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Want a Cool and Quiet PC? Dunk it in Oil
The Last Gunslinger writes "Tom's Hardware Guide has published an article (complete with video) showing how they employed their own approach to the liquid cooled computer. To offset the loss of normal airflow around their Athlon FX-55 and GeForce 6800Ultra, the mad scientists in the lab decided to fill the case up with 8 gallons of cooking oil. The oil temperature leveled off at a comfy 104F during benchmarking operations intended to tax both the CPU and GPU to their limits. Interestingly enough, they first attempted this operation using deionized water. It worked for 5 minutes before developing short circuits...but the hardware was amazingly undamaged." Slashdot has covered similar projects in the past but it was neat to see the differences in oil and the look at capacitance around the CPU pins.
...and make french fries.
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I won't believe it until I see it in a respected, peer refereed scientific journal. Downplaying this extraordinary "dunked in oil" claim by saying that it didn't work won't deter me.
Of course, once the oil turns rancid, things could get interesting as well as smelly...
... the server must be running on cooking oil. Ha ha ha ha!
Would you like fries with that?
I think that I still prefer to bake my chips, but if you're one of the deep-fry set, then this sounds like just the thing! ;)
they first attempted this operation using deionized water. It worked for 5 minutes before developing short circuits
Have to say that is kinda of dumb to try... de-ionized water is a great solvent and would love nothing better then to leach ions from material it comes in contact with.
This is one of those moments that I wish I could work at a Dunkin Doughnuts. I could deep-fry doughnuts from the heat of a dual-core AMD CPU and quad-core Nvidia video card and play Quake 4 at the same time.
Not sure why you'd want to do this. The benefits (effective, silent cooling) are more than negated by the drawbacks.
For example, if you get water into the system you could fry your machine. Its not that difficult, especially if its not sealed too well. Another example being if the sealing were to catastrophically fail, you'd have 8 gallons of cooking oil that wanted out, and if you weren't at home could very well destroy the board.
Think you're going to try to take this thing to a LAN party? Good luck. Better wear one of those muscle belts to be able to lift and carry it. And better make sure those seals are extra tight. How's the buff Asian guy next to you going to feel when he and his machine are doused in cooking oil?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
"Hi, can I order one large McIntel with cheese. Thanks."
Do you have to change the oil and filter every 3000 programs? On the bright side, you can use to old oil to make bio-diesel!
...the smell of a South Jersey boardwalk on a hot summer night.
I wonder what would happen in the case of a spark in the case. Let's say :
1. Oil burns
2. The computer is filled with oil
3. Oups.
I hate all sigs, mine included.
Did this guy take pointers from the William Shatner School of Websites?
You get like half a...
a sentence and then...
have to click Next Page...
Just because there was oil in the PC, and the CPU was cooled, it doesn't follow that the oil did the cooling. It could be that CPUs that drop in temperature exude oil or that there is some other factors that caused both the cooled CPU and the appearance of oil.
-- SIGFPE
Would you like fries with that?
fak3r.com
There's really no point to posting this, true. It's not news. It is, however, making the internet rounds. It's on the front page of reddit and digg. It's probably elsewhere. The internet "news" sites tend to share quite a number of the same silly stories.
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
This is not new and was probably done even before the digg article post, which was made over 180 days ago. I seem to remember coverage on slashdot or somewhere else about this being done several years ago.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
If your fondue pot goes out and your in the middle of frying things just hook up the old xbox360 and power supply.
BTW, It's been awhile (decades) since thermo - if it's not obvious.
That seems like an awfully short time period to have leached out enough material to allow current to flow. I wonder what they did to clean the circuit boards of residue prior to filling the box with water?
It probably says in the article but I'd hate to defy etiquette and actually read it.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Talk about frying your motherboard...
No pics left but archive.org does have a few pages achived from a guy who subsubmerged his Celeron 333 in oil back in 1999. I'm sure even earlier attempts exist...
s data.com/drffreeze/FAQ.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/19991122030011/www.acc
This is a fun solution for hobbyists, but with the current prices of oil it would be cheaper to fly in bags of ice from arctic expeditions. *ducks*
...be sure to thoroughly bread the motherboard before use, and use an Intel Northwood-core Pentium IV for quickest frying action.
