Hardening PCs for Hostile Environments? 19
labradore asks: "I must install a 1.2GHz Athlon system, in a secure place, at a retail business. The PC is going to be a security video recorder and a point of sale terminal server. In other words I need it to act like an appliance: something that requires very little on-site maintenance and at most, remote adminstration. Unfortunately the only secure place to put it is inside a hot, dusty storage room. It has it's own protective lock-box (approx. 3x3x3 ft.) to keep evil employees and snooping types out and to insulate it from the heat and dust of the storage room but I don't know how to actually keep the box cool and fairly free of dust." What things would one need to house comodity components in such a way to enable them to survive in such hostile environments? Is 27 cubic feet too small for the necessary modifications that would have to be made?
"There must be a lot of other people turning PCs into "embedded" controllers or appliances facing the same situations. At the very least this could be thought of as the quest for the ultimate "fire-and-forget" cooling environment. What options has the collective mind of Slashdot uncovered and thunked up to deal with this kind of situation?"
How fast does it need to be? (Score:1)
Simple solution (Score:4)
My OEM style PC with an Athlon 1100 is doing fine in my apartment without air conditioning. It has not had any problems with the room tempurature being in the high 80s. At work we had the air-conditioning for the NOC fail for part of a week end, the tempurature was in the low 90s when we got in there. Nothing crashed and we have not seen any problems with any of the dozen Sun servers nor the few Cisco Routers since then. It was not something I would desire to repeat though.
Oversized Aluminum Case + fans (Score:2)
Alumunum is a very good heat conductor. All the better heat conductors cost much much more to use. Look into using a copper CPU heatsink to better transfer heat away from it, but check the overclocker sites to really find out which heatsink is the best bang for the $$$ you are willing to spend.
I'm looking at having to make a PC for outside use in the near term future. I'm going to make it's case out of large area AL heatsinks. I'll be using a heat pipe to transfer the CPU's heat to one side, and use a dual sided heatsink on the other side to cool the rest of the components. Items like hard disks will be directly mounted to the side walls to provide better heat conduction. The idea is I want to make it so it doesn't need fans at all. It needs to run off of solar and batteries only.
Cool cabinets from Blackbox (Score:2)
Industrial (Score:2)
Remember, it is your ass on the line when the PC fails because the environment is too harsh for it.
Re:U don't need to do much... (Score:1)
Sealed box and A/C (Score:2)
Re:Simple solution (Score:2)
I think you underestimate the reliability of modern hardware.
Use OC tricks, make a good seal (Score:1)
Consider watercooling [athlonoc.com] this machine. I would have picked a CPU that won't heat your house, but that's irrelevant at this point.
Consider getting a peltier if you've got a beefy powersupply, it's not your electricity!
Seal the case and the enclosure well! I had a box crap otu on me because mice got inside. They pissed all over the motherboard. I got the sucker, found him trapped under the HD enclosure.
Consider setting up a cam pointed right at the enclosure.
Definately get MBM [livewiredev.com] so you can remotely monitor the temperature.
Good luck!
(me: 433@487 Celeryo. CPU temp: 59C. Ambient: 82F)
What about the breaker switch? (Score:1)
Can anyone unplug the power strip it's plugged into?
What's the case made of? Wood? Sheet metal? Is it a commercial box or something you/someone else fabricated?
3x3x3 should be OK, but if you have problems I would consider some sort of heat exchanger unit.
Put it in a fridge (Score:2)
You all should of given him a good link (Score:1)
they can, will, and in some states must help you
Well, (Score:1)
If an employee wants it that bad, they will find a way.
You can get a cheap safe for about 100$ and cut a 4x4 hole for a Cheap computer fan, and secure it on the top, and bottom. That way, you would first have to get the stuff through a 4x4 fan, an through a spinning fan. Not very easy.
Re:Well, (Score:1)
No cheap way out. (Score:2)
It all depends an how long the user is willing to go without.
A home brew method.... (Score:3)
You have two problems, dust and heat. Enclosing the unit within a cabinet won't really keep either out. But you CAN solve both problems at the same time. Put the unit into an enclosed cabinet. Have the customer purchase a small chiller with filters, which will probably have to go into a separate (hopefully less dusty) location. Funnel the output from the chiller through some ductwork, and run the other end through a small hole in the cabinet. And presto, you have a positive pressure, cooled environment for your hardware. The cooling takes care of the heat, and the positive pressure keeps the dust out. Hopefully, holes in the cabinet for cables, etc will be enough to keep the pressure regulated, but if not, you can always add some additional small holes. And, BTW, I've seen some chillers that are only about 1 foot deep, 2 feet high and 2 feet wide.
DISCLAIMER: I do not warrant the above information in any way, nor will I accept responsibility if it fails or creates other damage. Use at your own risk!
GreyPoopon
--
Water cooling seems to be the answer here (Score:1)
cooling for the cooling. I think that could work
for decades on end.
Just an idea.
Oelewapperke
Dust-proof Cooling (Score:2)
U don't need to do much... (Score:1)