Full Immersion Cooling Comes To Desktop PCs

mr_sifter writes "After three years of research and around £100,000 of R&D costs, UK-based Armari has unveiled its XCP prototype. It's a full immersion liquid cooled PC which supports standard ATX components. Unlike conventional liquid cooled PCs, the components are all easy to swap in and out as they're swimming in liquid, rather than under waterblocks. It also looks amazing, pumping around 70KG of electrically inert cooling fluid (salvaged from an old Cray) around its military grade perspex shell."

Comments

Been done before... what's original here?

[pwnies]

No offense, but this just seems like an elaborate waste of money. We've seen immersion pc's before ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M80eUcUVrmw ). Other than a fancy case and a waterfall, what makes this any different? Why is it worth £100,000 versus a fishbowl PC that'll set you back $200? Give us some decent benchmark results at least; as of now though, I see nothing really original other than a cool case mod here.

Re:Been done before... what's original here?

[lgw]

Ah, but this is just step 1. In step 2 they add a trained octopus to each tank that will do your PC repairs for you. Then you'll really see the value! Just don't forget to feed your octupus, or it will come looking for food on it's own.

Re:Been done before... what's original here?

[dfn_deux]

Actually that isn't too strange of an idea. Flourinert, the coolant used, actually can hold a significant amount of dissolved oxygen and has been used in lab experiments where rats and other animals were kept fully submerged and breathing the liquid for a non-trivial period of time. So, I'd go with a larger tank and a small cadre of laser equipped, liquid cooled, attack tigers...

Re:Been done before... what's original here?

[dfn_deux]

I'm not sure where you got the idea I was suggesting a different immersion liquid. If you checkout the rest of the comments on this story you'll see that I discuss fluorinert at least 3-4 times. I'm merely suggesting that wasting ~10k USD on coolant and then building a giant gaudy waterfall enclosure isn't exactly how I'd go about doing a project like this. A much smaller volume of liquid in a much smaller container with radiator/fan cooling could be assembled for about 2-3% of the cost they've incurred. Likewise a conventional closed loop cooling system that isn't fully immersing the system could be built for only a few hundred dollars and effectively cool all the components nearly as well and certainly be more cost effective. If you wanted performance you could build a whole cluster of either of the systems I've described for the cost that this article is advising.

Re:Been done before... what's original here?

[jacquesm]

Oh, come on. They were just really smart and spent it all on strippers, now they have to come up with a justification of where all the dough went. Look! Blinkenleuchtz...

"You can't use water, of course"

[Bromskloss]

"so the XCP is filled with FLUAHRGHPT." Huh?! What's that again? I can't hear what he is saying. What liquid did they use?

Re:"You can't use water, of course"

[nycguy]

They used flourinert.

Unrealistic

[HermMunster]

Is never happening ever for the average person and thus makes it just a novelty item. Their design is excessive and cumbersome, not to mention has excessive weaknesses such as cost to maintain, cost to purchase, time to maintain, etc.

It was tough to decipher their speech as well. Word use and pronunciation were a bit distracting. It's tough when your target audience are distracted by your speech instead of focused on your product.

Re:Fluorinert

[dfn_deux]

Heh, looks like my recollection on the pricing is a bit off: 250ml for 555.35USD at one retailer and 3Gal for 2,450USD from another.