Quote:
Originally Posted by
SkeeterSkeeter 
So I am a little board and have decided I am going to submerge my computer in mineral oil to cool it.
From everything I have read here are the pointers I must keep in mind.
- Up to a point the oil bath will work, until it gets saturated with heat. Then I will need a radiator (coming soon)
- Don't put any moving parts in the oil, it might work, but the parts that move (HDD, CDD, Fans) don't need cooling!
- Oil will flow into the smallest cracks easily, but not flow out of them easily. This means once situated we could have small pockets of very hot oil. Apparently from what I have read there is basically no way around this (the flow needed is to great at this size). Either seal the entire board or hope this does not happen. I figure for me I am going to get some of the artists putty erasers and seal off what I can.
Other than that it seems strait forward, just throw that stuff in there and let er rip.
Here are few other ideas I've had on the subject
- Maybe (since I have them) throw some chucks of dry ice in the oil to try and cool it down if it gets to hot and I have no radiator. Or possibly put some ice in a SEALED bag and put it in the oil to try and cool it too.
- Once I get a radiator I will place dry ice on it, and place it outside (currently winter 20F avg).
- If possible I could just do dry and oil! But seeing as the dry ice will boil once it hits the oil, I won't be able to keep the dry ice blocks in place on the CPU and GPU.
- Get a BIG tank, lots a room to build into and room to slosh and spill oil if it happens.
- Get another tank to set computer in when I remove it from oil (a workstation that I can get all oily)
The setup going into the oil
- Evga 610 GT
- Random MSI motherboard
- Random AMD processor
*Sorry, this computer was bought for $100 at a liquidation sale. Not sure what is in it, tried looking up serial numbers but they all came back with odd results. I did however purchase the graphics card recently and have been OC'ing it with direct application dry ice cooling. (lots and lots of condensation!)
--- Yes I know oil will get on my computer parts, yes I know oil is messy, yes I know there are better cooling techniques. But did you read the part that I am bored?
Above points are correct, you can put fans and heatsinks in the oil too. The fans wont do much but they look cool if they're LED ones, and can help circulate the oil a little bit.
You dont have to worry too much about heat unless you're chucking in a quad core and a more powerful dedicated GPU, no point using expensive stuff if it's your first shot anyway, it's a pain in the ass to dry em off if you change your mind.
You can keep things cool in the tank by running the PSU on the outside, i tried both lol.
Have you thought of the type of tank you're using and how the mobo is going to mount? No need for a larger tank, oil isn't too cheap and may need to top it up sometimes. Get one that will comfortably fit your mobo and PSU if you want it in there.
Check out my oil rig in my sig, it was a HTPC.
I ended up tearing it down, drying it off and selling it as an ordinary desktop. Was fun while i had it but. It wasn't an expensive rig either so i didnt really lose any money selling it, apart from the GPU which i sold separately for half of what i paid for it.
Point is, like i said before, better to use cheaper stuff for these experiments. I threw in some older LGA775 gen parts for my first shot, mobo was dying anyway so i didnt care. Because it worked and i wanted to keep doing it, the second shot i bought latest gen stuff.
So if you've got a $100 rig, don't chuck a H100i in there when it costs more for the whole thing all up.
Edited by PoisonousRakija - 3/5/13 at 1:16am
