What would happen to a computer... in space?

[hat]

So, space is really cold... but there's also no air. If you put a computer in space, what would the temps be like? Would it quickly overheat, as there is no air to remove the heat? Or does the heat radiate away into the coldness of space? Extreme overclocking possible?

 

[R-T-B]

Radiation would fry it.

 

[hat]

Yeah, I kinda figured that... but let's assume the computer doesn't get irradiated, and all other conditions preventing it from functioning are irrelevant. Does it just build up heat and overheat, or does it stay super cold?

 

[jboydgolfer]

I would guess it would be fine although hard drives might have issue

 

[R-T-B]

Yeah, I kinda figured that... but let's assume the computer doesn't get irradiated, and all other conditions preventing it from functioning are irrelevant. Does it just build up heat and overheat, or does it stay super cold?

...

You know, that's actually something I have no answer to. Let's try it.

 

[Easy Rhino]

complete guess but if it is shielded from the sun then it would still overheat because their is no air to dissipate heat... i don't know... if you gift @W1zzard 100 million im sure he could shoot one of his rigs up into space as a test...

 

[8bitgamer757]

more like a couple billion

 

[windwhirl]

When NASA took laptops to space, the cooling system was modified to move a larger volume of hot air more quickly (link here). However, due to lower pressure, there is less air molecules to transfer heat to, which means that the modified cooling system ended up having more or less the same effectiveness on the Shuttle in micro-gravity than normal cooling on Earth.

And lack of air (or any kind of gaseous or liquid material surrounding the heatsinks, for that matter) would make cooling impossible, since there would be nowhere to transfer heat to. The computer would overheat and stop working.

complete guess but if it is shielded from the sun then it would still overheat because their is no air to dissipate heat... i don't know... if you gift @W1zzard 100 million im sure he could shoot one of his rigs up into space as a test...

Considering how "inexpensive" a SpaceX flight seems to be, that would be actually doable, provided we could throw that kind of money at this "problem" LOL

EDIT:

Radiation would fry it.

And some guy wanted Windows to clear the cache on waking up from low power states to avoid data corruption by radiation

 

[Easy Rhino]

more like a couple billion

paging Elon Musk!

 

[MrGenius]

Air is an insulator. You people are WAY off.

 

[Norton]

Tin whiskers- a failure mechanism for electronics and circuits in space..

https://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/background/index.htm

 

[MrGenius]

Objects also conduct heat internally so the shadowed side of an object sitting in the sunlight near Earth might cool down to only -250 degrees Fahrenheit, where at the orbit of Pluto, it might be more like -360 degrees.

All this is very important to spacecraft designers. From the sun out to about the orbit of Mars, spacecraft have little trouble staying warm. They mostly are wrapped in reflective materials for protection from the sun, and given radiators or other systems to help get rid of the heat generated by their systems. At about the orbit of Mars, however, staying warm starts becoming a problem, so much so that the first Mars rover, Sojourner, carried a plug of plutonium 238 inside the little thermos container that housed its computer just to keep the electronics from freezing.

Space is cold in the sense that it’s big and empty and any object placed in space can radiate a limitless amount of energy in all directions, so if there is no sun nearby to warm it up, it will eventually lose almost all its heat and grow very cold indeed

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/02/23/why-its-so-cold-in-outer-space/

 

[jboydgolfer]

 

[MrGenius]

I NileRed. But I fail to see the relevance to the topic of the thread...

 

[Divide Overflow]

Thermal radiation works in the vacuum of space just fine. Satellites, probes and manned spacecraft have taken advantage of this for decades.

 

[MrGenius]

Is sunshine warm?

 

[fullinfusion]

So, space is really cold... but there's also no air. If you put a computer in space, what would the temps be like? Would it quickly overheat, as there is no air to remove the heat? Or does the heat radiate away into the coldness of space? Extreme overclocking possible?

You must be severely be board to ask such a question

Space as cold as it is without air movement isn't actually true! Heat always rises and so Dead air will siphon into a cooler and chill the system down as the heat rises, make sense, or shall I go on?

 

[Sasqui]

You must be severely be board to ask such a question

Space as cold as it is without air movement isn't actually true! Heat always rises and so Dead air will siphon into a cooler and chill the system down as the heat rises, make sense, or shall I go on?

Near earth orbit, spacesuits are designed to keep a person alive (and comfortable) from ambient temps ranging from -250f to +250f ...you have to have a damn flexible heat retention and dissipation mechanism to have components work in that environment.

CPUs and MBs suffer with zero bugs with TEC and other low temp coolers, imagine having to deal with that and temps also topping +120c!

Ie ask NASA xD

 

[MrGenius]

Space as cold as it is without air movement isn't actually true! Heat always rises and so Dead air will siphon into a cooler and chill the system down as the heat rises, make sense, or shall I go on?

Please don't. You're far enough off track already. Trying to make any sense out of that in relation to the topic is hurting my head badly.

There's no air in space. And that is true. And yes, it's very much due to that fact that it is so cold. Since air is a medium that can be used to transfer heat. A computer exposed to the vacuum of space can't use air to transfer heat. "Heat rising", which it DOESN'T always do, is less related to thermal radiation, and more to due with density variation. Heat typically "rises" because the medium transferring the heat is less dense than the surrounding medium. Heat can't rise in space, as there is no such medium to transfer the heat. Not to mention the fact that there's no "up" in space for it to "rise" into.

 

[hat]

You must be severely be board to ask such a question

Space as cold as it is without air movement isn't actually true! Heat always rises and so Dead air will siphon into a cooler and chill the system down as the heat rises, make sense, or shall I go on?

Not really. It's one of those curious thoughts rolling around in my head that pops up from time to time.

What do you mean by "dead" air? I thought there's no air in space?

 

[Jetster]

 

[Vya Domus]

Computer is broad term.

I am sure you can design an SoC that dissipates enough heat through radiation so that it doesn't overheat. Moreover a heatsink attached will still manage to cool it down to a degree.

 

[Vayra86]

...

You know, that's actually something I have no answer to. Let's try it.

 

[Nuckles56]

A standard rig that was sent into space would end up overheating even if it is protected from the sun by something, just because it doesn't have the radiator space that is needed for the amount of power use. I think that even if you were to downclock everything to the minimum, and only use a single core, a cooler 2x larger than say a noctua NH-D15 would be sufficient

 

[qubit]

@hat

Short answer is the computer would function, but slowly overheat. The HDDs are another matter and I'll come to those.

What you're really thinking of is a vacuum, it doesn't matter if it's in space or on earth and we don't wanna complicate the issue with solar radiation etc. It doesn't have to be outer space, that nice big one at NASA would enable you to conduct the experiment just fine, by suspending the PC with thin wires.

The heat could then only be extracted by conduction through the case and radiation directly through the vacuum (think heat from the sun can only get here by radiation). This is much slower than by air convection, hence the overheat, since the cooling system has been designed to work within air. Re-engineering the cooling system, or just underclocking it sufficiently should solve this. The PSU might need some extra cooling though... The other components on the mobo, especially the CPU power regulators, would tend to overheat, too.

The HDDs are another matter. They are filled with gas which will want to get out, so they are likely to swell, leak and be ruined. An SSD should be ok though and doesn't usually generate much heat.

Another interesting point of physics to realise, is that space itself doesn't have any temperature - it's neither hot nor cold. Of course, all heat would slowly leak away into space, but having a heater would easily counteract that.