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Ask Slashdot: How Do I Make a High-Spec PC Waterproof?
jimwormold writes: I need to build a system for outdoor use, capable of withstanding a high pressure water jet! "Embedded PC," I hear you cry. Well, ideally yes. However, the system does a fair bit of number crunching on a GPU (GTX970) and there don't appear to be any such embedded systems available. The perfect solution will be as small as possible (ideally about 1.5x the size of a motherboard, and the height will be limited to accommodate the graphics card). I'm U.K.- based, so the ambient temperature will range from -5C to 30C, so I presume some sort of active temperature control would be useful.
I found this helpful discussion, but it's 14 years old. Thus, I thought I'd post my question here. Do any of you enlightened Slashdotters have insights to this problem, or know of any products that will help me achieve my goals?
I found this helpful discussion, but it's 14 years old. Thus, I thought I'd post my question here. Do any of you enlightened Slashdotters have insights to this problem, or know of any products that will help me achieve my goals?
Make it water-cooled! Duh.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Some servers have been designed to have the motherboard immersed/sealed in dielectric fluid in a sealed box to take the heat out, which would also be in a sealed structure. That stops the need for air as a heat transfer method. Would require waterproof electrical connectors.
NEMA rates enclosures for their ability to withstand harsh environments. Search for NEMA enclosures and pick the one that fits your machine.
John
Can you give us curious folk a hint as to what you're doing?
Just put it in The Cloud. The Cloud is fun! The Cloud is fair!
They make "Ruggedized Computers" in Montgomery Alabama.
http://www.skbspecialtycases.com/
I deal with this kind of thing once in a while when deploying hardware in freezing conditions (down to about -60F), and the truth is there aren't many options that are as small as you want.
you have 3 types of cooling all 3 present different problems. -passive cooling. typical of embedded and low poer, pretty much precludes your fancy GPU. -active, usually fans. suck air in, breath hot out. obvious any rain or spray would get sucked in to, and damage the insides. -liquid cooling. would essentially seal your gear in, and prevent water damage, but is unlikely to fit in your space constraints. so either figure out how to live without the GPU, or see if you can get a small enough container for your oil ( still will have to worry about the pump and radiator parts but that can be made water - resistant). or have the number crunching done remotely, and just live with a raspberry pi encased in something.
http://www.liquipel.com/
They coat the chips in some sort of coating that insulates them.
Another idea which I like even better is to immerse the whole machine in mineral oil.
It is non-conductive. Somethings might need to be insulated against the oil like harddrives but everything else can just sit in it. From what I've gathered the entire tank of mineral oil acts like a giant heat sink to such an extent that a system like that can passively cool itself WITH overclocking.
I keep meaning to build a mineral oil cooled computer and keep chickening out.
Anyway, it has the virtue of being something you could seal and then take to the literal bottom of the ocean without worrying about a rupture.
That is pretty water proof.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This is the big question. Because, to riff off the 14 years old discussion, wireless has progressed leaps and bounds since then. So simply putting the PC inside a waterproof chest and using a combination of WiFi, Bluetooth, and a few wireless display technologies. This is what is presently on Intel's product roadmap anyway.
Your biggest problem is likely to be the monitor. Every means we have to produce significant amount of light (especially required for outdoor viewing), requires dissipation of heat. That means venting. Which means air holes. Which can get spray in it.
So really the question can't be answered unless you explain the purpose of the PC. Is it there to do things like take measurements? Can it be controlled from a mobile phone? (they're much easier to seal) This is what is needed to know how to give further advice.
Yes, you can find off the shelf computers which will do this and which have real GPUs.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ruggedized+pc
That's not going to help him. Apparently where he is at, the google is broken.
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Use a 50 cal ammo can. 100% water proof. Couple your CPU/GPU heatsink to the case and mount finned heat sinks on the outside.
Google 50 cal ammo can computer case. You will find a lot of howtos.
You're going to have a hard time finding a high spec computer that meets your needs, because of the cooling requirement. If I were you, I'd look to industrial enclosures designed for water proof operation. (there are industrial computer enclosures) Make the system water cooled so that you can run cooling lines outside the enclosure and use an external pump and radiator; this will allow you to minimize the size of the enclosure containing the computer. You'll have to accommodate the VRMs and Southbridge, which are typically passively air cooled (but do require cooling). You might try taping off connectors and spraying the PCB with conformal coating, to reduce the damage should water get into the enclosure. Connectors can be filled with dielectric grease on the pin entry side and epoxy on the wire side to prevent water access there.
