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Oil-Immersion Cooled PC Goes To Retail
notthatwillsmith writes "Everyone's seen mods where someone super-cools a PC by submersing it in a non-conductive oil. It's a neat idea, but most components aren't designed to withstand a hot oil bath; after prolonged exposure materials break down and components begin to fail. Maximum PC has an exclusive hands-on, first look at the new Hardcore Computer Reactor, the first oil-cooled PC available for sale. Hardcore engineered the Reactor to withstand the oil, using space-age materials and proprietary oil. The Reactor's custom-manufactured motherboard, videocards, memory, and SSD drives are submersed in the oil, while the dry components sit outside the bulletproof tank. The motherboard lifts out of the oil bath on rails, giving you relatively easy access to components, and the overall design is simply jaw-dropping. Of course, we'd expect nothing less for a machine with a base price of $4000 that goes all the way up to $11k for a fully maxed out config."
There is a joke involving Natalie Portman and hot oil here, but I just can't quite find it :(
When I am web surfing and playing solitaire, I can't afford to have my CPU or graphics card overheat. And don't even get me started on email.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Bulletproof? Seriously?
Seriously? Space age materials?
Did anyone inform them that the space age was the 1960s?
FTA: every centimeter of the machine oozes custom computing.
I hope that's all it's oozing.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Everyone's seen mods where someone super-cools a PC by submersing it in a non-conductive oil. It's a neat idea, but most components aren't designed to withstand a hot oil bath; after prolonged exposure materials break down and components begin to fail. Maximum PC has an exclusive hands-on, first look at the new Hardcore Computer Reactor, the first oil-cooled PC available for sale. Hardcore engineered the Reactor to withstand the oil, using space-age materials and proprietary oil. The Reactor's custom-manufactured motherboard, videocards, memory, and SSD drives are submersed in the oil, while the dry components sit outside the bulletproof tank. The motherboard lifts out of the oil bath on rails, giving you relatively easy access to components, and the overall design is simply jaw-dropping. Of course, we'd expect nothing less for a machine with a base price of $4000 that goes all the way up to $11k for a fully maxed out config."
RTFA - Drives are in separate bays for easy access. HDD's would not fare very well in oil, even proprietary super secret oil. Quite the impressive piece of hardware. - Your not on trouble shooting does raise a good point though. Seriously, what do you do when you have a problem with this thing? And redundant PSU's? They must know that these will be the first to go, and a tremendous pain to replace.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
From TFA: "The U.S. Patent Office does indeed show Klum, CTO Chad Attlesey and CEO Al Berning with a patent for liquid submersion."
You gotta be kidding me. I've seen "PC in a tank of oil" on Slashdot half a dozen times. Or is it not a real technology company if they don't have at least one bogus patent on an obvious process?
rushes off to patent "Method for legitimizing a company and attracting venture capital by means of a transparently invalid patent application"
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I don't know about you, but on my system drive arrays generate the most heat, and require quite a bit of cooling.
I don't see the practicality of having all this case hardware to support what looks like a few liters of oil if the hard drives still have to be cooled by fans.
This feature would only be useful to me in creating a fanless ultra quiet system.
So my first worry is upgrade path. Which my scanning of the article's many usages of the words "custom" and "proprietary" leads me to believe there really isn't one.
Kryo's problem was that while you could buy a bad-ass refrigerated system for a mere 2x the cost of a top-end system that got a good 30% more performance -- they broke the 1 GHz barrier when air-cooled athlons were still running at around 600-700 MHz -- but then six months to a year later that system was merely "top of the line", and then of course soon after that "sub-optimal". Air-cooled athlons hit 1 GHz, and of course Kryotech came out with even faster systems, but it was obvious that the advantage you were getting was temporally speaking not worth the price.
