Mineral oil PC

[komyali]

 

What do you think about this?!

there is old closed theme http://forums.cgarchitect.com/26242-cooling-your-system-insane-what-2.html

I read somewhere guy use mineral oil pc for rendering, had some problems with cooling but second pump solve his problem.

I like this because it is dust free, and it cool down whole components. But if you need to change one component what then? Is this safe generaly? I would like to do this to my old i7 920

[Dimitris Tolios]

It works fine with sealed / solid state components – as faras conductivity goes it is safe.

 

HDDs today are not air-tight, with the exception of the newHelium filled 6TB drivers that rolled out last month. The oil has a pretty highviscosity, and might get inside the drive through the pressure equalizingvalves HDDs have, potentially killing the drive.

 

The death will be “mechanical” and “complete” probably: headsare designed to “float” fractions of a mm over and between the disks as thosespin fast inside the drive. The uplift generated by air being dragged along isof course radically less than that mineral oil or any liquid of this density wouldproduce. Heads will most likely “hit the ceiling”, scratching the disks.

 

Main issue with mineral oil, is that it is no magic substance,just a heat conducting fluid, exactly like air, and water. Its only perk isthat it is not conductive to electricity like water accessible to us is (evento a very low %, like in the cheap, grocery store distilled variety).

 

So, it not being magical, it cannot get rid of heat withoutthe use of radiators that help facilitate the heat exchange to the environment.No matter how big the “fish-tank” within your PC is submerged, heat will buildup without a proper exchange process and cooling potential will diminish.

 

The whole process is limited to the provided radiator finarea, the airflow through the radiators and the conductive fluild’s flow rate.It is 100% like “conventional” water cooling. Needs radiators in contact withair, needs fans to maximize the efficiency of the radiators, and it needspumps. The only difference is that it doesn’t need waterblocks, tho it stillneeds some short of finned “heatsink” over the heat sensitive parts to maximizetheir contact area with the fluid.

 

It does cool all components more uniformly, but at the sametime it “deprives” the most demanding parts from that “special attention” the concentratedcooling power of a well-engineered water block or heatsink provides, without burdeningthe cooling process of the main components, with even that little heat all therest of the subsystems generate.

 

In the long run you are not gaining anything over more “conventional”water-cooling, other than after you spent a lot of money engineering it, youmight have the same tank serve different generations of hardware with littlemodifications, while with watercooling water blocks for the CPUs will berelevant for 5-6 years, while most full-cover waterblocks for GPUs arecard-specific.

It looks cool, but if we are not talking very very dense computer clusters, with a shared, centralized oil cooling mechanism , I think all you are left with is looks. No real benefits over a properly set WC rig, and probably a bit more expensive to boot.

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

 

These are pretty elaborately engineered kits, thus they ask for lots of money.

But unless you go complete getto, I don't see making it dirt cheap. The contrary.

 

Oil alone for a ATX sized "aquarium" that will be 8-12Gallons, will be in excess of $200~300.

Shipping for it alone is more than $75 (included in the above figure).

Edited April 11, 2014 by dtolios

[beestee]

MaximumPC just had an article about building one of these using a Puget kit, it seems more novelty than functionality currently, although the idea of dust free is appealing.

[Dimitris Tolios]

MaximumPC just had an article about building one of these using a Puget kit, it seems more novelty than functionality currently, although the idea of dust free is appealing.

 

Dust free as in "dust on secondary components"

If you would invest half of the price for those Puget kits + oil (or even less) you could get a full WC loop for GPU + CPU + VRM that would also not care about dust in non-cosmetic ways that much - the critical parts don't get cooled by air, so air contact is not critical so...the weak link remains the radiators, that in either way need fans, and in either way will be exposed to large volumes of air and get dusty after some time.

 

The answer is, use dust filters.

 

In the long run, a WC system will be cheaper, there is a chance it will be cooling better, and with proper filtration will require cleaning once a year or so...

 

I hope we can all understand that double thinking about dusting off your PC, and submerging it as a "maintenance free" & "easy" process, is using a very weird double standard.

[komyali]

what about heat? if you buy or DIY, are components going to have lower temperature and how much? I know that electric substation have their components in oil because of heat. And is it possible to cleare components from this "oil" and put another one on motherboard? It is good because it is dust free, but main reason why am I looking for this is heat, when you have your system couple of days on 100% you need to cool good all your components, my Noctua coolers work well but I want more

[Dimitris Tolios]

Both Intel and AMD sell products that will be potentially tortured to their limits all their life, i.e. for years.Unless you are pushing your equipment to the limits, there is little reason to worry for anything after you ensure a moderately decent airflow in your case, using nothing but the stock cooling that came with the CPU.

 

 

I have been using overclocked machines for years.

My current PC has been running almost 24/7, and during winter months it is under 100% load on both CPU and GPU technically 18 or more hours a day, as I was running F@H all the time. That's on a decent OC for both CPU and GPU most of the time.

 

 

My CPU (3930K), rated originally @ 130W, is pulling more than 300W under load @ 4.6~4.9GHz (I don't run 4.9 to do F@H, the GPUs are doing 80% of the work anyways). Yes, the CPU is watercooled by a decent WC loop, but the motherboard isn't.

If it endures more than 2 years of constant torture of 300+ W, I would expect the 130 or less watts of normal operation are a walk in the park.

 

 

What is left to cool in the oil other than the sub-components on the motherboard?

 

 

// As far as commiting into the oil goes: yes, it is rough. The thing has similar viscosity with thin seed oils. Imagine spilling frying oil all over your motherboard...cleaning the thing properly afterwards to resell or whatnot...well...good luck...

 

 

I could see the utility for high density data centers, where you have 1U or smaller systems very closely packed together.

But what kind of compute density do you have? Any full width mATX case or bigger, is properly engineered to have a couple 120mm fans for intake/exhaust and you are golden for 24/7. Much better than most air cooled server racks around the globe that do work 24/7 in very tight envelopes.

 

 

 

It is cool as a conversation piece, it does cool components ok (in essense no better than conventional WC) but it is messy. It is not a bolt on, bolt -off mod like a waterblock.

[Zdravko Barisic]

After you make "dust free" PC, you will start to look for "oil free" PC, just loosing your time, nowadays PC devices, are pretty silent, and with very common and reasonable priced devices, you can afford very silent PC.

The time of noise stock AMD/Intel coolers and PSU coolers are passed by...

Just my 2cents...