absolutely. Think of what you can do with a big vat of hot oil handy in > the workspace. Buffalo Wings. French Fries. Chicken. Fish. The > reason nobody does this is because OSHA prohibits it -- it is a huge > health hazard. Not even Jolt Cola can keep you thin in a sedentary > profession with your own personal deep frier as close as your server > room. Although you do have to change the oil pretty often, as otherwise > shrimp tails and bits of overcooked tempura crust gunk up the memory and > CPU. Systems people were dying like pudgy little flies of advanced > cardiovascular disease before the practice of using computers to heat > deep fat was banned. > > On a more serious note, one wonders why nobody has tried helium instead. > No, silly, not liquid helium, helium gas. The reason they fill windows > with argon is that it has around 2/3 the thermal conductivity of air, > and hence is a better insulator. This, in turn, is because it is more > massive -- conductivity is tightly tied to mass and hence the speed of > the molecules when they have kT sorts of energies. > > Helium, OTOH, has six times the thermal conductivity of air, and is > relatively inexpensive. The biggest downside I can think of is that it > requires a pretty good seal and thick walls to keep the slippery little > atoms from sliding right through to the outside, and of course the fact > that systems techs would always be hitting up the helium tanks so that > they could talk like Donald Duck. And you'd still have to refrigerate > the outside of the systems units. But all of these things are still > orders of magnitude easier than with oil, and even things like cooling > fans work fine in Helium. Maybe there are other problems -- lower heat > capacity to match its higher conductivity -- but it seems like it is > worth an experiment or two... > > rgb > > Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ > Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 > Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 > Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:r...@phy.duke.edu > > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf >
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