Now with a slide-out motherboard and all it seems that upgrading this thing is at least -possible-, so perhaps if the company stays in business, you could at least purchase a compatible upgrade from them. Assuming there isn't a huge premium for the upgrade parts, that could be reasonable. The main thing is to have the re-usable oil cooling system. If they could make it so it can use off-the-shelf parts, and just sold the case itself, then that would be the ultimate to me.
The enemies of Democracy are
The storage provided by the manufacturer is SSD (three of them, in RAID) and is submerged, but they have bays for removable drives you might want to add on your own. Also, in response to your comment about resetting the CMOS, they have a button that does that on the case (behind a little plastic door so you don't accidentally hit it).
System is worth $11k today, maybe $2k by 2010. Super high-end systems that are not designed for professionals (or servers for datacenters) just have never made sense to me. The depreciation is just too great on a computer.
Not to mention it will be worth $0 when the oil containment fails.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Ignoring for the moment what will happen when you tell someone your plans for the weekend are to oil up your new computer.....
I know that air cooling has its limitations, but there is something nice about knowing your computer is not going to spooge all over your desk or floor. And working on this thing will be a real nasty mess.
But if you are an alternate fuels kind of person, then your diesel Smart and your PC can both smell like french fries.
Seriously, if they have to ship this thing empty, how to you return it for warranty work? I promise you that UPS or FedEx will not be happy if your package begins oozing oil in their truck. This may be the best thing to hit town since, oh, Orgasm Queen of the SS (Godwin and porn in one post!), but I will wait a few years before I will buy an oil cooled PC.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Glance at the summary? You're new here, aren't you?
your money goes to support vladimir putin, hugo chavez and saudi wahabbism
do the patriotic thing and buy a domestic american wind immersion pc
and if you aren't in an area where a wind immersion pc is practical, follow t boone pickens' lead and get yourself a natural gas immersed pc
eh... on second thought, maybe not such a good idea, a natural gas immersed pc, heh
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Dead fan -- I'm sure that's a problem with an OIL-COOLED box. I suppose the extreme PC users you know would also complain that they wouldn't be able to vacuum the dust from their heat sinks, too.
Now, a dead oil circulation impeller, that's a completely different animal.
John
Here's the main claim from the patent:
7,414,845 Attlesey, et al. August 19, 2008
Circuit board assembly for a liquid submersion cooled electronic device
1. A liquid submersion cooled computer, comprising:
The only novelty here seems to be in putting the connectors in the removable lid.
Incidentally, the cooling liquid isn't an "oil" at all. It's one of 3M's Novec engineered fluids, probably HFE-7500, which is 3-ethoxy-1,1,1,2,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,6-dodecafluoro-2-trifluoromethyl-hexane. It's usable for cooling up to 150C, nonflammable, does not irritate skin, does not contribute to global warming, ozone depletion, or smog, and the MSDS even says "Ingestion: no health effects are expected". 3M developed it as a replacement for PCBs and perfluorocarbons like Fluorinert. So it can be used safely by the idiots who overclock.
I'm just wondering what the advantage of this thing is versus non-submersed liquid cooling.
1) Noise? They said it's quiet "for so much hardware." Yeah well considering what a normal three GPU system sounds like that's not saying a whole lot. A good pump-and-block cooled setup can run around 25 dBa which is something like a whisper at 6 feet. In both cases you still need a couple of fans running, so I imagine non-cooling factors will dominate noise.
2) Performance? The article says cooling probably won't exceed the best liquid cooled setups that focus on the CPU/GPU.
It certainly is a cool idea, but I think I'd rather pay for a normal liquid cooled setup.
From the article:
the machine should never really run higher than ambient room temperature if all is well
How long after you switch it on does the ambient room temperature make it up to the operating temperature of the pc?
Some see the vessel as half full; others see it as half-empty; We pour it out on the floor and laugh
First off, the summary reads like a press release, as does TFA, is slashdot that desperate for cash these days? Secondly, the PC itself seems like a pretty useless gimmick.
I don't understand who is supposed to be buying this thing at $4k-$11k.
