Mac Desktop in Cold Garage a risk??

[avalle1]

My home studio and computer is in my garage and in these winter months gets pretty darn cold overnight. I run the heat only so much because it's expensive enough in the house as it is and even when I do the tower is still cold to the touch. I've heard opinions on both sides saying cold won't hurt it and also that starting it up when it's cold can cause condensation to form and fry it.

Have considered simply not turning it off by enabling the sleep setting at the end of the night (disabled for optimization) , but wonder if that's a bad idea to keep on for long periods of time.

Any advice would be appreciated!

(It's a Mac Pro Desktop quad core 8GB)

[John_Toolbox]

You're going to get success stories from both camps. Me personally, I turn the heat in my studio down to 60 degrees every night and shut everything down. Been running the same imac (4 years old) that way for the last 2 years without issue.

However, this is a dry room, that does not get any condensation on the windows. A garage might be a different story, especially if you're bringing a cold snowy car in to the other stall at night.

[Buderjj]

You need to consult Apple for the design spec for the environment. I think for a consumer product, this needs to be operating between 50 - 70 degrees with low humidity. If your garage goes below 50 degrees and has better than 50% humidity, you probably need a better place to keep it. Apple has the environmental parameters for this.


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[avalle1]

It's a a finished garage. Not used for cars at all. We insulated it the best we could to block out the street sounds. I don't think there really is much moisture in there; it just gets quite cold when the heat's not on. It doesn't get as cold as freezing cause I leave coffee in there all the time and it's never frozen. No windows but no frost on the control room glass or mirror.

Another problem with letting it on sleep mode overnight is that the 003 rack must be turned off after the computer is off and before it's turned on so I have to shut it all down, then turn the computer back on (without the rack), enable the sleep setting and let it sleep. Then reverse this process at the beginning of the day to boot it all up again. Seems impractical...

I'm hoping I'm just paranoid about the cold but I can't risk it...

[zedhed]

The cold is nothing to worry about. It's moisture that is a problem so keeping it dry is paramount.

[SpinningDisk]

Your paranoid😊


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[John_Toolbox]

Originally Posted by avalle1

It's a a finished garage. Not used for cars at all. We insulated it the best we could to block out the street sounds. I don't think there really is much moisture in there; it just gets quite cold when the heat's not on. It doesn't get as cold as freezing cause I leave coffee in there all the time and it's never frozen. No windows but no frost on the control room glass or mirror.

Another problem with letting it on sleep mode overnight is that the 003 rack must be turned off after the computer is off and before it's turned on so I have to shut it all down, then turn the computer back on (without the rack), enable the sleep setting and let it sleep. Then reverse this process at the beginning of the day to boot it all up again. Seems impractical...

I'm hoping I'm just paranoid about the cold but I can't risk it...

As I stated, I'm not from this camp, but the theory behind leaving your computer on overnight also applies to the digi003 and all of your other gear. The idea is that the electronics don't go through any heat-cool-heat cycles, which theoretically should make them last longer. If you have a kill-a-watt meter, or a ups with a readout that shows how many watts your whole rig is actually using at idle, you'd be surprised at how little energy everything uses. Iirc when my computer is asleep, all of my gear uses less than 100 watts. So from an electric bill standpoint, it's like leaving a 100 watt light bulb on.

[albee1952]

There is another side of this to experiment with, depending on what kind of heat you have in that space. The reason I mention it is; when I got a new system in my last house(all electric heat pump), the installer put in a programmable thermostat, so naturally, I programmed it to turn down while I was gone. My next 2 electric bills were the worst ever. When I asked the heating company why, they told me that this type of system is very efficient at maintaining temperature, but really inefficient at raising it more than 1 degree. So each time it wanted to go from 60 to 68 degrees, it would kick on the 20KW heating coils. For this type of system, its actually cheaper to leave it at 66. Food for thought