Jason4i7

I actually would like to one day do it. In a huge 200 gallon tank. Float the computer right in the middle of it, sunk into the wall. Dreams are great, but who knows right. With that much fluid, and enough circulation, it could be possible. Just not sure. Id love to try it one day.

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Allsop78

What if you put like some kind of heatsink anchored to the bottom of the tank with fins and fans coming out the top of the tank to get rid of heat in the oil. Like a really tall, modified Dice pot.

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clbkdaz

QFT...

It's neat to see at first...but that fades out really really quick.

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Jason4i7

Dont think it would be effective enough. Its too passive for a fluid setup. You would need to focus the passive cooling to a smaller amount of fluid, otherwise you would probably cause a temperature differential that wouldn't have a positive effect on the tank itself. In conjunction with active cooling maybe, but not on its own.

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dlee7283

this thread makes me listen to this song

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Yop

http://www.pugetsystems.com/aquarium_both_module.php

You can modify (or just buy the complete kit) the mineral oil comp to run the oil through a filter + radiator to obtain a lot lower temps.

Black Magix

for 511 dollars, I could build a state-of-the-art watercooling system that'll kick the crap out of that oil cooling system.

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JPSwaynos

An oil cooled system is more just for cool looks. I considered making one, and putting it in my living room with fish tank rocks, bubble maker and everything. But the biggest concern that I had that most people don't even consider is the maintenance on keeping the oil clean. The oil needs to be replaced periodically, or else the elements that collect in it will make it look bad.

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atlas_nathan

*Bump*

I've worked on one of these projects in the past. I'm actually familiar with the Puget Systems setup.

The mineral oil submersion systems work very well, provided that a few things are addressed:

1) The heat must be dissipated out of the oil to get good results. Glass is a good insulator, so despite the large surface area, a closed system will run quite warm. That said, because of the sheer surface area, and temperature difference between the room and the oil, you will find a stable maximum temperature even in a closed system. It will, however, be much higher than you would be comfortable seeing in a conventional air or water cooled system. It's worth noting that high temperature is much less of a problem in this environment as there are far fewer hot-spots, but still, this will cause alarm for most people.

Setting up a radiation system can be done a number of ways.

A) Use a metal bottom plate to allow the heat to be passively conducted out of the system. If you're using an aquarium for your case, you would need to disassemble the aquarium down to the individual glass panes, and replace the bottom.

B) Pump the oil through a radiator which then uses a fan to dissipate the heat. You will need a higher quality pump, as the increased viscosity of the oil will burn out the cheaper pumps.

C) As an alternative to B, use a closed circuit dual radiator water system. Install one radiator into the fluid (this is your heat collector), and another radiator in the same way that you would in option B (this is your heat dissipator). This lets you pull the heat out of the system - but since you are pumping water instead of oil, you are not straining the pump. As an additional bonus, since oil in insoluble in water, your system is immune to the failure of the water loop. YAY SCIENCE!


2) Oil settles, collects dirt, and breaks down. This can be mitigated by, as previously mentioned by another posted, adding a filter to the loop that you're going to be building to regulate temperature.


3) You cannot, obviously, submerge spinning hard disks. You can, however, submerge solid state drives, or mount your spinning disks out of the fluid. Since the fluid 'wicks', and is also subject to 'sloshing', I do not recommend attempting even partial disk submersion.


4) The oil will tend to 'wick' up the insulation of the IO cables unless you account for this. This is typically done by terminating the connections at the top of the casing into plugs - essentially utilizing short extenders to replicate the IO ports.

Immersion cooling has been done for decades in various industrial applications, as well as mainframe computing. When done right, a mineral oil computer can be a very stable, silent, and efficient platform requiring no maintenance or attention - and it's always a conversation starter!

PhillyOverclocker

OMG! I have never seen that one before.

I wonder if you can hook a refrigerator up to the oil so it can cool it down?

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