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Running a Server at Freezing Temperatures?
mw13068 asks: "As a part of a backup solution, I'm thinking of running a backup server in my unheated, unattached garage. I live in central New York State, and the temperatures very often drop below zero degrees Celsius. The computer is a Pentium III Celeron running at 733MHz. Has anyone else tried this sort of thing? If you have, please share your experiences."
is it just me, or are other people thinking he should overclock it to make sure its nice and warm (excuses to overclock are always good).
The computer is a Pentium III Celeron running at 733MHz.
I'd be less concerned about what type and speed the CPU is, and more concerned about a hard drive seizing up.
Make sure your case is hardened. Every little critter, including mice, will want to live in the warm case. We had a computer in an astronomical observatory dome and mice built their nest on the CPU. The acid in urine from the mice destroyed the motherboard.
Isn't cryogenic computing the best way to get more speed out of your processor. Heat is the worst enemy we have.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
The electronic should be ok, but you may run into problems with power supplies, cpu fans and disks. The lubricants on bearings change viscosities and may gum up or stop working right.
I'd be more worried about dust and dirt... video chips and cpus are always warm, and dust will be caked on the chips and cause them to overheat.
I used to work at a company that ran state park reservation systems. Sometimes I'd see machines that came from the field where they were kept in park ranger booths and were absolutely filthy. I believe the PC repair staff would end up cleaning each PC out and replacing hard disks annually.
So IMHO, I wouldn't keep backups outdoors.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Not sure if this would genereate Too much heat, but you could always just make a sealed, or almost sealed case that just recirculates the air inside the case and does not pull in any of the cold air from outside. Seems like this would keep things nice and warm inside the case.
Look up the specs on all the hardware. Most have an operating temps guideline. If your within it you should be alright.
It seems like every car repair garage I go to has a shop computer for looking up parts etc.
They almost always are in the main garage, and aren't heated at night. They seem to work fine.
You will have mice and other animals trying to live in it, and using the bathroom in it. A guy that worked at a lumberyard brought a PC in for us to upgrade, and the first thing we found when we opened the case was mouse turds.
I'd say try it. It's an old machine anyways but try to check first if there isn't some temperature that it could reach that could be too low.
My advice is not that of a professional. Maybe some electronic engineer or electrician could give you better advice.
I ran a couple of dual PIII 450's in my garage in Minnesota last winter with no problem. I didn't have any room in my small apartment for them so I put them in the garage and used a couple of Linksys WAP11's in bridge mode to get them talking to my cable modem in my apartment. The average temp in the garage was about 5 degrees above zero last winter.
The one thing you need to watch out for though is static. When it gets cold and dry, you don't want to be ripping open your machines in the garage. My machines stayed up from October through last June without any problems.
I'm not a storage expert, but I'd think if the system was left on 24x7 that the drives would generate enough heat to keep them stable at low temperatures.
Granted, I wouldn't dump liquid nitrogen on them or anything, but given that outdoor temperatures fluctuate slowly, I don't think there'd be any hardware issues.
One thing that I would do is make sure the system remains powered off after a power failure just to be safe. If the temperature is very low and the power goes out, the system will cool rapidly.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
My main concern would be how protected would the computer be from the elements?
Here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, there are some pretty heavy snow storms and it can get mighty cold. So if you use the garage you'll get the snow and all coming in. If the garage is in use then I would definitely make sure that the computer is not sitting on the floor, (snow and ice melting from the vehicle would form a nice puddle.)
Then there is the issue of dust and such. If you're using the garage, then the exhaust from the vehicle would also add to the wear and tear of computer.
If your garage is not actively being used then I would say that it is safe. The computer should in theory do better in the cold, (just as long as you don't have a lot of moisture. Water and computers don't mix.
Unless you know it is secure from rodents and bugs, and you are positive about the operating temperatures of your hardware, I wouldnt trust it.
Also, you will need to check the operating temperatures of your motherboard, processor, hard drive, memory, and any other components, and make sure that they will work in the temperature range you expect. Operating temperatures are much more narrow than storage temperatures. The operating temperature, for example, of the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 is 0 to 60 degrees celcius. I am guessing your temperatures will get well below 0 degrees, so you will need to be certian before attempting it.
Also, what type of humidity do you get in this garage? Are you worried about data security? Can someone just walk into your garage, and fiddle with your server? Can the kids basketball hit it? All things to think about.
1. It sounds like the backup is for a server in the same house --
which isn't much of a backup, if your concern is environmental factors (power failure, fire, flood, theft, etc.).
And re power failure, a commercial location might get more responsive service when ice takes down a power line.
2. For virtually all hardware, there's a published spec of acceptable temperatures. You should check for your equipment.
Also, beware of humidity: any sudden introduction of moisture (e.g.,
-- from opening an attached kitchen entrance while cooking pasta,
-- or moisture from an engine exhaust or a garage-located frost-free freezer,
-- or a sudden rain when the weather goes above freezing faster than your equipment thaws)
could cause condensation on your equipment.