Normally hard drives require air for the read heads to maintain a proper height above the platters. Additionally, the heads would probably break if they were quickly moved through a viscous medium like oil. As far as I know, hard drives aren't completely air tight. Any ideas why this wasn't a problem?
Immersing equipment in oil is how you keep water out of it. At the place I used to work, it was standard procedure to put equipment (data loggers etc.) in an oil bath if it had to go into the water. That way if the container leaked, the water couldn't get at the equipment.
As for being a PITA to fix, I'd rather fix something oily than try to troubleshoot and fix something that has been potted in silicone.
I don't think that it's that heavy. Of course, if you have a bad back, then it'd be an issue.
It's not the water that damages electronics but rather the salts and other ions in the water that allow short-circuiting, and if concentrations are as high as in tap water will often leave conductive salt bridges between pins. (Washing ciruit boards in the dishwasher can be ok, though, if you know what you're doing.)
Deionized water temporarily has no ions but disolves some out of virtually anything, making it an undependable resistor. It also has a whopping dielectric constant that would be a bad idea in any case for a bath for high-frequency circuits designed to run in air.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Tranformers have used oil for a very long time for cooling. The problem with putting it in a computer case is that over time the oil would most likely work its way into the slots on any cards you have installed and cause the system to stop working. And you have the maintance problem, you want to upgrade that video card but now you have several hours job of draining the oil, removing the existing card, cleaning the slot connectors carefully, installing the new card, sealing the system up, refilling with oil, only to find out that you forgot to set the options on the card correctly, back to step one.
BTW: I saw a tranformer on a pole catch fire once. Spit oil and other stuff all over the cars below it. Very impressive.
Forgot to mention that the oil would be lighter still, maybe not as light as gasoline (6 lbs/gallon), but it'd be lighter. So we're talking between, 50 and 70 lbs for the machine.
Oil take one of those...
:)
OK, I'll get my coat.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Now, if only they managed to make a lava lamp case...
Why not mineral oil?
More pie for all!
When I first heard of submerging a computer in oil I Googled the web to see if anyone had successfully done it. I came across a discussion board where a high school kid wanted to use the idea of computer cooling for his science fair project. He wasn't, however, keen on destroying a perfectly good computer with oil. He asked the group if submerging the computer in ethanol would be a better choice, since it would evaporate off when he was done.
Someone in the discussion said, while the cooling properties of alcohol are well known, and his hardware would likely come clean, the possibility of fire, and probably even large explosions wouldn't make it worth while.
Good thing the kid bothered to ask first. I can only assume/hope he got the advice in time.
At Los Alamos National Lab, an early star wars prottype, the Beam aboard a rocket program launched a sub orbital sattelite that had electronic dissipating lots of heat for a short interval. Fans don't work well in space. And weight was a premium. The solution was to fill it with parafin. The parafin not only conducted the heat as a solid/liquid but it also has a phase change from solid to liquid which until the transition was 100% liquid clamped the electronics at the melting temperature of the wax. This required no circulation pumps.
Of course once it all melt then you are back to the steady state conduction of liquid parafin. But if you've ever made candles then you know that melting 8 gallons of wax on a stove burner can take a long time. If you can make that last say 12 hours--a work day-- and then let it cool down overnight you might never melt it all (or have two computers and play ping pong: one always cooling while the the other is heating).
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Oil is a good (but messy) cooling solution. I think I'd prefer mineral oil for reduced possibility of microbial growth. You'd want heatslugs vertical to improve natureal convection. And I wound't trust ithe typical PCBthermisters with that much ambiient cooling.
http://www.tomshardware.com.nyud.net:8090/2006/01/ 09/strip_out_the_fans/
just open a window! :-)
:-)
I guess this works best if you live somewhere north, like say, Winnipeg, though. Adding 100 degrees F to a -40 degree day will make it almost room temperature again!
Who needs this oil stuff? It freezes too easy, anyway! Real Programmers (TM) use Nature Herself to cool their processors.
..is going to feel soo gooood!!!
I decided this weekend to try and quiten my PC by following some other members lead and going down the water cooling road. The fans on my PC were really starting to drive me mad. The first thing that I did was to remove all the fans. The one on the processor and graphics card were no problem but the one in the power unit was a bugger to get out.
The most difficult part was sealing all the ventilitation openings in the PC case with silicon. I also put silicon all around the joints on the PC case. The smell of silicon was dreadful but when my wife complained I told her to be patent as it will be worth it when we have a completely silent PC.
