more power draw with higher ambient temperature?

[Anonymous user]

Hi,

We had a cooling failure in a datacenter and a pair of circuit breakers feeding some servers subsequently tripped. I'm trying to understand why we all of a sudden experienced an overload. Do servers draw more power in warmer ambient temperatures?

Or perhaps all the fans started working harder to cool it down? Do the fans draw enough power to make a difference?

(It was a few Dell Poweredge 2950s)

Thanks!

[TheNotoriousKMP_apc · Accepted solution]

Dave,

While I can't be sure on the power draw of the PE servers (you might want to discuss this with Dell), I can tell you from experience that even using a Back-UPS product w/ PowerChute Personal Edition and an HP tower, I've witnessed my UPS capacity increase when the Heat Sync fan kicks in.

Not sure if that carries up the chain when you improve to better equipment.