Computer in a vacuum

Vacuum as in a sealed cupboard with all the air pumped out?
Poorly, as airflow is normally needed to dissipate heat. So you'd need something else to transfer heat.

Vacuum as in the cold dark nothingness of space?
That's a whole other problem.

Vacuum as in building a PC inside an old hoover?
Great idea :)
 
Yeah you need a flow of cooler particles moving over the hot parts (air for example) the particles warm up, taking the heat off the hot part, cooling it down, and the particles are whisked away, and new cooler particles take thier place etc...

There are no particles in a vacuum, so no heat exchange can take place.

If you were in space however, it's pretty cold so a relatively minor source of heat might get away without any cooling?
 
I've always wanted to know what would happen to a CPU in shade in space. Would it overheat instantly or be super cold?

can 8 pack into space?
 
I think Ocuk should team up with space-X.. And fly an overclocked rig into space.

It would be a great marketing exercise, and we demand answers! Lol

hornetstinger said:
also what about having a computer in a cabinet with different gases, or different air pressure?
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I would hypothesise that different gasses would more readily steal heat than others, assuming they were already at a lower temperature than the heat source.

Whether it's a gas or a liquid , it needs to arrive at the heat source, allow itself to warm up and then move away to allow more gas or liquid to take its place to further remove more heat.
 
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Increasing the gas pressure would just cause the low-pressure liquid to be... a slightly higher lower pressure liquid.

Just immerse the computer in non-conductive oil (though it makes it difficult to change parts).
 
You would have to use radiation to cool the chip, which would probably require a huge white sheet shaped heatsink / radiator
 
I have worked on satellites for almost 10 years now and although not on the on-board computers or thermal engineer I am an electronic engineer working on the communication units.

When we test units or satellites on the ground in a vacuum chamber the way to cool or heat is with conduction and radiators (LN2 for cooling and electrical heating elements for heat). As people have said if the computer was in vacuum it either needs to radiate the heat or conduct the heat away as convection obviously won't work. In space there is always a side of the spacecraft that faces away from the sun and this is used to cool the satellite down, for instance my high power amplifiers are usually bolted to the cold panel. So what is happening inside the craft is conduction with excess heat being dissipated on the cold panels facing away from the sun. Inside the modules CPU's and FPGA high power devices will have copper heat sinks to pull heat from the devices onto the metal module boxes and so onto the rest of the satellite. When I say heat sinks these are literal copper pieces with minimal mass as all we are doing is allowing heat to get out of devices onto satellite structure and then the thermal engineering will make sure the design will keep modules within design tolerances.

Thermal engineers will put different coatings on panels to allow them to radiate the correct amount of heat to keep the core satellite modules at effectively room temperature. For instance the maximum temperature swing inside the spacecraft is usually less then -20deg to +50deg in extreme cases but this is normally kept around the +10deg to +30deg. Some larger higher power satellites will have arrays of heat pipes to conduct the heat away from hot modules to radiators.
 
Crockett said:
I have worked on satellites for almost 10 years now and although not on the on-board computers or thermal engineer I am an electronic engineer working on the communication units.

When we test units or satellites on the ground in a vacuum chamber the way to cool or heat is with conduction and radiators (LN2 for cooling and electrical heating elements for heat). As people have said if the computer was in vacuum it either needs to radiate the heat or conduct the heat away as convection obviously won't work. In space there is always a side of the spacecraft that faces away from the sun and this is used to cool the satellite down, for instance my high power amplifiers are usually bolted to the cold panel. So what is happening inside the craft is conduction with excess heat being dissipated on the cold panels facing away from the sun. Inside the modules CPU's and FPGA high power devices will have copper heat sinks to pull heat from the devices onto the metal module boxes and so onto the rest of the satellite. When I say heat sinks these are literal copper pieces with minimal mass as all we are doing is allowing heat to get out of devices onto satellite structure and then the thermal engineering will make sure the design will keep modules within design tolerances.

Thermal engineers will put different coatings on panels to allow them to radiate the correct amount of heat to keep the core satellite modules at effectively room temperature. For instance the maximum temperature swing inside the spacecraft is usually less then -20deg to +50deg in extreme cases but this is normally kept around the +10deg to +30deg. Some larger higher power satellites will have arrays of heat pipes to conduct the heat away from hot modules to radiators.
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Wow, thanks for the insight. Fascinating stuff - can I have your job?
 
Very interesting, I didn't even consider that the side facing the sun would be hot and away would be cold, so it's interesting to hear how actual 'rocket scientists' do things lol!

Consider if the sun wasn't a factor though, so the pc (or exploration probe or whatever) was between solar systems, or even between galaxies in that vast void, I suppose things would need to be done differently then?
 
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