I have never tried to do this with a computer; although, the techniques above have been used by me in other applications.
The Toughbook might be an option.
Why don't people provide more details when asking questions? Really, you'd think a bunch of IT related people would be sick of getting questions with vague details and thus be better at making their own questions.
Do you actually need a PC in that environment? Can you use a rugged wireless display/embedded system within reach of the jet, but connected wirelessly to the computer with the GPU that's in a safe location? This is probably the easiest and cheapest setup.
If the water jet is always present and not too warm, it could be used for cooling. Just put the computer in a waterproof aluminum box (maybe with fins?) and attach the hot parts of the computer to the box with heat pipes.
Encase the PC in a fireproof rubber balloon like the ones used in Formula One and fill it with perfluorocarbon (PFC), then encase that in a rust-proof metal box.
I need to build a system for outdoor use, capable of withstanding a high pressure water jet! "Embedded PC," I hear you cry.
No, I cry - well, no, just say, really - "why?"
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Double enclosed is best, but you probably don't have room for that. I've been putting stuff in food processing plants for 20+ years though where the conditions (especially during cleanup) are comparable. Find the smallest Pelican case (there are generic knockoffs, if you go with one check it thoroughly before trusting it) and equip it with a thermostatic heater to keep the temperature above 70F or so all the time to limit condensation. Pack in a big bag of dessicant because without double enclosure that still won't be perfect.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I have old Linksys wireless routers with DDWrt loaded out in the backyard. It's Oregon. It rains here... I used tupperware containers(or whatever fits from Home Depot), and a little hole for the power cord and some silicone calk in the hole. You can double enclose, and it'll run you maybe $10. :D
http://www.industrial-computer...
Not only that he has never heard of remote computing either. This sounds like the perfect job for an embedded machine running Vnc remote desktop or even a Unix shell back to a central server with power to spare.
Not even internet connected just a remote node will work
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I'm used to IP67-IP68+(IE. IP69K) for my work in designing autonomous subs(although I have other experience from GPU mining bitcoins), but NEMA 4X is specifically designed for the high pressure water jet conditions you're describing.
Although I'm curious WTF you're doing in a mobile/stationary weatherized application that requires a GTX970(A Jetson TK1 is easier to cool and good enough for most computer vision problems)? I'll answer your question directly instead of asking you how I can back out of your difficult design requirements:
First off: Lets assume IP55 is good enough:
http://cosmotec.stulz.com/en/products/ventilation/kryos-filter-fans/
These are the most cost effective IP55 ventilation fans I've been able to find.
If that's good enough for you: get on McMaster and order a NEMA 4X enclosure and consider yourself lucky that was all you needed. You have an industrial cooling problem, they have industrial cooling solutions. If you want some a little closer to your side of the pond: request a catalog from Rittal or get on their website and see if they have anything that meets your needs.
If IP55 is not good enough, and nothing as generic as a cosmotec fan or a cooled Rittal enclosure can get the job done: you can start by reading all the other responses and see if anyone has a better suggestion I'm unfamiliar with. If not, your job is either impossible, no one here knows what the solution is(or isn't saying if they do), or you have to go custom. That means in house or out of house design.
First off lets make something clear: you have a thermal management problem, not a water ingress problem. It becomes a water ingress problem when you are unable to adequately manage your thermal output without circulating air from the outside of the enclosure.
Shedding the heat of a 500-1000W PC using nothing but convection cooling with the enclosure skin/fins is difficult in the size you've described so the easiest thing to do would be to cheat and exceed your volume constraints via an external radiator in a location where your volume constraints are less of a problem. Supposing that is not possible: in a stationary application the ground becomes a pretty good heat sink if you dig down far enough. An alluminum water block burried beneath your computer circulating water through a NEMA 4X enclosure on the surface with the CPU and GPU pimped out with watercooling blocks. Excluding that as a possibility(mobile application?): pumping the heat in to a thermally conductive chunk of material large enough to dissipate it is still your preferred solution.
If there is no way around self-contained: you're either going to have to spend a lot of time and energy maximizing the thermally conductive surface area(doing analysis to determine it is adequate to meet your use case a high enough percentage of the time to matter), make the system fail gracefully under the conditions where it exceeds it's thermal management capabilities, optimize system thermal efficiency to the greatest extent possible by doing things like underclocking the CPU and using more CUDA/OpenCL for your code, redesigning your system(using a wireless modem to offload the processing requirements to a datacenter like Amazon AWS or even a closet at a nearby facility), or some crazy combination of all of the above in appropriate proportions to maximize the value to the customer(whoever that is) on the time frame/capital investment scale they are willing to pay for, and/or manage their expectations appropriately to where you can redefine your requirements, and/or claim it's impossible and hope a smarter/more ambitious engineer doesn't prove you wrong.
