# Vacuum Sealed Computer **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 29, 2010, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-sealed-computer/544897 "2010-06-29T04:54:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2015, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-sealed-computer/544897/21 "2015-06-24T16:42:41Z")
AFAIK, the main cause of dust in computers is fans. It may not be practical for a high-powered gaming rig, but low-horsepower applications like POS terminals (eg: cash registers) that need to run for years and years with no attention work fine in nearly-sealed boxes stuffed in little cubbies under the counter. I was doing some work with one of these things and the shoebox-form unit has almost no ventilation holes in the case as the power supply is an external brick. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2015, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-sealed-computer/544897/22 "2015-06-24T22:18:57Z")
This would be totally impractical because you’d have to have a PC-sized vacuum chamber vessel, which would be bulky, heavy, and expensive. You can keep a PC cool with ways that are all much, much more compact, light and cheap… ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2015, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-sealed-computer/544897/23 "2015-06-24T22:24:13Z")
Close enough to really good & cheap to cancel pet hair, bugs, a LOT of dust = fabric mosquito screen sack, 2 clothes pins for closing the open end of the sack you make for the tower & two rubber bands around the cable groups coming out front & back. If you can find a scrap of the cloth at the hardware store, total investment +/- $5 ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-sealed-computer/544897/24 "2015-06-25T07:17:13Z")
I’ll add numbers to label the different sentences/concepts. > [@AlaskanDan](#): > > 1. A vacuum sealed computer would have the benifit of never needing to be cleaned of dust and dirt, 2. also, a controlled environment would be vey useful. I will list a few ideas for brainstorming: > 2. The coolant: Liquid cooling makes most sense to me. This is all open to experimentation, so maybe something like nitrogen gas would be more efficient. For the sake of this post, I will choose mineral oil. However, I do not know how mineral oil will react in a vacuum. > > The Heat sink: 4. The stainless steel container itself is technically a heat sink. > 5. Fans (or pumps) could convect the oil, pushing hot oil up and away from the cpu while fans at the top push the oil down along the walls of the chamber itself dumping the heat onto the surface of the chamber and recycling the oil over the componants. However, this only transfers the heat, the ambient air outside of the chamber could dissapate it, or a coil of copper tubes could wrap around the outside of the cylindrical container and connect to a passive cooling element or, > > 6.better yet, you could pass a refrigerant through the coiled copper tubes and just use a series of peltier coolers to run the refrigeration cycle. It would be silent. My comments about the numbers points 1… So could a positive pressure (more pressure inside)… system… that would be better, filtered air could be pumped in. You could just put dust filters on the inputs … The vacuum has the drawback of being a very poor conductor of heat… its not conducting the heat from the stars to earth … its not conducting it away from your cpu either… 1. Why is vacuum a good way to make it controlled ? 2. Why are you having vacuum if you also have coolant ? isn’t one mechanism enough of a problem ? 3. The metal container would store very little heat, Ok it is a heat exchanger in that it has a large surface area, but it would take up a large volume inside the computer case… also the problem of the cabling to the motherboard ? 5.Thats a very complicated system … seems to be overengineering… computer cooling systems help transport the heat, and better yet, transport it outside of the case. Heat sinks on cpu’s are actually misnamed, they are heat exchangers, which means they pass the heat to the air better, due to their large surface area (for mass, volume,etc) ---
**Author:** ![Anita\_Dayoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Anita\_Dayoff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anita_Dayoff)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-sealed-computer/544897/25 "2015-06-25T09:41:21Z")
The heads fly above the platters on a cushion of a few molecules of air. Its advised by most manufacturers that they not be operated above 10,000 ft as the air is not of sufficient density to keep the heads from dragging on the platters. SSDs would probably cook off due to lack of heat transfer. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-sealed-computer/544897/26 "2015-06-25T11:10:23Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > Nope. Mineral oil is used to fill high-voltage transformers. It’s an excellent electrical insulator and a pretty good coolant. True, but this doesn’t mean a computer will necessarily work if submerged in oil. If the oil has a dielectric constant significantly greater than air (≈ 1), there will be greater capacitance between two adjacent conductors, which in turn could cause excessive capacitive coupling in high speed circuits. It will also cause the characteristic impedance of transmission lines to change. (Around the processor, adjacent traces on the PCB are often transmission lines.) I am not saying submerging a computer in oil won’t work; certainly there are examples where it works fine. But submerging a modern, high-speed computer (or any circuit) in oil _that wasn’t designed with that in mind_ could cause problems. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2015, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-sealed-computer/544897/27 "2015-06-25T20:31:15Z")
I don’t understand the purpose of the ‘vacuum-sealed’ part. If you want to prevent dust, there are less radical ways to do that. Several have been mentioned. Basically, positive air pressure, tighter dust filters, changing frequently will do that. If you want better cooling, liquid cooled heat sinks are available. Or complete immersion cooling is possible – Seymour Cray did it on the Cray 2 supercomputer in 1985 (35 years ago). Neither require vacuum-sealed containers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vacuum-sealed-computer/544897.md?page=1)