Mineral oil chilled by water chiller??

Hi,
I wanted to know at what temperature plexi glas cracks and what the pour point of mineral oil is. I wanted to use a plexiglas case and fill it with mineral oil cooled by a water chiller. Mineral oil does not conduct any electricity and thus there is no harm to the hardware. The only things to be removed are the dvd drive and the hard drive (anything that moves). What are your thoughts on this?

Many people have tried this and there have been many things done in the past. It's generally not the best idea to do this for full time use.

Mineral oil does not conduct heat well. You will have to create a lot of turbulence around the parts to cool them well. Even still the mineral oil will conduct heat slower then aluminum if I remember correctly.

Also are you going to have the water chiller submerged in the oil as well? A lot of pumps can't handle the viscosity of the oil and burns them out quickly.

It makes a real big mess when having to change components or oil.

This makes a great and fun learning project but I wouldn't depend on it for ever day use. It is not very energy efficient at all.

i cant really add to what mepis said but i can say that I agree with it all.

I can go a lot more in depth if you want for an explanation. I just hit on some of the points. This kind of experimenting goes all the way back to the Pentium 2 days but instead of using water chillers people submerged whole computers in oil inside of a chest freezer. It did well back in the p2 days and every once in a while someone would come back with this little experiment with new hardware and some where around the early athlon k7 days it didn't work nearly as well as a good water cooler and peltier and was far more expensive to run.

By all means dont let me stop you from trying. Half the fun of learning is doing it your self. Just be prepared though that it will make a massive mess, cleaning oil off electric components is a pain in the wazoo, and not to use it as a long term cooling solution.

Thanks for the explaination. Someone suggested to use Fluorinert instead of mineral oil. If i used Fluorinert, would I be able to submerge also the compressor into the fluid? The only downside with this fluid is that it is very expensive. People have to pay a lot of money to get this fluid but it is very non-conductive. Someone said that you can put 30,000 VOLTs in it and not feel it. I wouldnt suggest you trying this out but this is what theory says. .

I thought about buying a chest freezer (from ebay where they can be found really cheap), however, people said that chest freezers will burn out eventually because they are not made to constantly dissipate heat. What are your thoughts on this, mepis? Have you tried it out?

Does Fluourinert damage any of the components on the motherboard? Does it tolerate the plastics used in the motherboard?

freak.

Glad to see you posted your question and got the same answer :S

As for last two

Yes as you have read freezers/fridges are bad for dissapting large amounts of heat, they are designed to do it short term and hold it.

However...

Getting one and tweaking it, you need to talk to NoL he may be able to guide you through adapting a chest freezers components to make an awesome phase change system.

As discussed via IM, finding a low viscosity non conductive medium is tough. Perhpas flourinert is the key but not worth it compared to deciated cooling sources. ( like a single stage or cascade made out of a chest freezer )

thanks for the reply neuromancer,
the biggest problem about cascade or single stage cooling is the big noise. I dont want a very noisy system. Moreover, casecade systems can easily create condensation in the pci slot of your GPU.

Flourinert has an even better viscosity than water and submerging a water chiller compressor in it would reduce sound and remove the danger of condensation.

The only thing is, that I dont know if flourinert digests plastic on the motherboard.

Call 3M and ask them if Flourinert desolves anything (more than just plastic, remember the paper parts of the caps, glue on the board, etc.

I was thinking of this a while back, and I decided that I needed a two stage cooling system, with a heat exchanger consisting of two spiraling copper pipes welded together in a spiral fashion. You could then use flourinert inside a sealed container (except of course the video card and power.

Such a sealed (Metal?) box could have just the Video output port, and a power plug. Keyboard, mouse, and Wifi would complete the setup. with the heat exchanger cooling it.

Expensive, and upgrades would be a pain, if at all possible.

I would be careful with the sealed container and flourinert coz it evaporates really quickly and it can hurt you.

Also, fourinert is very expensive. I found another material: Fluid XP. WHat about submerging your computer in Fluid XP which can be bought easily and is cheap as well. THey say it is non conductive but I wanna hear the experts in this forum.

I havnt heard of fluid XP so I couldnt help you, nor am I an expert. I've just been around the block a few to many times here.

Are you looking for a long term cooling solution to build? If so think outside of the box with your water chiller idea and a water cooling system. The only expensive things to buy would be pumps and blocks. These can still be found cheap enough if you look carefully. And think outside the box for everything else. This would be a better and easier long term solution and doesn't limit your upgrades.

I would like to just add as the other person did and you already mentioned chest freezers will burn out with a constant heat load. I think this would be the best route to go though. Contact the other person in the earlier post to help you tweak it. Retrofitting the lines to accept a r134a line is not difficult so you can complete drain the system then just head to advance auto parts to buy those el cheapo refill things with the nozel to charge and release the system anytime you want. I do know if you dump the proper coolant and the right amount into a chest freezer you can make it handle a constant heat load. As for the math to do it I dont know. Wife gets to upset with me when I start doing "super strange" things so I have to break her in and move slowly with some things.

Ive done the whole oil PC thing and here were my conclusions:

1. Entertaining.
2. Messy.
3. Not really practical for everyday use.
4. Once the oil starts building up foreign particles its conductivity can change, with disastrous results for your parts.
5. Hot. I left prime 95 running over night and in the morning the oil was almost uncomfortably hot.

I've seen a mineral oil PC withy dry ice added to it. It worked in the sense that it was really cold, but was very impractical.

First off, flourinert is only going to help you with the wow factor, but at $500 per gallon, it isnt cheap. It also permeates through almost anything and evaporates extremely fast (its vapor pressure is 26-27 times as high as water)

Remember that the final destination for the heat produced will be the air, be it direct (heatsink directly to air) or through a radiator (water cooling or phase change). The oil will only act as an insulator between the components (CPU and the like) and the air. To illustrate this, whales use blubber (oil) to keep themselves warm in subzero waters. By using oil over the whole mobo, you will be adding heat from mosfets and the like, which I believe can reach up to 150*C, diminishing any gain you may have had.

I suggest either building a chiller or going phase. A chiller will probably be better for you, in that you can chill gfx cards and the like in a single loop.

I did a search and came up with this thread. I've been reading about this mineral oil computer and I'm thinking of doing it, as well.

My current computer is starting to age, as well as my media center, although they are still both very useful and very capable of everyday activities. I'm really contemplating the idea of taking my older hardware and doing this exact thing. What I really want is silent computing and the 'wow' factor of having a submerged MediaCenter PC in my living room.

Few ideas I had are using this Zalman Reserator 1v2 (link) which includes radiator, pump, and quick disconnects. Cool the mineral oil through a fanless radiator. Additionally, use the quick couplings to add in an oil filter. I don't really see any major downside except it would be pretty messy to add a new PCI card or clear the CMOS. Once it's submerged, I have no plans to take it out.

just wont work, and if you gonna be buying a reserator, you will be better off using water, since it conducts better then oil, en doesnt cost you an arm and a leg..