Hardcore overclockers? OK the thing has excellent cooling, but not much better than you could achieve with a decent watercooling rig at a fraction of the price. This group will be put off by the proprietry(and probably overpriced)upgrades and the difficulty of actually opening the thing, not to mention the pricetag.
Gamers? Why would they pay this much over the odds for a system that's at best 10% faster than a commodity system? Again, this group will be put off by the lack of a decent upgrade path.
Silent PC enthusiasts? This group might be interested at first, the one thing an oil filled PC might arguably be useful for is silence. But at $4000+, you've got to be joking, there are already very good solutions at a fraction of that price.
Ultimately I just don't see any need for this kind of cooling system, PC's just don't run hot enough that it's worth dealing with the hassle.
It was thought that the mineral oil on these PCs would eat at the Rubber seals or the contacts on the motherboard and cause the PC to fail over time. This isn't true. Here's a link to the year-after report on a oil-based PC that Puget Systems built: http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php#update3
The most important part:
"# There is no sign of weakening of rubber seals or PCB. We have found that prolonged exposure to mineral oil does not eat away at any components. However, you will notice in the pictures that the voltage module for the LED light has fallen down. That module was stuck in place with nothing more than a sticker -- it took 9 months for it to come down! We're amazed it stayed up that long, but definitely recommend you do not rely on stickers or tape to fasten anything. Zip ties will be more solid and long lasting."
Can we demand an open-source version of the oil for us hardcore geeks?
The Buick thing is easy - it tells you what size engine is inside. The V6's have three holes on each side, and the V8's have four. And yellow and blue make green, so you can see when it is sealed. I thought that was well covered by the "yellow and blue make green" ad campaign.
Wow, a 7 digit ID - let that be a lesson in the perils of procrastination.
Great! Now we're going to be dependant on foreign oil not only to run our cars, but now to run our COMPUTERS?!? I'm so disgusted, I didn't even read the summary. Our addiction has reached new heights. What's next, making PLASTIC out of oil? Sheesh.
No, it runs SL/IX and the main processor is made by Texaco Instruments.
There is a shell scripting language but the interface is a bit crude.
There will be a Mobil Computing version next year.
I'll stop now.
AT&ROFLMAO
Whenever you read these overclocking and gaming sites it gets really tedious that they always have to call a computer a 'rig'. But finally, we have an instance where the name is entirely appropriate.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Now when somebody tells you to shove that computer up your ass, it'll have plenty of lube to go in smoothly.
This is from a now dead startup I did from 2002 to 2005. 100% totally silent High end PC's.
http://www.silentcomputing.com/i.html Look at the last photo.
We had an all aluminum design as well as a water cooled design. I also came up with an advanced Carbon Fiber material with 4x the thermal conductivity of Copper that was light weight.
These systems provide much more cooling then oil could ever do.
The system was sealed, 100% total silent and easy to disassemble and re-assemble. Even easier to work on then a regular PC...
We even had the hard drives in a thermally conductive rubber allowing them to run cooler then in a normal system with fans.
The main system was sealed and designed to run with a descant and dry gas like argon inside so when overclocking using peltier thermoelectric coolers on the CPU where wouldn't be any condensation. Condensation is a major problem for overclockers that up the voltage and have to supercool the CPU.
We are still planning to open source the designs.
We never were able to raise the money to start production of these. To be honest 1/2 our problem was management wanted to court Intel,HP, SUN, and they just didn't get it. The large companies really weren't interested in something that didn't conform to what they already were doing.
We never did talk to enough small investors, and finally we ended up with a bad apple in the company that try to do a hostile take over and killed the company when he failed...
Finally the last 20 polished heat sinks I had were stolen out of my garage 2 weeks ago :( Some idiots problem going to get standard aluminum recycling prices for them too, considering each one cost me over $100 each!
I always felt doing oil was just idiotic and still do.
Too bad being an entrepreneur isn't as easy as programming.
