Operating Temperatures

[BuBBa]

so i've been giving serious thought to putting a pc in my car for music and such...

the only hurdle i have to get over is the pesky cold weather we get up here in the great white wasteland for 4 months of the year....

after a lot of checking, it seems the lowest operating temp of any HD i can find is 0*C....


as it hits -40*C overnight durring the coldest parts of the winter, that won't fly... i really don't want to have to do some ghetto battery blanket for the HD just to keep it toasty...


suggestions?

 

[DougLite]

Hitachi has an Endurastar line, info here. They are good from -20C to 85C. -20C is -4F, and they are at least good below freezing, and those are operating temperatures. Also, according to this datasheet, they can be stored to -40C: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/n4k30/n4k30.htm so it looks like we have a winner!

Also, -40C is pretty darn cold (it's also -40F) I'm in Indiana and I can't ever remember it getting lower than -10F - How's winter in Manitoba?

Downside is that those drives are pretty expensive and I'm not aware of any retail channels that carry them, especially in Canada.

 

[defakto]

you could try creating kind of a modularpower coupling setup to allow you to pull the system out of the car what it gets too hot or too cold.

 

[TLS2000]

The downside to that of course is that you lose your system in the winter/extreme summer weather. Maybe set up a back up with it as well?

Or, as an alternative, just run a drive in that weather and see if it stands up to it. I'd be more worried about condensation around the CPU than the HDD dying.

The other thing to remember is that any LCD you put in the car is going to be FROZEN at that temperature, so you will more than likely have no display.

 

[defakto]

Oops, think you misunderstood what I was saying.

With the modular plug setup, using something like the vai chipset that has everything in it (processor, vid, audio and lan) you could remove the system at night when it's too cold and put it back in, in the morning when the car is warmed up. Or same with it being too hot. Not just remove it for the winter when it's cold and summer when it's hot. Most likely short term exposure to heat or cold won't make a difference, it's the long term you need to worry about.

 

[BuBBa]

thanks for the advise... i'll have to find a place to bring one of thoes drives in through (as i assume they arn't very commonly found)...

as for the condensation part, i'm not worried about it... i plan on building a sealed enclosure for the cpu... who cares if it dies, it's only a via epia anyways


as for the winter part... ya, manitoba kinda gets the ass end of the stick... the geographic middle of canada is a few hundred kilometers to the east of us, and we don't have any huge bodies of water around us that don't freeze over, so there's no moderation for the weather...

here's a little taste of wonderful:

MAX TEMP : 4.3 °C
MAX TEMP. DATE Dec.17 2004
MIN TEMP : -38.6 °C
MIN TEMP. DATE Jan.17 2005
PRECIP ACCUMULATION 58 mm

that's just between dec 15th and jan 31st (we had a nice huge warm trend around that time, then got owned with cold weather)

january's normally the worst month cold wise, but this winter's just been wierd...

records in the last 4 years are this:

MAX TEMP : 35.9 °C
MAX TEMP. DATE Aug.19 2003
MIN TEMP : -41 °C
MIN TEMP. DATE Jan.30 2004

we basically get the biggest temperature changes in any place in north america... 77*C temp swing is something to be proud of


but back to the subject at hand, i was planning on doing a passive heatpipe setup from the C3 to the case which would be made as a sealed unit (rubber seal, and i'd finally have a use for all thoes moisture absorbing packets i've been getting with HD's...)

thanks for the heads up on thoes HD's, that piece of the picture is now clearer...