This is something I've just recently seen and started doing some research on. It's basically using a tank filled with mineral oil to keep a computer cool by submerging the parts. I've pretty much decided that once I get out of school and get a decent income, I'm going to do this to my pc for a media center type thing in my living room, and get new parts for an actual gaming pc. Has anybody else ever tried something like this?
I'm not sure. Some of the setups I've seen just have a giant heatsink in place of the fan. Others leave the fans on and say they keep working just fine. Not that they actually do anything to dissipate the heat, except maybe move the oil around a bit. As far as servicing/upgrading, I'm finding mixed information on that as well. A few sites I looked up said that isopropanol (if that's spelled right) will take the oil right off, and others say there's no going back. I can't imagine it would be an easy clean, but if I do this I wouldn't plan on taking it back out and putting it in a normal case ever again.
I wouldn't do this, I heard the mineral oil will just get gradually heated up and then it doesn't work anymore until the heat is siphoned off. Air cooling > Mineral Oil
You could rig up a simple radiator/reservoir with a small pump if you are worried about heat dissipation.
I built one. It's cool to look at but it doesn't cool that well. Also to do it correctly you must coat the mother board and any plugs and caps with something to prevent oil entering. The oil will break connection between connectors and destroy capacitors. Not instantly but within a year. If you have some cheapie system I say go for it ifs cool as hell looking
Ahh good to know. Did you have an kind of radiator hooked up for heat dissipation? When I moved into the house I'm in right now, I found a half decent motherboard with a videocard, ram, and processor all attached. Don't know why the previous tenants didn't want it, but hey, I'm using those parts as I type I attached a pic of the specs for the parts I found if anyone is curious. Not great, but all I had was a low-end laptop before. In any case I figure this computer is the perfect candidate seeing as I didn't actually pay for much of it, lol.
That looks amazing However its not so good if your machine doesn't last as long and I think my fish wouldn't like it either
One of my instructors and I built one of these as a display. I don't know how well it would work with daily use but for a full working display it looks dope
Yeah... This makes as much sense as cooling with Liquid Nitrogen. No offense, it still looks neat. I'm using a Zalaman dual fan 120mm heatsink on my AMD 1055T 2.8gz (OC 3ghz) 6-core and my PC stays at 70-85F all day