Originally Posted by magicalmuffin

YouTube - Mineral Oil Submerged Computer

Now im wondering, this really works? I want silent desktop. Can i put it inside mineral oil?

Are there any step by step guides how to do it?

Originally Posted by loll

If you want to spend $50 every 2 weeks to re-fill it.

Originally Posted by atlas_nathan

Mineral oil doesn't evaporate...

Originally Posted by loll

There are many contaminants floating around that get in while your filling, emptying, and just letting it sit there full. After awhile it starts to literally rot away.

Originally Posted by 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!

Originally Posted by atlas_nathan

I think you're confusing vegetable oil with mineral oil. Mineral oil is not biological, it cannot rot.

A well designed submersion system includes a filter to remove unwanted particles.

Originally Posted by Contagion

dang..
people must have the 5870 search as their homepage, bookmarked, "auto-notifed", blackberry, and 6th sense.

Originally Posted by Grayfox

& when oil is cooled it thickens so you will have issues with a rad as it would get stuck in the pipes & stress the pump due to the thickening of the oil

looks good but not worth it

Originally Posted by atlas_nathan

This is absolutely not true. If this was true, mineral oil would have to be shipped 'hot'. Where did you come up with this idea?

Originally Posted by Grayfox

co-worker said oil thickens at lower temps