We've definitely seen our share of wackyCPUcooling (and silencing) schemes, but most liquid-cooling setups aren't as, uh, immersive as Puget Custom Computer's mineral-oil-cooled PC. Essentially a motherboard in an aquarium topped off with fluid, the Washington company claims the oil effectively cools system components for up to 12 hours at peak load. While traditional homebrew oil-cooling setups use vegetable oil, the Puget crew chose mineral oil because it's perfectly clear and, more importantly, doesn't go rancid after a while. Disadvantage? Large quantities of mineral oil are difficult to find -- Puget had to explain what they were doing to a local vet, who normally uses the stuff as a horse laxative. That means those of you looking to build one of these better get friendly with Fido's doc, cause Puget isn't planning on selling these. Peep a vid of the crazy setup -- including the aquarium's bubble bar in action -- after the jump.
No, they meant Celcius. Yes, very hot. That's because the oil eventually heats up and they have no system in place to dissipate that heat quickly. You would have to pump the oil through a radiator for this to be a good cooling system.
Toms used vegetable oil and it looked gross and got pretty nasty after a while due to organisms bathing in their computer. Obviously it isn't that dangerous for the computer if there are no shorts or problems when it is poured in while the computer is running. If it was patroleum based im sure the electrical current would have ignited it.
Finally - this is a pretty sweet set up, computer have gotten so loud.. having tile floors doesnt help much either.
The HD isn't in the aquarium. It's in an external enclosure sitting on the desk to the left.
Weird/cute that they left the fans in the PS and the video card going. I think I would have disconnected them. I guess it helps to keep the oil moving though.
It's a neat idea for a silent PC, but obviously a *bad* cooling solution for a high-perfomance rig. 88C it a little hot for my comfort!
@ me: The mineral oil would indeed mess up the hard drive in a heartbeat. A forum user (somewhere) did this once, with mineral oil too, although it wasn't as nice of a set-up. The first thing that happened was his hard drive wouldn't spin up (he had enclosed it in an airtight seal). Later, he mounted it on the top on the side of the glass in the fishtank he was using, so it wouldn't be submerged, and overclocked the thing pretty high.
HD encosures are in a vacuum I think so that not even dust will be anywehre near the mechanisms/platters etc beacuse hard drives suck massively and are easily the worst (read: most unreliable, slowest) part of any computer.
Hard drives need airflow to operate. If you notice there's a small hole on the top of all hard drives that say "do not cover this hole". That's so air can get in. There's a heavy duty air filter in there to prevent dust and such from getting in.
Have they considered the increased load on the component fans due to the viscosity of the oil? Seems like those things were spinning pretty slow, could burn the motors out of they aren't careful.
The fans weren't designed to run in a medium as viscous as oil. The fans are being dampened by the oil medium, with no changes(reductions) made to the power input to the fans. On the long run, the fans are going to go bust, and perhaps, the coil may burn.
I have been familiar with cooling a PC by submursing it in mineral oil for almost a decade. The problem is that the hot oil tends to congregate and not move away from the components. An external radiator would help, but it would not help as much as a pump that circulates the oil over the heatsinks.The circulation of the oil would help redistribute the heat with in the aquarium.
Yeah, oil getting into the harddrive would mess it up, specifically because harddrives use air lubrication, but I do know you can buy special hermetically sealed harddrives which would work.
Dang, I remember reading about some guy doing this back in the Celeron 300A days. I seem to remember that he had a problem with water contamination, where the water droplets would sink to the bottom of the tank and rest right on his motherboard.
Transformer oil is usually a highly-refined mineral oil that is stable at high temperatures and has excellent electrical insulating properties. It is used in oil-filled transformers, some types of high voltage capacitors, fluorescent lamp ballasts, and some types of high voltage switches and circuit breakers. Its functions are to insulate, suppress corona and arcing, and to serve as a coolant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_oil
Couldn't they use mineral oil from mountain bike disk brakes or Citreon 2CV hydraulic oil ?
Really easy to find. Stable at high temperatures and usually much lighter weight than mineral oil used for food purposes. Of course, it's not clear but something like Magura's 'Blue Blood' oil with some lighting would probably be quite cool.
