Deep fried PCs on the market within a year...

I love to see a mod that uses oil and watercooling at the same time. Ok it may be useless somehow but i imagine the tubes running into the oil embeded system. watercooling the cpu/gpu(s)/chipsets.

I know i am eh.. weird.. :D

I've seen someone with a oil cooled system lik this, it ran at like -20 or something stupid, dunno how he got it that cold. His motherboard bas basically a big block of ice

I participated in a looong forum discussion about this over at procooling.com (i think it was). The end conclusion was that it does work, but it has a tendency to kill your caps, and you should probably not do this with your favorite rig. if anyones interested I'll see if I can dig up the thread...

Originally Posted by Veles
I've seen someone with a oil cooled system lik this, it ran at like -20 or something stupid, dunno how he got it that cold. His motherboard bas basically a big block of ice

That was because he dropped big chunks of DICE into the thing to keep it cool - this is a normal solution.

Originally Posted by Dr. Strangelove
I participated in a looong forum discussion about this over at procooling.com (i think it was). The end conclusion was that it does work, but it has a tendency to kill your caps, and you should probably not do this with your favorite rig. if anyones interested I'll see if I can dig up the thread...

Probably - but it'll depend what kind of oil you use. I'm sure there're different kind of oil that you can use which won't damage a cap.

Originally Posted by Article
The oil will, in theory, provide a powerless cooling system as the heated oil rises to the top, cools down, and then sinks to the bottom in a standard convection cycle.

Unless you start with fairly cool running parts (like a Via CPU) I suspect you'd still need some extra system to get get rid of the heat - convection alone wouldn't be enough since convection is simply motion caused by thermal differentials and not actual cooling.

I think the main problem with oil cooled rigs is that you need to be sure you won't be taking any part of the system out after the oil is in there. What do you do if you want to swap your graphics card out or swap your RAM into a new computer and its covered in cooking oil? Wash it?

Originally Posted by CardJoe
...Wash it?

Yep, as long as it's not live (not powered or holding power) you can wash it.

Welcome new staff guy ;) (I loved Monkey Island too)

Nobody loves monkey island as much as I do. And anyone who even thinks they do...well, they fight like cows!

Originally Posted by CardJoe
Nobody loves monkey island as much as I do. And anyone who even thinks they do...well, they fight like cows!

Mr. dairy farmer, you can't start the fight with a comeback.

"Look behind you... a three headed monkey!"

What a classic :D

"Your fiancee' looks like a monkey in a neglege!"

*Note to self, never use comebacks from games in a real life situation*

Originally Posted by CardJoe
Wash it?

Yes, with normal tap water, then rinse with bottled/distilled water, then leave to dry in a warm place for 48 hours. they did it to a Lappy, had it running, tipped wine and orange juice on it till it stopped, the took it apart and washed it in the afore mentioned way. It worked after.

But it would be a huge hassle to upgrade, it would be much heavier to move, I can't really see any benefit, possible more consistent temps over time as dust is less likely to accumulate around the heatsink preventing flow.

one thing people have overlooked here is that if regular cooking oil is used it will slowly cause chemical reactions with some of the board components, creating very tiny free-floating electrically conductive particles.

It would be quite fine in the short term, but over the long term and given the sizes of contacts/traces these days it would not be fun after a few years. :(
The charges of the contacts would also be a draw for the debris (a la electrostatic painting)

I also don't foresee this being able to handle an 8800GTX SLI setup without additional cooling, but for that hassle you might as well use the secondary cooling system as the primary in the first place.

It's always been a dream to do a computer like this, but there's monetary and practical considerations. Sounds like they are trying it first with servers/ rackmounts etc systems not desktop PC's my concern is not so much with the frying of the computer, but the what if situation I've personally dropped or dented a computer case before, but I can just imagine the first time this thing springs a leak or is dropped and you have a gallon plus of oil dripping over your desk or what not (also the comp would overheat and shutdown) That's my concern for the practicality of such a system

as far as the ability of such a system to do significant cooling I have faith. these oils would have a higher specific heat (IIRC) than air as such it would take more energy to heat up than air, convection and heatsinks would handle flow. and radiation/sublimination would release the energy into the air, proof-of-concept systems have been made before. Also a decent amount of electrical transformers which handle much higher voltage and temperatures are oil submerged/cooled. there also might be an aspect of maintainence over the years though in terms of contamination and such

Just imagine if you somehow cracked open the case...oil all over the place!