If anyone is still interested in this tech, let me know. I have 3 years invested in it, and we were partners with NASA for much of it.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
They also use SSD's because they aren't mechanical and can be immersed, allowing you to actually cool your hard drives, which is sort of the point.
I'm not sure whether the time is right for this technology, or even whether it's a particularly good idea, but there's a good reason for the SSD's.
Liquid submersion cooling system:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=2&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=Attlesey.INNM.&OS=in/(Attlesey)&RS=IN/Attlesey
Circuit board assembly for a liquid submersion cooled electronic device:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=Attlesey.INNM.&OS=in/(Attlesey)&RS=IN/Attlesey
From the first, a notable claim that relates to their "super high-tech secret oil":
8. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the dielectric cooling liquid is a soy-based dielectric liquid.
I know that this will disgust most folks here but afaic, the best market for these will be for receptionists and folks like that at high end customer service applications. If you're looking to build a reception desk for a boutique hotel then three or four of these in an open frame aluminum enclosure puts you well on your way to looking cool and rich for your snotty customers. In an application like that they don't even have to work very well. Back in the early nineties a company sold insanely expensive custom paint jobs for tower Macintosh CPUs and monitors and my friends and I all looked at them at the trade shows, drooled, and told each other that nobody would buy them. We were wrong. To a SoHo art gallery a thousand dollar cpu paintjob was cheap at the price and I can tell you that I kept spotting those puppies, some of them not even turned on, at various front desks at ad agencies, snotty law firms, and the like for at least seven or eight years after that.
Mark my words, these will be bought for high-profile uses at these kinds of places and almost certainly will get featured in at least one televison show or movie, probably several. All they need to do is a seed a few at Rodeo Drive stores or the offices of some casting agency and they'll be in like Flynn.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
I have to take my pc AND my car to Meineke to get an oil change. Im gonna be poor soon.
elevator controls. I know where there's a 3 stop basement traction elevator in a private home that was installed in 1917 and still in operation with all stock components where the control relays are immersed in a tub of oil. The relays are mounted to the lid which can be raised up via a small chain hoist.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It seems to me a better design would be to mount the CPU(s), and anything else real hot, on the bottom edge of the motherboard. Then you only have to immerse the bottom portion of the board in a pool of oil. The upper portion, where the PCI boards plug in, can be conventional, thus not requiring special boards.
J
Problem 1: Fire codes. To date, nobody has come up with a non-flammable insulating oil to replace PCBs (carcinogenic, nasty stuff). Oil is flammable and, in combination with electrical equipment, a very bad idea. Generally, it is not allowed within occupied ares outside of fireproof vaults.
Problem 2: Specific heat content of oil. Its not as good as water by a long shot. So, for equipment that operates below 100C, water can transport much more heat than oil. CPU and GPU water coolers are common technology. So what good is oil?
Problem 3: This doesn't eliminate fans, pumps, heat sinks, etc. that eventually move the heat into the surrounding air. That stuff still makes noise. Apart from some custom systems that plumb coolant to remote heat exchangers where the noise isn't a problem, this thing will still have fans. So what did we gain?
Problem 4: How much power do those kewl blue LEDs consume? Here's an idea ....
Have gnu, will travel.
We made something like this some years ago. We submerged a MB in oil and put the whole thing in a freezer. It worked great, until the oil penetrated in between the pci card slots (yes, it was an old computer)and MB. This also affected the ram slots. This made the electrical connection between ramMB and pciMB pretty useless after a while, effectively shutting the thing down. We soldered the ram and pci cards to the motherboard, and this solved the problem.
Why bother with a moisture proof wrapper when you could just dehumidify the freezer itself and keep it sealed tight? Honestly though there are plenty of refrigerant type phase change cooling products on the market.
In Soviet Russia meme tires of you!
What I really want to know is where do you find a repair outlet equipped to deal with the specific problems involved with opening and repairing an oil-filled cube? I can't help it but giggle when I imagine someone calling Dell tech support and being asked to 'please open the PC and reseat the memory'...