Vacuum sealed pc case

Fenrir

ok since heat is conducted into the air from the parts of a computer to the heat sink and that into the air. and in space because the lack of oxygen there is very little heat. so i was wondering would creating a vacuum around the mother board and its components keep it cool because of the lack of oxygen?

Greatone123

there is no heat cause there is no air to transfer the heat... from the sun...

the chips and motherboard still would over heat because there is no air to REMOVE the heat from it's surface...

Duke3d87

the motherboard and processor create heat from the very fact that there is current flowing wires and there's current leakage and whatnot.

So making a case a vacuum would remove any chance of conducting heat away from the components unless you wc it.

Fenrir

ok so if i water cooled it would have an even lower temprature?

Jimbo64

In an assembled computer (Complete ready to run) There are 1000s of resisters. All of these resisters are giving off heat, via resistance. These all rely on air to stay cool. even if its in still air, (which still moves due to hot air rising) they radiate heat away. This is why even electronic devices with no fans still have vents in the top and bottom. (Like a TV) Hot air rising exits the case, drawing cooler, lower air, in the bottom.

In a vacuum this doesnt happen. So a vacuum sealed motherboard would end up with a thermal runaway situation. The heat from each component will back up thru the solder, trace lines, copper, even the fiberglass the PCB is made from. Eventually it would all fry :) You would need to water cool almost every component on the motherboard for this to work.

Water cooling is the way to go if heat is an issue, because water can move a massive amount of heat quickly.

I could ramble on forever...

Jimbo-

Fenrir

ok what if i were to pump in a fire supresion gas? or dip it in liquid nitrogen?

CreatedMind07

Or how about you just use some fans? fire supresion gas is deadly if you breath it to long.. It's only made for short burst to stop the fire.. liquid nitrogen.. Yeah go for it.. And watch the parts get so cold that if you touch anything on them it'll fall apart..

'DomE ^

or your could keep your computer in a fishtank filled with oil :-)

obobskivich

reasons not to use nitrogen aside from brittleness (ASTA LA VISTA, BABY!) -> 1) superconduction 2) condensation 3) issues with your caps (they're gonna be the weakest link)

reasons not to use the fishtank filled with oil: PCB is porous, oil is fatty, bacteria grows in oil, gets into the PCB, -> ain't that a bitch?

not to mention that the overall cooling capacity of the oil system is poor, because its hard to pump and cool off, it doesn't have huge heat capacity, and it spreads the heat around, so components like VRMs that are used to having like 20-30w to deal with, now have the entire beast to deal with, throughout the liquid (it wants to equalize its temperature, you give it enough time, it will)


now, if you want to get extreme, you can be like Cray, and buy Flourinert at $560 US/liter and run a closed evaporative system with full immresion, theres a reason that system cost a couple million dollars, and a better reason why nobody does that today for computers, because its absurdly expensive

if you want CRAAAAAAAZY cold temperatures, you want to go with either an LN2 pipe, dice pipes, cascade cooling, direct die phase change, chilled water, evaporative cooling, water cooling, air cooling, or passive radiation(in that order, from most absurd to most realistic/quietest)

the vacuum idea would be impossible, for one, and not cool the computer, for two, the reason theres no temperature in space is because theres no pressure, but liquid also boils readily, because theres no pressure (pressure and heat go together, with no pressure, it doesn't matter if its 9000* or -9000* degrees, because, theres no pressure to hold matter together (so if you removed all pressure from your PC, theres no pressure to hold matter together, the reality is, you'd pull the case in on itself and crush everything internally FAR before you got it down to something similar to free space))

Fenrir

ok so thats the reason my full tower atx is now the size of a gamecube

obobskivich

lol

to give you an example of the structure you srsly need to sustain a vacuum
in the basement of my engineering building, theres this old windtunnel, it works by sucking in an assload of air, into this like ~30 ton tank, for about 6 seconds of output, the bolts that hold this thing together are the size of a softball, and the tank is the size of a 15 passenger van, and its not holding zero pressure, its holding like whatever multiple atm of pressure (few hundred PSI iirc)

Fenrir

but if i could achive zero pressure with out catastropich struactural failure how would that effect the cooling of the pc?

obobskivich

like i said, zero pressure on its own doesn't help, because then the temperature becomes more or less irrelevant, energy will be expressed as heat and things will be damaged (thats my horrible explanation of it), not to mention that absolute zero pressure is impossible, not even space is a perfect vacuum (its just close-ish, in a relative manner)

basically this idea won't work, you can't even get to close to achieving it, and even if you could, it would just destroy your PC

Fenrir

ok so what if i filled the case with compressed air or helium and had it liquid cooled with mercury? im going into completle absured and outlandish ideas now! crazy FTW!!

obobskivich

if you're gonna talk nonsense, whats the point in talking?

Fenrir

not trying to be non sencical (how the hell do you spell that!) but what is the singal craziest cooling system youve ever heard of?

obobskivich

triple stage cascade cooling systems are probably about the limit of insanity, thats about -170* C sustained for 6-8 hours, but those are pretty unfashionable anymore, because LN2 is so readily available and a nice set of pipes is only a few hundred bucks at a machine shop

rahl07

liquid mercury is not a good idea. there's a reason we use non-conductive fluid in the tubes. Now, you're proposing to fill them with superconductive liquid mercury? not only that, it's more viscous and it would probably go thru pumps with almost stupid regularity.

WhiteBoy88

Sealant spray over entire PCB and mineral oil work well.
I've been working on an idea of mine for a while, and I needed to test the reaction between mineral oil and several materials (acrylic, PC parts, different sealants, thermal compounds, etc.). I tested with an older PSU in an acrylic case, with the different chemical compounds applied in various locations and amounts. It ran constantly for 2 months with absolutely no issues. Voltage was stable, temps stayed at a manageable level. I sprayed the PCB with sealant first.

Firstly, oils have good cooling potential for immersion cooling. Cooling the oil is easy, you just need filtered fans blowing over the top of the oil. It gets plenty of uptime compared to other "extreme" cooling.

RcRon7

Another reason space is cold is the lack of a heat source. The closer to the sun you get, the hotter it gets. It is not cold simply because it is a vacuum.