Temperature question

[Howard]

Hi folks,

I am planning to be moving my server and Smoothwall box (and other associated networking clobber) down into our garage.

Now it's not the best-insulated garage in the world, and it gets bloody cold in there in the winter. Fortunately I don't think moisture will be an issue but will the temperatures be an issue?

The CPU and motherboard temps of the Dell server currently are sitting at about 20 and 14 degrees respectively, with it being about 7C outside.

Is this going to cause a problem when it gets to sub-zero temperatures outside? What are the minimum temps a CPU/HDD should reach?

Thanks

[staffsMike]

Well when people do overclocking with liquid nitrogen it's gets down to -80 or some such temps () so I'd imagine as long as you don't get any condensation its will fine.

[Howard]

Does this apply to the hard drives as well?

[staffsMike]

Good point. At very low tempreature's hard drives could struggle. Never experienced it myself but then my pc isn't in the garage lol.

I might investigate lol

EDIT: a quick google suggests that there may be a 5 degree minimum operating temp on western digital drives.. Swap your fans for hair dryers

[0iD]

I would say your only enemy would be condenstion & humidity. As long as the disks are running they should keep above freezing point.