The correct answer is so situation specific it is difficult to tell you what to do without more information. These are some of the questions I would ask. Good luck with your bizarre requirements definition. I'm sure you've been painted in to a corner for good reasons and not because of an unwillingness to compromise on the "I want everything" mentality that makes programs like the F35 and F22 so fucking expensive.
* A rugged box shouldn't be hard to find - look at weatherized enclosures for radio equipment or, failing that, an AC mains box made for outdoors.
* A modern CPU and a high end GPU in an airtight box won't be easy to cool. Since your only means of heat dissipation is the surface of said enclosure, it'd better be all-metal.
* Your next challenge is to convey heat from the CPU + GPU to the box - sounds like a job for watercooling, with regular blocks for the CPU and GPU and a third, possibly custom block attached to the enclosure wall instead of the usual radiator (which requires moving air). Overclocking forums may offer some ideas; also the "silent PC" forums since some are into fan-less designs.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
The answer of course is to update to IOS 7.
Many years ago, friend of mine was in army. He was in secret devision and one day they give to him a order: "Change the HDD of this PC" and they give to him new HDD, hammer and chisel.
He has surprised, because when open PC cover see massive block of epoxy. People before just fill the PC box with epoxy and made it fully water, shock and dust proof. Simple and reliable !
You must keep in mind that may be will have a problem with cooling of some staff like video card. You can do it with water block, if is not possible to cooling.
www.kioskstyle.com
You will need an IP66 enclosure. If your water jets are not that powerful maybe an IP65 enclosure. Search for them, there are plenty (not cheap though). Assuming that power is not a limitation (not a green device by any means), you can use a peltier cell or some of them to actively cool your device. Attach then directly to the steel of the enclosure. Put a heat-sink in each side. On the inside you can put a smaller heat-sink with fan. On the outside, use a bit fan-less heat-sink. You will need a big power supply to power the peltiers. You will need IP66 connectors. There are plenty of connectors (Google, Digikey, mouser are your friends). There are offerings from almost any type of connector (USB, Ethernet, Power). There are also LEDs, switches and other gadgets you could use in your box. Using this will be an expensive solution but you will not have problems with water getting into your computer.
Can you place your system somewhere safe and have remote (wireless ) sensors and peripherals?
This sounds like you are either too lazy or not qualified for this job. My advice is to find someone who installs this kind of thing professionally. You aren't going to impress your boss or anyone else when this fucks up due to you half-assing it based off what someone from /. told you to do.
Non conductive oils that completely fill the case can keep water out. Make sure the case has fins for cooling on the outside. Divers watches have used this method to assure their electronics don't drown.
Immersion PC. You'll already be working with a sealed case.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
buy a Noax or build something similar.
With a ~150watt GPU, plus the rest of the system, you are going to have quite a time with heat dissipation in any case that is sufficiently waterproof. Even fairly impressive looking passive heatsinks are surprisingly feeble compared to the usual 'few heatpipes, bunch of fins, actual airflow' designs that normal PC hardware uses. Even if you can add enough of them to your computer's case, you still need an excellent thermal path from the CPU and GPU to the case(for reference, Zalman released a somewhat ridiculous case for this purpose a number of years back. As you can see from the photos, the design requires a pretty substantial number of custom heatpipes for the CPU and GPU to be in meaningful thermal contact with the big passive cooler side panels, while a custom PSU had to be used to keep that part cool. It also cost $1,500)
You may also run into trouble, even if CPU and GPU are OK; with high internal air temperatures: most PC gear has a variety of other heat sources(basically anything with electricity involved, VRMs, motherboard chipsets, RAM, etc.) that are typically ignored for water cooling purposes; but which depend on a modest flow of reasonably cool air to stay within their limits. A fanless PC with decent convection might be OK; but a sealed box isn't going to cut it.
If you can get away with it, your best bet would likely be breaking the problem into two parts: the sealed computer case, with waterblocks on the CPU and GPU, and a radiator with fan for cooling the air sealed in the case and keeping it moving for the benefit of lesser components; and the radiator module, which pumps coolant back into the computer case and cools the heated coolant coming out.
