Cold weather operators, how do you keep the 'puter warm?

**rayjr13** · 02-13-2008, 02:57 PM

Now I know the °'s in Canada are smaller during the winter but damn, unless your inches shrink in the winter too, you either have the largest carputer (and therefore vehicle) or that's the shortest 4' I've ever seen in my life lol

But I definitely agree a Cold Weather (Cold Weather Booting) thread Sticky would be appreciated in the Hardware discussion.

**Salmizar** · 02-15-2008, 12:54 AM

Originally Posted by rayjr13

Now I know the °'s in Canada are smaller during the winter but damn, unless your inches shrink in the winter too, you either have the largest carputer (and therefore vehicle) or that's the shortest 4' I've ever seen in my life lol

But I definitely agree a Cold Weather (Cold Weather Booting) thread Sticky would be appreciated in the Hardware discussion.

Bad angle picture. The base where the carputer sits is raised. Here is a better angle. closer to 3' on the bottom of the heater, 4 on the top I would say.

**rijk** · 02-19-2008, 05:37 PM

I have a temperature problem as well, cpc shut down when mobo was +4°c
I have a flashdisk as os , i don’t think thats the problem. Bios doesn’t show, but the fan can be heard.
Cpc is now out of the car, want to make a casing to put the cpc in the interior of the car.

The cpc is mounted on the front interior air intake.
[media]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/imhotepke/meeting%2030-12-07/100_2516.jpg[/media][media]http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o280/imhotepke/meeting%2030-12-07/100_2517.jpg[/media]
Now in the bios, i had the shutdown temp of the mobo on 60°c, could it be that by switching on the temperature sensor with a high temperature shutdown also makes it aware of the low temperature?
Has anybody tried if switching of the sensor in the bios will help?

Cartft have don a test with a jetway started up at –40°c
http://www.cartft.com/community/Story/freeze
So there are cpc,s that can take the cold. (i have a Commell)

Maybe use a heating element of a car-seat around the cpc would worm it up enough

**Salmizar** · 02-19-2008, 08:39 PM

I doubt the bios temp settings have anything to do with it, but you never know. Try disabling it and see?

I wouldn't recommend using anything to keep the PC warm when the car is not running. My truck has a 220Ah battery and that still will not provide enough sustained power to keep it warm for more then a day or so. I had considered using a car seat warmer as well, but the power needed is to great.

I have a jetway and aside from the HDD not starting in -30 and lower, the board does post.

I think it's just a temperamental board. Keeping it out of the car can also be problematic because temperatures are much colder then within the vehicle.

**nobb** · 02-19-2008, 08:50 PM

Some motherboards just wont work in the cold. I have tested two separate boards which would fail at -10C and -20C. The fans would power on, but the board would not POST. Or if it did actually POST, it would freeze/reboot sporadically. The problem mostly seems to be capacitor related, because the capacitance can vary alot with temperature. But 4C seems a bit high for a board to fail. Try to enable power on after power loss in your bios. Stupid idea, but it helped my m10k to boot. I also noticed in your specs, you are running the M2. It appears that this power supply might "overshoot" the voltage rails a bit when it gets cold (thats probably why I had to enable the power on after power loss).

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/powe...tx-jetway.html

Test that maybe? Or try powering on your system with a standard ATX psu to see if it is the power supply's fault.

**rijk** · 02-20-2008, 02:04 AM

I now have a dsx12vd. In the bios after powerloss power up.

the 4C is when it switched off, the cpc didn't start that day it was -4C i had a drive of about 2 hours. Then the car was parked for ca. 0,5 hours and the cpc switched on (the engin nust have warmed the mobo) the temp of the mobo was 35C When i drove back and checked the temp on the dsx12vd the last reading i did was 4C half a minute later the mobo was gone (like someone had pulled the power off)

Have don a test, mobo in the fridge, tempsensors off. No result, fan spins up and no other reaction. Power completly of the system in bios after powerfail restart.
Power back on and it doesn't start up by itself, So startet it by the strabutton on the mobo.
When it started the mobo temp was back up to 22C.

Must be those capacitance. My board only has the p4 connection, so only 12 volts. It has te make teh 5 and 3 Volts by itself.
So in theorie a board with a atx connector should do better?

**HuseyinOzsut** · 02-24-2008, 03:31 PM

I'm at Turkey and here in winter temp. can drop under -10C at nights and in summer it can be over 35C in the morning. I was using my pc with water cooling, and I'm thinking to place my pc to the car with water cooling and isolate the case by glass wool and rock wool. And In summer I'll remove the isolation. Will that do the trick if I have failures in the winter?

**Lithoss** · 02-24-2008, 04:50 PM

Originally Posted by HuseyinOzsut

I'm at Turkey and here in winter temp. can drop under -10C at nights and in summer it can be over 35C in the morning. I was using my pc with water cooling, and I'm thinking to place my pc to the car with water cooling and isolate the case by glass wool and rock wool. And In summer I'll remove the isolation. Will that do the trick if I have failures in the winter?

are you saying that you going to try to water cool a car pc? and in sub zero temperatures? uh......?

**TruckinMP3** · 02-24-2008, 05:34 PM

Originally Posted by Lithoss

are you saying that you going to try to water cool a car pc? and in sub zero temperatures? uh......?

While I would not recommend liquid cooling in the car (water is not the only option) several liquids would work without turning into a solid at lower temps.

**Lithoss** · 02-24-2008, 06:09 PM

Originally Posted by TruckinMP3

While I would not recommend liquid cooling in the car (water is not the only option) several liquids would work without turning into a solid at lower temps.

i know you can get some blue windshield washer fluid that looks good in watercooling.. but why in a car?