Rather than keeping the comp in the garage, perhaps it would be more optimal to keep it near the garage, and have a duct pulling cold air in from the garage? You get the benefits of cool air in winter, and you reduce the hazards of pests in the box.
This sig no verb.
I wouldn't worry too much about it being too cold. if you have a pusher fan, take that out. puller fans (that exhaust air, instead of pulling it in) will have the temp of the air inside the case, rather than the temp of the outside air. lubricants become more viscous with colder temps, so you want you fan to breathe the warmer air from inside the case.
you probably want to make it a smaller fan also, you don't want too much cold air going through. cold is good for CPUs but too much cold breaks solder joints.
if you can control your fan thermostatically i would recommend that. having computer parts get hot, then cold, then hot, then cold, then hot, then cold, due to day/night cycles KILLS solder joints quick. condensation is also a concern with widely varying temperatures. condensation is bad, of course.
as someone else said, rodent-proof the case and check it for infestation often. mice will chew right through sheet metal when they need to. Try mounting it on a wall somehow so rodents can't get to it.
i'm not worried about the below zero C temps, i'm worried about temperature fluctuation. using a smaller than OEM fan will keep what warm air there is inside the case there a little longer, and should keep the insides of the case above 0C constantly.
I would be most worried about temperature fluctuations. Generally speaking, hardware can handle a stable extreme condition, but even (commonly) minor events like an electric grid power failure or a reboot or a sudden ... sunshine might prove fatal. If your hardware is cheap you might want to try it but I'd consider an aggressive backup policy.
Haven't you noticed that hardware fails on powerup/powerdown in the majority of cases? Change is what stresses electronic circuits.
P.
Yes, mice will chew through all exposed cables, especially if you put peanut butter on them.
I have had some overheating problems with my athlon xp 1900+ in the past, so I started to keep my windows in my bedroom open 24x7 durring the winter, this solved my overheating problems and the computer seemed to run better as I was sitting in front of it seeing my breath. As far as the dust goes, I used to work in an IT Dept. for a factory that made security doors for mall shops, They had some old computers through out the factory that were used to operate some of the machines. I did maintainance on a few of them and when they were opened there was literally a layer of thick dust covering everything inside, this didn't effect any internal parts, the only thing we ever had to replace on these pc's were floppy drives. I am talking pentium 1 generation boxes here, so I would venture that yours should be pretty safe since your garage should not produce near the amount of dust that this factory produced.
What this will do is create a "bubble" of warm air inside the box that is vented when the fan is running and stable when it is off. This will keep your box temperature roughly even. If you are concerned about cold-starting hard disks after a period of off-time, make sure you have a power supply which remains off after a power loss and add a 100 W light bulb inside the box. When you want to power the system back on, switch the bulb on and leave it for an hour or two before you hit the power button, then turn the bulb off again. Do not bring cold hardware into a warm, humid house to warm up - you will get condensation.
As long as you have the bottom of the box screened against critters and otherwise isolated, you probably won't have to worry about static or other environmental nastiness.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
If you are running it all the time anyway, and heating your house, move it inside. That way the heat from the computer cuts down on your heating bills. Move it outside during the summer.
You can operate a computer in that environment just fine, if it is on all the time. The main problem is that dew can form on the components when it is off, and it might still be there when you start it up, if you turn it on and off. Equipment that is designed for unheated, open to the outdoors environments, is often designed so that when it turns on, just the power supply comes on for a period of time, blowing warm air through the case; this dries things out, and then it boots. Setting that up would be a pain in your situation.
Tell your PC to never turn off hard disks, never turn off fans. (might freeze if they stop, and not start again). Take the floppy out of the machine, and replace the hole in the front with a blank panel. It might be a good idea to do that with the CD/DVD drives as well. Make sure that the back of the case is all sealed up, (ie, no open holes for old PCI devices you no longer have). Lastly, Don't put anything over or close to it. Your going to need it to be able to suck in air, and evacuate the air with the fans. you do not want to be recycling the air (like you would if it was under a blanket) as it can increase the moisture of the air.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
At my old workplace, we had to keep welding rods at a reasonable temperature during Southern Ontario winters (cold!), so we put a lightbulb into an old fridge and used that.
The temperatures in NY don't get low enough for you to worry about anything but condensation, as previous posters mentioned. When I was in the Air Force, the computers we used to troubleshoot avionics loved the cold. The shop could not get above 70F or we would start seeing problems. A buddy of mine went to Iceland and they opened all the doors to the shop one day in winter and got the shop to around -10F. He said the computers never ran better. You would have to get the computer pretty damn cold before you started seeing failures. We're talking the kind of cold that the cpu can't even think about warming up.
