How is this working?

[Martinussen]

pretty cool, but how is it working?

i understand that water and oil aint the same, but wouldn't se oil do something to the computer?

Enlighten this little mind.

[Milkshake86]

It's mineral oil it is not electrically conductive there for pose's no threat to the operation of the hardware.

[Joben]

It's non conductive. So theres not risk of shock, the only thing that happens is it puts strain on fan motors because of the resistance of the liquid.

[Milkshake86]

It's non conductive. So theres not risk of shock, the only thing that happens is it puts strain on fan motors because of the resistance of the liquid.

Think about that a minute, the entire point of this is to remove the need for fans. In all fairness the cpu fan is more aesthetic than anything in this kind of setup. However it is impractical and once it reach's its max temp it just sits there not really cooling much anymore. It however does take hours and hours to reach max

[Deleted]

when i was a kid i saw a science show that was forgoing for technological breakthroughs. On that same show, they showed us an experimental kind of water that could come in contact with any piece of electrical-operated machinery (i.e. computers) and it wouldn't damage the hardware. maybe he got his hands on that same kind of "water"? or maybe it's sold but not very popular? or plain magic? i need to know, too.

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EDIT: when i opened this post no1 had posted yet. went for dinner and replyed when i came back. now i know what that water is :P

any1 know where its sold?

[Milkshake86]

It's used as laxative for horse's and is 100% impractical to do. It looks good but even w/ an air pump pushing bubbles to remove heat it still hits much higher temps than on air or normal liquid cooling. It also sit's at this temperature for a much longer time. Think of it like this the same as some metals the longer they take to heat up the longer they take to cool down. Beyond the mineral oil its all 100% custom rigging on every build.

[Demoness]

For the longest time I have considered doing this, but the more I research it, the more I decide against it. Thermal conductivity of mineral oil is complete shit. It takes it forever to get to its equilibrium temperature, but will never suffice for overclocking applications.

What happens is once your oil reaches equilibrium temperature, you have oil that is roughly the same temperature as your CPU. Your motherboard, which usually sits comfortably in open air at 25-45c (depending on chipset and other factors) is now sitting in 70c oil. Not to mention mineral oil will degrade certain types of PVC and rubber grommets holding heatsinks down on ram and chipsets.

The solution to this is to circulate the oil through a radiator, and then cool that radiator with fans. The downside to this is that you have just nullified one of the neat benefits to an oil submerged PC- silence.

All that said, having a PC submerged in a liquid is totally badass, and you will blow most people's minds when they see it. As far as performance though, I would not recommend this application to anything other than a very lightly used HTPC.

[Deleted]

There is some new stuff that was shown off at CES this year by 3M called Novec 7000. You can see the information sheet here.

It was in one of Swifty's videos from CES. Don't know what I think about it though, the CPU looked like it was glowing hot as it had no heatsink or fan on it. I'll go dig out the video for anyone that's interested. EDIT: On second viewing, it looks like there's an LED light shining on it.

EDIT: You can watch the video here. The reason it's boiling is because the liquid has a boiling point of 34 degrees celsius.

[Martinussen]

For the longest time I have considered doing this, but the more I research it, the more I decide against it. Thermal conductivity of mineral oil is complete shit. It takes it forever to get to its equilibrium temperature, but will never suffice for overclocking applications.

What happens is once your oil reaches equilibrium temperature, you have oil that is roughly the same temperature as your CPU. Your motherboard, which usually sits comfortably in open air at 25-45c (depending on chipset and other factors) is now sitting in 70c oil. Not to mention mineral oil will degrade certain types of PVC and rubber grommets holding heatsinks down on ram and chipsets.

The solution to this is to circulate the oil through a radiator, and then cool that radiator with fans. The downside to this is that you have just nullified one of the neat benefits to an oil submerged PC- silence.

All that said, having a PC submerged in a liquid is totally badass, and you will blow most people's minds when they see it. As far as performance though, I would not recommend this application to anything other than a very lightly used HTPC.

ahh this and some of the other posts cleared it all up for me thanks

Though, there must be some way to cool the oil without much sound... thinking thinking...

[Milkshake86]

@Demoness the radiator option was tried and it actually still doesnt work well, the underlying problem is that you cannot cool the oil fast enough, then the option of an airpump was introduced which stabilizes the temps fairly quickly throughout the tank, but still hits and sits at higher temps.

[Martinussen]

There is some new stuff that was shown off at CES this year by 3M called Novec 7000. You can see the information sheet here.

It was in one of Swifty's videos from CES. Don't know what I think about it though, the CPU looked like it was glowing hot as it had no heatsink or fan on it. I'll go dig out the video for anyone that's interested. EDIT: On second viewing, it looks like there's an LED light shining on it.

EDIT: You can watch the video here. The reason it's boiling is because the liquid has a boiling point of 34 degrees celsius.

nice:O!

looked at the info sheets, and the boiling point is 34 deg. where it in water is 100 deg. so i guess, that once the CPU/GPU reaches those temps, the liquid starts boiling and the bubbles transfer the heat up in the air above it atleast thats what i think it does :P

[Demoness]

@Demoness the radiator option was tried and it actually still doesnt work well, the underlying problem is that you cannot cool the oil fast enough, then the option of an airpump was introduced which stabilizes the temps fairly quickly throughout the tank, but still hits and sits at higher temps.

Yeah, I did not mention it in my earlier post. While adding a radiator and pump will greatly decrease your temperatures of the ambient oil, oil still has a shit thermal conductivity rate compared to water. Oil temps will be better with this method, but still a good 20-30c above a water loop, at a much higher cost.

Basically this is just a novelty and should be treated as such. It is a really cool idea, but is basically a dead end if you have performance in mind.

[Milkshake86]

nice:O!

looked at the info sheets, and the boiling point is 34 deg. where it in water is 100 deg. so i guess, that once the CPU/GPU reaches those temps, the liquid starts boiling and the bubbles transfer the heat up in the air above it atleast thats what i think it does :P

It is also probably insanely expensive making it less likely to be worthwhile and when your likely on par w/ the cost of liquid nitrogen or Liquid helium and 100% guarnteed to not cool as good as helium then its pointless for any pc usage at any point except an experiment, and even the giant OC 8ghz runs are experiments so it's place would seem scarce cuz Liquid Helium is damn near absolute zero.