Jan 16 2008Mineral Oil Computer Cooling: Sure, Why Not

FIRST

COMPTUER ATEZ MY FIZH!

What a couple of f***ing losers!

i want one
i'll throw in some action figures
it will be so sweet

It's recently been brought to my attention that I'm a moron, so forgive me, but... huh? The computer is submerged in mineral oil? That doesn't seem right, but I suppose if it's non-conductive... Somebody help me out here.

Cray did this back in the day. It's non-corrosive/non-conductive, so it should work. Nothing special.

NO FUXING WAII!!! Wow O_O.... this just opened my eyes to a slew of possibilities... why didn't I know of this before?!

Amazing.

You'd get sick of the smell after awhile. Smells kind of like crayons but worse.

84C is supposed to be good? Erm... you're killing your pc at that temperature.

I think I'll continue using the far cleaner and more efficient AIR thanks.

Pretty cool and would make a good display for their computer store. :)

#9-- Heh, I'm definitely sticking with air as well, but I wouldn't say it's cleaner or more efficient... any computer person dreads the sight of a case interior that hasn't been cleaned in 5 years...

I always kinda liked the smell of crayons... Dunno if I still do or not though

I saw something similar to this at QuakeCon

This is a really good idea. All the system needs is a radiator to take the heat out of the oil.

#6 +1

There was also on the net a distilled water tank pc project but I don't remember outcome... Should work, as long as ions don't get in the way.

I have to admit that this is really neat. Though I wouldn't do that. I would rather stick to air. What if you need to upgrade parts, or if you're a IT support or something, where you're troubleshooting with your pc...wouldn't be worth it. If I ran an aquarium with an old pc that I didn't care about and would be cheap to replace, then I'd go for it (making sure I could get rid of the smell).

Btw, the computer reaches 80+ degrees after 12 hours of load! So it's hardly a problem. I don't think my undervolted Athlon 5000+ would ever reach that, though.. :P

84C??? tats f***ing hot as hell! Mines running at 84F...

hey... i been hearing alot more recently about this whole oil cooling your system etc... a lot of places are telling me that it is advised not to submerge your pcu and others telling me that it is perfectly fine.... im confused here does someone have any information pref from someone that has already done this.

My 2cents, don't do it unless you're doing it for the sake of eye candy. I bet you could build some really interesting cases/aquariums/tanks/whatever).

I would use as few fans as possible as they'll likely wear out from the heavy workload.

The oil s'posedly gets very hot and I wouldn't be surprised if it can get rather hot aswell. It would be a nightmare to topple so put it somewhere safe.

Lastly, remember that once your parts are submerged it'll be a nightmare to clean, if possible at all? I wouldn't advice trying this with any new system, unless you're feeling rich.

You are a complete dumb fu** to insult people who made a PC that will hardly ever overheat. You complete and utter failure douche who thinks it's cool to insult other that have more brain cells then your sorry excuse you call your brain

Doesnt the oils slowing down the fan speed knacker the psu?

Actually, this is not a new idea. Cray liquid cooled the XMP and Cray1 with a heavy flouro-carbon that was liquid at room temperature. You must liquid cool when the temps can't be controlled by air. Mineral oil is a di-electric (will not conduct) & non corrosive with no smell. What do you think is used in transformers? Cleaning is simple with ethanol or parts/TV tuner cleaner.
DON'T SUBMERGE THE HARD DRIVES! The fans and powersupply are ok to submerge. The oil won't get hot. The thermal mass will keep it cool. IN 1992,I built a pc using 4x 33mhz 386's over clocked to 333mhz and HAD to liquid cool them. They were on 4 motherboards in a aquarium with 22 gal of light mineral oil. The thing ran like a 2 ghz p3.
Dan BSEE.

looks like a good idea but could add a few more tweeks to it like a pump that pumps out the oil into something that would cool it to a decent temperature and pump it back into the aquarium to lower the temperate of the PC

wow i want one how much did it cost all up

I have also heard of building a computer inside a refrigerator however this could lead to condensation issues. However if you combine both techniques and place a submerged PC inside a refrigerator environment this shouldn't be an issue allowing you to effectively "refrigerate" your PC. Given that the freezing temperature of Mineral oil is -30° C you could even try a "freezer" environment for extreme overclocking. However due to the viscosity of mineral oil at these temperatures I would say all fans would need to be disabled as they would likely burn out pretty quicky if they would even work at all.... This is of course theoretical and there could likely be smething that I have overlooked, but if I had a cheap system, money to spare, and alot of time on my hands I would like to give it a try.

wouldn't it get cooler if you put a heat exchanger(from a fridge) in it?

1rst It's a great way to keep you computer as cool as possible BUT

heat from you cpu will heat up the oil slowly but surelely it will go around the temp you got in you area and after all you gonna have to find a way to keep the oil cooler again ,

Seems to me that the PSU fan seemed to get "caught" in the oil... WOuldn't that make the motor work harder to turn the blades causing heat and thermal build up in itself? Mineral oil's viscosity would hurt the fan motors in short.

The bubbles actually might help the cooling of the oil

The bubbles actually might help the cooling of the oil

the bubbles do help the cooling of the block. this is illustrated here:

http://driverstorer.com/oil_cooled_pc.html