Condensation, bugs, and critters are your only concerns.
Mod Parent Up
It ought to keep your garage nice and warm. Problem solved. :)
a buddy of mine put his mobo and suchwhat in a freezer so he could oc it like mad, but the humidity condensed on it and froze, and when it got warm it melted and destroyed it. you might face a similar problem.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
computers like the cold. mechanical things could have issues. but if you system is always on and not frozen when you first boot it you should have no problem as the disks will generate enough heat on their own to survive.
I used to install computer systems in junkyards. Think 40 year old railroad cars converted into "office" space. Obviously, these places are, generally speaking, environmental nightmares. I was always waiting for the ground to catch fire when one of the owners tossed out a cigarette butt.
I saw computers shut into closets at 100 degrees F, ones where they used PVC tubing for the wiring, and had rainwater dripping down into the floor where the PC was stored, you name it. We had one RMA where the box had literally about half an inch of crud on the motherboard, and that one was in because they were upgrading (the box worked just fine).
Surprisingly, we had relatively few computer failures. Occasionally, we'd have to actually detach the temperature sensors that went off when the interior of the box got to 130F, but I don't recall the boxes coming back even after that.
Eventually, I arrived at the conclusion that PCs are a lot sturdier than we tend to give them credit for. Short of insect/rodent invasions, I can't think a fifty degree garage would be problematic, especially if you're leaving it on most of the time.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
Oil viscosity is the most important factor here. The machine will be fine in steady-state operation, but if it's turned off for more than a few minutes, a cold start will be very difficult.
:)
Cold-starts outdoors will require use of a heater. Blowing a hair-dryer (on low heat!) into the case for a few minutes prior to startup should warm the drives enough to spin freely, but consider this: During the warming period, the hard drive platters are stationary, and may heat asymmetrically. This means their thermal expansion will be uneven, throwing the spindle off balance and making it nearly impossible for the heads to track a cylinder. Depending on how the drive case is built and how the heat is applied, this may not be a concern. (Heat for 5 minutes, let sit for 1 minute, then power on?)
Of course, bringing it back indoors for startup would be an even worse idea, as moisture would condense on the cold metal. Whenever you bring hardware in from the cold, put it in a tightly closed plastic bag first, and leave it in the bag until it comes completely up to temperature. The relative humidity inside the bag will drop as it warms up, avoiding condensation concerns.
Fans are a bigger concern, as they don't generate much of their own heat like drives do. While it's likely that you won't need much cooling, a CPU fan is almost guaranteed to still be necessary. Look into tip-magnetic-driven (TMD) fans, whose design gives them more torque to overcome stiction at startup. Find one with ball bearings and replace the lube with a light machine oil.
I don't think dust is such a big concern, if the case provides air filtration, as any server case should. Just get the thing off the floor, out of dust-bunny territory. If the power supply fan is thermostatically controlled, airflow should be kept to a minimum and dust entry will be negligible. It still never hurts to pop the case off every few weeks and check. The poster might even have an air compressor in the garage!
Optical drives might be tricky, as they don't spin constantly. Luckily their motors are amazingly torquey and should have no problem spinning up even with cold bearings. If you can position the hard drive directly below the optical drive for heat sharing, so much the better.
These suggestions should keep you running to below freezing. If you get much below that, electrical characteristics of components start changing significantly, and you might have all sorts of weird problems. Look at the temperature-versus-value curves of various passives, and you'll see what I mean. Even clock crystals resonate faster because they've physically shrunk.
This hasn't addressed the first pressing question: Why? Except for acoustic noise, I can think of no reason to put a machine outside during winter. Consider that every watt of electricity you use gets turned straight into heat. Putting your electric heater outside simply means the energy gets wasted, rather than heating your house and lightening the load on your furnace. If you're paying for the energy anyway, why not keep it inside where it does some good?
Rapid temperature change is what you need to watch for - I used to run 486-PII machines in unheated buildings in Minnesota all the time, ambient temps over those winters and in my area (central) got as low as -40 (that's Fahrenheit and Celsius - the scales cross there...) no troubles that I can recall.
and I only had to worry about dust from the shop - BTW, under no circumstances put your box near anything that grinds metal! That's a real quick kill.
STOP. You're being farmed.
You might look at this article on slashdot a while ago:
9 /1 5/1953249&tid=160&tid=126&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/0
It was about how they made a server run in Antarctica over the winter.
There have quite a few suggestions on how to keep the computer warm by wrapping it, using a light bulb, etc. Another option is to just install a heater. We added a gas heater to our garage. It is a Modine Hot Dawg unit that hangs from the rafters. You could set it at a minimum setting to just keep the chill off things. Or, you could set the thermostat a bit higher and use the garage for something other than just storage, like a workshop. Of course, then you get into other issue with the computer like sawdust or dirt.
