Extreme Temperatures

First off, this is my first post after lurking for a while. What a great site with so many people doing cool things. Just want to say thanks to everybody who contributes here.

Anyway, we are getting a new pickup in which I am considering putting in a carputer - that is how I found this site. One concern I have is that we live most of the year in Arizona and part of the year in Park City, UT. So, while we would spend most of the summer time in Utah, we will still be in AZ quite often during the summer and while we will be spending most of the winter in AZ, we will be in Utah quite often while it is really cold.

What would I need to do to prevent damage to any of the equipment that will be in extreme heat (110F+ outside) and extreme cold (below 0F)? I searched around the forums for an answer, but couldn't really find much about it. I did see that keeping it in the trunk is helpful, but this will be a pickup truck with no trunk.

PS - if it matters much, I plan to mostly be using it for basic stuff like music, gps and a streaming internet connection.

TIA.

Mmmm water cooling if you have the guts to do it. what would scare me about doing that would be bumps and pot holes... (air bag susp might help?) Or even crazier would be a submersion!!

Oh, just had another thought... On most trucks their is unused spaced before and after the rear tires between the outer skin and the bed might be a good spot for a comp guess it would depend on the truck.

That's not extreme, my computer goes through worse every year. In the winter here it gets to -50 and last year I drove my car down to Atlanta for 6 months where it was 40 degrees. The computer powered through both extremes and those temperatures are higher/lower than the ones you posted.

I've used my carputer when outside T was about -33C (about -27,4F) and +30C (about 86F). Worked normally without any issues. Nothing special were used to build a system...

Remember that the computer doesn't need to be powerful for in car applications. You can use a CPU with low power consumption and install a case fan (dc power supplies don’t have them) if you are concerned about it.

not sure what truck you are getting but I would think installing inside the cab in some configuration would be the easiest. Mine is installed behind the back seat with my amplifiers.

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.

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.

Water cooling is abit overkill and scary to use. One hose pops off and your done. WuNgUn is the only one that I have seen do a successful water cooled system. Me, I live in FL, which isn't quite as hot as AZ, but its pretty close. I use a uniquely designed case that forces alot of air past the system, Since my AMD based board generates more heat then I like. Even with no A/C at the moment, with cabin heat, the PC will rapidly drop in temperature once turned on. Once the A/C is on the temperature drop is so massive, due to a design flaw, that turned out to be good. Basically the front center console has two fans that draw air in, then push it out the back. It just so happens those fans actually draw in A/C air. Since the second console is directly behind the first, so it actually drew that air in. I have since redesigned the consoles so they are one long unit, so all the air is very slightly chilled for the Car PC. To avoid moisture issues, I made it a 2 chamber system, so if it does happen, alot of it gets caught in the first.

I once water cooled my desktop system in order to keep it quiet so I do not view water cooling as scary. I would actually consider water cooling in a car to be even more reasonable than at home since the car is already water cooled. A transmission cooling kit that adds a 2nd small radiator could be readily modified for pc use. To me the only reason to consider this solution though is if you are running an overpowered carputer (or a system like HiJackZX1's ;) )and you install it in the cabin, otherwise standard pc cooling should be enough.

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Originally Posted by CMOS1138

I once water cooled my desktop system in order to keep it quiet so I do not view water cooling as scary. I would actually consider water cooling in a car to be even more reasonable than at home since the car is already water cooled. A transmission cooling kit that adds a 2nd small radiator could be readily modified for pc use. To me the only reason to consider this solution though is if you are running an overpowered carputer (or a system like HiJackZX1's ;) )and you install it in the cabin, otherwise standard pc cooling should be enough.

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LOL, please take note. A psycho that has A.D.D, and thinks on massive scales = a system like mine. CMOS1138, where in FL u at?

I live in Tampa. I wanted to go to the last Florida meet but unfortunetely I have no free time.