This should allow you to fully seal the computer side of things(with the exception of the necessary data and power connections, for which IP-rated connections are available, and the input and output hose fitting) without it cooking and dying; and leaves only the radiator, pump, and possibly a fan outside the sealed case in the radiator module. Given the demands of vehicle engine cooling and the common need for fully submersible pumps, both are available in very waterproof versions, and the heat dissipation of the radiator should actually improve if it's being sprayed down.
If cold is a concern, you'll of course need to use antifreeze in the coolant, and a temperature sensor in the computer module that either activates an internal heater, reduces coolant flow rate, or both, to allow the computer module to remain at a safe temperature.
Even if it cuts through metal, the simple solution is to just not put the computer in front of the jet. Like you said, put it in a box out of the way, with some baffles to stop water coming in the ducts, and just to be paranoid, elevate the computer within the box, so it's not sitting in a pool of any water that may come in.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Somebody mentioned a pelican case. That (or similar eg NEMA 4 or 4x) is a good start. But if you cannot get the heat out of the case it doesn't take much power to cook a PC even at -5C exterior temperature and at 30C it takes very little added power.
It sounds like you are talking hundreds of watts. So you need to make it entirely liquid cooled. This means everything that would normally have a fan -- processor, video card, chipset, and power supply. In addition you will likely need a fan in the enclosure to prevent hot spots, and if that isn't enough you'll need to liquid cool those hot spots.
At this point you should be thinking about submerging all the electronics in an oil tank and circulating the oil thru the radiator as your coolant. (Use light mineral oil, because it will get thick at -5C and you may have to heat it so it will flow thru the lines!) Mineral oil submersion will also protect the electronics against condensation.
The radiator will need to be outside the pelican case. It will most likely need a fan at 30C, so you should use an automotive or similar fan with a proper temperature rating range. Also mount the coolant reservoir externally so you can check the level and fill without opening the enclosure.
If not mineral oil, the cooling system will need to be filled with something to provide freeze protection below your lowest low temperature. (Antifreeze, various alcohols, sugar water, etc.)
The pump will likely need to be controlled to run very slowly when temperatures are cold. But -5C should be okay for everything except perhaps fans and mechanical hard disk (so use SSD). For a less power hungry PC or colder temperatures you might need to insulate the case. If the PC must start when cold -5C is probably okay but you may need to provide auxiliary heating to warm it up to maybe 10C before powering the PC (almost certainly required if using mineral oil or at temperatures colder than -40C, but perhaps at -10C or even at -5C depending on your equipment). You can heat the air in the enclosure but heating the liquid in the cooling system is more efficient if it will thermosiphon within the enclosure. You don't want to pump coolant thru the radiator while trying to heat it.
Mount the equipment without penetrating the case. Keep all electric stuff up as high as possible off the bottom of the case. Condensation or leaks will puddle at the bottom and you want to keep the gear out of that puddle.
Make the cooling, power and connectivity lines come out the bottom of the case (to prevent puddles from slowly seeping in) thru liquid-tite cable glands (to keep out bugs and lightly pressured water). A drop tube around the exit (or each exit) will help protect against high pressure water jets except for a direct stream into the end of the tube. You might also like a valve in the bottom of the case. You can open the valve and if liquid runs out you need to take down and service the system. Do not make any other case penetrations.
Man you people are ,myopic ass hats.
Maybe he will be too far away to connect? To remote, maybe he is number crunching fluid dynamics and hull friction while at sea?
It is for intense GPU calculation, so you didn't even have the brain power tom grok the most basic requirement.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Trust me, cheap computer + Tupperware + vnc. Keep your expensive equipment indoors and access it remotely.
Add IPX8 to the high specs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Simple:
1. Put your conventional, fan-cooled PC inside a completely sealed all-metal case. (With water-tight ports for CAT-5, USB, whatever.)
2. Line the inside of the case with Peltier junctions wired to power, through a thermostat.
3. On the outside of the case, aligned with each Peltier junction, you place a heat sink. Heat to be transferred through the metal case.
4. If the thermostat detects high temp inside the case, it energizes the Peltier junctions to be cold on the inside, hot on the case side.
5. If the thermostat detects low temps inside the case, it energizes the Peltier junctions to be hot on the inside, cold on the case side.
Others have posted most of what I'd suggest. If you want to consider running heat pipes to the case and have the case act as a giant heat sink, have a look at the 2008-2014 Mac Pro cases, which are solid aluminum. They'd probably be among the best options for a case that is also a heatsink. Finned heatsinks could be added to the outside of the case.