Because I had completely sealed the PC case the only opening near top was the DVD drive. So I opened that and put the small hose I had purchased specially for the job into the DVD drive as far as it would go. With what I can only describe as great excitement and anticipation, I turned on the water. It really is amazing just how long it took before the case was complete full, and boy was it heavy. That didn't really bother me as I didn't intend to be moving the PC anyway.
The big moment had arrived so I called in my wife and mother in law (who was visiting) and I announced "prepare to hear nothing!" and flicked the switch on the socket on the wall.
Before I could even press the power button on front of the PC, with a loud bang, the whole place was plunged into darkness
I knew that it was only the tripswitch so I told my onlookers not to panic and I ran out to the hall to turn the trip switch back on. But can u believe it, it wouldn't stay on. After five attempts I decided to try unplugging the PC and would you believe...yes the trip switch stayed on. My conclusion: the PC must have in some way been causing the problem.
After about an hour of tries I finally decided to abandon the whole idea of water cooling and emptied the water out of the PC, put back in the fans (except the fan in the power unit, I had broken that one getting it out) and tried the pc AGAIN. IT STILL CAUSED THE TRIP SWTICH TO BLOW!
My PC is completely shagged thanks to stupid suggestions that I got on this forum. What the hell am I going to do now. I spent two hours last night with a hair drier inside the PC case and it still trips the switch.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated
Conor
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Oh man! Did I set you up for that one!
Brake fluid (Dot5, silicone based) seems like it would be a good candidate.
Dot3 has awesome heat transfer ability, but collects water, and plays hell with paint (I imagine sensitive electronics to feel similar pain).
Silicone is a dielectric, right? How about PEG? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_glycol
Aren't some transformers submerged in oil for the same reasons?
-- Mike
We've been immersing electronics in oil for decades. Difference is, we build sonar systems, so we're doing it so the electronics can survive a high-pressure environment, and also because oil provides lots of heat sinking and you don't want to put fans and such in a sonar receiver. Like others have posted, though, it gets heavy: one of our units is only about as big as a Shuttle XPC box but weighs over 75 pounds.
I haven't seen the rancid oil problem, but we've only used a couple kinds of oil: a synthetic type (I'm told it's often used as a base for cosmetics), and castor oil. I have seen circuits change their operation when submerged (due to increased capacitance), but only once: a microprocessor reset controller changed its timing (it used a capacitor connected to a pin to determine how long to wait before letting the machine out of reset). You just have to be careful and watch for these things when designing the circuits.
Water leaks are bad, though water will tend to head down to the bottom. Our equipment is usually made to much tighter specs than any PC case, though (titanium housings and electron-beam welding, and sometimes an anti-corrosion coating). You get what you pay for.
A couple of things we deal with that your average PC builder won't: we have to forgo the use of any component with air inside it (e.g. aluminum can-type capacitors, some clock oscillator chips, really big power transistors), since they'll collapse under pressure (thousands of pounds per square inch), and we have to put a flexible window (or something similar) on one side of the enclosure because the oil volume will change with temperature.
Also... that oil gets on everything, man. No fun to work with. At least it doesn't smell too bad when you have to solder through it. But your hands feel greasy for the rest of the day, even after washing them.
"The oil temperature leveled off at a comfy 104F"
Hmm, sounds like rampant bacterial and fungal growth to me. You though a hard-core gamer's BO was bad, wait until you check out the smells coming from his case...
OTOH, a clear-modded case would be kinda neat... like an ant farm, except fewer ants and more slime molds.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You've got to watch the thermal range, if you're wanting to do extreme cooling OR run really hot hardware. Some of 3M's synthetic liquids are excellent for this type of project - well, they would be but only a handful of enthusiasts have ever been able to afford them.
Finally, although you only need to extract the amount of heat being put into a total emersion system, you've got to cycle through most/all of the liquid in a reasonably short period of time. You shouldn't rely on the heat simply transferring through the liquid. Besides, if you do that, some regions will be hotter than you'd like and others colder, even if the average is just fine. The average doesn't matter, because no component will see the average.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The RAM will be volatile and the ROMs are burned...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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
This was old news back when it was posted in http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/ 11/1756259&tid=222 This time it is cooking oil instead of mineral oil. There are fluids specially designed for this sort of task that will not go rancid like the oil.
