Computer Submerged in OIL !!!!!!!!!!

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Mineral oil is one of the best non conductive cooling liquid. If you look on a telephone pole and see those grey round things which is a transformer well they are filled with the same mineral oil to cool it so if it works good for a transformer that takes 50,000 volts of raw electricity and turns it into 110 volts just think how good it will work for your computer.
 
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I actually did a bit of research on this topic back in High School, and as it turns out, the way it's displayed doesn't work too terribly well. In the setups we all see on youtube and such, there is no circulation, so after a rather short period of time, heat pockets start to develop, and it loses it's effect. I did a little experiment for my paper, I took a 2'x2'x2' plexiglass box, put one of those things you use to keep water from freezing in the winter in there, and recorded the temps around it. After 5 minutes, it was about 21C farthest from the heater, and close to 40C near it, and climbing. I then put a pump in the cube, with the return and supply lines leading to a 5 gallon bucket of mineral oil, and the oil stayed at 24C right next to the heater for nearly 15 minutes, if I remember right. I didn't use any fans or anything to cool the oil, which might have made it effective. Oh, and I think the cube weighed somewhere around ~70 pounds. :)
 
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The long term effects are good luck in getting the stuff out.

A while back there was a guy who was posting because he did this with one of his computers and he wanted to pull the stuff out since it was getting kinda old and turn it into a file server. All of the ideas sounded equally crazy in terms of how much effort and time it would take to get it out.

@jack_attack
would you really want a fan system of some kind? Then you'd smell your computer...
 
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Well, you'd need something to help dissipate that heat from the oil. Problem is, oil doesn't like to let go of heat well, so that would be another challenge entirely. If it ran 24/7 with no cooling, eventually that oil would heat to dangerous temperature.

And, what exactly does a PC smell like? It's not used frying oil :)
 
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The air pump in the video would allow for movement in the oil and keep the heat moving but you can also get a lcs pump and small ran to move the oil through to cool it if the tank's pump isn't moving it enough.
 
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True, an air pump would keep it moving around, but I think you'd still be faced with the problem of eventual, albeit slow, heat build up. The air would definitely keep the heat pockets from forming though. I wonder if a radiator could perform correctly with oil in it. Not that I'd ever try submerging my components in a liquid :)

EDIT: Maybe I will make a underoil build sometime, I do have an old Celeron machine in pieces/parts in a box somewhere....
 
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I am definitely going to try this with my old P4 machine within the next year.

I'm thinking that for long-term cooling, anything where you're trying to blow heat off the top of the mineral oil with straight air contact is ultimately doomed to fail, because how the hell are you going to dissipate enough heat that way? The oil will just keep gathering heat faster than air can take it away.

My theory is that the way to do it is to run water-cooling tubes throughout the middle of the tank -- no need to complicate it by actually hooking them to any components, you're just trying to suck heat out of the oil itself. Then after they pass through the oil, you run the tubes out the top and out of sight, where the water gets cooled by a radiator mechanism, or some kind of refrigeration, or even just by having a big fan blowing on the tubes.

Seriously, if you just had something similar to a loop of cold water coming from a water cooler and passing through the machine and back out again, that would do it.
 
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Also -- yeah, I am equally curious about the hard drive. I don't see how that would work unless you could deal with a 3 RPM Velociraptor.

edit: look on the table to the left of the case toward the end of the video. I think that's the hard drive.
 
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Ok, if mineral Oil isn't conductive, can it be frozen? I was wondering if you fill a pc with mineral oil and freeze it, would you be able to cool down the system and overclock it like hell? Has anyone ever tried that?
 
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Mineral oil will go really thick when really cold. some people run little radiators from a Liquid Cooler for a CPU to cycle the Oil and cool it off with the RAD. If you wanna do your super cooling, what people do is make whats called a "slush box" where they put a water Cooler into a bucket of automotive antifreeze and add dry ice to it then run 100% unmixed automotive antifreeze in your cpu water cooler. you dont need fans on your RAD because the heat from the CPU will convect the super cold liquid around it.If you want you can put fish tank pumps in it to push the liquid around the rad. I had a friend of mine try this, it worked really well for short term exreme OC'ing.
you have you use unmixed Antifreeze because you can get the liquid as cold as -90 to -100 degrees from the Dry Ice. if you add water, it will actually freeze the antifreeze
 
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yea i was just thinking maybe i would get a liquid cooling pump and run it through a radiator! this company that did this has a version two!! this version 2 has the hard drive submerged and the liquid is running through a radiator! at full load with 3dmark it is at 55c and very stable. they tested version 1 the one in the video for over a year and it was stable! http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

but they suggested using a wireless mouse and keyboard.
 
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why not just have an air pump and then a fan at the top, just above the surface where the heat comes from the oil and the upcoming air out of the aquarium, that takes away the heat. it really shouldn't smell. otherwhise you can add some parfume that is based on oil.
 
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they said when they just had the bubbles the temps got as hot as 88c that is hot!! however they said it was still stable....
but they also said that when thy put it through a radiator then full load temps only got as hot as 55c!
 
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yes but they were able to submerge a ssd just fine! so that is probably what i will get! i might get a little bigger of a tank and some how fashion a hdd mount in there somewhere.
 
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