Anonymous Coward (7548) gave us a real world answer. “Putting heaters (computers) in an environment meant to be cold is just adding to the cooling workload. If the computer is at any decent operating temperature, it’s going to be heating up the immediate surrounding area, and you don’t want that.”  He advised people to mount the computer outside of the cold environment and put the sensor probes inside.

Although this appeared to be a sensible idea, the discussion added a new variable – building size. People were quick to point out that the original question required that he needed monitoring for a warehouse. Most warehouses are large, some larger then a football field. Clearly the above approach would not be applicable.

Embedding the PC inside of the sub-zero environment presents another issue – condensation. How are we going to protect the electronics?

BobPaul (710574) points out:

“Since cold air has a lower capacity to hold water, warming the air should decrease the relative humidity of the air, bringing you farther from the dew point and make condensation less likely. Just let everything sit in the cooler to get nice and cold before you turn anything on and I think it should be just fine.”

This response produced quite a bit of traffic. Quite a few people disagreed with BobPauls theory. Although this could be an answer, its validity is still in question.

The best solution to humidity was pointed out by Detritus (11846). He points out that “Military equipment often uses conformal coating, which is a spray-on plastic coating that protects the components from the environment.” This method encases the electronics protecting it from moisture. To the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t provide any thermal benefit, nor is it a life long solution. I would make sure to have a humidity sensor in the enclosure to ensure longevity.

The last post that I read made the solution clear.  munpfazy (694689) writes, “For what it’s worth, we’ve always built room-temperature enclosures to house electronics gear and PCs for the work we do in Antarctica.” You can’t get much colder than that.

My conclusion, build small micro enclosures for the computer that includes the required environmental conditioning and monitoring equipment.

Let me know what you think . . .

- Jimmy D