Duh, who thought that use deionized water would work... How do you make ionized water? Add a bunch of hot metal bits to it.
I wish it did work with water. Throw in some tropical fish and wait to if anything infectious manages to grow in the near-body-temperate environment.
Uh no. There is such thing as DOT 5 brake fluid which is not silicone-based. It's made by Elf.
Brake fluid is expensive, anyway. I'd use the cheapest synthetic oil I could find.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And also basic enough to make short work of the motherboard plastic.
n/t
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
As thousands of Slashdot users hammered the newly setup web server cooled by cooking oil the processor quickly heated up to previously unseen levels. This resulted in the server caking the cooking oil and quickly overheating as it crumbled under the /. effect.
Okay....the server is still up....but it is running a bit slow.
Interesting but i really dont want my hard drive or ram at 100 degrees. im sure they never get that hot with air cooling. for cooling the cpu and gfx card its a solid, if impractical concept. when you include ram and hard drive, not to mention other componets, it gets crazy quick.
Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
It doesn't make this any less of a duplicate.
/ 11/1756259&tid=222
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
I would think this would be a more attractive solution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert
Want a crazy overclocking article? Post one from 1998
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That's a pretty interesting idea. Normally when we think of phase-change cooling it's liquid to gas and vice versa, but solid to liquid phase change is certainly an option too.
What I wonder about though, is whether in a conventional (atmospheric) application, you would end up with voids in the parafin (or other material with low melting point) as it heated and cooled. Obviously this would be a bad thing and could lead to overheating of the chips. I don't know much about the physical properties of parafin -- does it expand and contract as it heats and cools? If so then it seems like it could easily form voids around the chips.
I once worked with a liquid, some sort of long-chain polymer, that had a freezing point of around 40F. If you chilled the whole thing slightly below it's freezing point, that might be able to work in much the same way. Provided of course that it's a dielectric.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The containers we used were intended to be waterproof. Since oil is non-compressible, any water that tried to get in couldn't. As for hard drives; this was back in the seventies. Small hard drives hadn't been invented yet.
Set it on fire. The processor is bound to be a lot cooler than a flaming case.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Hmm, this cooling system seems really cool. PCs with no moving parts have always been a curiosity to me. I see this as a very useful, unique idea. Useful in that it will make it possible to run high end components without running those real fat fans. Plexiglass probably isn't the base material to hold the oil, it wouldn't allow for the heat to be dispersed into the air as easily as something metalic. Btw, flash memory would be a must instead of a harddrive. Not that much of a trade of if you slim down the OS.
Anyone?
I am trolling
This has been done before
more info
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
But until then, it's the niftiest (if ugliest) case mod out there, at least from a technical standpoint.
diesel fuel would be a better choice. Doesnt go rancid, is not (very) volitile, isn't as messy, and is equally non-conductive. Possibly a combination of diesel fuel and alcohol, even?
What a job, blowing expensive stuff up for a living in completly useless tests. I'll take it!
http://www.youtube.com/?v=KdBqvQ73A1M
if it's good enough for x-ray and broadcast transformers and particle accelerators, it's good enough for your pc. it's less likely to grow crud, very much less likely indeed to harbor water, and readily availiable.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Uh, no. DOT 5 fluid is silicone by definition. DOT 5.1 is not silicone based. This is what the Elf fluid you mentioned is classified as.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Can I squeeze a Turkey in there?
Ever done a `man` on `top` ?
the lube is right there!
Pre-warmed, even.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
They obviously didn't have to deal with removing 20 lbs of solid parrafin in order to replace a bad hard drive. And you better make sure all of your jumpers are set right. Ever tried to remove solid paraffin wax from a PCI slot?
Kyndar: Exotic Imports, Jewelry, Candles, and Incense http://www.kyndar.com
Ah But Will It Work With Beer?
..is coming for your PC!!
but when i try to cool your pc by 'applying' a can of coke to it, suddenly i have a lawsuit on my hands
-AlexC
Doesn't make sense to me.
The processor is responsible for most of the heat (and gpu, for some), so why not isolate it and put it inside a sealed container full of oil, instead of making a mess of whole box.
It would be a problem connecting it to the mobo, but thats nothing big.
And why cooking oil? We have special purpose cooling oils for such jobs.