If you want to heat just the computer, there are some other options like a Heated kennel pad to set the computer on or even some heat tape like that used to keep pipes from freezing. Either of these type of things would probably transfer enough warmth through a metal case to keep the inside temperature above freezing. One advantage to the heat tape is that you could probably coil it inside the computer and leave the thermostat outside. This would keep it warm enough when it is cold, but not get too hot when the temps rise.
A garage floor is a great tempurature moderator in the summer, but it can really pull the heat from something when the temps drop outside. Uninsulated walls have a similar problem. Make sure you isolate/insulate from both as much as possible.
Hot CPU + cold air = condensation. Water inside a PC=bad.
I hate sigs.
The heat from the CPU, Hard Drive, and power supply will probably keep it above freezing, but if you have a power failure, you'll want to get it inside the house to warm it up before attempting a restart.
Spinning up a frozen hard drive is a great way to cause data loss.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
I just did this a month or so ago. My experience is that, because of the generated heat, the computers are not the problem. I've only tested this down to maybe 45 degrees (F), but the problem I've been seeing is with my small network switch. Basically the garage disappears from the network every night between about 2 and 7 am... But so far it's always come back :)
Check this out for cooling concerns:
Liquid Nitrogen 5GHz CPU.
well, it seems that the "airtight" (or close to it) case would prevent the mice and the condensation problem, and if its cold enough heat should transmit to the outside good enough. mount it on chains from the ceiling (hehe) for protection, with some obstical.... like traps on the rafters or something
or encase it in treated wood (CCR-copper crome arsenic, should keep stuff out)
have a space heater, and heat the whole enclosure to start it up. low heat over a long time to avoid problems. other than that, its trial and error
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
I honestly don't think you'll have a problem. Like others before me have said, small bugs and animals trying to take advantage of the warmth is probably your biggest problem. And humidity shouldn't be an issue. I didn't think there was even any humidity in the air when its right around zero. Simple chemistry leads me to believe that(though I may be wrong) I have lived in Florida all my life and cold weather is very unfamiliar to me. I have relatives in Texas and Michigan, however, and when visiting them in the winter, its always very very dry outside. You have to realize that in the end, its just a 733mhz Celeron. Thats worth about $20 tops. If it fails (unlikely) just chalk it up to experimentation.
I live in Denmark the temperature often drops below below zero degrees Celsius. I have had three Pentium servers running in my parents garage for about three and a half years now. I have had no problems with them that was related to the cold. Actually the only hardware that has been changed in the three and a half years is a new disk on one of the servers, a new cpu-fan on another. I think this is just normal for a PC running in three years.
All three of the servers have experienced uptimes on more than a year.
thomasdamgaard.dk.
Typical operating temperatures for hard disks is 5C to 55C
And they need to acclimate to the environment before you start them up..
Just overclock the computer enough that the CPU heat will bring it to room temperature. After all, you've got the original cooling system working for you....
Do you plan on keeping this server in the garage year-round? I would also be concerned about the heat and humidity of a garage which (presumably) wouldn't have air-conditioning.
Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
I used to do network installations at a Major North American University. We would occasionally have installs where our "networking closet" was just a big steel box on the outside of a building. Along with all the networking gear that went in these boxes there was a little tiny heater with a thermostat on it. We set it to about 50 degrees F. When it gets that cold, it turns on.
Build a little cabinet to house your computer and put one of these in here. I think we bought them from Graybar, but I'm not sure, as I just installed them, I didn't buy them. I'm sure Google would help...
Buy a small tent. Put computer in tent inside garage. Turn computer on. Close tent.
I just read through the comments at my usual mod level of 3. Every comment I read implied some need to keep the server warm. My own experience says that cold is not a problem. Heat is a problem, even in cold weather. Putting a computer in an insulated box is, in my opinion, a rather time-consuming way to destroy it.
So I decided to read all the comments. Lo and behold, the let it stay cold comments were there, but weren't being modded up. I'd take serious the overclocking suggestion; just generate a little more internal heat if you're worried about the cold.
Note to moderators: Don't jump on bandwagons. The "cold" commentators in this case were at least as "informative" and "insightful" as the "warm" commentators.
Put a standard incandescent light bulb in the case, it should be able to produce enough heat. Maybe have it switched with a thermal switch like http://dkc3.digikey.com/PDF/T043/1075.pdf. Wouldn't be a bad idea to have the case fans switched with thermal switches as well (since you still want them half of the year). Don't forget to use a relay with the thermal switch & light bulb.
I wouldn't worry about it, that X-box case looks pretty macho. If it can't take the punishment, it deserves to die.
I've got a bunch of computers running in unheated mountain top radio sites without too many problems.
The first thing I do is seal up the case as best as I can, mainly to keep rodents and bugs out. I then make any necessary BIOS changes to keep everything, especially the hard drive, running all the time.
