Loft seems to kill PCs ...

[The Natural Philosopher]

big move for me was mini ITX atom board. less power and just one small fan.

Debian stable is all it needs.

[Michael Chare]

I have had a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo in my loft for the past year. It has two large hard drives and has been fine.

It is programmed to go to sleep at night, and the disks power down when they are not being used.

Sometimes the temperature in the loft gets down to nearly zero.

I did consider using an old PC, but my old PC does not support the sleep function found on many modern motherboards.

[pete]

I'd give serious consideration to humidity (not necessarily full-blown condensation) being a major factor. If you have a water header tank in the loft, that could well add to the local humidity. The effect I've noticed is that the contacts to the DIMMs get partially corroded. Pulling the memory out and simply reinserting it is sometimes enough to get my "cold environment" machine back running again. Sometime I have to rub the gold plating of the DIMMs fingers with a piece of printer paper (as paper has a slight abrasive quality). The black residue left on the paper shows that something comes off the contact. So far, those two measures have been enough to revive the machine. However I have also noticed the occasional dead insect inside the chassis and have a suspicion that a carbonised bug of some sort killed a laptop that we'd stored in the loft for a period of time, before switching back on. The lappy worked for a few seconds until the smoke appeared, followed by a not unpleasant smell of burning/cooking (not the acrid smell from fried circuit boards).

[MrFerrous]

I've got a temperature sensor in my loft, and the temperature up there does vary rapidly, nearly as rapidly as the outdoor temperature. The loft temperature changes much more quickly than the temperature in the rest of the house, even if the central heating is turned off. Don't iknow if that's a factor. On the other hand, a lot of houses have an alarm control unit in their lofts, and those seem to survive OK.

[Ghostrecon]

I have an old pc(5 years old ) running Freenas in the loft the power supply recently failed - its only turned on 6days/fortnight (When I have my kids - all their dvds/films are on there so it saves on damaging the disks (+ rcordings from tv)) Mine is mounted under the platform which houses the water tank so there is no insulation between it and the ceiling below

-hopefully its not exposured to the wild temperature fluctuations others have mentioned. Have not have any problems with disks though. There are 2 routers which are powered on 24/7 - fees all the bedrooms from one cat 5 from downstairs and I've had no trouble with that in 2 years.

[Terry Casey]

This thread is starting to get me worried!

Different scenario - a network drive used mainly for back-up - but, as my wife pointed out, what happens if someone breaks in and steals one or more of the PCs, with the HDD clearly in view?

Not much use having a back-up if some scrote nicks that as well!

So, what I was planning was to relocate it to the cellar. All I need is a new mains socket and a bit of Cat5 from the router.

Although it doesn't suffer from the temperature cycling problems of a loft, it does get pretty cold down there!

The HDD will be on a shelf under the stairs - in other words, at ground floor level and, as this means it will be boxed in on three sides, it will be protected from any underfloor air currents.

But, in view of comments like those above, am I likely to run into problems?

It's in a small enclosure (convection cooled) and runs warm to the touch - would this be sufficient?

Or should I leave the drive spinning 24/7 for extra warmth?

Or just forget the idea ...

But then where would I hide it? The loft is obviously out of the question ...!

[Andy Champ]

I wouldn't put anything electrical in a loft. Too hot, too cold, too damp... thermal cycling alone can cause connectors to pop out.

Get yourself a nice quiet PSU, a passive cooled mother board and graphics card, and an over the top CPU cooler and the disk will be the noisiest thing in there. Then put it in the furthest corner of the least used room.

Andy

[Huge]

Cupboard under the stairs? Garage? Surely there's got to be somewhere to put this stuff?

[Terry Fields]

Let's say that the overnight low reduced the loft temperature to 2 deg C, humidity level 50 percent. The morning sun raises the temperature in the loft to 8 deg C in an hour. The computer can't follow that temperature rise so fast, but all the time it's below 4 deg C it's below the dew-point and condensation takes place[1]. The problem is worsened if the loft temperature keeps rising, as the computer will be below the dew-point for longer.

Every part of the computer that is a) in contact with the air, and b) below the dew-point, will suffer condensation, every time the loft temperature cycles.

[1] This assumes the loft will remain at 50 percent humidity, which is pretty likely.

TF

[Mark]

snipped-for-privacy@thanks.>>

Well. You should always have offsite backups in case of a major disaster, but I'm sure most people don't do this.

In a small enclosure I would suspect that it may get too hot in summer (if we actually have one that is). How cold does it get there in the winter?

The understairs enclosure sounds OK. I would include a temperature controlled fan to aid cooling.

Don't forget to store some back-ups offsite.

[Mark]

-^^^^^^^^^^

Hope you don't get a leak!

[tony sayer]

As maybe .. but we have a PC running in a rather cool place round what your loft is and from time to time that stalls requiring a re-boot which isn't always as quick as it might be due it seems to a sluggish disk..

And thats quite a recent one too. PC and disk that is At normal room temps it's fine ...

[Mark]

If it's a home media PC then put it under the TV. It's not difficult to make an almost silent PC these days.

[Dave Liquorice]

Except that the PC is consuming anything from 25 to 100W of power and all that is being dumped as heat...

[Man at B&Q]

Add in someone having a steamy shower in the bathroom below and leaks around the light fittings allowing moisture laden air into the loft space.

Also what sort of loft is it? Well insulated from below but open to the elements, or what?

MBQ

[Andrew Gabriel]

You are right that the PC's heat could save it in this situation, but PC's are not designed to handle this environment. The forced air cooling which is important in your living room, can be a disaster at changing low temperatures.

Easiest way to do this (which is what I've done) is to enclose the PC in a cupboard (needs to be many times the size of the PC), and use a temperature controlled fan to change the air in the cupboard only when it gets about 21C (in my case). This will keep the relative humididty in the cupboard lower and somewhat more consistant than in the loft as a whole (although it's not loft in my case), and should be no risk of condensation in the cupboard. I actually blow the warm air from the cupboard into the house, so I get some benefit from the 150W of kit in the cupboard. Another problem with a loft is (mine at least) goes up to 50C in the summer, and that would also kill a standard PC.

I have some other kit in the loft which is rather more designed for such an environment (but is much lower power). That just relies on convection cooling with restricted ventilation, to ensure it's always above the ambiant temperature and thus lower RH.