The whole experiment sounds stupid.
God created man in his own image, but somehow he evolved into a hairless monkey.
De-ionized water is a great non-conducting liquid, and in theory it would be a perfect bath for electronics. Unfortunately it's also a great solvent, and once particles start becoming dissolved, it becomes more and more conductive. It doesn't take a whole lot of conductivity to start arcing across solder pads with distances measured in fractions of a millimeter.
Definately not the dumbest idea I've ever heard -- making a hat out of a plastic bag, for example, would be worse.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Since we're picking nits; DOT 5.1 fluid IS DOT 5 fluid. It's just not SBBF. Related documentation appears below:
If it's DO5, then it will be further distinguished. It's all DO5.
I mean, if we're picking nits, I can pick 'em with the best of 'em.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Caption on a photo from page 7 of the article.
"Afterwards, sufficient silicone is deposited - in the final solution we then also added a Plexiglas strip.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Hauppage make this Windows only thing:
but once you replace the OS with the Linux version:
it does fairly well as a MythTV front end. The Linux version is still in it's infancy so there are the normal teething problems (hangs, audio sync problems, etc.) but I've had one for about a month now and it does well enough for me.
The big wins are that it is absolutly silent (no fans at all) and it's about CAN$130 or the equivalent in US$
http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/information/scripts/1f 01.shtml
h eadygoodness.mp3
You've gotta start selling this for more than a dollar a bag. We lost four more men on this expedition!
Ooh, a head bag! Those are choc-full of... heady goodness!
http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/downloads/sounds/apu_
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Just use mineral oil. Its properties for this sort of thing is even better than cooking oil and it's still resonably clear so you can see the components, and most important of all it doesn't go bad over time - does cost quite a bit more though.
I was going to make an air tight case to use 3M Fluorinert to submerge my machine in the coolant. But, I got too lazy and 3M Fluorinert is expensive to buy and if its not air tight, it will evaporate very quickly. You can also use 100% pure Mineral Oil. Its non conductive and will work somewhat well. I am not sure of any long term negative effects. Personally, I use watercooling through a closed system similar to a car's cooling system. The fans I use are low RPM and quite quiet. I would still love to try the 3M Fluorinert solution, but not with my main rig. Too much money in that one.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Because you can....and trying out different ways to cool down a computer may one day lead to a better solution than noisy fans. I just ran across another method people are trying to cool down graphics chips using Liquid Metal.
If I overclocked my PC do I have change it every 2 months or 1,500 miles?
Will my next Intel Inside computer come with an odometer? Stay tuned! Oil filter change recommended once a year.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I really wish people would Open Source their old cooking oil, instead of leaving it out for the birds.
Back in the day of the immersed super-computer,
they used to use artifical blood, a freon liquid
to suck the heat away, exchange it with water,
then exchange to the air.
What happens with the fans? or do they remove them?
You probably don't want something too flammable, but if you can seal well enough to keep water out isopropanol is relatively nonvolatile and nontoxic, it's just that alcohols tend to absorb water. (Another option is propylene glycol, the stuff used in nontoxic marine antifreeze.) A more off the wall option is a suitable molecular weight paraffin. High quality lamp oil is almost odorless and not particularly flammable in bulk. The question really would be how fast convection currents can move in the different options.
Pining for the fjords
Possibly you could add a little kerosene, ethanol, gasoline or lighter fluid to that mix?
but seriously folks, using oil as a coolant for hot, possibly explosive components is a nobrainer no-go. The result could be a firebomb.
Taiwanese Capacitors Leaking, Exploding
I heard http://www.stabilant.com/ will work wonders with circuitry, and is great for floating your motherboard in, but it comes with a hefty price tag.
Hard herbs for smart women.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I love the first paragraph. "Common sense dictates that submerging your high-end PC in cooking oil is not a good idea..." but they did it anyway.
Common sense is overrated.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/09/strip_out_t he_fans/page11.html
You can see what look like hundreds of little stress cracks forming in the clear plastic they used for the case already. How long did they have this put together, a week? At that rate, it seems the case will fracture in just a few weeks. Of course, they say they used plexiglas which has poor solvent resistance..
