Extreme Cold

redhawk · 08-17-2009, 07:10 PM

Has anyone on the forum ever had to deal with extreme cold on their unit?

I'm using a solid-state Asus EEE as my main, and it gets down to close to -50 here in the winter.

2005 Focus.

Ideas?

Sonicxtacy02 · 08-18-2009, 09:23 AM

i've never been anywhere near that temp but i know the two weak points in the cold are the LCD screen which takes a long time to warm up and the hard drive which if not solid state will have problems spinning when its cold

nobb · 08-18-2009, 09:53 AM

Getting my system to work in -40C was already difficult enough, -50C will even be worse. Get an LCD screen with LED backlight and a solid state hard drive. Using a ccfl screen in those conditions will significantly shorten it's life, and might not even turn on. Also make sure your motherboard uses solid state capacitors, like most Jetway boards.

Machinehead · 08-18-2009, 10:08 AM

At -20C the touch functionality doesn't work at least on the screens I've had.

Maheriano · 08-18-2009, 11:51 AM

You must be living close to me. I'm in Calgary and it gets to -50 here, my CCFL Xenarc 700TSV screen works flawlessly 100% of the time at 50 below. The only thing in my system that doesn't like to work is the hard drive because it's not a solid state and it takes a few minutes for the viscosity of the bearing sludge to get to a level where the drive will actually spin. So I just leave the car on for 10-15 minutes, hit a reset button and the computer fires up. Everything works, touchscreen and all.

I have heard of Lilliputs crapping out at -10 degrees which makes sense since they're cheaper but everything else is fine. And I imagine you probably wouldn't have any issues if you have a solid state drive.

prodigalsun · 08-18-2009, 01:03 PM

Yeah I also live in Calgary have used my lilli over 2 winters with no problems. The screen works fine in the cold. The problem is usually my hard drive as I use a 2.5' sata drive with my most recent set up. Previously I had an eee pc with a sdd and not even that booted up. I attributed that problem to the other components tho. Point blank....main thing is the configuration of the PC's components and how tolerant they are to cold rather than the screen - lilli or xenarc.

whitepanther · 08-18-2009, 04:37 PM

Used when out temperature was about -32C. No problems!

Fiberoptic · 08-19-2009, 01:54 PM

You might want to check out the ee25 hard drives on the store. They outperform most SSD controllers. SSD is capable of lower temps, but the controllers for the SSD often aren't.

Punky · 08-19-2009, 02:25 PM

i also live in calgary, one thing is for sure i never had a screen crap out on me on the last 5 years i've had carpc (used only lilli and xenarc). The only thing that ever craps out on cold temperature was the stupid creative sound card which i scrapped the day i installed it, and hard drives. Hard drives, I've used the ee25 which worked great, tho expensive and hard to find (before mp3car had them). I've used countless old school loud wheel bearing HD which worked all winter for me (but dies when springs hits, every year lol!). So this year, i'm going with SSD, knowingly that it might very well fail on me faster than the other options, but its a risk i'm willing to take. (currently running on OCZ 32GB Vertex, because my Patriot 32GB died in one day at -15C).
If you are using the eee laptop you can use the sd slot and run on a 32gb sd card (i've seen it done somewhere on the net). It maybe slower, but sd card has no controller to fail on you and therefore maybe a good solution.

sergatiuk · 08-19-2009, 05:52 PM

wrap you pc in wool...
seriously though... wrap your pc in a wool cloth, natural wool (not chemically processed).
natural wool has amazing isolating ability, and is the only natural material that preserves the heat of whatever it contains while isolating the temperature outside. however wool can generate electro-static, so what id recommend you is make the pc case out of wood and then wrap it in wool. you should have absolutly no problem with any HDD or MOBO or any other component ... (i dont know about the monitor though...)

trinybwoy · 08-19-2009, 06:06 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by sergatiuk

wrap you pc in wool...
seriously though... wrap your pc in a wool cloth, natural wool (not chemically processed).
natural wool has amazing isolating ability, and is the only natural material that preserves the heat of whatever it contains while isolating the temperature outside. however wool can generate electro-static, so what id recommend you is make the pc case out of wood and then wrap it in wool. you should have absolutly no problem with any HDD or MOBO or any other component ... (i dont know about the monitor though...)

i will give the wool aspect a try.

i have a 320gb secondary hdd that stores all my music; i am worried about this drive.
my main hdd is a 32gb ssd.

sergatiuk · 08-19-2009, 06:22 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by trinybwoy

i will give the wool aspect a try.

i have a 320gb secondary hdd that stores all my music; i am worried about this drive.
my main hdd is a 32gb ssd.

just keep in mind, the thicker the wool is the better the isolation and temperature preservation.
also make sure there is something to isolate the wool from the internal components, plastic is not good, metal can be used as long as its grounded, and wood is the best...

btw, sheep wool is the best and least pricey for this purpose, however lama (alpaca) wool is also excelent...

sergatiuk · 08-19-2009, 08:24 PM

another idea ...
i believe it is possible to write a very simple script that will run from a bootable disk or a flash drive, a script that will warm up the entire system, spin the HDD at full speed, "benchmark" the CPU, ram and graphic card, a few seconds of such a script should warm up the system enough for it to be fully usable ...

i am not a coder but im sure such a script could be found somewhere in the linux community...

malcom2073 · 08-19-2009, 08:27 PM

Perhaps get a simple resistive heater plate for the hard drive, put it right over top of the bearing pack just to get it warm enough to spin up. Put it on a temperature sensor and the ignition of your car. If you're really creative you can rig it to warm for a certain period of time before the computer tries to boot.

I've been thinking about doing that here, it will get down into single digits (F not C) in the winter and I've on occasion had issues with my hard drive spinning up.

sergatiuk · 08-19-2009, 08:46 PM

i didnt read too much about it... but with some additional configuration these might work for warming up the system ....

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.a...tno=520&pgno=0

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