How are computers cooled in space?

[thermalgoop]

What if you put an open bucket of water on top of a heat sink in space? The heat from the chip would melt the water, but by the time it's far enough away it'll be frozen.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, whm1974 said:

Well the Computers they put on Spacecraft are nowhere as powerful as Modern PCs. So less Heat produced to begin with.

Well considering the Model 3 supposedly has a modified NV Tesla Gpu for self driving, I suppose you can say it's a different kind of powerful.  

 

For an example, a modern 2021 Feightliner Columbia model with equipped DD13 or 15 engine will have at minimum 9 modules (or PCs if you will...) to run all the systems on the vehicle. That would be a base model. I think the high end model is around 13.

 

Now a space ship, depends how they designed it, but I'd imagine it has more "computers" on it then you may own in a life time.

 

 

[whm1974]

14 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

Well considering the Model 3 supposedly has a modified NV Tesla Gpu for self driving, I suppose you can say it's a different kind of powerful.  

 

For an example, a modern 2021 Feightliner Columbia model with equipped DD13 or 15 engine will have at minimum 9 modules (or PCs if you will...) to run all the systems on the vehicle. That would be a base model. I think the high end model is around 13.

 

Now a space ship, depends how they designed it, but I'd imagine it has more "computers" on it then you may own in a life time.

 

 

Well they would have a much lower clockspeeds then your Standard PC, since that is the easiest way to lower the voltage used and reduce waste heat.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, whm1974 said:

Well they would have a much lower clockspeeds then your Standard PC, since that is the easiest way to lower the voltage used and reduce waste heat.

I would like the cabin of my space craft heated thank you.  I'll take a few ThreadRippers please

[Orange1]

3 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

I would like the cabin of my space craft heated thank you.  I'll take a few ThreadRippers please

Looks to me as though they have laptops in the low orbit "space" station. Not really space per se. Which is to say, NGT - Do you want to go where hundreds have been before, low orbit ISS station.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Orange1 said:

Looks to me as though they have laptops in the low orbit "space" station. Not really space per se. Which is to say, NGT - Do you want to go where hundreds have been before, low orbit ISS station.

Yeah, I'd totally go there. Would love to get off this rock one good time. Even if low orbit! 

[Orange1]

Just now, ShrimpBrime said:

Yeah, I'd totally go there. Would love to get off this rock one good time. Even if low orbit! 

Call up elon or virgin guy and save up your pennies. A 500k house? nawwwwwww low earth orbit.

[Guest]

Just now, Orange1 said:

Call up elon or virgin guy and save up your pennies. A 500k house? nawwwwwww low earth orbit.

I wonder if the internet is good being next to all those satellites? 

 

 

[Orange1]

Just now, ShrimpBrime said:

I wonder if the internet is good being next to all those satellites? 

 

 

I guess you can see them shine in the sky from your porch with the naked eye, thats the news I glanced over.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Orange1 said:

I guess you can see them shine in the sky from your porch with the naked eye, thats the news I glanced over.

You can see the space station with the naked eye. Even Mars! XD

[Orange1]

Just now, ShrimpBrime said:

You can see the space station with the naked eye. Even Mars! XD

Yeah but these really low orbit satelittes are suppose to glean and glare in the sky, blocking out other stars.

 

 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Orange1 said:

Yeah but these really low orbit satelittes are suppose to glean and glare in the sky, blocking out other stars.

 

 

Shit, I live in Chicago. What stars? Probably won't see the satellites either lol.

[WereCatf]

6 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

At  -270c I don't think you'd need anything on a cpu at all. No water block, no air cooler.... just the IHS plate exposed to the chilly temps of 2.5 kelvin. 

 

The question might be more proper, how do I heat my PC to an operating temperature in space

It doesn't work like that. Astronauts suits, for example, exist to cool the people inside them, not to keep them warm; they'd cook inside, if the suits didn't have cooling. A human without underlying medical conditions, if tossed out of an airlock into bare vacuum, will die of lack of air, not of the cold. The same human can survive in space for about 3 minutes without any major issues -- some smaller veins in eyes and the likes would pop because of the pressure, but those heal over time -- as long as someone pulled them back in and revived them after that. The saliva on your tongue, would it freeze? Nope, it'd boil; the pressure of space does that, not the cold.

 

The thing is, it being cold isn't enough: you still need something to carry the thermal energy away from you. There's no air, no wind, nothing much, really, to carry the energy away other than radiation, so the scifi-movie trope of freezing instantly just isn't real. It'd take days for your dead, space-faring corpse to freeze.

[Guest]

Just now, WereCatf said:

It doesn't work like that. Astronauts suits, for example, exist to cool the people inside them, not to keep them warm; they'd cook inside, if the suits didn't have cooling. A human without underlying medical conditions, if tossed out of an airlock into bare vacuum, will die of lack of air, not of the cold. The same human can survive in space for about 3 minutes without any major issues -- some smaller veins in eyes and the likes would pop because of the pressure, but those heal over time -- as long as someone pulled them back in and revived them after that. The saliva on your tongue, would it freeze? Nope, it'd boil; the pressure of space does that, not the cold.