When I did this, I used a 5 gallon bucket of "Tractor Oil" from the local Wal-Mart for $15. I put a complete old PIII 500 machine into a rubbermaid container that was just tall enough to let me submerge to the tops of the add-on cards. I also decided to see if I could get away with submerging the hard drive as well, though I made the mistake of using an old Quantum drive with a foam rubber type seal around the cap.
The drive went about 4 days before it finally drowned. I replaced it with a maxtor drive which lasted about 1 month before meeting the same fate. During my autopsy I found that I had missed a breather opening that had been obscured by a decal with the same texturing as the HD's brushed aluminum body. Had I found it I'm confident it would have continued as long as a normal drive, but running much cooler.
I experienced about the same oil temp mentioned in the article when running folding@home, though I'm sure being in a plastic bucket didn't help much for heat exchange. I also found, when taking it all apart that the oil had hardened the plastic on all the peripheral cables, and had also climbed though my USB extension through capillary action.
I found when removing cards it was best to wash them with degreaser, wash them with water, then alcohol and then blow them out.
As an added bonus, the wifi card worked just fine.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
"Fan gave up the Ghost" no you have oil between the magnets and the copper coils wtf did you expect. Forget the friction would cuase the fans to fail the inability of the electrons to pass through the oil will cuase the fans to cease functioning.
the mad scientists in the lab decided to fill the case up with 8 gallons of cooking oil.
Were they planning to fry a turkey? Oh wait, they'd need dual Xeons for that. Mmmm...turkey.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with nuclear bombs. We have a protractor.” — Neal Stepnenso
i noticed they didn't put the psu in the oil. is there a reason? what about hds, should they be sealed if you dunk them too?
Transformer oil used to contain PCB (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) bad toxic stuff.
I dont know the year oil manufacturers stopped using it but be wary of old stuff with cooling oil.
1) I notice the power supply and hard drive stay out of the oil... seems like it would still be fairly noisy. Even if they did submerge the power supply, the hard drive has tiny air vents, and I bet a hard-drive full of Wesson has a very limited lifetime. Without submerging these components, is the system quiter than the many "media center" cases around? 2) The Giant Mess. I don't know about these guys, but I find myself in my system several times a year at least. This seems a bit impractical. 3) The final product suffers from some seriously ghetto workmanship.
Does this oil mean I'll have to more frequently wash my anti-static wristband??
;-)
I actually got a job in 1999 working with Dr. Freeze =) Funny guy. He was actually identified in a computer shop when we where looking for parts.. Its an odd moment to come face to face with another slashdotter. It was a bit surreal =) Hey Freeze! Howdy from Brady!
Assuming space and accessibility are no concern, what's wrong with sticking the computer in a refrigerator (or freezer if the refrigerator isn't cold enough)? You can probably get a fridge big enough cheaply, and there would be no alterations to the case. For the cords, you might have to cut a hole in the plastic seal on the door, but that wouldn't be too hard. I guess this would be like a lot of the current cooling systems, but a lot cheaper.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
That's fully synthetic mineral oil for the hydraulic suspension, braking and steering used in Citroën, Rolls-Royce and some Audis. It's very thin, clear, bright green oil, and it's (relatively) cheap. It's also non-hygroscopic, which would be good here, and doesn't attack rubber and plastics (which is sort of the whole point, otherwise the hydraulics would pish fluid all the time).
Looking at the list of Florinert compounds, I noticed that some of them have a boiling point that's above room temperature, but below the temperature that a lot of processors run these days. Unless I'm missing something, if you could seal these in a case (with some kind of heat exchangers) it would result in a maximum temperature that the parts would get to. When the fluid exceeded that temperature it would turn to a gas and bubble to the top, being cooled off as it passes through the rest of the fluid. Instant convection without anything mechanical to move it around.
This would also be way cool to watch, especially with proper backlighting. The major flaw with this thought is that your entire computer case could readily explode on a warm day. Oops!
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Due to the problems with circulation, couldn't you try emersion cooling with a liquid with a low boiling point (like acetone, although I doubt that it is friendly to circuit boards). That way you don't really need circulation, and the temperature of the liquid shouldn't exceed the boiling "point" (range). Just be sure to cool off the vapor at the top of the case fast enough that you don't run out of liquid. Of course, you'd need an airtight computer case and an easily obtainable, inexpensive liquid with a boiling point around the temperature you want to maintain, which is an electrical insulator, rather stable/unreactive, and a terrible solvent for the things you'd find in a computer. Is such a system practical, or is there some reason this wouldn't work?
