Can LCDs survive winter temperatures?

Kyosho · Post by **Kyosho** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 8:47 am

My gut tells me no, but I thought I'd ask if anyone knows for sure.

I don't know about the rest of the country (or the rest of the world in the northern hemisphere), but we've had a pretty cold winter. Below freezing a bunch of times, and I think below zero a few times as well.

I didn't have room for all my stuff in my new apartment and didn't have a choice at the time but to store some stuff in a storage unit. All my portable parts have been in a storage unit over the entire winter thus far. I was sort of done with my portable-building phase and never thought about what the cold might do to them. I just got the itch to start building stuff again and couldn't find my screens and stuff. It was then that I realized they must be in the storage garage. I'm going to get them out this weekend.

In the meantime, do any of you know if my screens will have died? I've got two PSOne screens in there. It sure would suck.

palmertech · Post by **palmertech** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 12:26 pm

They should be fine as long as they were not exposed to moisture. If they were, there would tiny ice crystals that expand inside and ruin it. I have put a gameboy in a freezer overnight to fix it, the screen was fine.

Kurt_ · Post by **Kurt_** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 12:29 pm

See "Times Square". Although those might be huge LED dot displays...

It depends how "winter" your temperatures are. I mean, there's the bulk of America who think all Canadians live in Igloos year-round because we're so far up (exaggeration). Over there, it doesn't get cold enough to snow, I imagine.

Then there's places like the northern parts of the U.S., where it gets really cold in winter. And pretty much all of Canada gets cold in winter, except for B.C.

Regardless, TFT LCDs can be stored at -20 C to 70 C and ran at 0 C to 50 C.
Do the conversions yourself, if it were up to me everybody would be metric.

Post by **marshallh** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:09 pm

Be careful with cold temperatures - if it's just for storage, the best thing you can do is limit temperature fluctuation, which causes the glass substrate to expand and contract repeatedly.

Don't ever run LCDs unless they're above freezing, especially ones with CCFL backlights (running cold cathodes below freezing shortens their life considerably).

Post by **bicostp** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:44 pm

They should be fine as long as you let them warm up to room temperature and let any moisture evaporate before you try to use them.