Determining total heat dissipation for an office

[DaniloK]

Hi everyone,

We're creating a new dispatch center office for our company in Belgrade. It will be working 24/7, and we're procuring HP workstations and other equipment for it. I now need help in determining the total heat dissipation for the system, so that we can get appropriate  AirCon. The setup will be the following:

12 Z4 G4 work stations

Xeon W-2104

16GB DDR4 RAM

1 HDD + 1 SSD

NVIDIA® QUADRO® P400 graphics

The machines will be idling at 90% of the time, they will be running a few simple apps, with optimization alghoritms every hour for a few minutes. How many watts can I expect to be dissipated?

There will also be a video wall dissipating a maximum of 800W, and 4-6 persons in the office.

If there's a need for any more information, I'll be glad to answer them.

Danilo

[DGroves]

short of getting a system configured with the software and running it  with a power checker to see the actual watts drawn from the wall socket you will have to take the system's rated watts and use a estamated 50% duty cycle (aprox 230 watts per system,  6 persons generate aprox 700 watts of heat and the wall display you say is 800 watts this is just a start

however your not done yet...........................

you also need to account for the size of the room, how many windows (if any), the orentation of the building (does it face south) is it in a building that has existing AC for other uses or a standalone building,......and many other considerations such as running the power/water drain lines

why you think that your local aircon contractor will be unable to help you with this escapes me as as in the USA just about any business cooling/heating/hivac contractor has the ability to do this

asking us for a number on this forum is not a proper way to determine the correct size cooling requirement for your needs

you really need to have to have a onsite check by a properly trained person/company 

[DaniloK]

Hi, thanks for your answer. 

 The only reason I'm asking here is to get a more accurate estimation of the heat dissipation of the workstations. The company that will procure the AC equipment can work out the rear of the heat dissipation, but their approach to determining the Z4 dissipation is disappointing to say the least.

They calculate it as 465W psu, with a 90% efficiency, gives a total of 517W, and I'm sure it won't be that much.

Your 50% assumption is a better guess I'm sure. 

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

I personally feel that your 90% idle time is not a valid usage requirement for long term usage  and i tend to agree with your contractor that using the systems full wattage for determining the total AC requirements is a much better and future proof method of getting a AC unit. i've heard many stories from  contractors in my field about companies who tried to cheap out using methods like you are trying to do......and they usually end badly for the client who either can't run the existing hardware or future hardware upgrades unless they totally replace the existing AC unit

 it's your money/time so if you want to try a 50% wattage reduction in your cooling capacity  that's up to you but i recomend getting 3 or more bids for your setup and then decide on what you want to do and if all 3 recomend the same AC capacity, i strongly recomend you consider taking their advice as even my 50% is just a guess since i can't see your office or software used or any future changes that may come up

[DaniloK]

I guess you're right, we'll talk to several companies and get their recommendations. It's not a point to save money, money's not the issue, it's that we currently have 2 AC units, one is 12000BTU, the other is 18000BTU, and we rarely use the bigger one, because it's too uncomfortable to sit in the office when it's on. Now we have 6 workstations, and 2 TVs instead of the video wall, so the heat will increase. Thanks for the answers!