I'm not sure how you will accomplish what you are looking to accomplish in the space constraints you outlined but if you do I suspect it will be using 3M's Novec 7000. It aint cheap but you can fully enclose your box and it uses convection to circulate.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Or a recent iPad in a waterproof case?
They're waterproof enough for what you describe.
What's the application, anyways?
here's one i found only the video processor is not defined linux/win I7 processor http://www.drs-ts.com/pdf/JV5%...
Or are you just trying to be cool?
If you can live with an HD 4400 graphics enigne, you can get a Small PC iBrick, which is an Intel Mobile Core i3 processor in a sealed, watertight box with cooling fins.
There are industrial cases available for fast food restaurants. Those can handle routine pressure washing.
Holding oil in : 1 atmos of pressure
Keeping high-pressure water out: many atmos of pressure - in the other direction
I can use an open bucket as a case for a mineral oil cooled PC; it's not going to help much when you point a hose at it :)
Nice suggestion - even if he needs more processing than that, it's easier to put 2-3 in and they'll run cooler too, which will help with his biggest challenge: heat dissipation.
I suspect that the problem here is that you're asking the wrong question. You are trying to solve a very hard problem - how do I run a high performance PC in a location where it will be blasted with water jets - but that's not actually what you want to do; you want to accomplish a task. You haven't posted the actual task, so all we know is that it takes place outside and there will be water jets. Even so, that's enough to make me sure that there will be a better way to solve this.
Without more data we can't give you a good solution, but even without more data I can tell you that trying to waterproof a high-performance PC (and, presumably, a generator to run it from) is not going to be the right idea.
I'm curious why you can't use one computer with smaller footprint (and specs) and send everything via wireless to a bigger computer which is not co-located (and therefore doesn't need the waterproofing)?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
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If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
As many will point out, getting rid of heat is one of your larger concerns. When you say "'-5 Centigrade", do you mean it will be sitting turned off and then activated and then enabled at that temperature? If there's a chance of getting freezing and thawing ice into exposed components, there are a _lot_ of mechanical and electronic devices that do not behave well when abused this way. Simply repackaging an untested design may fail at startling moments.
It sounds like you should talk to your local meteorologists or marine biologists. I'd asume that your local Coast Guard or equivalent will have a great more hands-on experience than most Slashdot readers working from theory.
I've got some old radio gear from the military, and when you're dealing with a 300w uhf transmitter that needs to go into an unpressurized area of an aircraft, you have to go down this same road, because it needs to be AIR-tight (to a large pressure differential), not just WATER-tight.
One unit I have here is a tube type amp. Tubes are NOT efficient. Their solution was to make a hermetically sealed case (complete with pressure gauge and what looks like a bicycle tube valve on the outside. A part of the inside is a heat exchanger, and a fan runs internally to circulate air around in the case. There's a 1x1 hole in the back for intake, and 1x1 hole on the bottom for exhaust. That, along with about 24 1/4" bolts and a large gasket, allows this amp to remain sealed, pressurized, and cooled at 30,000 ft. Note that while there was a fan on the inside exchanger, the unit itself had no external moving parts. The slot you dropped the radio into in the aircraft supplied the moving air into and out of those external holes for the external side of the exchanger.
The old motorola maxtraks were mostly solid-state, but used tubes for their internal PA amp. Instead of a heat exchanger, they used passive radiation for cooling. The power transistors that inverted the AC to run the tubes were bolted onto the sides, were completely covered, but were attached to a large chunk of slightly finned aluminum. It didn't radiate very efficiently, but they didn't generate a LOT of heat, and the plates had a relatively large surface area, so it was enough.
The tubes on the back were a very different story. Normally you cool tubes with air convection, or in much larger applications, with a built-in water jacket. These were placed sideways in the back, and a LARGE hunk of aluminum fitted over them. The inside of the aluminum was curved to wrap around the outer 1/2 of the tube, and be in contact with it. The outside of the aluminum had many large, durable fins. So these tubes were kept cool by passive radiation.
Those maxtraks were made to be tossed (literally) into the back of a squad car and go on high speed joyrides without damage. They were tanks, and used NO air circulation.