This thing is pointless as is. The brilliant aspect of an oil-encased computer would be running a liquid cooling setup through the oil with refrigerated water. The problems with condensation forming would be nonexistent within the oil. The same would be true for a phase-change cooling setup, which requires a heating element in an open air setup to avoid frost formation.
Simply replacing the water with oil doesn't offer enough advantages to outweigh the cost and difficulty of a setup like this.
This is sweet i now no what im going to do with my old computer and to the people that sed that the oil doesn't move away from the hot components must be blind cant you see the bubbles they would circulate the oil nicely
Now that's laugh out loud. Very nice indeed. Maybe they could submerge or partially submerge a mini sealed fish tank (possible?) in the larger tank. Sweeeeeet!
Way to combine 2 hobbies. Some guy into rc cars, fish and pcs could probably add wheels, a motor and rc. But that would just be stupid...
Nice!!!! But two mistakes 1 They shouldnt put bubbels in it!! why? bubbles=air and air contains water so after 24h you got a bit water in tha aquarium 2 they should pump oil thru some radiator to coool it down
For more efficient cooling they should put PSU in anther aquarium And the fans should have turbine shape to speed up oil flow
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posted May 12th 2007 11:57AM
all i want to know is why? why would some one do that arnt there any risks? if not still i like my computer where it is
Now that's what I call liquid cooling.
Are we talking petroleum based mineral oil? Isn't that stuff like horribly dangerous? Also the on the site it said 84C?? I hope they meant 84F...
No, they meant Celcius. Yes, very hot. That's because the oil eventually heats up and they have no system in place to dissipate that heat quickly. You would have to pump the oil through a radiator for this to be a good cooling system.
it was hot because they put sealant around the CPU
Just put in an aquarium cooler. They're another ~$150, but worth it.
http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/prod/195736/product.web
Another question ... I don't see any audio or video cards installed on this rig ... would the oil interfere?
ok, so, oil...NOT a conductor.
got it.
What about trying the same thing but with a silicon based polymer? You can samples from Dow Corning.
it was better when toms hardware did the exact same thing, about 2 years ago.
Toms used vegetable oil and it looked gross and got pretty nasty after a while due to organisms bathing in their computer. Obviously it isn't that dangerous for the computer if there are no shorts or problems when it is poured in while the computer is running. If it was patroleum based im sure the electrical current would have ignited it.
Finally - this is a pretty sweet set up, computer have gotten so loud.. having tile floors doesnt help much either.
is that good for hard drives? wouldn't the oil get in there and screw with the disc spinning right? Or are hd enclosures airtight?
The HD isn't in the aquarium. It's in an external enclosure sitting on the desk to the left.
Weird/cute that they left the fans in the PS and the video card going. I think I would have disconnected them. I guess it helps to keep the oil moving though.
It's a neat idea for a silent PC, but obviously a *bad* cooling solution for a high-perfomance rig. 88C it a little hot for my comfort!
@ me: The mineral oil would indeed mess up the hard drive in a heartbeat. A forum user (somewhere) did this once, with mineral oil too, although it wasn't as nice of a set-up. The first thing that happened was his hard drive wouldn't spin up (he had enclosed it in an airtight seal). Later, he mounted it on the top on the side of the glass in the fishtank he was using, so it wouldn't be submerged, and overclocked the thing pretty high.
HD encosures are in a vacuum I think so that not even dust will be anywehre near the mechanisms/platters etc beacuse hard drives suck massively and are easily the worst (read: most unreliable, slowest) part of any computer.
SSD FTW
Hard drives need airflow to operate. If you notice there's a small hole on the top of all hard drives that say "do not cover this hole". That's so air can get in.
There's a heavy duty air filter in there to prevent dust and such from getting in.
@Daniel
Maybe they only used to be sealed a while ago? (or maybe they are only sealed now?) but I'm pretty sure there was some sealing going on somwhere
lol, make more stuff up, you're entertaining!
just use a solid state drive.
