Anyone know if it would be harmful to position a computer to be directly in the path of an air conditioner's fan in order to help with cooling?

I know its probably not the most efficient way to go, but would any harm come to the computer from it?

It can be harmful if it causes condensation on your hardware, yes. It'll short circuits on your boards. There are freon based cooling units available for big server farms, but they're designed to drastically lower the temp of the room the servers are in, and do not blow directly onto the unit. If you have that much heat problem go with liquid cooling. That's what I use and I promise you I generate heat at a massive level and it works excellent.

Also it will accumulate more dust that usual so that would be just as bad. Doesn't matter if there are filters in the AC unit, dust is inevitable.

Just outta curiosity... What kind of temps are you registering that causes you to require such a proposal?

Theoretically it should not cause condensation inside the computer because at worst the relative humidity of air coming out of the AC unit is 100% and the computer will raise the air temperature thus lowering the relative humidity ... ?

If you need an full air conditioning unit to cool a desktop PC then that suggests something else isn't right...

That shouldnt be a problem, in most cases (it will depend on local weather and humidity/temp differentials). The only time I've seen serious condensation problems has been with pelts, phase change cooling or the ever-crazy 'lets just put the computer into the freezer' idea.

+1, IF you make your own. Most of the water cooling 'kits' arent worth bothering with....

If the aircon is blowing clean air into the case, dust shouldnt be a problem.

I'm wondering the same thing. I'd guess that there might be some 'I'll be able to overclock like crazy' idea pushing it.

Well I live in the Southeastern US so humidity is very high. Condensation can be a big issue from my prospected. And yea, I personally built my liquid cooling system. As for overclocking like crazy, most of the people who come up with the idea generally don't need it. Most of the performance gaines are fairly minimal. Not always, but usually.

sorry for the late reply

Its a gaming laptop, so liquid cooling or really any kind of cooling upgrade is impossible (or at least, beyond my ability).

I'm sitting at 61° C (approx 140° F) right now, which is about usual for regular use. It gets hotter when I'm doing something that utilizes the graphics card, but haven't checked the actual number for that. I'm assuming outputs the current running temperature and not something else. Not a lot of experience in this area.

Not overclocked or anything either though.

Also, what should a good operating temperature be, anyway?

If it's a gaming laptop, and you leave the cooling ports open and not blocked, it should be just fine. It will feel like it's hot as CRAP sometimes, but that's normal. Regular CPUs generate intense heat too... they're just not as close to the outside of the case. Average dual core laptop generally runs about in the 120s at idle if I am not mistaken, so there's you a ballpark figure. Note it will get significantly hotter under load.

61C, if thats a GPU temp dont wory at at all. If thats the CPU temp, its getting petty warm, and its not that far from the tcase max temp for i3/i5/i7 desktop CPUs.

Which CPU are you running?

The climate here might be more humid than NC.

Depends on what you are looking at. I've seen some huge performance gains from overclocking.

I just meant for an average user wanting to overclock a laptop a few megahertz. Obviously with the proper cooling equipment, you can do some serious increase.