Biggest problem with the "dunk it in oil" method is the caps, big electrolytic caps tend to soak up oil over time, modifying their response and so, in short, will screw up the system after a few months.
...
in this case, DO5.1 meets DO5 grade's performance. but it's not DO5 brake oil, it's DO5.1.
One of my past summer jobs was for a consulting engineering firm. Anyway, one of the jobs that I had was to do a florescent light ballast inventory of an old hospital. Any ballast manufactured before 1970 definitely had PCBs in it. Any made after 1975 definitely did not (and are marked with "no pcb", anyway). I have no idea how, or if, that translates out to other applications.
Speaking of PCBs in old transformers, Ill relate a story from a environment engineer (strangely, different firm), I knew. His company was doing a site cleanup at an old junk/salvage yard. One thing that Junky Jims had specialized in was getting the valuable metal out of old (military) transformers. How do you get the liquid PCBs out, you ask? Crack it open with an ax, and let it drain into a hole dug in the ground. "What do you do when the hole filled up?" asked my PEng friend of a former worker. His reply "Well, see, that was the beauty of the system. It just "Went away.""
Sadly, a true story.
Dude, that was a knock-out. It's over, give it up.
If only it didn't conduct electricity...
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
That's cool and all that they did that, but it'll suck when it comes time to move it. Imagine the weight of a computer, plus gallons of oil, PLUS it sloshes around when you move it, so it's hard to keep a balance. Definitely not good for a computer that gets moved around a lot.... which is probably why it is a desktop and not a notebook :)
Their experiment was not complete - you can see that a hard disk was on top of the box, not immersed in the oil.
Lukasz Anforowicz
Hikipedia - a free database of hi
...is to submerge your computer gears into it, measure how long does it take to get the shortcut.
Great, now my car and my computer can smell like french fries!
couldn't the entire unit be placed in the evaporator end of a heat pump?
recently (within the past 2-3 years) the electrical utility in my city did a complete inventory of all the transformers at the tops of poles and in boxes in back lanes, at that time they affixed stikers to most of them stating that they had been inspected and do not contain PCBs... considering that I have yet to see one that doesn't have the "no pcb" sticker I'm guessing that they also swapped out any that did have PCBs...
Oils used to submerge triodes and other electronic components (of X-ray equipment)operating at up to 150 KV do not exhibit voids, bubbles, and backwaters. The heat will transfer fairly uniformly throughout the oil tank. The tank is warmer than the ambient air and the temperature transfer realized by blowing air over a large surface of the tank maintains the oil at a reasonable temperature fairly easily. I have witnessed overheating of a 4X3X2 foot tank after continuous use of about 12 hours when the air conditioning failed at the hospital. The solution was to increase air flow. Instead of using the normal (six) 4x4 inch fans we took the outer covering off and directed one of those giant pedestal fans from the 1950's towards the tank. It cooled down fairly slowly, but the temperature was maintained that way for an extended time.
And for some reason these Yo-Yo's always seem to do this crap right next to streams or in areas with high water tables. It's like trailor parks to tornadoes.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
That is interesting. I can definitely see it. I'd worry if a person tried pumping 150 KV through their computer, just to even out the temperature, though.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Thank you mods. I post "Don't mean to troll" and I get modded -1 Trolling. Thank you idiot mods.
Want some fish with those chips?
What am I supposed to do with the other 17 gallons?
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Wax does not keep its temp constant during a phase change like water does. The temp will actually still rise during a phase change. If the temperature of the parrafin is between 45C - 55C then the paraffin is melting but the temp never stops rising as energy keeps being added. This is because wax is not crysaline, but is actually an amorphous substance. So your claim the temp. would be clamped until all the wax is melted just is not true! Sorry.
The fact that the system was started first with only passive cooling made us nervous. Therefore, we wanted to fill the thing up with oil without delay; otherwise, you run the risk of the processor or the graphics chip overheating, of course. By contrast, the variation of first filling the oil and then starting the computer is less dangerous.
Ok . . .
If I can do it, its probably not worth doing... probably
All that cooking oil must be rough on the CPU fan.