During the summer I do monthly PM checks and end up blowing out quite a bit of dust. My last PM check of the season is October and I don't get back up there until early July if I'm lucky.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Many BIOS allow for a hard-drive spin-up before booting. It would be wise if this was set for it's longest setting. This would give the CPU a chance to heat up the case a bit.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I have a pentium mmx (1) 233 running knoppix 3.3 and it has been down to 15deg F so far this year. I have it in the upstairs of a unattached unheated uninsulated garage. It has a 9 gig hard disk hdparm reports IBM-DTTA-371010. I will try to post a response if it fails soon. I live in exeter nh and it should get to -20F this winter. I may insulate the garage soon though. I am ssh'ed into the box right now and it is about 30F outside now. I am thinking of putting my main server in the garage but I am not sure I want to risk it. This experiment should answer the question. If it survives the winter I may move my server into the garage. After insulating(the garage) of course.
I leave the windows open during the summer and havent had a problem. It ran all summer and it probably got up to 88-90F outside. Inside who knows.
I would worry about water condensing more than anything. As long as the drives keep spinning you shouldn't need to worry too much about them freezing and shattering, as in some earlier responses. However, think about the cold glass of lemonade on the patio table in the middle of August. Your CPU will become that patio table and every bit of air around it will be the cold glass of lemonade. I would worry about condensation and oxidation damage. Probably not enough water to explicitly short your stuff, but maybe enough water to cause oxidation in a big way.
I like music
Methinks the concerns were about the machine's components becoming too cold, rather than too warm.
I do this in my room with my TV, when it gets cold I just turn the lights on and watch TV for an hour. Warms right up.
i think that cold is a great advantage u have rather than a downfall. it could have been much worse if u were in a hot land. being in a cold place means u can overclock it as much as u like it. i had once seen a video in which using liquid nitrogen(!) put on top of a 1Ghz intel pentium chip they had over clocked it to 5Ghz! so if u overclock it enough maybe google might want to hire ur server;)
I have an old IBM Aptiva P2/350 in a closet that's open to the outside and has very little insulation and a leaking door. It's been there for the last three years and it's still working fine 24/7 - the only times it's been down have been when the power has gone down.
So, what's so special about this one?
I live in Finland. It's cold here. It has survived weeks of -30C with NO problems. The only things that have borked are a CPU fan (which had no bearings to begin with) and a brand new Seagate hard drive which lasted for exactly two weeks - the replacement has worked fine for a year and a half now.
I've been thinking about replacing the machine with a nice 4U industrial PC that I have laying around - it's just that the Aptiva has proven to work in extreme conditions so I'm not sure if I wanna replace it. Ever.
"At lower temperatures electrical wires have less resistance and it could do some damage (theoretically of course) to some electronic components."
Highly unlikely, unless winter temperatures approach absolute zero, since normally the resistance of copper changes by parts per million/degree (teperature stability is one reason copper is widely used, even though there are better conductors). Even if the copper became superconductive there'd still be no damage, because the current flowing through any given PCB trace is determined by the circuit configuration, not the resistance of the trace itself (note that in the circuit design phase the resistance of the circuit board is usually taken to be zero. RF emission and trace impedance* are generally only considered during the PCB design phase).
There's actually a greater chance that the semiconductors would stop working because of the extra energy required to force electrons across the semiconductor junction. Or the electrolyte in certain types of capacitors might freeze (bet you wish they still used low-temp polychlorinated biphenols). Or the hard drive spindle could sieze, or the fans die (not that they'll be needed). And, of course, the backup battery on the mobo will simply stop working at some point, just like your car battery does in winter. Basically, there are plenty of things far more temperature sensitive in a computer than a few strands of copper.
"It's an old machine anyways but try to check first if there isn't some temperature that it could reach that could be too low."
Most consumer grade parts are rated to handle down to about 5 degrees centigrade (I don't recall what that is in Archaic American Numbers; I think its something like 6 1/2 furlongs to the hogshead); any manufacturer relying on inherent internal heating to push that lower is fudging the figures in a dangerous way (think PMPO ratings...)
*Resistance is only dominant with DC. For AC, or pulsed DC systems such as computers, inductive or capacitive components can be far more important (too high capacitance can cause your nice square clock signal to turn into a flattened triangle; excellent for generating timing errors), which is why we refer to the sum of inductive, capacitive AND resistive elements, and call it "impedance" (if it helps, you can think of impedance as "frequency dependant virtual resistance", and it too is measured in ohms).
A capacitors' impedance (virtual resistance) drops as frequency increases; so PCBs designed for high frequencies must have as low capacitance as possible between tracks (the simplest capacitor being two pieces of wire seperated by air, the value determined by the surface area of the conductors, their distance apart, and the dilectric constant of air). Hence, short PCB traces with better-than-air insulators (multilayer fibreglass) are needed to push bus speeds to their current point. This explains why its possible to overclock a monolithic CPU more than the motherboard its connected to: timing errors caused by parasitic capacitance.
