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Wow, amazing, they finally produced something like what has been done on my website more than 9 years ago:
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/submersion/submersion.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert [wikipedia.org]

It is electrically insulating and is commonly used for cooling electronics (think Cray supercomputers).

Cray, yes... but for what it costs it'd probably be cheaper to go with no cooling and replace parts as they fail than to get the gallons required to submerge an MB/Video combo.

It may approach a viable solution for a water replacement in a water cooling system, but it's too expensive for the submersion approach.

http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/submersion/submersion.html

See http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/submersion/submersion.html

Apparently its approx $500 a gallon for the Fluorinert solution.

Once again, an article that sparks my interest, then someone comes along and destroys it with reality...

http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion/submersion.html
OCTools did this back in 2000 with Fluorinert and Liquid Nitrogen

And in other stories many times before, including the one that combined fluorinert with liquid nitrogen and circulating pumps to see how far they could push the processor: A Celeron 566 ...past 1Ghz

Tm

This guy has a better idea to liquid cooling. Just look, there's no need for me to say anything more. http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=submersion .html

cooler temperatures will only improve performance in solid state electronics for so long... at some point they will actually begin to malfunction as a result of the extreme cold.

http://www.octools.com/ramil/newscientist/faster.h tm

a segment from the bottom...

everything had frozen solid and the thermometer registered -150 C. Success. Then the monitor started to flash strange images. Pressing keys on the keyboard produced random characters on the screen. "In other words," Tranquilino says, "the motherboard was stuffed."

Regardless of what actual mechanism caused the thing to fail, the cold temperature was the factor that drove it, making this a good example of a device failing in extremely cold conditions.

I can't remeber the exact link right now but i remember some guys submerged there computer in flourinert and use dry ice and liquid nitrogen to cool it. got the entire mobo to about -50 and the capacitors exploded. I found the link http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion2/submersion2.html

Someone did this a few years ago, but they pumped the oil over an air conditoner coil to get it even cooler, pics are awesome!

http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion/submersion8.html

Why not just submerge it? http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion2/submersion2.html

It's been done so many times. (Though the first one is still the best)

Why? I just did it a while ago: http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/f reezercool/experience1.html

LN2:
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion/submersion.html

Fridge:
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/f reezercool/experience1.html

LN2:
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion/submersion.html

Fridge:
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/f reezercool/experience1.html

You might be thinking about this mentionned on /. here and this mentionned again on /. http://slashdot.org/articles/00/09/17/1427248.shtm l.
They were using Fluorinert, made by 3M at 500$/gallon. That's not cheap..

You might be thinking about this mentionned on /. here and this mentionned again on /. http://slashdot.org/articles/00/09/17/1427248.shtm l.
They were using Fluorinert, made by 3M at 500$/gallon. That's not cheap..

Also, how much heat would one be producing to raise the temperature of the Fluroinert to the evaporation point?

There is one person who resorted to immersing the entire PC in Fluroinert and then chilling the Fluroinert with Liquid Nitrogen, but this seems just too messy:

Mission: Submersible

--ScottKin

Given the fact that many P4s are made in Malaysia (among other countries), how exactly is the US going to enforce this?

Fluorinert. Yep- That rings a bell.
That lets me do a search that actually finds something... A Google Link! Not the one I remember, but neat none-the-less...

It's only useful in total immersion cooling if and only if it's cheaper than fluorinert (by 3M).
Of course, due to the low boiling point of Sapphire, it would be necessary to isolate the cpu and probably the gpu and cool them with normal watercooling and the rest can be submerged in sapphire, which will also help reduce the build up of dust, enemy of efficient cooling.

BTW, TIC is nothing new. There are these crazy New Zealanders who bought 2 gallons of fluorinert, priced at 500 bucks a gallon (and you thought gas prices in california was bad), submerged their entire setup in it and cooled the liquid.
Unfortunately, LN2's temp was well below the freezing point of fluorinert. Here's a linkie

Sorry to reply to my own post, but the link in that Slashdot story is outdated. Click here for a link to pictures and video.

Check out this submerged rig . The first attempt is using Florinert and Liquid Nitrogen, and there is a second attempt using Florinert and dry ice. They get some CRAZY temperatures, and apparently are currently working towards a third attempt. From what I've read, Florinert is used by 3M for testing electronics, and will dry off of components and leave no residue, so no damage will be done to your components. The stuff is pretty damn expensive though...

Liquid nitrogen has already been used a couple of years ago for a submersed system. Great article, and there is a second attempt which uses dry ice if you click all the way through it...These guys are crazy!

Yep, it was done on Octools.com. The old "Fluorinert" story. Check it out...

Flourinert is a whole bunch of fun. You can actually buy it for about 200 bucks a gallon. A few people have tried overclocking their computers by immersing their computers in the stuff. Check it out here and here

You guys should read this: Mission Submersible. They've found an inert liquid and are submersing the whole mainboard in it, cooled with liquid nitrogen.

If you think that's scary, check this out! BTW, this -basically- how the old Crays were cooled.

http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion/submersion.html

I believe the above-referenced liquid N2 cooling project (and others) used 3M's Fluorinert as their coolant medium.