 

The thing is, it being cold isn't enough: you still need something to carry the thermal energy away from you. There's no air, no wind, nothing much, really, to carry the energy away other than radiation, so the scifi-movie trope of freezing instantly just isn't real. It'd take days for your dead, space-faring corpse to freeze.

That's because of the relative distance to the sun. Nothing more. Further out, you freeze, hence landing on mars to colonize will be a gravely difficult task. At the Equator it's about positive 20c during the day and negative 75c at night. 

 

Since you are in the way of the sun, the earth's atmosphere doesn't save your rear end. Even then, you can get 2nd and 3rd degree burns even if the wind is blowing. Take a tip to the bahamas without sun screen, you'll have experience a mistake in my life I've made lol. 

 

Temps on Pluto however are about -250c (or somewhere thereabouts.)  Doesn't matter where it is in relation to the sun really. Well sorta but not by much. 

 

I do know that when running a processor with LN2, the Cpu doesn't need atmosphere and doesn't suddenly get hot. It pretty much stayed around -174c at least from my experience and equipment. The only thing in between was copper.

 

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, ShrimpBrime said:

That's because of the relative distance to the sun. Nothing more. Further out, you freeze, hence landing on mars to colonize will be a gravely difficult task. At the Equator it's about positive 20c during the day and negative 75c at night

That's not how physics works. On the equator, there's air; there's matter to transfer the thermal energy!

[Guest]

Just now, WereCatf said:

That's not how physics works. On the equator, there's air; there's matter to transfer the thermal energy!

I see what you're saying. 

 

Copper doesn't need air to transfer thermal energy. It can do that in a vacuum easily. Why would this material be reliant on air? 

 

A temperature is like light. You can't measure it's weight. 

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, ShrimpBrime said:

Copper doesn't need air to transfer thermal energy. It can do that in a vacuum easily.

It needs SOMETHING to transfer the energy to. Energy doesn't magically appear or disappear out of nowhere, so where would the energy go from the copper in space? Go ahead, do explain: what mechanism is there besides radiation in space that'd allow the copper to transfer heat away from it? In space, you're not surrounded by a mass of matter!

[Guest]

Gah, How do I put this. 

I temperature can travel in either direction with or without "material or matter" to persuade it.

 

So if a temperature is much greater than a cpu, the temperature that's greater wins in that direction. 

 

Since cold is in abundance in deep space well past our star, a Cpu cannot heat this space to become what you might consider a comfortable temperature of 20c. 

 

So space -250c, hottest running cpu 100c.

[Guest]

The copper is the medium. (material, the substitute for air)

 

edit

Further more, if there needs to be a material to measure a temp in deep space, and there's no air, we took the temp off an asteroid.... why would the asteroid not still be hot from whatever catastrophic event it went through? The asteroid shouldn't cool off if there's no atmosphere?

Edited October 29, 2020 by ShrimpBrime
additional question

[Pixel5]

8 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

Right. The sunny side of the space station can get over 200 degree. And the shaded side negative 200 degree.

 

Let's assume in the the shaded side for all intensive purposes. 

negative 200 is pretty irrelevant in this context as temperature alone is basically meaningless if you have no medium to transfer the heat to that you want to get rid of.

There will be no cold bug or cold boot ever on the space station because there simply is no medium outside the space station that would take all the heat they want to get rid off.

This is why they use giant radiators as cooling with convection will not work.

[Pixel5]

1 hour ago, ShrimpBrime said:

 

Since cold is in abundance in deep space well past our star, a Cpu cannot heat this space to become what you might consider a comfortable temperature of 20c. 

 

So space -250c, hottest running cpu 100c.

that is not how this works.

temperature is meaningless unless you know which material has this temperature and how much of that material is at that temperature.

 

[NineEyeRon]

8 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

The other question is where is my PC drawing power from in the vacuum of space.

Unplug the space vacuum first then plug in the PC

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

that is not how this works.

temperature is meaningless unless you know which material has this temperature and how much of that material is at that temperature.

 

Copper, read the above posts to yours. Copper is the medium. You dont need air.

 

If air was required things that are hot in space would never cool off. I used an asteroid as an example. Something that was thousands of degree (possible depending on the material of the roid) cooled down to below freezing. 

 

So how does that happen? Magically?? Where does the heat go if there is no air then? 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, NineEyeRon said:

Unplug the space vacuum first then plug in the PC

 

[Orange1]

4 hours ago, ShrimpBrime said:

Copper

Probably Diamond or Graphene, highest transfer as they do spend a lot, down on earth copper is economical.