In another thread, I mentioned oil submerged computers, and it got me thinking about whether people still tried things like that. To my surprise, I found that what was once a tech-weenie stunt has now gone mainstream, and I thought it was fascinating that you can get your very own oil-submerged machine from specialty dealers nowadays for a paltry $4000 or so...............

 

http://www.hardcorec...s/rx/index.html

 

Very cool!

 

 

Or you could just go ahead and build your own. Think it will run FSX better?

 

I've heard of being aware of your oil pressure, but that's ridiculous!

That's a sweet looking tower, but I feel submersion is more a novelty than anything else. Imagine a fan failing. What a mess!

I like the concept. I remember liquid cooling was once a pain in the arse but now with many sealed liquid cooling systems on the market they are as easy as installing a stock fan.

 

Oil Submerged will get better and better as well. One day we will be able to run stable at 6.0ghz as this stuff gets better.

I hadn't expected to see the fan immersed. Surely the oil's viscosity would load the fan motor far more than air would, leading to increased current drawn from the PSU and a consequent increase in heat generated. Running the oil through a radiator, car-style, with the fan blowing on it would make more sense.

 

With the above system heat has to dissipate passively through poorly-conductive plastic aquarium walls. In a warm room that might not be too effective until the entire mass of the oil had heated up.

 

Newton's law of cooling: the rate of cooling of an object - whether by conduction, convection, or radiation - is approximately proportional to the temperature difference ΔT.

 

It does look pretty cool in a different sense though :lol:

I hadn't expected to see the fan immersed. Surely the oil's viscosity would load the fan motor far more than air would, leading to increased current drawn from the PSU and a consequent increase in heat generated. Running the oil through a radiator, car-style, with the fan blowing on it would make more sense.

 

With the above system heat has to dissipate passively through poorly-conductive plastic aquarium walls. In a warm room that might not be too effective until the entire mass of the oil had heated up. It does look pretty cool in a different sense though :lol:

 

The system builders in the video did a number of tests over time to test the efficiency and cooling ability of the system: :smile:

 

http://www.pugetsyst...eral-oil-pc.php

 

After Six Months:

The machine is still up and running with no problems! We made a few more alterations:

• We took the power supply out of its housing. This makes it much smaller, and less in the way. This is a great improvement to the look of the machine. This does remove the fan from the power supply, but it was already clear that the fans were not necessary. There is a real risk of shock if you don't handle it properly, but without the housing, the power supply would look much more at home in a system like this.
  
• We added blue crushed rocks to the bottom. It adds a finished look to the system, and gives it even more of an aquarium theme. We checked carefully to make sure the rocks were not conductive, since they come into direct contact with the power supply.
  
• The fans are still running strong, just like they did on day one. Two times now, we have seen some oil on the countertop, and paniced thinking we had a leak, but each time ended up being a false alarm. It seems some days the bubbles tend to "foam" the top of the mineral oil, and this foam was spilling out of the aquarium. We just turned down the bubbles a bit, and everything was fine. It is curious that this only happens on certain days. Perhaps humidity plays a part?
  

After One Year:

The machine is still running strong! We are having no problems with stability, and it has now been running for over a year, most of the time at 80C (still not recommended...the arylic could crack)! It is very easy to lower the temperature through a radiator, or just putting the system into standby at night, but we wanted to see if stability would be affected by higher temperature.

• The fans continue to run strong. We're amazed by the number of people that continue to be concerned that the fans will burn out. It is now very clear that the fans have absolutely no problem running in this environment.
  
• There is no sign of weakening of rubber seals or PCB. We have found that prolonged exposure to mineral oil does not eat away at any components. However, you will notice in the pictures that the voltage module for the LED light has fallen down. That module was stuck in place with nothing more than a sticker -- it took 9 months for it to come down! We're amazed it stayed up that long, but definitely recommend you do not rely on stickers or tape to fasten anything. Zip ties will be more solid and long lasting.
  
• The CCFL light has turned from blue to purple. We aren't sure whether that is due to the oil, because we've seen it happen with other CCFL lights in regular computers.
  
• The oil has gotten slightly murky. It isn't a very large change, but it is definitely there. This oil has been sitting, unfiltered, for a year, so it isn't really surprising! A quick pass through an oil filter (maybe even a coffee filter!) or a change of oil once a year is all that would be needed to counter this problem. Overall, the biggest downside we have found is that the oil wicks down the cabling and makes a mess.
  
• Its amusing at first to find oil seeping out of your mouse, but gets annoying very quickly! We recommend making extensive use of wireless (especially bluetooth) for a system like this. There's no reason why you can't run only a power cord and video cables to the box, and take care of everything else wirelessly. We completely solve this issue later with our V2 system under development. Every day, we're coming up with improvements we'd like to make to the machine.
  

After Three Years:

Though the PC was still running strong, the hardware was getting older, and we wanted to upgrade to something faster! At our office, we upgraded to our V2 system! Still in fully working condition, this original system has been retired to storage, and we'll pull it out from time to time to see if there are any ill effect over long term oil submersion.

Newer Versions

While we were very happy with the cooling performance of this unit, we actively researched methods to try to bring the oil to sub-zero temperatures! We tried a number of different extreme cooling techniquies, including dry ice, phase change cooling, aquarium chillers, and liquid cooling blocks with TEC coolers. Ultimately, the snag was always the same: The thermal conductivity of oil is not as good as that of water, so all products designed to cool water do not have the sheer surface area necessary to cool the oil. It is possible that you can build your own aquarium chiller, taking care to dedicate a large amount of extra copper coils to the oil side of the heat exchanger. However, we have spent a lot of time on this, and have to get back to our main jobs -- building high quality computer systems! We encourage those with experience in phase change cooler design to pick up this ball and run with it, and if anyone can achieve a sub-zero cooling technique, we'd love to talk about it and post it here. Our standard radiator setup does a great job of cooling, so we're happy leaving our project there...but sub-zero would be pretty amazing!

And finally a pic of the back of the professionally made system I posted. Their system appears to be much more advanced than the DIY video:

video cards, motherboard, microprocessor and power supplies are submerged in CoreCoolant™, a safe maintenance-free dielectric liquid that absorbs heat more efficiently than conventional liquid cooling systems.

 

 

I want one!!!

My guess is the fans are having a greater resistance compared to air but don't overheat due to the oil keeping them cool. I question why have them at all. I would just put a pump that moves the oil around to prevent warm spots, instead of using fans.

 

They found the fans to be useless as well but interesting that they didn't burn out after that much time, well lubricated that's foresure.

 

My only reason for not wanting one is I live on top of a major faultline and earthquakes and tremors are common here. An earthquake would send all that mass flying around compared to a light weight mid-tower. I like keeping things light-weight at home as they tend not to damage. If an earthquake knocks it off the desk and breaks the shell then that is a lot of oil to clean up

Pure novelty.