Submerged mineral oil cooling
_k
P-Town, Texas Icrontian
Who has done it? Feeling like I need to expand my electronics resume by cooling some electronics in mineral oil. Also this is an attempt to see if I can deal with the eat from parts in Texas better since summer is incoming and pretty soon days will only be 90+ for the high.
I have a swiftech pump sitting around with a 120x2 rad and tubing. Figured I would just find a cheap fish tank or buy a heavy duty plastic tub and cut a few holes in the top to pull the rad out. My issue is I can't find a reference for heat dissipation. Looking at between 400 and 800 watts per container but I don't know if that will be to much heat.
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I recall @Thrax did a project like this in school once.
k. I just took an old Dell apart and dropped it in a fish tank of mineral oil because I saw some cool pictures and wanted to try it.
If you're doing it for cooling purposes and not as a conversation piece, you should know that instead of just cooling a few ounces in a closed off system, you have to cool 5+ gallons, and while it's possible it's also impractical. You have to use something like a radiator from a lawnmower to get enough surface area to keep it reasonably cool. Another hard part is getting enough mineral oil. I ended up having to go to a tack and feed store to get the oil when I attempted mine. Make sure to have everything lifted a few inches off the bottom of the tank. Moisture from the air will collect at the bottom of the oil, and having a few inches of cushion will give you enough time to notice a buildup of water and pump it out without risking a short. Also, make sure to use a SSD, and store the PSU as far away from everything as possible as it's going to heat up pretty fast due to its fans being unable to spin well in that viscous sludge. Also know that you'll want to get everything plugged together before you start adding oil, and that includes any USB cables. Swapping parts and components out afterwards is a messy and sometimes unfruitful process, so don't use top-of-the-line gear because it won't really work once you pull it out without a lot of cleaning.
I'm sure you've already found it, but I used http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php , http://www.instructables.com/id/Mineral-Oil-Submerged-PC/ and a few other sites to help plan out my build. I can try an dig up my other links when I get home, if you're interested.
If you have that much time and money to throw around you should invest a thousand dollars in a low expense ratio index fund instead, and with the free time think of something better to do.
I'll show myself out.
Just build a bong cooler or swamp chiller. It'll still be challenging but it will actually work in TX summers.
I submerged a system in fluorinert.
I approve.
Did a couple of them. First had to trim the fans (NB, video card, CPU), cut the blades back so that they would run and circulate the oil without overloading.
Used very thin oil. Water has a viscosity of 1, this oil was only 2. Motor oil is like 10-20.
Don't use more oil than it takes to cover stuff.
Then used a submersible pump (pond pump) to circulate the oil through an auto heater core that was mounted in front of an AC unit.
Also did one with a chiller where the evap from the chiller was in the oil. It was running about -40.
Even regular water cooling outside of the most basic pre-built kids are impractical (and generally unnecessary) for the regular home user/typical gamer. Air is more than sufficient for most.
This is high-level geek stuff, which is fun and interesting, but not intended for practicality.
New front page article: why tech sites go under when their main demographic gets old
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Reading a bunch more shows that this will be a bust. Instead of using the air in a 10x9x9 room to cool the electronics you can make a 10x9x9 liquid mini-room inside of your 10x9x9 room but there is a massive downside. The oil will slowly destroy all of the tubes, seals, wire coating, and container.
Everyone was talking about cables becoming brittle and breaking USB cords used for IO if you run them into the oil. A [H] member built a custom submerged PC but the seals slowly leaked in a few places and all of the rubber seals died and had to be replaced with custom seals due to the rubber absorbing oil and staying expanded and too squishy.
Similar issues when people have tried (or at least theorized) distilled water setups. It works fine until things start leeching into the water and creating shorts.