I doubt you can use an air exchanger like in my first example, but there it is for reference in case you can use it. You're more likely to go with the second example, and just use a sealed case with a large passive heatsink. You could also just go with the heat pipe and radiator you have for the CPU already, and move that part of it out from the middle a bit, and run the exchanger line(s) out of the main enclosure, exposing the radiator to the outside. That would be fairly easy to waterproof, but most of those exchangers are made of copper and may not fare well when exposed to water. You will also need some sort of a screen / filter to keep the fins clean. The maxtraks didn't care about that, their fins were large plated aluminum, and spaced far apart. Much more durable than a modern heat pump radiator.
You could take inspiration from any modern day solid state amplifier. Even the audio amps would be worth a look, though they don't actually deal with anywhere near as much heat dissipation. (efficiency can get pretty high at audio frequency, and VERY poor at high radio frequency, making good cooling necessary) Many designs use extruded aluminum with fins on the top and two sides. Salvage a chassis off a burned up audio or rf amplifier like this, and go from there. Waterproofing the enclosure will probably be your bigger challenge than cooling.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
answers to those q would help
I put together a system a few years ago for use doing offshore surveying in the surf zone. The system is carried on the back of a jet-ski type PWC, and has to withstand constant salt water spray and splash, as well as occasional immersion. It consists of a PC, a monitor, an ultrasonic depth gauge, a GPS receiver, and a custom keyboard, all mounted on the jet-ski.
The case is an off the shelf Pelican waterproof travel case, with all connections in and out of the box through Seacon waterproof bulkhead connectors and plugs. Because this thing is in a sealed black plastic box used outdoors in full sunlight, cooling was an issue. It was solved by using a seawater cooling loop supplied by a tap off of the propulsion jet on the jet-ski pump. The monitor is a 9" TFT mounted in a smaller pelican case with a viewing window up on the handlebars, with the UI handled via a custom 12-key "keyboard" constructed from industrial watertight switches in an IP68 enclosure.
System is still in regular use, with the only repairs being damaged cables when the driver flipped the jet-ski in harsh surf and ripped things physically apart.
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Are you trying to cheap this off or do it right?
If you're going cheap, put it in an ammo box. Force through it with a duct fan, I'd weld flanges onto the box (since I've got my MIG up and running now) to attach the up and down pipes. This solves your air circulation problems to the point that you might not even need fans in the box. Ammunition cases have rubber seals. You may have to inspect the boxes carefully to find one with a good seal. You'll still need a drain as well, and it should have a long hose attached to prevent spray, and a restrictor to prevent bugs.
If you can do anything you want, water cool it and make a water block to go on the outside of a truly well-sealed box. Monitor the temps in the box and run seti, folding@home etc for heat if necessary.
Or, how about a waterproof enclosure which can't handle direct spray inside of a bigger box with drains which will deflect it? That's how cars work. It's remarkably effective
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Duct Tape.
Just remember: If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy!
Buy an industrial aluminum external mount box with gasket sealed top and bottom you bolt on and seal.
It must also have sealed power and monitor data entry/exit and whatever on-off/reset switch is needed.
You need to transfer heat from the CPU to the walls. The standard CPU cooler is fine, it transfers the heat to the inside air - but you also need to couple the internal air heat to the wall. So you mount a few aluminum fanned heat sinks flat to the aluminum walls by screws to the brackets that the case will have because you chose such a case from a catalog. For a typical system that dissipates about 300 watts, and the heat sinks will need thermal grease to the walls.
A sealed oil filled case will also work, remove the fan and rely on bulk convection to the low viscosity oil that fills the case totally. This will also need power, data, reset in/out.
There might be cases that fit your needs off the catalog floor = $$$
You say you are UK based and the ambient temperature is from - 5 to 30 degrees C. Which part of the UK enjoys 30 degrees C? Also are you eliminating Scotland from your travels where it can get lower than -20 degrees C?
It sounds like you're using the GPU as a DSP. Why not just get an embedded processor with a built in DSP? An example of an older generation one is the Atmel at9g45m. This is an older ARM core processor which has more power than you would expect. You can probably get away with using a fanless ARM system for your application. You may even find one that has enough processing power which doesn't even need a heatsink.
Either conformally coat the entire system and/or stick it into a NEMA IP68 box with ducting for air intake that will never allow water to intrude, so ground facing intakes and outakes.
It looks to me like it has two fans (presumablly intake and exhaust) with covers that have an opening on the bottom. That's probablly fine for keeping most weather out but not so good against high pressure jets.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Put it inside a building and just run really long wires to what you need? Why does the whole system have to outside where high pressure water jets are an issue, is this going inside a carwash or something? A bit more context would be handy here.
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