Question Stuffing silica gel sachets inside the protective bags of GPUs and case fans ?

[hishara1999]

Hello everyone, I have to store some of my pc parts for long-term due to personal reasons. So I'd like to know is it safe to keep 1-2 packets of silica gel inside protective bags of GPUs and case fans while they are stored. I hope to put 1g or 5g sachets inside protective bags, then store them in original boxes, in my steel closet. Doing this to protect them from humidity, as rainy weather is more frequent in our region. But I'm a little worried about fan bearings though, can these gel sachets dry them out by absorbing the lubricant?

Parts I have to store (in their original boxes):
6x Lian Li UNI FAN SL-INF 140 Reverse case fans
9x Lian Li UNI FAN SL-INF 120 case fans
1x Zotac RTX 3080 12GB Trinity OC GPU

I know fan bearings come sealed and this sounds silly, but I just want to clear my head off this. Any ideas are welcome.

 

[USAFRet]

store some of my pc parts for long-term

What is "long term"?

 

[Lutfij]

Doing this to protect them from humidity, as rainy weather is more frequent in our region.
Where are you located?

How long will you be leaving them as is?

But I'm a little worried about fan bearings though, can these gel sachets dry them out by absorbing the lubricant?
You should be fine to store them in the bag though if I were you, I'd have placed them back into their original packaging with one small packet of silica gel.

 

[Gururu]

the packet enclosures permit air exchange which passively dries air by absorbing water. no water should be present in the fan bearing lubricant so you would be fine.

 

[BFG-9000]

What are you trying to accomplish by lowering the humidity?

Museums aim for 50% Relative Humidity because that is low enough to prevent mold on, and not so low as to cause drying and cracking of natural materials. Which aren't found on GPUs. Humidity does not affect the growth of tin whiskers on lead-free solder, which grow at the same rate in the full vacuum of outer space. JEDEC standards for humidity control of SMD are for before robotic soldering, because if you let the surface corrode it requires lots of flux to clean that off and then hand soldering to see if it actually wets. But the GPU is already assembled, and contact surfaces are gold-plated to resist corrosion.

If you supply enough silica gel in a really well sealed container, RH can reach ~40%. This is because that's the best silica gel can do when it is 20% saturated (silica gel can only adsorb up to 37% of its own weight in water so your tiny 1g satchet can only hold 0.074g of water and still hold 40% RH). Only by exchanging the silica gel with fresh many times can it eventually get down to 20% RH. Fortunately silica gel can be baked many times to dehydrate and regenerate it, so long as you don't use too high a temperature and turn it brown.

Note silica gel with blue-to-pink indicator is cobalt (II) chloride which changes to pink at 8-10% saturated (so the silica gel itself continues to dehumidify long after the color has changed) + is now known to be somewhat dangerous to health so you probably shouldn't heat it in a food oven--it requires cancer warning labelling in Europe. The latest indicator the manufacturers have switched to is orange-to-green which uses methyl violet and iron salts instead, which gradually changes color from 6-14% so isn't any better at telling you when to regenerate the silica gel (while that 14% matches the capacity of silica gel at 45% RH, it's pretty hard to distinguish minor changes in shade, much less when the shade stops changing...). Brown-to-light blue copper (II) chloride is available too (and is supposed to change closest to 20%) but besides lower cost, cobalt was originally selected because the orange and brown dyes require more heat than the blue to dehydrate and reset the indicator--much more than the silica gel requires. And of course brown indicator means you can't know if you overheated the silica gel and damaged it.

Other compounds are way more effective in reducing humidity but tend to be incredibly corrosive salts like calcium chloride which turn into splashable liquids as they work. If the object is to reduce corrosion, an oxygen absorber may be more effective. For example 1g of iron powder in one packet can remove 300 cm^3 of oxygen from your sealed container. Putting dry ice in the container and letting it sublime a bit before sealing can displace atmospheric gases. Or if you have a welder or soda machine, just filling the container with carbon dioxide or argon would do the same.

 

[Paperdoc]

Silica Get is quite specific for absorbing WATER from air, and not other materials. So it will not impact lubricants in bearings.

Silica get is quite good at scavenging water vapour from air down to low water content levels BUT it has very limited capacity. So what you use can be saturated quickly, and then it cannot dry out the air any further. So to use it properly in your situation, FIRST you should be sure that the packaging bag you use can seal VERY well so no new moist air can sneak in during storage. NEXT, dry all your silica gel packets in an oven at about 250 F (120 C) for several hours so that they all are as dry as possible. This ensures they have their maximum capacity to dry air in the sealed bags. From there, get them into each bag as quickly as possible - do not let the dry silica gel packets sit around in open air. THIRD do your packaging only in a VERY low-humidity day if you can so that the air you trap in the bag has lower moisture content. FOURTH try to exclude as much air as you can in closing the bags, because the silica gel must scavenge moisture from the trapped air.

 

[CountMike]

Haw about putting parts with their anti-static packaging in vacuum bags for food ?

 

[hishara1999]

What is "long term"?

Just for 5-6 months. Thought I mentioned that in original post but... I've forgotten anyways 😒

 

[hishara1999]

How long will you be leaving them as is?

I just wanna let them sit for 5-6 months

Where are you located?

From Southern Province, LK (Known for its fairly humid weather)

 

[hishara1999]

Silica Get is quite specific for absorbing WATER from air, and not other materials. So it will not impact lubricants in bearings.

Thanks for assuring that. I was worried cuz all fans are bought from AliExpress as they're not available in local pc parts retailers, so if one unit fails it'll be a lot of hassle (shipping fees etc.) during warranty claims. Fortunately all fans arrived in sealed packs as I bought them from official Lian Li sellers, I have also tested their ARGB and motors and everything was fine.

Zotac GPU was bought from a local pc parts retailer few years ago, for my old pc with TUF Z590 Plus WiFi. GPU still has remaining warranty till April this year. Also got it tested by a pc repair shop recently and it functions properly too.

Case fans are bought for my upcoming new pc build with Lian Li O11DEXL, which I expect to complete before July this year. I originally thought to do a push/pull with ROG Ryujin III ARGB for Ultra 9 285K, but later found out that it won't make a noticeable difference anyways. Also ROG Ryujin III ARGB Extreme was relaesed faster than I expected, so now I wish to go for its white edition with stock ROG ARGB fans (will still check temps with push/pull though).

I had to delay the building of this new pc due to a medical emergency of one of our family members, which costs a lot.

 

[hishara1999]

@BFG-9000 Thank you! I was already aware about these multiple dyes used in silica gel manufacturing, to indicate their humidity adsorption levels (Cobalt chloride and methyl etc.). But your clear explanation helped me clear out some doubts in between. 😊