Following on from what metarinka was talking about, the server market is about the only place an idea like this could gather ground.

If you think about the average amount of power used by fans in your typical 2-4U server. They're never pansy-fans, and I'm sure it adds up, particularly over the years (and with an entire farm).

10W x 3 = 30W? Even if that's extreme, and per-server, it's a difference that could turn up some interesting TCO differences over a 5-year period.

Also, if Intel can sell new chips based on lower-power requirements, surely Very-PC could sell their new server-cooling solutions based on the promise of eliminating the need for powerful (and noisy!) fans in the system. It's not as nuts as it sounds, and especially considering I'm due to be working in an office with a number of servers locked up in a £1,800 sound-proofed rack -- something I'm sure the management would rather have not forked-out for!

Though there are problems, of course. Fumes? If the oil gets too warm, it could begin to evaporate, causing some unpleasant smells (chips in the morning, afternoon and evening?) There's also the possibility of needing to top-up the oil, and what may be the most important consideration: How long until the oil needs replacing? If that winds up being too often, then I should imagine any benefits in TCO would go straight out of the window with the downtime required to "change the server oil".

But pushing the reduced power requirements, they could be on to something, should they manage to squash any bugs in the theory.

Well dug around and found the thread Here (Warning close to 400 posts).

I think they tried several types of oil, and yes smell was one drawback (as far as I remember)

I myself managed to get hold of 25L of transformer oil to try it out, but never got any further than that. If anyone reading this lives in Copenhagen and wants to try this I'll be happy to donate the oil. This oil is probably some of the best for the job as it's designed to cool electronics (at very high voltage), only drawback is that as far as I remember also smells quiet bad.

If you were to do an entire rack, you might as well have some sort of very large low-speed fan over a radiator and circulate the oil from all the systems through a cool and filter loop.

If done that way I can see this being quite practical for servers. Desktops will still be the domain of air and water cooling though.

BRB, My pc needs an oil change!!!

Originally Posted by Kurayamino
BRB, My pc needs an oil change!!!

I for one welcome our new oil-cooled, electronic over-lords... ? :p

I just think that its extremely weird, and having to drain the system to add new bits and the old bits being covered in oil lmao!

And so it hits Slashdot!

The comments were particularly interesting :)

What no one has offered to test this out on an old PIII or something they got laying around? Toss it in an old aquarium.... Everything but what, the cd-rom?
Its gotta be good for a few laughs even if it doesn't work out!

Anyone up for it??

I've seen threads about this in various places. One issue is that PCBs are porous so oil can seep in between the layers and cause separation. Caps can be an issue too, but I wonder if the new solid caps would fare better.

Some One idea to put out there for anyone working on such a thing is some sort of external cooling with the return being directed to hot spots in the system for directed cooling.

In a server environment, I could see a shared manifold on a rack where each server connects and they all dump their heat to a small concentrated location rather than dump all the waste heat to the air. A valve system could be used to pump the oil out of the system, then cut it off from the manifold. I think there are hydraulic fittings that could be used to prevent spills in such a system.

As for power, I'm dealing with a server now that, if all the system cooling is going on full, could not be supplied by low end ATX PSU and that is just the fans. If the system works to reduce power consumption, and does not cause too many problems for the admins, it could be worthwhile.
But would a water cooling system using a similar shared lead system be equally as good?

How do heatsinks work with oil?

I assume the fans could be removed and the convection currents in the oil would kepp them cool?
Or can the oil conduct fast enough to do away with the heat sink altogether:D?

WTF.

hi i like the idea of water cooling pc but dont like the idea of leaks but what is a pc water cooling system was filled with mineral oil would that work?

http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php
http://www.pugetsystems.com/gfx/submersion/gallery/SubRad2.jpg

For use in a water cooling system instead of water, as long as the pump, hoses and seals are not affected by mineral oil it would work well instead of water but it would make life harder for the pump unless you used oil with the same viscosity as water.

Modifying an oil pump from an engine might be a better option than using a water pump with oil.

Those power transformers you see at the top of Stobie Poles (power poles) and in substations use mineral oil for cooling.

Vegetable oil turns rancid after a little while so it should be avoided.

Silicon oil might be a good alternative.



"Sir are you aware that you are leaking cooling fluid at an alarming rate?"

I though mineral oil was the best stuff to use


If I could find a old running PC i'd see if I could run it in oil