3M has information on it here in PDF format.

Just don't drink the stuff, sounds nasty...

Since someone is going to say something about running water through your system and how you don't trust it, etc. etc. etc.. There are alternatives out there such as flourinert that have similar thermal properties but don't carry charges well. More expensive then water + wetting solution, but gives MUCH more peace of mind if you happen to be a paranoid person. Here's a link to an OC forum with a story or two on how the product behaves as well. A better article on watercooling (to the insane extreme) can be found here.

This guy uses Fluorinert and Liquid N2.

http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion/submersion.html

S

Here you go: 3M Flourinert

Completely submerge your PC in an inert liquid and lower the temperature of the entire volume.


http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles /s ubmersion/submersion.html

It's been tried. There are a couple of sites out there about doing this very thing to a motherboard, such as at the Mission Impossible site.

The problem appears that it is pretty hard to get from a sub zero level of -40C to the much cooler temperatures that liquid nitrogen provides without cracking something on the motherboard or CPU and killing the system completely.

OCTOOLS at www.octools.com wrote two articles on submerging the motherboard in Flourinert with liguid nitrogen cooling. The articles are Mission: Submersible and Mission: Submersible 2.

OCTOOLS at www.octools.com wrote two articles on submerging the motherboard in Flourinert with liguid nitrogen cooling. The articles are Mission: Submersible and Mission: Submersible 2.

aha! here's the link:
Wacky flourinert fun!

Originally the Dreamcast was supposed to be liquid-cooled. We were pretty excited to open up the case and check that out -- no doubt it would involve hundreds of tiny valves and pipes and pumps and very small migrant laborers to work them. However, Sega seems to have engineered the Dreamcast to run without overheating and scrapped the liquid-cooling -- we saw no evidence of it when we poked around.

Instead, heat is distributed out through a large metal plate that acts as both shielding as well as a heat sink. A sizable fan runs when the system is on to circulate air -- it's both effective and a little noisy. We've had no overheating problems with the Dreamcast, even after extended 12-hour or more sessions.

- PlannetDreamcast

Actually, how about dumping the entire thing in
a bath of Fluorinert (an electrically inert hydrocarbon (IIRC?) liquid)
as used for cooling the Cray C90 amongst others.

This is *immensely* neat stuff - I once saw a television (operating) dumped in a tub of this stuff, incredibly weird sight.

Ah. In checking back through my bookmarks, I see something similar has been mentioned Here

I have always been a huge fan of overclocking, not so much for the performance aspect, but more for the challenge. Sometimes I would pile as many as 11 fans into my case, round my IDE and SCSI ribbons, and pre-chill the air blowing in. However, these people take it a little bit more seriously than me, actually submerging their computer in some -57 degree C lovin'.

Fluorinert + Liquid Nitrogen + Dry Ice + Celeron533 = 1GHz CPU at -32 degrees C.

http://www.octools.com/articles/submersion/submers ion.html

Cooling with Fluorinert and liquid nitrogen. If only the Fluorinert wouldn't gel up, it would be perfect:)

It's been done. Twice. Slashdot even had articles about the first one and the sequel. The trouble happens when certain semiconductors get too cold to semiconduct. (Remember, conductivity increases with temperature in a semiconductor)

It's been done. Twice. Slashdot even had articles about the first one and the sequel. The trouble happens when certain semiconductors get too cold to semiconduct. (Remember, conductivity increases with temperature in a semiconductor)

So what? It still can't beat project submersible. NO2: the only way to chill =)

Originally, the geek houses were established because the surrounding universities were the only institutions, outsides large businesses, that had high-speed internet access. The geekhouses would tap into the T1 lines used by the universites for their own purposes. Now that high-speed internet access is available anywhere, the geekhouses simply don't flourish like they did.

Personally, I believe that the geek houses should remain in existance simply for social purposes. Right now I'm a freshman at a midwest college and there isn't a hardcore geek in sight ('cept one, but he's an upper-classmen, and as such doesn't think much of me for the meantime). Geekhouses are a great way to mesh together the minds of similar thinking individuals and to reap the fruits of their collective consciousness as such. Look at projects like project submersible 2. It's efforts like these that show the ingenuity that geek collectives can produce. Think of the possibilities. It all starts when they all get up on a weekend afternoon and say, "I have nothing to do, so I think that I'll..." and out comes and number of wonderful projects/ideas/terrorist acts/etc that produce something wonderful.

Maybe it's just the beer talking. I love college.

It didn't work. When they tried to feed the LN2 into the block and boot, everything went wrong. "Somehow the CMOS was damaged by the extreme temperature." If you've interested to read what finally happened, go here

--

Something similar has already been done here, albeit with a rather expensive non-conducting liquid and liquid nitrogen for a heat pump :)


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If there's one thing I don't understand about overclockers, it's why some of them will overclock their system and spend tons of money on cooling systems (like Peltiers and Fluorinert(TM) :) when they could just as easily upgrade their processor for slightly more money with the advantage of much better stability...

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