Too bad fish can't live\breath in mineral oil or that would be one hell of a setup. :xP
Have they considered the increased load on the component fans due to the viscosity of the oil? Seems like those things were spinning pretty slow, could burn the motors out of they aren't careful.
Yeah its prob not good for drives.. As you can see, they are runnin off an external HDD.. So yeah.. Id keep them outta it, just in case..
The fans weren't designed to run in a medium as viscous as oil. The fans are being dampened by the oil medium, with no changes(reductions) made to the power input to the fans. On the long run, the fans are going to go bust, and perhaps, the coil may burn.
That thing has to be really freaking heavy...
I have been familiar with cooling a PC by submursing it in mineral oil for almost a decade. The problem is that the hot oil tends to congregate and not move away from the components. An external radiator would help, but it would not help as much as a pump that circulates the oil over the heatsinks.The circulation of the oil would help redistribute the heat with in the aquarium.
Now that is sweet!
Yeah, oil getting into the harddrive would mess it up, specifically because harddrives use air lubrication, but I do know you can buy special hermetically sealed harddrives which would work.
Mineral oil is definitely made of petroleum, so yeah, not the best choice when working around electricity.
Dang, I remember reading about some guy doing this back in the Celeron 300A days. I seem to remember that he had a problem with water contamination, where the water droplets would sink to the bottom of the tank and rest right on his motherboard.
Transformer oil is usually a highly-refined mineral oil that is stable at high temperatures and has excellent electrical insulating properties. It is used in oil-filled transformers, some types of high voltage capacitors, fluorescent lamp ballasts, and some types of high voltage switches and circuit breakers. Its functions are to insulate, suppress corona and arcing, and to serve as a coolant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_oil
Tom's Hardware Guide did this last year. They talk you through the whole process, and provide vids too!
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/09/strip_out_the_fans/
Not quite as good as their liquid nitrogen cooled computer, though!
http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/12/30/5_ghz_project/
Hard to find in bulk? Took like 2 seconds:
http://www.google.com/search?q=bulk+mineral+oil
That wins my favourite mod ever award...just for the video. Awesome.
Wow, I've built all my own PC's and this is giving me some ideas regarding cooling the next one I build.
http://ntfa-dallas.home.att.net
Couldn't they use mineral oil from mountain bike disk brakes or Citreon 2CV hydraulic oil ?
Really easy to find. Stable at high temperatures and usually much lighter weight than mineral oil used for food purposes. Of course, it's not clear but something like Magura's 'Blue Blood' oil with some lighting would probably be quite cool.
This thing is pointless as is. The brilliant aspect of an oil-encased computer would be running a liquid cooling setup through the oil with refrigerated water. The problems with condensation forming would be nonexistent within the oil. The same would be true for a phase-change cooling setup, which requires a heating element in an open air setup to avoid frost formation.
Simply replacing the water with oil doesn't offer enough advantages to outweigh the cost and difficulty of a setup like this.
This is hardly new stuff...and properly done, it works quite well. Cray (and others) used this method in the 1980's for their supercomputers.
This is sweet i now no what im going to do with my old computer and to the people that sed that the oil doesn't move away from the hot components must be blind cant you see the bubbles they would circulate the oil nicely
Funny name that company has. Here in France a company called Puget is one of the biggest olive oil manufacturers.
Still a cool project.
I loved the slo-mo fans, but the bubbles didn't do it for me.
-maybe if they were coming from a slowly opening and closing treasure chest it would be better for me. ;)
Now that's laugh out loud. Very nice indeed. Maybe they could submerge or partially submerge a mini sealed fish tank (possible?) in the larger tank. Sweeeeeet!
Way to combine 2 hobbies. Some guy into rc cars, fish and pcs could probably add wheels, a motor and rc. But that would just be stupid...
old news, even tomshardware was unoriginal in this
vintage 98/99: http://www.drffreeze.com
Nice!!!!
But two mistakes
1 They shouldnt put bubbels in it!! why? bubbles=air and air contains water so after 24h you got
a bit water in tha aquarium
2 they should pump oil thru some radiator to coool it down
For more efficient cooling they should put PSU in anther aquarium
And the fans should have turbine shape to speed up oil flow
Update after two months has been posted:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php#update