Aquarium Full of Oil For PC Cooling

JaredOfEuropa writes "Forget fancy watercooled CPUs or complicated heat pipes. Annoyed with the noise of the forced-air cooling in his computer, this guy simply dumped his entire motherboard in an aquarium filled with mineral oil. (coral cache). No modifications were necessary; he even left the fans running to keep the oil moving about. The only thing not submersed in oil is the hard disk."

Comments

It's been done, it works

[orasio]

Some guys in Spain (http://www.sorgonet.com/torderawireless/nodo1mejo rado.html) already did it in 2003, and we at /. talked about it. Apparently it keeps on working.

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/03/16/2023221.shtm l?tid=193&tid=137

As everybody says here: nothing [new] to see here, move along.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with using "very pure" water is that it wants to become impure in the worst way. It's astonishingly reactive stuff.. It will suck atoms of carbon, silicon, and copper off a motherboard in its quest to become impure. And then, at some point, it starts conducting, and you're screwed.

So, you're partially right- you could use very pure water (for a very short time) until it managed to eat enough impurities to start conducting again.

Re:In case of slashdotting

[khrtt]

I'd say the biggets problem with this is making sure the plastic in all the components is oil-compatible, i.e. doesn't degrade or dissolve. The bottoms of most shoes do, as anyone knows who stepped in a puddle of oil in a garage. So why not plastic used as structural material and insulation?

Also, loading a fan by making it spin in oil might make it use more power than normal, possibly overloading and overheating either the motor or the drive circuit, though the better cooling provided by the oil could alleviate that.