Ask an engineer a question and you'll get the answer you wanted, plus a few dozen you didn't.
Finally a cool idea to permanently destroy the data from my old hard drive!
Folks, we appear to have forgotten basic phase change physics...
For water to condense on an object it has to be cooler than the humid air*. So the computer, being the warmest object in the room, is least likely to accumulate moisture, plus it has a mechanism to evaporate any mositure that might accumulate.
Then there's the fact that cold air carries less moisture anyway.
Gel packs are not a good idea in a working machine; you want to keep moisture away, not attract it in convenient little sachets.
*Those in doubt can observe this in operation: go to any car park late at night in summer. You will notice the cars, which cool more rapidly than the ground, will be dripping with dew while the bitumen will be dry.
About ten years ago, my father ran a household server with a 7-disk SCSI array acquired from work in his basement workshop. It was heated, but since it was in the basement and he did a lot of woodwork, it was very dusty.
We'd have to clean out the case every month or two to keep the dust down to a reasonable level. Eventually the dust began creeping into the drives and every time we powered down the array, one of the platters would seize up and we'd lose that drive.
http://chrismetcalf.net
Years ago, a phone company in Canada did something that you might use. They had outdoor equipment which was cooled with a heat pipe. The fluid in the heat pipe was water. If things got too cold, the water froze and the heat pipe quit working. Thus, the equipment wouldn't get too cold. When it warmed up again, the heat pipe started working again and kept the equipment from getting too hot.
... As air cools, it can carry less moisture. The moisture drops out as condensation. If you have a surface that is colder than the air then the water tends to condense on it. If your computer is at all warmer than the air around it then you have zero worries about condensation.
Heat pipes are really easy to build. A piece of copper pipe with a cap at either end works well. Put one cap on. Put a bit of water in and get it boiling. This will drive most of the air out. Then solder the cap on the other end. As the water cools, you will get a reasonable vaccuum. Clamp some aluminum heat sinks on either end. You're done. A guy I used to know built a large heat pipe and left it lying under a tree. The sun shone on the lower end, heated up the working fluid which transferred heat to the shaded end which melted the solder and allowed the cap to blow off! These things are really good at transferring heat.
As for all this business about condensation
Monitoring the computer's temperature is probably a good idea. Mother boards I have bought recently work with a front panel that gives a readout of cpu temperature etc. I haven't done it but perhaps someone can suggest a way that you can query the computer's temperature and find out how happy it working in its sealed case.
There's lots and lots of electronics that runs permanently outside. Most of the problems have already been solved for you.
ps. Don't make the case of wood. Rodents can and will easily gnaw through.
First, try and seal the garage as well as you can. Nothing expensive, just a little caulk on cracks, some weatherstripping for the doors, etc. Trap an air pocket in the garage and minimize the amount of air that comes in from outside.
:)
Next, get one of those little fifty-dollar electric space heaters and set it up so it blows on the backup server. It doesn't have to warm the whole garage, just the area around the server. If you can keep the area around the server up around fifty degrees, you're probably good to go. Actually a good heater will probably keep the whole garage above freezing, which solves your problem for you.
I'm not talking about a nuclear blast furnace or anything. Just a little space heater with a fan to blow hot air on the machine. That's all you need.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
You sure can place your computer in a garage in freezing temperatures... I do something similar in a basement celler and it gets cold in there without the computers.
But a couple of precautions and notes to modify the hardware to suit.
1) Don't try to start a computer while it is frozen cold. As the chips, fan motors and hard drives heat up and will cause thermal expansion issues. So temperature control is required but in a case this is doable.
2) Run an OS like Linux or BSD, they can be run headless, that is without a monitor. Monitors may not fair well.
3) Leave the system on all the time if possible.
4) Turn off any power saving features, you want the CPU, MB and hard drives to generate heat. Much like our bodies keep warm, the principle is to generate it interally.
To address temperature control there are a few things you can explore. Have the case and power supply fans (but not the CPU fan) vary their speed based on the internal temperatures. If the internal temperature rises so does the fan speed.
You can also use a bi-metalic switch and light bulb to heat the inside, but be sure the wires are clear of the bulb or they could melt.
If modifing the power supply is difficult, leave it alone but with tin and reversing case fans have the power supply exaust go back into the cases intake. Many PCs have a power supply and case exaust at the back, but the case exaust can be reversed as a case intake, and the front fan reversed to be an exaust.
The whole trick here is to keep the internal temperature at about 75 degrees.
But some of these modifications although the work for winter, my be a problem in the summer if not done correctly.
BTW - I learned about the light bulb from a northern Ontario cottage owner. In the winter, the water well heads would freeze and crack pipes. This was solved with two light bulbs (in case one burns out) on bi-metalic switches.
