Summer on PCs

[Kevin Buettner]

On Dec 19,  2:27pm, Armin Hartinger wrote:

> I'd like to move my constantly-running Linux server into the garage. One
> less humming noise-maker in the house. Now the question to those
> Arizonians is, if any of you has experience with running PCs at such
> high environment temperatures.
> 
> Temperature is the biggest issue. Of course, I'd try to pick components
> which aren't already running hot (so no o/ced CPUs, 10K SCSI drivers or
> similar). Still, the question remains if maybe the whole attempt to run
> a PC with standard office components at outside temperatures isn't
> entirely futile.
> 
> Any experiences?

I've never put any of my machines in the garage, but I have a home
office which used to get rather warm.  (I now have a separate AC
unit for the office.)  Anyway, the temperatures would only get up
into the 90's, but I still experienced more hardware failures than
what I would consider normal.  (Several disk drives and a computer
power supply.)

My advice is don't do it.  (Your equipment will probably be okay for a
while, but it is likely that something will fail sooner than it
would've if you had kept it cool.)

Having said that, there was a thread on this list a while back about
someone who wanted to run a machine in a fairly hot setting who wanted
to figure out a way to cool just the machine...  I don't remember the
outcome of the thread.  It seems to me you could just put your server
in a frost-free dorm room refrigerator...

Kevin