I posted this on Reddit, but always wanted to share something cool on these forums.
Context:
I was using a 360mm radiator on the side of my case to cool off just my 5900X, with 3 fans for intake, 3 for exhaust. My 3090 + 5900X constantly output too much heat into my office, causing the room to regularly hit 80F, making it quite uncomfortable for me.
My first idea was to lower the air conditioning in the room, which adversely caused the rest of the floor to become too cold, even after closing and checking the vents. We had looked into exhausting the PC into the hallway, adding extra vents, running the computer setup from our downstairs closet (this would be viable, if the closet wasn't a furnace in the summer), but all had their issues.
After months of research on how to circulate air in and out of my office, I struck a deal with my wife to stick a 480mm radiator on the outside of my office so I could shut the door and keep the PC in the office. This way, all the heat goes out into the hallway, and I can still shut my door on children playing downstairs while I work.
During work hours, when the fans are red, I'm in a meeting. They become white from left to right as the meeting gets closer to ending.
Outside of meetings, they are set to my Teams presence. (Green: Available, Orange/Amber: Away, Red: Busy)
The total project time thus far has been 3 months. I had to wait for the GPUs water block to ship from China, build the box for the radiator, wait for parts from Amazon (about two weeks of waiting total), and fail multiple times at substituting PCIE power and USB with CAT5 cable. This really did cause the most amount of pain.
The original setup didn't have RGB fans, but my wife said she wanted them there to help it not look like garbage hanging above my doorframe. I had a PWM fan splitter, requiring 3 SATA power wires and 4 PWM fan wires. This worked really well across a CAT5 cable. In order to get the RGB ran, I decided to use a Corsair Commander Core XT. The Commander has 6 PWM connectors and 6 LED connectors for the fans, with a 3 pin external port for the Pump/Res and CPU water block.
Soldering the USB connection (4 wires) did NOT work over CAT5 copper. We soldered and desoldered the connection over a dozen times, thinking we just simply weren't doing a good job. I broken down and got 100ft of 18 gauge speaker wire, which conveniently has the same color scheme of wires as USB. I additionally purchased some terminal block USB connectors. This allowed me to run the wire and not have to solder the ends to the connectors. The 3 pin connections were soldered, but used electronic jumper wires to make it modular.
Would I do any of this over again? Hell no- it was way too much work. Next time, I'll be adding a climate controlled computer closet. I purchased a new home, thinking the AC system would be able to handle my office, and after having HVAC out three times (each time finding a separate issue), I learned my lesson. Don't let the builders gaslight you. I purchased a FLIR camera for my iPhone just to show them they were lying to me about airflow in the house.
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