We use fresh water (not deionized, just desalinated) to cool electronics on my boat (an SSN751-class submarine). Thing is, we don't bathe the gear in it, we have radiators and heat exchangers that transfer heat from components to air to metal to water and then to entropy (the ocean). Not as efficient as a mineral oil bath, but since the water only stays in the pipes, it's far less likely to destroy some critical equipment.
No, you are mistaken, it is true. THe clamping that takes place is a result of the large latent heat required for the phase transition. This happens in wax too. All you are arguing is that this phase transition is heterogenous so their is a spread of temperature where the wax melts. Okay but there is still a clamping effect, it's just not as rigid as with homogenous crystaline materials
I thought the same thing -- interesting concept, but cooking oil would either have to be changed every few days or so, or it would get stinky. Of course, they included a plug at the bottom of the case to make draining the oil easier.
Ah, and the solution presents itself! Run vegetable oil in my computer, and then drain it out and put it in my car. Added bonus: it's pre-warmed, so in winter I might not have to worry as much about the higher CFPP.
If I'm going through a couple gallons of vegetable oil a week, anyway, this would just get me a quiet computer for free! Well, plus a little bit more work.
Hasn't this been done with mineral oil already much more successfully?
+++ATH0
Am I the only one to notice that the PSU AND the HDD are parked on top of the tower case? As far as I know, both of those componants can create a significant ammount of noise. So, they' were able to keep their cpu/gpu quiet, but I'd like to see them dunk the PSU and the HDD in oil and see what happens :P
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion/submersion.html
OCTools did this back in 2000 with Fluorinert and Liquid Nitrogen
Modern motherboards actually have a remarkable resistance to short-circuits. A few years ago I built a computer from scratch, and did a very, very stupid thing: I bolted the motherboard right on the case, without using those weird screws that raise the board from the case. The result was a weird noise and some smoke as soon as I turned the PSU on, because a pin under the board was touching the case (d'oh).
I thought I ruined the board for sure, but nevertheless I tried taking off the board and re-bolting it in correctly, and to my surprise it worked fine! That same motherboard still runs fine to this day, even though there's a nasty melted pin surrounded by an ugly black spot where the short-circuit happened.
"Deionized water is corrosive" is a commonly held misconception, but it's absolutely false. Distilled water (or de-ionized water, whatever you want to call it), is non-conductive. It doesn't "want to" or "try to" do anything... but it's a fact that lots of stuff is soluble in water to some extent, and once that happens the water's conductivity goes way up and then electrolytic action is possible.
Less is more.
If my 'mech gets too hot, I can flush some of the coolant to get it cooled down quickly. Can I do that for my PC as well?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
So you are saying a change in temp of 10 degrees C from when wax starts to melt until it is all melted is a clamp in temp?!?! Uhhh you have a different definition of clamp than I do buddy. Water ice on the other hand is a true clamp during the phase transition, as the temp stays at pretty much 0C until all the ice is melted. Wax on the other hand continues to heat up significantly during its phase transition from a solid to a liquid, sure more energy is put into the wax then the temp increase would indicate, but the temp is hardly clamped until all the wax is melted.
Um, I am not the original poster. But if you belive DOT5.1=DOT5.0 then yeah good luck on your future brake jobs. think people, think.
...the spud server
You should also know that the reason I specify pure paraffin oils is that things like motor oil are really unpleasant and contain lots of unwanted substances.
I'm surprised from your http that you omitted one option I didn't mention: transformer oil.
Pining for the fjords
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2520893163&category=11772
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Also, if water doesn't harm computer hardware, why does it kill cell phones??
You just got troll'd!
You do know that just because you type "Don't mean to troll" doesn't actually shield you from being an idiotic troll.
What keeps you from being an idiot troll is posting thoughtful comments that show concern for others as human beings and raise insightful concerns about events. Not inciteful like most trolls.
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:e n=CTGY&Store_Code=f&Category_Code=edmsinkfluid
http://www.edmzap.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Scre
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:p .htm
http://physics.kenyon.edu/coolphys/thrmcmp/newcom
"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."
Oh yeah, I think I'd like to continuously filter any fluid I'm using for this purpose, since the air/oil interface will collect dust extremely quickly.
Off the top of my head, I think I'd use a small pump (like a fountain pump) mounted below the lowest computer component; hopefully most dust will naturally sink there. Pump the oil up and out of the tank, where it can be continuously filtered through a coffee filter.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Twice, no less.
'If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.'