[Oil Submerged] Lao's Rig - Page 3

I'm going to try it w/ some living components that I have laying around. Namely an old video card. It still works, which will answer the most important question: can we wash them and have them still work?

Actually, I meant one that lives in the case. I'm playing w/ the idea of making it so that when I cut off access to the radiator, the pump will feed oil into a frame made of brass tubes. The tubes will push up against another set of tubes that will push up the top, but hold it vertically over the tank.

I'll have to draw out a diagram to really explain myself clearly.



Anyway, so, here are some new pics of my changes:

Tank PC Album

All right, guys. This is my last post in this topic. Here's what happened:

I was getting really high temps on the CPU even though the tank and oil was cool. I knew that the back-plate for my heatsink needed to be replaced (the "nuts" were coming loose, so the screws could not be adequately tightened). However, I didn't know I had a spare, and didn't want to go out and buy a back-plate, so I decided to just tighten the heatsink onto the mobo with a set of regular run-of-the-mill nuts. I over-tightened, apparently damaging the back of the mobo, and that was it. The computer did not boot ever again.

Let me re-iterate: the cause of the components going bad was NOT DUE TO THE OIL!

That being said, the cost both in time and money of maintaining my main PC as oil-submerged was too great. I will not be repeating this until I have a side-project PC. I will then try this again. Until then, I've returned to a very standard liquid-cooled solution. This time I made very informed decisions about my loop and it's currently idling @ 16 deg. C.

My greatest regret of losing the submerged PC is that my video cards will not run as cool as they did without their own liquid-cooling blocks. While fully OCed and during stress-tests and benchmarks, the temps never rose over about 52 deg. C.

Anyway, thanks all for your input. I look forward to submitting more on my future builds.

EDIT!! Important!!! Before I forget! You CAN safely wash off components in the dishwasher if you want to sell them later, or else want to ditch submerged cooling. However, you need to make sure that you let them dry! They have to be ABSOLUTELY BONE DRY before you use them again. A few notes.

• Hot water is OK. If you have an open heat-element washer (you can see the metal bar at the bottom), make ABSOLUTELY SURE that your components cannot fall / touch it.
• Do NOT heat-dry.
• Do NOT use dishwasher soap. There are some safe soaps to use, but tread carefully. That said, it's safe to add white vinegar into your rinse dispenser (do this for dishes as well, if you don't already). This will help with the cleaning.
• You may have to run the components a couple of times to fully clean them. After the first run, the components were decently clean, but still looked / felt a little oily.

Edited by LaoArchAngel - 12/6/12 at 11:01am

Hey Skeeter:

No, I didn't need to do any special modifications. I did not seal the CPU, but if you don't, you'll have to keep adding thermal paste every few months. To seal it, I recommend some basic, high-temp silicon that you can buy from your local hardware store.

I also don't recommend you use vegetable oil. Unlike mineral oil, vegetable oil will spoil, and it will stink to high heaven. As for fans, they don't help too much. You're much better off with bubblers.