Mineral Oil Computer Cooling: Sure, Why Not

WTF!! Oh Im doing this for sure guys. So I was wandering aimlessly looking around the interwebs and I come across this. You may have seen this but it's new to me. I happen to have an old Fishtank and so I'll be doing this one Shirley.

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/01/16...l-computer.jpg

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Take one computer, drop it into an aquarium, fill with mineral oil and presto! -- a mineral oil cooled computer case. I decided to make one of my own and I've got to say it's pretty cool except for the fact that all my fish keep dying. What do they not like mineral oil or something? The man responsible for the mod had this to say: "after about 2 hours, the temperature settled at a new maximum of 84C on the CPU under load." That's pretty impressive, seeing how the temperature of my CPU settled at broken under heavy load. And by 'under heavy load' I mean I sat on it.
A video tutorial to make your own after the jump.

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[youtube]PtufuXLvOok[/youtube]

If you use an external SSD then it would be completely silent ;)

That's pretty cool, does the mineral oil lessen the life of the components? I'd imagine it would..

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Originally Posted by Detale

If you use an external SSD then it would be completely silent ;)

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If you used a SSD, it too would be immersed and wouldn't require the modifications necessary to a regular drive.
Here is a project log which details the steps necessary to submerge a PC.

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Originally Posted by S!X

That's pretty cool, does the mineral oil lessen the life of the components? I'd imagine it would..

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Although I've never seen any supporting data to prove it, I'd assume that a submerged PC would actually last longer.
The cooling/heat dissipation would be more thorough, dust intrusion would be a non-issue and environmental ambient much more consistent.

I just saw (in the past month) that some company is actually marketing a PC with immersion cooling- talk about appealing to a niche market.

Have you ever tried it C? If not why not?

No, I haven't.
There is a limit to my ambition and that falls beyond it.

You're young and solvent...why don't you try it?

cos if he tries it his misses will break his nuts!

that is amazing now itssomething i wud give a go one day with the help of dan :D

well worth a try and it looks amazing nodust problems ever agen

I HAVE MAJOR DUST ISSUES

Seems like an extreme solution to a relatively minor problem but you'll have that from time to time.

You are aware that such a setup will weigh somewhere north of 100lbs., right?
Mineral oil isn't exactly light ...

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Originally Posted by clocker

You are aware that such a setup will weigh somewhere north of 100lbs., right?
Mineral oil isn't exactly light ...

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That's definitely something I think most of us overlooked :unsure:

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Originally Posted by clocker

No, I haven't.
There is a limit to my ambition and that falls beyond it.

You're young and solvent...why don't you try it?

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Yeah I really do want to try it. I will go downstairs after new year and see what parts I can scrounge up. I know I have an older P4 board and chip and ram. I might have to dig out a PSU. I think I have everything except the SSD :(

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Originally Posted by clocker

Seems like an extreme solution to a relatively minor problem but you'll have that from time to time.

You are aware that such a setup will weigh somewhere north of 100lbs., right?
Mineral oil isn't exactly light ...

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OH SHIT RIGHT!:shutup:

Here's the real deal; lots of proprietary stuff, but more high-zoot than the Puget kit:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fea...corepc_reactor

That really is awesome. I wish I had the balls to try something like that out.

$6500 for the extreme, Nice but not that nice.

It really is a solution in search of a problem.
Early electronics ran so much hotter than today's stuff and I suspect that the immersion cooling solution was useful for mission critical hardware...of course, they were probably using exotic PCB laden fluids instead of mineral oil.

The type of hardware we use hardly needs/justifies such extreme measures.
I mean really, why spend all the money on an enclosure and fluid to protect hardware that costs less than $500?