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When you find something non-conductive enough, you could actually just fill the entire case with it -- or just drop your whole computer into a tank of non-conductive oil. I always loved the idea, and was never brave enough to actually try it, but it seems like a much easier solution than water-cooling.

The idea is to submerge the entire computer in vegetable (or better, mineral) oil. This cools ALL components at a lot less cost than a bunch of watercool components, and at less effort as well.

Please forgive my lack of physics or other high end science classes, but what was the radio for? He mentiones turning it on, being able to put it anywhere in the room, and that you might as well put it on the table. Is it just to listen to while your waiting for the egg, or does it serve some purpose (something to transmit over the phones, or something to do with the radio waves, maybe?)?

Oh yes, please spare me the jokes, I prefer to deep fry my food.

this has been done.. with mineral oil, sunflower oil..

but... no one has done this yet with your basic transformer coolant:
http://www.cooperpower.com/FR3/

or, you might be able to use an EDM oil.. head to:
http://www.edmzap.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Scree n=CTGY&Store_Code=f&Category_Code=edmsinkfluid

• EDM Clear-3 Dielectric Fluid, 5 gallon pail Code: CLEAR3-5 Price: $80.00
• EDM 30 Dielectric Fluid, 5 gallon pail Code: EDM30-5 Price: $50.00
• IonoPlus 3000 Synthetic EDM Fluid, 5 gallon pail Code: Ionoplus3000-5 Price: $120.00

Places we've talked about this before:

http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelbilder.html
http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelrechner.html
"OilComputer.com - These are the pictures of my oilcomputer"

http://www.hwspirit.com/reviews.php?read=16
"Sunflower Oil cooled PC (stage 1)"

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/ 11/1756259&from=rss
"Aquarium Full of Oil For PC Cooling"

History's REAL solution to this problem:
http://physics.kenyon.edu/coolphys/thrmcmp/newcomp .htm
"Some of the latest supercomputers actually have their working parts immersed in a liquid fluorocarbon coolant to improve the efficiency of waste heat removal."

http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/35.html
"The amount of silicon chips used in CRAY-2 caused a problem because they overheated so intensely during use. By immersing CRAY-2 in a cooling bath of liquid fluorocarbon, Cray kept the chips from melting. Cray's theory for success with the CRAY-3 was to substitute revolutionary new gallium arsenide integrated circuits for the traditional silicon ones."

this has been done.. with mineral oil, sunflower oil..

but... no one has done this yet with your basic transformer coolant:
http://www.cooperpower.com/FR3/

or, you might be able to use an EDM oil.. head to:
http://www.edmzap.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Scree n=CTGY&Store_Code=f&Category_Code=edmsinkfluid

• EDM Clear-3 Dielectric Fluid, 5 gallon pail Code: CLEAR3-5 Price: $80.00
• EDM 30 Dielectric Fluid, 5 gallon pail Code: EDM30-5 Price: $50.00
• IonoPlus 3000 Synthetic EDM Fluid, 5 gallon pail Code: Ionoplus3000-5 Price: $120.00

Places we've talked about this before:

http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelbilder.html
http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelrechner.html
"OilComputer.com - These are the pictures of my oilcomputer"

http://www.hwspirit.com/reviews.php?read=16
"Sunflower Oil cooled PC (stage 1)"

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/ 11/1756259&from=rss
"Aquarium Full of Oil For PC Cooling"

History's REAL solution to this problem:
http://physics.kenyon.edu/coolphys/thrmcmp/newcomp .htm
"Some of the latest supercomputers actually have their working parts immersed in a liquid fluorocarbon coolant to improve the efficiency of waste heat removal."

http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/35.html
"The amount of silicon chips used in CRAY-2 caused a problem because they overheated so intensely during use. By immersing CRAY-2 in a cooling bath of liquid fluorocarbon, Cray kept the chips from melting. Cray's theory for success with the CRAY-3 was to substitute revolutionary new gallium arsenide integrated circuits for the traditional silicon ones."

And if you want an even newer technique... FAN cooled components. Toms a dingbat, and this is so 1970s. Heres another one http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelbilder.html

Wonder if you could simply replace the antifreeze in one of these stock hydro systems with peanut oil and see what happens. Or maybe someone has already made a proper oil cooler. Tell me if you know of one... I'll be interested to hear.

Oh, by the way, the old VWs threw the engine oil into a heat exchanger where air blew across it. So, strictly speaking, they were were oil cooled.

I just did some research...my un-implemented idea about submerging a mobo in oil was a while ago, and at the time I was never able to find any supporting information on it. It seems now though that a lot of people had the same idea, and a few of them have even gotten it to work.

Also, I found the name of the material used in the Cray II's submersion cooling system. It's called Fluorinert FC-77, and it's made by 3M. Electrically inert, not toxic to the touch (unlike PCB based transformer oils), great heat transfer properties ... too bad it's ridiculously expensive. The cheapest place that sells it in small quantities (3M wants you to buy 11 lbs.!) has it for $240 a liter. Apparently it's used in the cooling systems of some lasers.
http://www.parallax-tech.com/fluorine.htm

However there are people who have successfully cooled systems by submerging them in vegetable and sunflower oil:
http://www.hwspirit.com/reviews.php?read=16 Sunflower Oil
http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelbilder.html German, Vegetable Oil (?), even submerges the PS

I can't find a picture of a mineral oil cooled one (although there are references to a Slashdot story), but I think if I were going to do it, I'd definitely go for some sort of inorganic or synthetic liquid. Having a rancid vat of vegetable oil on my desk just doesn't appeal to me at all.
These guys will sell you a 5gal jug of "odorless, tasteless, crystal clear, technical grade white mineral oil" for $54.45 (and they have 55gal drums available, if you want to go into business). They have a bunch of viscosities available, I just looked at the lowest one.
http://www.steoil.com/catalog.asp?productgroup=70t

Then you could cool it with oil!

Mmm, fried fish.

I don't understand why the case "mod" which uses oil as the liquid cooling isn't on the list. http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelrechner.html

Perfect solution!

I was just thinking, wouldn't mineral oil submersion solutions like this and this be a solution to noise? Would it not be possible to somehow seal the entire PSU, fill it with mineral oil and have some kind of heat exchanger system? If powered the exchanger with natural convection instead of a pump (ie allow the warm oil to rise into the exchanger at the top of the supply, cool and then drain back in to the bottom), it could be extremely quiet. You might need a small fan to encourage circulation in really hot PSUs, but I'm guessing it could be quite low power, and the oil could dampen a lot of the vibration, and thus noise.

This could conceivably also reduce dust problems, and increase reliability as there would be very few, if any, moving parts.

Use mineral oil and a fish tank.

Here you go: fanless box: here (as reported on Slashdot earlier)

Using OSS in vegetable oil will not only save money, but also dramatically reduce cooling costs...
http://www.markusleonhardt.de/en/oelrechner.html

Sorry, i actually came here after i got a REAL link from in the forum of storagereview.
The forum still works, and he tells even in english how it works.

Here is the forum:
http://www.markusleonhardt.de/forum/viewforum.php? f=7&sid=406dcf24b6cfb74d63f7fe6342a98e1e

Did anyone notice that the images aren't on a coral cache server? They're hosted on the same server as the images for the original site so it will still be slashdotted. OTOH, mirrordot cached the images properly: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/7bb0bea011df80856 9857f1175b25bee/index.html

Original site here.

I'm surprised that the PSU and all the cables (like speaker/CAT5) work at all, I feel so uneducated.

And I guess his parts have very little resale value?

vegetable oil