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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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Would you like fries with that?
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.
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!
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...
Of course, once the oil turns rancid, things could get interesting as well as smelly...
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.
They say at the end of the article that they recommend motor oil for long term operation. They used cooking oil for proof-of-concept. I still don't know if I would want the top of the case open as they did, even with motor oil, so I guess some sort of heat exchanger would have to be included to run this with a totally sealed interior. You'd need something to keep the oil at 104 deg F or cooler with the top on -- I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to design something.
Beware of Sleestak
How's the buff Asian guy next to you going to feel when he and his machine are doused in cooking oil?
Extra Crispy?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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*
Always remember the five enemies of oil: SWACH
Salt
Water
Air
Carbon
Heat
These five things will slowly reduce the quality of your oil, forcing pre-mature replacement, and adversly affecting the taste^W [operation] of the product^W [computer].
Salt is introduced into the oil when [you eat] the french fries are salted too close to the vat^W computer. This has immediately damaging affects on the oil. Always ensure that you salt the fries [you are going to eat] in the bin^W^W^W [on your desk] rather than over the vat^W [computer].
Water is naturally introduced into the oil from the air around us, and the moisture contained inside the french fries.^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W Try to shake off excess ice before cooking the fries.
Since air is all around us, there is not too much that can be done to stop this enemy of oil. However, keeping the lid on the vat^W [computer] when not in use has been shown to reduce oxygenation of the oil.
Carbon is introduced into the vat^W [computer] as the french fries are cooked. Use the handheld strainer to remove excess carbon from the vat^W [computer].
Heat is a constant threat to the oil. Since the french fries are often cooked at 400 degrees or higher^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W [Since the computer regularly operates at temperatures rivaling a nuclear power plant], it is important to constantly monitor the clarity and viscousness of the oil. Use of a portable strainer can remove destroyed oil, and allow you to rescue the oil that is still in good condition.
Follow these simple tips, and your french fries^W^W [computer] will remain tasty batch after batch!
* tongue planted firmly in cheek
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
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.
So would this mean a machine cooled in such a fashion could be a Crisco Router.
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
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.
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)
I should call 3M and see if they can find me a non-conductive, inert, non-volitale chemical to submerge a PC in. I'm sure they make one.
You should. But I'll save you the trouble.
It's called 3M Fluorinert, and now that it's come up in two separate discussions in two days, I now know more about the stuff than I ever wanted to. (Great use of company time, eh?)
This is the 3M page about it, they make a bunch of different varieties for various purposes. I believe what you'd want to use on a computer is the '77' variety. (I'm told that's what the Cray II used.) 3M Fluorinert
Some people who will sell it to you in small quantities (3M wants you to buy 11 lbs.)
And here's the obligatory Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
you'd have 8 gallons of cooking oil that wanted out, and if you weren't at home could very well destroy the board.
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Leave it to a geek to be worried about his mobo when 8 gallons of oil spill onto the floor.
I'd rather replace my mobo anyday. Try getting 8 gallons of oil out of burbur. Or better yet, try the same mess on hardwood or linoleum. I can see it now:
(slip) Shit, my fscking back. Gotta hurry, must get up before mobo dies!
(slip-splotch-boom) Oohhh... My aching head. How am I ever gonna get outta this mess!
(bam-slip)(careening into corner of desk, eye-first) Ahhhh! I can't see! I'm blind! My baby! My baby! Don't worry, I'll save you, baby!
[voice from bedroom] Is everything OK dear? Who are you talking to?
(splotch-bam-boom) Everything fine, honey.. Just a few minor diffi.. (bang)
Honey! Quick, call Compusa, STAT! She's not gonna make it!
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."
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?
the lube is right there!
Pre-warmed, even.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson