condensation

[DickyDrive]

The room next to my PC has an outside wall vent, the temperature outside is about 2c, if I duct this cold air into to my warm PC case will it create condensation (or does this happen the other way round, i.e.warm air into a cold room)

 

[camieabz]

At 2C you would cool the parts quite drastically when the system is off. If you leve the system on 24/7, then fine.

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[peteb]

If you duct the cold air in, it will cool your system _very_ effectively.

The danger lies with mixing air from a much more humid space (like your room). The outside of your case will be cold most likely, so there is a possibilty it may get condensation on the outside.

If there were a source of warm air into your case - say a non-ducted intake fan, the the air in that flow would tend to lose its moisture to cold surfaces (HDDs, MOBO, PSU etc...) this would be bad, make sure your ducted flow is the only intake into the case.

Remember there are lots of holes in a case - external parts are going to suffer the most. CD-ROMs and Floppies may get condensation inside (it will take very little fogging to make a CD-ROM inoperative.

Also, if the relative humidity outdoors, and therefore in your case is very low, it increases the risk of static discharge.

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[knowan]

Like peteb said, it's the mixing of cold and warm air that causes condensation. So long as you have positive pressure inside the case you should be fine. In other words so long as you have enough cold air coming in that it pushes out the warm air you won't get condensation (except on the outside of the box). So make sure that the fan blowing in the cold air is more powerful than the fan exausting the air from the case, never turn off the intake fan and you should be fine.

Have you thought about what you're going to do in summer when the outside air warms up? I don't quite see the point to this setup as it will involve construction, make it so that you cannot move your PC, and will only work for a few months of the year.

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