I’m in the middle of redesigning my home network (when I really should be in the middle of my uni work). One of the main points was sneaking a rack into the garage for a firewall, some servers and a beefy NAS. My new workstation has got me thinking of ingenious solutions to a big problem. My workstation is LOUD! Dual Xeons need serious cooling. I could just throw on a fan controller and throttle the two 120mm Akasa fans, but I’m getting back into the swing of Folding@Home and 100% across 8-cores is pushing it.
So the obvious answer is to move the workstation itself into the garage too! Wikipedia tells me the specification for DVI should be fine with the distance though the wall.
The maximum length of DVI cables is not included in the specification since it is dependent on bandwidth requirements (the resolution of the image being transmitted). In general, cable lengths from 1-15 feet (4.5m) will work for displays at resolutions of 1920×1200. Cable lengths up to 50 feet (15m) can be used with displays at resolutions up to 1280×1024. For longer distances, to eliminate the video degradation, the use of a DVI booster is recommended. DVI boosters may or may not use an external power supply.
Moving the box to the garage will solve more problems than just noise. Space constraints and heat issues would be solved. The CPUs could be watercooled using a large, passive external radiator.
I’d have to sketch up some designs, but a simple wall box containing two DVI ports, powered USB hub, FireWire and sound would be pretty simple. Imagine just moving all the I/O ports on the back of your PC to a wall jack. It’d solve the plug nightmare that is the corner of the living room too. Currently 10 devices all need a plug-socket with only one available? Oh god!
Of course it would be a great deal of hard work and investment into this project. For starters I’d have to fabricate a new case suitable for wall mounting. Feature check; wall mountable, light, sturdy, thin (2U if possible) and the operating environment would be quite a challenge. The I/O would be the next greatest challenge, I think the distances involved would be borderline for signal boosters on every bus (DVI, FireWire and USB would all need boosters over 4.5-5m cable length). I’d need a new external CD/DVD solution and it could be a pain to troubleshoot if something went tits up.
However ,the pay-off for such a project would be huge. Having a powerful, absolutly silent (but not in the garage!), ‘invisible’, always-on workstation would be fantastic. Time to check google to see if anybody has attempted/acheived this before!