But in any case, engineer your solution. Don't do crazy stuff like put a light bulb against the wiring or smoke will ensue. Other mistakes might be getting too much heat. If this sounds too complex, I would advise not doing it.
I might be tempted to put it in a box with a 25 watt light bulb. I think this would be sufficient to keep the ambient temperature above freezing.
Sig, we don't need no stinking Sig!
I've left my computers running in my house with the heat off when I was away and never had any problems. The temperature would get down to about 40 degrees (5 degrees C - I left the heat on low so the pipes wouldn't freeze). Condensation is not a problem while the computer is running since it will be warmer than the surrounding air. The only problem I had was when I came back and tried to burn a CD. The CD was too cold for the laser to burn it. After I waited for it to warm up the CD burner worked again.
Just use an AMD spaceheater - no more problem.
I'd be less concerned about the computer fucking up than your processor somehow being a Pentium III and a Celeron at the same time.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
Not the temperature. That's cool in more senses than one. Not the environment (if it's dry). The wildlife. Including the crazy two legged kind. I've already seen wacky stuff with pidgeons in servers so I figure you could have a bad time there.
... and Genghis the Gecko paid me a visit...
If you think I'm joking. I'm not. I had a simple network with my old machine as a server and a compact fluorescent in my work room...
Just one problem. Genghis was obviously a follower of that quiet gentleman at MS aka Steve the Ballmer. Genghis crapped all over my file server keyboard. Normally, just as most of us with linux boxen i don't use the keyboard (telnet is easier), but this day i needed to. So, I picked up the (what the heck is this on the keyboard ugh) keyboard. Took me a couple of hours to calm down and stop using my favourite undeleted expletives to describe greece....
Darned gecko. Very tidy though. Just on the letter
H.
AARRGH!
When i finally returned to something like sanity, I tried to stop laughing.
Moral is: good file servers are great places for gecko poop. (This is greece and they are awesome
creatures). I forgive it. Just wish it understood OSS...
If you are truly lucky (and in northern europe) you might get a blackbird to decide its a great place to nest...
I had one of my old 700 Durons sit in my car all winter so I would have a PC available on the road, and never had any issues. It would always start right up when I needed it, no problems whatsoever. I think your biggest issue could be condensation over anything else. If that happens things could fry.
Put a blanket over the case and a cheap thermostat n the fan!
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
My big concern is humidity, when a big storm runs through in the winter - is that garage going to get humid - although mice would be my second concern.
I'm running a laptop as a server in my ice encrusted fridge right now. It runs below freezing and above freezing, but when I accidently leave the fridge open it locks up. In short, freezing doesn't matter as long as you leave it off when you thaw it.
at our observatory we run several computers (and countless other digital devices) in the telescope chamber 24/7/365. we need to keep the chamber as close to nighttime ambient temperature as possible so this time of year those systems deal with temps down to -10 C or colder for extended periods of time. the temperature is never a problem in my experience, however. static electricity can be when it's really dry and lightning can be a big issue in the summer, though good UPSes and a big metal building help in that regard.
:)
right now it's 5 C in the chamber and one of our shuttle SB51G boxes is reporting the following from lm_sensors:
M/B Temp: +25 C
CPU Temp: +22 C
Temp3: +19 C
quite reasonable and even if it were 10 C colder, it would still be close to or above freezing within the case. one key difference with our environment is that we take great care to maintain a chamber temp that's above the dewpoint and close the chamber when outside humidity is >90%. condensation can wreak havoc in hurry with optics, though i think computers are pretty safe as long as you keep them running.
at any rate, if i were a computer, i would be much happier in a minnesota garage in the winter than in an arizona garage in the summer
tim
hiding in shadows / i hear you coming closer / you will explode soon -- a quake haiku
This has been beaten to death with ways to keep computers cool enough for overclocking.
1. Keep it running.
2. If you have to stop it to work on it, do the repairs there, in the cold.
3. If you have to bring it inside, it'll take a few hours to let the condensation on it evaporate.
4. No humidity is as bad as too much.
Why not select one object that is roughly the same size and move it to the garage instead...
...or find a space under/over/behind something else. I live in a small two room apartment with my wife and dog. We have five computers running and you can only see two of them. The others are tucked away in obscure places.
______________
Huh?
Putting blankets over the box or sealing it in a trash can sounds like it could start a fire. CPUs put out a LOT of heat. If the machine is on all the time, depending on how hot it runs, just the metal case should be sufficient to trap enough heat to keep the HD warm. If not, cover SOME, not all of the vents. Check the temp inside. If it becomes unacceptable, adjust the venting/insulation ratio. But completely insulated sounds like asking for a fire.
