Seeking information about specific aspects of mineral oil cooled PC building

[arthur.a.nonato]

Real question: Do HDD cables degrade in industrial mineral oil? I´ve heard that after a while industrial mineral oil tends to degrade plastic and rubber, there was too much questions and answers in these and others forums, I couldn´t get to a concrete answer/form opinion.
I´m aware that mineral oil have a bad habit of climbing up cables to get freedom.
I found almost no information about sleeved sata/hdd cables.
Something I want to point out is that I´m talking about industrial mineral oil, I saw stories about cosmetic/drugstore mineral oils but as always too much info and I couldn´t get to a formed opinion but feel free to share with me other about other mineral oils or coolant oils.
Thanks in advance!

Now some interesting info why I´m asking this things(feel free to skip it though ) :
I´m not new here in Tom´s Hardware but I decided to join up, I´m a hobbyist in quite few IT´s areas (from game programming, web development, simple electronics projects and I work currently with BPM Process Automation). Sorry for grammar mistakes, my native language is Brazilian Portuguese.]


I know a lot of people say to not build submerged PCs, it´s not worth it, it´s expensive, time consuming, it´s messy and all but... it´s just a hobby!
And apart from that I wanted to try it(since I saw the first submerged PC years ago in a magazine) and to try some new concepts I had not seen yet(maybe I didn´t search enough) Stuff like using Peltier Plates to cool down using a external supply and lot´s of other crazy stuff I´ve been thinking

Thanks again!

 

[n0ns3ns3]

eventually plastic will be dissolved. it can take few months or few years.
you can watch couple of videos about (industrial) oil cooling on LTT.
And about sleeving, it is cosmetics. beneath it's the same plastic sata cable. ans sleeving will not prevent from oil to get to that plastic.
If it's a hobby, be ready to take the risk after all, the adrenaline and the excitement of the result are those pushing us to do things XD

 

[WildCard999]

If you do decide to go forward on this hobby/project please start a thread and document work (pictures) as I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to see how this works out. I wanted to do something similar awhile ago but it just became more expensive then my budget allowed.

 

[arthur.a.nonato]

eventually plastic will be dissolved. it can take few months or few years.
you can watch couple of videos about (industrial) oil cooling on LTT.
And about sleeving, it is cosmetics. beneath it's the same plastic sata cable. ans sleeving will not prevent from oil to get to that plastic.
If it's a hobby, be ready to take the risk after all, the adrenaline and the excitement of the result are those pushing us to do things XD

- Yeah, I saw a couple of videos of him! But my biggest concern here is that (besides my cables getting dissolved) it´s the residue that this could left inside my tank and eventually short-circuiting something in a bad luck moment(I do know that plastic and rubber are not conductant ). But with the the sleeve cable thing, I know it´s cosmetic and that´s why it worries me, the sleeve made material getting dissolved :/ (And I do not know what material this sleeves are made of).
I do have some ideas of how to keep the oil clean(even with eventual dissolving parts), just another crazy thing a thought this first mental visual version of my tank is that it will have pumps to move the oil around and out of the tank for cooling, with an intersection valve, I would lower the computers processing or even turning it off and I could keep the oil pump going through an active charcoal filter, for a couple of hours to filter every a month or two. Just an idea.(This is for another thread )

If it's a hobby, be ready to take the risk after all, the adrenaline and the excitement of the result are those pushing us to do things XD

You nailed it! Thanks for the answer!

If you do decide to go forward on this hobby/project please start a thread and document work (pictures) as I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to see how this works out. I wanted to do something similar awhile ago but it just became more expensive then my budget allowed.

Thanks for the tip WildCard, I´m new to this forum so I´ll still going to learn how people do this here.
My idea here is to first ask my question more focused in a problem (this case degradation of cable material).
But as soon as I have all my missing info I´ll start to build it and do something like that.

I wanted to do something similar awhile ago but it just became more expensive then my budget allowed.

