Gaming PC in loft - long cables to desk in another room.

Sekrab

Sekrab

Sekrab

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Hi guys, I'm thinking about situating my gaming PC in my uncoverted loft as away of removing a hot and noisy box from the small room that I play games in. My plan is to run long USB and HDMI cables into the the room with my desk so that I have my monitor, mouse keyboard, speakers, etc as per usual. The box itself will be located above the room in the loft.

My concern is about condensation; a hot box in a freezing cold winter loft space - is it likely to cause signifigant condensation that could adversly affect roof timbers etc?

Does anyone here have any advice here or have done anything similar? it all seems to good to be true - gaming in blissful silence and zero heat issues.
 
how are you going to switch it on and off?
Upgrade/diagnotics on the pc if anything goes wrong?
Loads of long 5/10m USB extension cables for mouse / keyboard /joypad /headphones /speakers etc etc -seems very daft if you ask me.
Extreme stuff this one - but what about potential fire hazard

Why not just improve the cooling/noise levels with some better fans etc and keep it in the same room.
 
Don't forget to Run an extension to the power switch as well for when stuff crashes.

Provided the temperature doesn't drop below a certain level you should be alright. I don't believe loft spaces get all that cold (ie freezing temps) as they are warmed by the house below and trap a certain amount of heat from escaping.

Just watch out for loft insulation being sucked into and through the system, dust can be quite an issue in loft spaces.
 
Thanks very much for your input guys, the power switch will be located in the office, near to where the vertical section of trunking will run. I've already thought of that :) I dont think I'll need that many leads, 1 usb lead with repeater can connect me to a hub... which I can connect my mouse, keyboard, headphones, etc to.

I'm not sure I'm overly concerned about an increased fire hazard as I routinely leave my PC switched on all day when I'm at work and no one is in the house.

The loft is at least reasonably clean and fully boarded out, the PC will sit on a shelf halfway up the gable... the case has dust filters which would need cleaning every so often I guess.

I thought about upgrade/diagnostic access but in all honesty, I probably only need physical access every 6 months or so.
 
Personally I'd just build a custom desk and get a watercooling setup and put the base unit into a hidden compartment in the desk itself. That way no mentally long cables, risk of dust killing it or awful fire hazard.
 
I've had computers for years and not once has one burst into flame. Sure stuff breaks from time to time and a blown PSU can make a bit of fizzle and smoke but surely not a catastrophic combustion.

I've heard of people having their system case in a separate room with cables and stuff running through the wall, this is not that different, especially as the loft space is all boarded.

Fit a surge protector and install a smoke alarm up there and you'll be laughing.
 
Tealc said:
I've heard of people having their system case in a separate room with cables and stuff running through the wall, this is not that different, especially as the loft space is all boarded.
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Agreed, a lot of school's have there systems in another room and feed the wires through walls / ceiling (Or was it just my schools?:p) I dont see this any driffent
 
This actually kind of makes sense and starts moving things towards a "central computer" in the home. Couple it with the ******* child of a USB KVM switch and a server console and stick monitors/controls wherever you needed them.

edit: Deleted this chunk as I think theres money to be made with it :D

In short, go for it, i'm sure it would work fine :)
 
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Dust and just general crap in the loft would be my worry, I'm in lofts often and there is a lot of stuff in the air, This getting sucked through your system can't be good.
 
Interesting idea........do you use your DVD drive often
or is there a way round that.

I've got a temperature sensor in my attic, I had a spare, and my attic gets significantly hotter than the lounge - facing South.

On the rare days which are quite hot my attic gets up to 40 deg C and retains the heat rather well - saves on the water heating bill.

Your experience may differ.

Smoke detector a must. It doesn't matter how rarely components burst into flames it happens and they're cheap.

Edit: A master switch on the ground floor controlling all power to the PC & any other remote equipment is also obviously essential.
 
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Loft is gonna roast in the summer, your pc ain't gonna last too long or be very stable imo. I've got wires in the wall, ps/2 audio and usb from downstairs to my room, usb dvd-rw etc.. its dead silent obviously :)
 
And what do you do in the summer? No way it's gonna survive if you have the kind of loft in most modern homes that get incredibly hot in the summer time. I can only see you having to remove it from the loft in the summer and locate it somewhere else in the house (seen as you can't seem to bare it being in the same room as you)
 
barney magru said:
And what do you do in the summer? No way it's gonna survive if you have the kind of loft in most modern homes that get incredibly hot in the summer time. I can only see you having to remove it from the loft in the summer and locate it somewhere else in the house (seen as you can't seem to bare it being in the same room as you)
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Unless the OP is running a massively overclocked system which is on the brink of being stable now it'll be fine.

I've run lots of different computers / server in my loft for years and not once have I had an issue. At the moment I have

C2D @ 2,800Mhz
8GB Ram
4 x hdd (300GB - 1TB)
Dual nics,

Dual P3 (HP DL 380) (smoothwall)

Dlink DGL4300

Keyboard/mouse/monitor all running at full tilt, dust and heat have never been an issue and this summer has been a hot one.

If you can get the cables then go for it, there's a fair few "over ethernet" adapters about these days for video / mouse. Not sure how good for gaming but work looking at.
 
I've been running my gaming system in my loft for 4 years now, sat right next to my file server and my 1U firewall.

Yes it does get a little warm in the summer, filter need cleaning regularly but I've yet to have anything fail that could be put down the the heat.
 
i've been running pcs in my loft for years, never have a problem really.

i have quite a few rackmounted so they can heat up abit, but still run fine in the summer, especially as one of them is a Q6600 that is encoding 24/7
 
Logitech 5500mx Revolution will sort the mouse and keyboard cables issue, blutooth 2.0 is near perfect.

Other than that I'm useless as I wouldn't want my PC in my loft (too much crap in there!)
 
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