Its something about how thermodynamics & phases of matter interoperate:
As long as the server is staying turned on all the time, it will be warmer than its surroundings; and moisture will consistently migrate out of it. The only way to get moisture damage in a 24/7-on server is to put the water there directly. I mean like a flood or a roof-leak, or some animal getting inside & urinating on something.
Now, if the machine is getting turned off for days at a time, thats when the humidity goes in & does its thing. Otherwise, moisture is not a problem.
my half cent
We used to keep a 100 watt light bulb in our dogs' house. It actually kept it warm in the middle of the Wyoming winter. You can paint over it if you want, and place it in your case. You might not need anywhere near that amount of power. Perhaps a 60 watt would work, or less, since a case is smaller than a dog house. Hook it to a light switch, and turn it off when it gets warm out. If you spend a few extra bucks you can get a long life bulb. The whole solution, light switch included, will probably cost you less than $20.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
To that I say, "Let he who is without sin (cast) the first stone."
John
I don't necessarily agree with your overall conclusion (don't do that) but the wattage numbers you state are grossly high for a typical desktop PC.
The rating on your power supply is NOT the amount of power your system draws.
i measured the following with an inline meter - google for "kill-a-watt".
For instance, my P3-600, 256M ram, 5400rpm disk, ethernet, video, draws about 60 watts constant when it's just sitting there running windows. I can't remember, but that may have also included the LCD display attached to it.
My celeron 1000 with four disk drives, an nvidia AGP card, and an adaptec 4-port ethernet (probably power hungry, i expected) pulls under 100 watts. Again, just sitting there, in this case running fedora.
That said, CRT monitors probably draw about whatever it says on the back panel. over 100 watts for a big one.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
As far as hard drives go, check the drive manufactures web site for specifications. I also think that keeping them running is important and a big honking battery backup is a good idea.
Finally, from what you say, it's a pretty small space. As long as the outside was somewhat tight, a combination of fiberglass insulation and some sort of inside paneling would take a couple of weekends at the most, and would not cost a fortune.
Mostly, I proud of you for having a server in your garage and wonder how it connects to the rest of your network. Here in Florida, I mostly use fiber for outdoor runs.
wherever I go, there I am.
It's not an issue of cold, it's an issue of freezing. It's like when you start your car in a frosty winter day... notice it's taking those few extra cranks to turn over and then sounds like crap for awhile? I think you could probably go fanless if you had a good heatsink and consistent low temperature, or at least a smaller fan.
The warmth issues are - as mentioned above - about your moving parts. Unless you enclose the drive properly enough to contain the CPU heat, your issue will be with the drives failing. Actually, in this case a nice small box is probably best.
That being said though, you could partly insulate the drives (leaving room for air), but not so much that they overheat.
Also, I'd imagine that as long as the drives aren't spinning down for any long period of time, the constant motion will keep the lubricants fluid. Overclocking might work in osme situations for generating some heat, but it really depends on the structure of the case... and if you've got a cruddy heatsink then you may not get a fast enough transfer from the CPU outwards to divest of massive extra heat (in case of a large overclock).
In my room when the temp drops below 55 farenheit the fans get much louder, any warmer than that and they sound fine. once I left my old notebook in a car when it dropped to 2 below outside and it fired right up the harddrive was fine.
what about using silica gel to absorb some of the humidity
Build yourself a small humidor. Easy enough to do.
First of all I think it isn't the best idea to insulate a computer compartment. Computers generate a fair amount of heat and tolerate cold quite well. Even a bit of condensation will not harm them unless it causes a short. I think it would be more practical to make sure that the hard drives you are using are rated for those temps. But >0 Celsius isn't really all that cold. I would imagine that you can get away with just heating the hard disks or just leaving them running to keep them warm. Most of the effects in this terrifying scenario begin to occur at much lower temps and the quick move from cold to hot.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
If this is going into a cold building, go with the least amount of fans possible. less fans is less points of failure.
A Case fan for a 733 in freezing temps should be pretty much unnessary. The power supply fan should be more than enough to handle venting the case. in fact, If you can find an older ATX power supply that blows air from the power supply onto the cpu that would be better cause it would elimate the fan for the cpu if you use a zalman like cooler.
Hard drive needs to be on all the time. it will generate enough heat to be ok. Especially the large drives. if your going to use raid, in a cold environment keep the drives close together so they will transfer heat to each of the drives.
Protect all the vent holes with high strength screen. you will be amazed what you will find trying to get in there.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
I don't think a computer would have any problems running in a cold environment. The only catch to that is I would not start up a very cold PC due to mechanical issues with the hard drive and such. If the PC in question runs all the time in a cold area without turning off or going into standby, I bet it would work fine. Once it's up and running, there's no problem. I plan to put an old computer in my garage to use during the winter. I do not forsee any problems except on keeping it in a clean area.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
i left my xbox open for the coldest week in the year lowest it went == 20 degrees. too much moisture. the board was wet with dew :(
==dead xbox