Oil cooled + water chiller

Ok guys, this is a theoretical build that i would love to do. This combines the best parts of lots of different set ups. I want to build a custom lexan or Plexiglas casean submerge both my mother board and possible my power supply into mineral oil. I would pull the oil out of the closed system into an external aquarium water chiller and then dump this back into the system over a processor and possible video card(s) water cooler heatsinks. The hard drives and dvd drives would be hosted outside of the main case, probably beside it in there own case. All my ports would come straight out the top of the case. The whole thing would be sealed to prevent spill. So its not the smallest thing around, but it solves alot of problems. Because everything is submerged into mineral oil, it would not have a condensation problem. I could cool WAY below ambiant temps and keep everything on my board cool. It would be interesting figureing out all the hard drive wiring, but if i set it all up sata/ esata it wouldn't be that hard. Possible run dual power supplies, one internal, one external, would take care of wiring that way.

This is my first post on your guys forum, i just found it tonight. I have been kicking this idea around in my head for awhile now, thought i would run it by you guys. Let me know what you think.

ive been wanting to do the same thing exept use a central air compressor for Phasechange with just a cpu and nb condensor so its totally quiet. (noise being outside)

I was thinking of somthing similar, not that i would ever do it. I was thinking of piping the oil through an automotive oil pump (electric, but wound down so the pressure isn't insaine) and an oil cooler with fans running on it. A chiller is a much better idea.

But still reguardless of what you did, you would still get oil seeping into the caps and plastic over time which breaks the board. As a bench test though, might work. Just don't forget that oil gets thicker the colder it is, and evetually coagulates. You might have to find somthing other than mineral oil.

Hipcrostino said:

I was thinking of somthing similar, not that i would ever do it. I was thinking of piping the oil through an automotive oil pump (electric, but wound down so the pressure isn't insaine) and an oil cooler with fans running on it. A chiller is a much better idea.

But still reguardless of what you did, you would still get oil seeping into the caps and plastic over time which breaks the board. As a bench test though, might work. Just don't forget that oil gets thicker the colder it is, and evetually coagulates. You might have to find somthing other than mineral oil.

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FALSE, i have seen one submerged for about 6 months and nothing is damaged or soaked, but other wise when you take something out its a bit sticky.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=232516

some one else thinking about doing it, and he has all the hardware for it.

Metallica said:

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

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Can we ban this link from OCF? They weren't the first to do it, and it has been done a lot. I think Tom's was the first place I saw it. These guys just used a cool looking fish tank, not an original idea, no work done, no skill involved - not that there is with many of the oil cooling spin offs.There is also a computer bing sold that is a submerged system. In response to chilled submersion cooling, I think this about sums it up http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1662151&postcount=6

Perhaps a sticky of something similar to the post linked above is needed? I think we get a lot of threads on the topic, with noting really coming out of them.

First time I saw it was some time back around '99 on Ocinside.de

Ben333 said:

Can we ban this link from OCF? They weren't the first to do it, and it has been done a lot. I think Tom's was the first place I saw it. These guys just used a cool looking fish tank, not an original idea, no work done, no skill involved - not that there is with many of the oil cooling spin offs.There is also a computer bing sold that is a submerged system. In response to chilled submersion cooling, I think this about sums it up http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1662151&postcount=6

Perhaps a sticky of something similar to the post linked above is needed? I think we get a lot of threads on the topic, with noting really coming out of them.

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I dont realy see where they claim to be the first that did that and I don thtink they would be that arogant but puget is the only place that sells that as a kit.

and as far as banning links to manufacturers due to hearsay is dumb, Bitspower was banned on xtreemsystems for a little bit due to that...

Puget wasn't the first that one is getting a bit old

Oil looks way more of a hassle than it would ever be worth to myself anyway.

Just me maybe

Even self contained phase setup is too much hassle to be worth it for most people. I remember my Vapochill LS going nuts when the ambient temperature hit anything above 30 Celsius. I might even go so far as to say the same about water, unless you bench or run tri-SLI/quadfire there seems little point in overclocking past what an i7 can do on air.

a couple of days ago, i put together a mineral oil submerged pc and pumped the oil out and through a aquarium water chiller. everything worked pretty well, but the chiller wasn't powerful enough to handle the heat or keep it at a low or ambient temperature.
it's my fault though, i got a 1/15 HP Chiller, and i should have probably bought a stronger one. the system still works, but the oil reaches a 97*F max temp

here's the specs:

CPU: Intel i7 920 C0 2.66Ghz stock @ 4.11 Ghz
GPU: MSI GTX 275 @ 759GPU/1305Memory/1727Shader
Memory: Tri Channel 6GB Mushkin Redline @ 1564Mhz 7-7-7-20
HD: 128GB Crucial Solid State Drive @ 250MBs READ/190MBs WRITE
Motherboard: EVGA X58 SLI LE
PSU: 850W Corsair Professional HX850

Oil Chiller: 1/15 HP Prime Nano-Chiller
Pump: Koolance 450
Tank: 6 Gallon Aquarium


the TS here i think is talking about water cooling and oil cooling, which might work.

Holy crap, I hope that i7 system cleans up man. Maybe some alcohol and a toothbrush.

@ turbohans, did I sound like I seriously wanted to add the URL to the vBB swear list? I just mean it got old. It isn't a great idea and has a lot of problems with little benefit. The post I linked to in my post above has some pretty good reasons. I did the oil thing twice and it wasn't that great. I used a 10 gallon aquarium the second time, just in my bedroom. Had a nice P4 Celeron system in the tank. It looked AWESOME but after I built my new rig (the Celeron was decent at the time of build) I wanted to move this thing somewhere else. It was now ridiculously heavy. Plus for just some dumb crap like resetting the CMOS, I had to reach my whole arm into the oil. The thing I thought would be AWESOME would be to use this thing as a web server and have the oil cooled. Winter months were just in so I moved this thing out to the shed. The oil actually sort of froze, it got like a jell-o. It would have been pretty sweet to run that setup because it would basically be chilled and no need to worry about condensation but on the other hand, so would just an air cooled computer. The air cooled would have probably been more effective even. Anyway, my oil cooling adventure ended after not running cat5 to the shed and the whole rig being moved down to my dad's garage where it was accidentally knocked over. I wasn't mad about my sticky smelly celeron system as much as I felt bad about the 5 gallons of oil that had to be cleaned up. Have one of these things fall over in your house... It would just be terrible. After you get your hands and hardware in the oil, you start to realize this. After you say hey, the monitor cable is oily now... and it's not really cleaning off.

wow 97f is your computer used to make Mac Dee's french fries or wut....?

97*f is 1.6 degrees cooler then normal body temp.
Very cool, in the computer world.

shotawe said:

wow 97f is your computer used to make Mac Dee's french fries or wut....?

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Maybe you're thinking 97C? 97F is not too far from 'room temperature'

Darionis said:

Maybe you're thinking 97C? 97F is not too far from 'room temperature'

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o_0. where are you living.