Tjernlund M-6: Finding A Better Way To Cool The Benchmarking Server Room

Written by Michael Larabel in Peripherals on 7 November 2015 at 09:38 AM EST. Page 2 of 2. 15 Comments.

That previous VenTech fan was rated for 240 CFM, so once setting up the Tjernlund M-6 at 530 CFM, it was a world of difference. The M-6 is much larger than the former duct fan, so I ended up needing to attach some extra wood to the wall studs and then bolting this Tjernlund fan to them.

The Tjernlund M-6 could be attached to a rheostat if desired, but I plan to just run it 24/7 at full-speed in order to cool the server room. So far it's been doing an amazing job! It's pushing plenty of warm air into the rest of the house that I'm hoping the furnace will be on minimally during the winter months.

There's just been one drawback: with the amount of noise it's pushing, the Tjernlund M-6 is incredibly noisy at full-speed. I have some changes I plan to do next week to reduce the noise level so I'll be writing a follow-up after that. I'm going to replace the flexible ducts with insulated flexible ducts, use some neoprene duct clamps rather than tape for securing the joints, and make some other modifications.

The severe noise is on the exhaust end, which is pushing all the air into my main office area. The noise near the intake or even within the closet isn't bad at all -- thanks to using stone wool insulation when building that closet on all of the walls plus using cement board in most of that area too.

Anyhow, so far the room temperature is much better and only a few degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the ambient temperature outside of the room. It will be interesting to see how the Tjernlund M-6 works during the summer and if there's a reduction in AC usage, so stay tuned for more follow-ups. In case you missed it, last month I also wrote A Six Month Redux After Building A 60+ System Basement Server/Computer Room. In addition to the many Linux/open-source tests done on Phoronix.com, more of the performance data from this test farm can also be found on LinuxBenchmarking.com and OpenBenchmarking.org.

The M-6 and the other high performance fans from Tjernlund can be found at Amazon.com.

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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.