Thread: Extreme Temperatures

I think you'll be fine. a descent fan should do.

Quoting myself from a parallel thread on the same topic:

A quick anecdote.

I have had a Fujitsu Stylistic 3400S tablet mounted in my car for the past 3 years, two of that in southern California, and the past year in south Florida. Windows are non-tinted.

The machine sits on a post in front of the dashboard at present. Over the years, the machine has been rained on (it's a convertible), it has moisture condense upon it every time I leave the top down at night in the summer, it has direct sunlight shining on it all day when I'm parked at work with the top down, it suffers through immense heat when parked outside at the airport for weeks on end (sunlight on a black convertible top = really quite hot), and is subjected to pretty serious shock and vibration, as it's rigidly mounted to the floor and my car's suspension is quite stiff.

For the most part, everything still works perfectly.

The battery gives about 5 minutes of runtime from a full charge, but then, it's the original. 5 minutes is plenty of time to hibernate, so it's not a problem. When it is very cold (say, 40°F or below) the display is dim, but has never completely failed to energize. The touchscreen is somewhat unresponsive, however this is sort of a known issue with these. When I hit a particularly hard bump, the display will occasionally go on the fritz, requiring a reset. This happens once every month or two, on average. The hard drive, surprisingly, is still error free and performing perfectly. Likewise, the external connectors (power, USB, PCMCIA) have suffered no corrosion and still work perfectly.

In other words, it seems no worse for wear for a computer that is nearly ten years old.

The only downside is that the supposedly outdoor viewable screen isn't all that good. When I have the top up on the car, then it's great. With the top down and sunlight hitting the screen, it's difficult to read. Impossible if I have sunglasses on. For a hardtop car however, it would be fine.

Originally Posted by redhawk

I'm deliberating what to do with my Ford Focus, an 05.

I am not sure where the best place to put it would be... in the summer, it gets up to about 30 celsius here, and in the winter, down around -45 celsius on the worst of days.

That would be uh 86 to -49 farenheit.

Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Suggestions?

Using an Asus EEE.

heat will never be an issue for you, 86F is cold for most people

if youre worried about frozen startups (at 50F below zero, that is a valid worry) then i suggest you add a remote start system to your car. i bought a 791xv for $160, installed it myself, and it warms up my truck before i ever step foot outside. i might add a lockout function to my remote pager so i can start the truck without firing the pc on, but honestly just having it idle until the truck warms up really shouldnt be a problem.

btw, thank you everyone for changing your metric figures to the proper standard formula so the rest of us can understand.

Originally Posted by jdc753

snip

Only problem I could possible see with extreme temps would be with standard mechanical hard drives. Many have some sort of a liquid lubrication inside of them and this can be affected by the temperature. I don't recall all the times but mine has started up in 0° on several occasions. This took multiple pushes of the power button over maybe 5 minutes however the PC did eventually boot up.

These are called Fluid Dynamic Bearings (FDB) and your statement is accurate at very low temps the platters do not spin at the correct rate to be read correctly thus an incomplete boot to the OS,

Originally Posted by jdc753

This is also with a "ancient" Maxtor 120GB IDI drive, I figured I would use a old spare drive I had laying around as a test drive in my truck just incase the bumps (1 ton suspension) or temperatures (0°-100°+) were going to cause issues. So far 1 year or so and absolutely no hiccups other than what I mentioned with I guess hard cold starts.

Some drives are more picky about cold temps than others.

I have not had an issue in Denver, CO even on the coldest days. The coldest I remember off the top of my head is 11F ...

Living in Minnesota, I've had a couple of -40° F starts where a fluid bearing hard drive failed to spin up. Typically, the bios never ids the drive and the os fails to boot at all. But that happened during the coldest part of the winter. Waited a few minutes for the car to warm up, reboot and away I went. I do wonder how this mode of operation lowers the MTBF for the rest of the components in the car. I've had more power supplies die than anything else.

i need to do a tune up before winter really hits. i want to add low voltage shutoff and remote computer killswitch so on the really cold mornings i can disable the pc first, then start the engine all with my remote starter. the cold shouldnt do much harm to the hardware, but allowing it all to warm up to at least above freezing first cant hurt it.

I was thinking about doing the same with a five-button remote starter. I already have a M3-ATX power supply in my case so I have the low voltage condition covered. With the aux line on the remote start I can boot the pc after the car has a chance to warm up.

does the m3 have real low-voltage shutoff that's adjustable?

the m2 claims it has low voltage shutoff, but its only for the usb ports... its not something that will send a windows shutdown signal, and its trip point is not adjustable. i want something i can set so its shuts down the pc at around 12.0v battery left...