During the winter season, outside temperatures can go down to 10 degrees Farenheit or lower.
Since many people carry their laptop computers to and from work each day, I was wondering whether exposure to cold temperatures can damage computer components or circuit boards.
My guess is that 10 degrees F is probably not cold enough to cause damage, and that any temperature-related damage is probably caused by too rapid a change in temperature (cracking as a result of expansion and contraction).
Am I correct on this?
If 10 degrees F is not cold enough, how cold would it have to be for damage to occur?
It is more a question of water condensation on traces and components and even into components via capillary action when the kit is brought indoors to warm air, plus mechanical problems again more to do with condensation
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The problem is with temperature cycling. The solder joints eventually fracture and lead to either intermittents or opens. You can really stress you electronics by letting it cold soak and then turning it on. It may not fail immediately, but you have shortened its life.
In article , snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (known to some as wylbur37) scribed...
The item most susceptible to such damage in a laptop would be the display. LCD means 'Liquid Crystal Display,' and that liquid that holds the crystals suspended does indeed have a freezing point.
Permanent and irreparable damage can be done to such displays if they freeze. There are industrial-grade displays which are explicitly designed and built for service at low temperatures, but they are considerably more expensive than the typical 'consumer' display. I doubt that you would find such in a laptop (or any other portable computer) outside of the high-end ruggedized models made by GETAC, Dolch, and Panasonic (the "Toughbook" series for the latter).
As to the other electronics: The standard "Commercial" operating temperature range for most components is 0c (32f) to 50c (122f). You may want to check the specifications for your specific laptop, but I would say that 10f is way too cold to be operating such a device.
No. Sustained exposure to 10 degrees F will freeze and permanently damage the display, unless the laptop is explicitly designed and built to withstand such (only your spec sheet will tell you).
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I actually tried this once with a Samsung laptop that had a serious problem with its mainboard. I popped it into a chest freezer for a few hours and then powered it up when it had cooled down.
The backlight failed to come on correctly, but the dim image in the LCD seemed fine apart from a tendency to respond very slowly.
You make an excellent point, Al, that nobody else here brought up (as far as I've read). Thermal cycling stresses solder joints. Period. Repeated stress eventually causes strain (damage). Period.
In a former life I was an engineer in Packaging Assurance at a major U.S. business machine company. Our life projection testing included thermal cycling in the range 0C-100C specifically because thermal cycling produces stress and stress precipitates strain ... i.e. component failure.
So exposing e.g. your laptop to thermal cycling - be that room temp. -> hot car
-> room temp. or room temp -> cold car -> room temp - is decidedly a Bad Thing. Maintaining your electronics at a *constant* temperature during its entire life is impractical but would go a long way toward extending its life.
Then again, who really cares if a laptop dies after only a couple years? Within that relatively short period of time it is superceeded, at least twice, by newer-faster-better.
So says this guy, who still uses a PC-AT, a vintage 1993 80486-20 laptop, and a vintage 1998 Pentium II-350 desktop PC.
And I did component failure analysis at a major defense contractor. I've seen it too many times. And another one was tin whiskers between solder joints. ;-) Can't wait to see what happens with the new lead free solders. It'll be a bonanza for us failure analysts.
RoHS solder has already shown itself to be substandard in this respect, and we'll be seeing lots of these failures as the standard becomes the rule in the rest of the world. Course, Europe will lead the way in broken electronics gear!
Now that was done to reduce 'hazardous' materials in the disposal chain. Wait... So now they throw away *more* stuff because it breaks more quickly? That's efficiency?
I'd also like to know if "tin pest" has started happening. I guess the first place to check would be some cold country because it's supposed to happen below 13 degrees C.
I'm not cognizant of that. What I have seen is when a cold PCB, say if the equipment was outside in cold weather and is brought into a warm, more humid atmosphere, moisture condenses on the PCB and the contacts. Conformal coat covers most of the PCB, but not necessarily at the contacts. If, due to poor layout, a +5VDC contact is next to a ground contact, the moisture will bridge the gap and the tin whisker will form between the two. Now at the power points the problems is self correcting as that as soon as the whisker bridges the gap between power and ground, it vaporizes. You can imagine that if this occurs at a rapid rate, you get spikes on your power plane. Hopefully your power filter caps will take care of this.
But.....if this happens on high impedance paths, like between a HIGH output from a gate and ground, there may not be enough energy to vaporize the short. So, you can guess the consequences. Sometimes, the short happens and then blows open. It depends on the current carrying capicity of the whisker. Then you get logic errors. Ah, and they are so intermittent.
BTW, at a recent IEEE Reliability Group meeting, I listened to a lecture which revealed that consumer electronics are now being designed for a
3yr lifetime. So perhaps you will "upgrade" before your equipment dies due to tin whisker growth.
Um ... efficient at promoting a bustling economy, maybe, by ensuring a never-ending market. In the short run, at least.
I must be un-American, and possibly unpatriotic, because I hate stuff that breaks and I eschew the mindless upgrade race. I embrace and hold onto whatever works well.
13C... that's about 55.4F for us Americans. Yeah I could see that being a problem as seeing I usually spend only about 2 or 3 months a year at or warmer than 60F in where I live.
I wonder if the mfgs would sell the electronics with really short warranty or none at all, especially for those of us in colder climates.
Looks like I may consider the store's extended warranty no-question asked package as I'd probably end up having to return electronics every so often due to failed solder joints.
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