Well I´m sure one day you will able to do it! I was only 14 years old when I first saw a full submerged PC in oil in a PC magazine here in Brazil, now I´m 32 and got really lucky to have extra time at weekends and I have two semi-new PCs which I have no use for them and because I always liked electronics projects I got already a good portion of tools that I´m gonna need! Hope you can back to it someday!

 

[n0ns3ns3]

dissolved plastic (sleeving usually is some sort of plastic/nylon) will not cause the oil to become more conductive. may be dirty/ugly. may be cause some issues to the pump or whatever else in that can get clogged.
The contact with metal and dust are what eventually will increase the electrical conductivity of the oil.
I might be wrong, but I think we are talking about years before the conductivity becomes critical.

 

[arthur.a.nonato]

dissolved plastic (sleeving usually is some sort of plastic/nylon) will not cause the oil to become more conductive. may be dirty/ugly. may be cause some issues to the pump or whatever else in that can get clogged.
The contact with metal and dust are what eventually will increase the electrical conductivity of the oil.
I might be wrong, but I think we are talking about years before the conductivity becomes critical.

Good point, I haven´t consider the fact that those parts could get stuck in the pump. I mean, not the dissolved ones but a bigger piece that because may get loose from plastic parts... even from the motherboard(e.g. the edge of memory slots and graphics card, I think it happened with TTL in one of his videos).
I´m going tostill leave the thread open in case someone else still wants to contribute with info.
Thanks n0ns3ns3!
I´ll be asking more specific questions soon!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Pretty much everything you want to know about mineral oil cooled PC configurations can be found at Puget systems. They seem to be the preeminent authority on these as far as what I've come across. If you have a bunch of specific questions, I think I'd aim them at them rather than here. You are unlikely to find many, if any, users here with the answers you seek. At least, if you want answers from users who actually have experience in this area worth mentioning and that is even minimally relevant. Same thing I said in my other reply on your other thread. You don't need to make a new thread for each mineral cooling question. One is sufficient. Further examples will be deleted or merged with this thread.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

 

[arthur.a.nonato]

Pretty much everything you want to know about mineral oil cooled PC configurations can be found at Puget systems. They seem to be the preeminent authority on these as far as what I've come across. If you have a bunch of specific questions, I think I'd aim them at them rather than here. You are unlikely to find many, if any, users here with the answers you seek. At least, if you want answers from users who actually have experience in this area worth mentioning and that is even minimally relevant. Same thing I said in my other reply on your other thread. You don't need to make a new thread for each mineral cooling question. One is sufficient. Further examples will be deleted or merged with this thread.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

Nice, I´ll be checking their website for more info, I actually already saw people talking about them and it looks like they used to sell or still sells submerged PCs.

My idea of making specific questions in different threads was to when I finally build my submerged (Which I´ll try to inovate some stuff) me and other users could have a lot of info(if any, in case users here have answers for it or I might take the risk to test myself and post results here) in each specific question in a more 'granular' way and because every time I searched for a specific question I normally ended up inside threads that were full of other informations and the main question was simply forgotten in the middle of the replies and answers. I think that could help new hobbyists to maybe encourage them and get the info already harvested and organized. (And info of the innovations I´ll try)
But I´m new here and you are the moderator, I´ll take your advice and use only one thread for this and try to make it more organized as possible.
I just need a little help though, can I edit(in case it´s possible) the thread´s title for a more generic phrase like 'Mineral Oil Cooled PC Single Questions Series' or should I delete both and create a new one and then start asking the questions?

Thanks

 

[Darkbreeze]

You can just carry on in this thread. Of course, if something completely off on another tangent becomes an issue or potential sticking point for you, feel free to start a new thread on THAT particular issue, if you find you are unable to find answers elsewhere or within this thread. But creating a new thread for every question you might raise regarding a mineral oil build is simply overcomplicating the process.

 

[arthur.a.nonato]

You can just carry on in this thread. Of course, if something completely off on another tangent becomes an issue or potential sticking point for you, feel free to start a new thread on THAT particular issue, if you find you are unable to find answers elsewhere or within this thread. But creating a new thread for every question you might raise regarding a mineral oil build is simply overcomplicating the process.

Alright, nice new title by the way!
Thanks!