Is a submerged mineral oil computer marketable?

Hi all,

I'm new here but I have been REALLY wanting to build a rig submerged in mineral oil with an old fish tank I have. This would not be worth it without also making it high performance. Unfortunately, with a young family, my high powered gaming days are all but over so I can't foresee spending $1500+ on a rig for myself but the idea of building sounds awesome. I was thinking I could build to sell (after a good overclock of course ) and maybe make a little profit. The problem is I have never heard of anybody actually owning one and I have no idea what kind of market/demand there is for this kind of set-up. I would hate to invest that much money and not be able to sell it. I'm looking for opinions on whether it would be worth it or not.

The rig would be state-of-the-art starting with a AMD FX8xxx series and all the hardware on the same tier. What do you think?

Thanks for your help.

I don't think it's worth the hassle, time and money.

BTW, Intel CPU's (4690k/4790k) are much better at gaming than FX83XX.

manu2b said:

BTW, Intel CPU's (4690k/4790k) are much better at gaming than FX83XX.

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Probably true. But I have heard the the FX8350 (best last time I looked which admittedly was a while ago) was better for benchmarking/OCing, especially considering cost differential. Honestly though, I might even build to suit since I really don't want to keep it.

The FX series has never been better than Sandy Bridge/IvyBridge/Haswell, either for gaming or benchmarking.

You could build a more than decent gaming build for less than a thousand dollars actually (incl. SSD and all the nice features ).

That's a comp between the i5 [email protected] vs the "top dog" [email protected]:

http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1261?vs=1289

Marketable... sure. A feasible, long term source of profit? No way. One off's and nitche sales. Maybe. Thing its, its can be a mess. Requires maintenance, and people just do not want to hassle with it. While neat to look at, there are just very few benefits. ANd the few benefits there may be are far outweighed by its drawbacks (to me).

The FX8350 is not a better benchmarking chip... not even close. It falls in 3D, it is not close in 2D compared to Intel and clock for clock performance.

I see. Looking at the passmark overclock CPU benchmarks, it would appear that the AMD chip is behind a lot of the i7 processors but at the same time, it is also quite a bit cheaper at ~$260 compared to the closest i7 being ~$320. Of course, top line i7 is ~$1000 but it does blow AMD out of the water. AMD does take a lot of the spots on the overall value benchmark though (i.e. price vs. performance). I guess it's something to thin about...

Anyways, back to the original question:

Marketable... sure. A feasible, long term source of profit? No way. One off's and nitche sales. Maybe.

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Are there any good places besides ebay and craigslist that you would recommend to sell it? Perhaps a site dedicated to computers? I really appreciate all the help.

I wouldn't recommend selling them in the first place. I just cannot imagine there to be a large enough market to make it worth it for a single person to do. Then try to RMA a broken part with mineral oil all over the thing...

Here would be your competition though: http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

rugbywarrior89 said:

Hi all,

I'm new here but I have been REALLY wanting to build a rig submerged in mineral oil with an old fish tank I have. This would not be worth it without also making it high performance. Unfortunately, with a young family, my high powered gaming days are all but over so I can't foresee spending $1500+ on a rig for myself but the idea of building sounds awesome. I was thinking I could build to sell (after a good overclock of course ) and maybe make a little profit. The problem is I have never heard of anybody actually owning one and I have no idea what kind of market/demand there is for this kind of set-up. I would hate to invest that much money and not be able to sell it. I'm looking for opinions on whether it would be worth it or not.

The rig would be state-of-the-art starting with a AMD FX8xxx series and all the hardware on the same tier. What do you think?

Thanks for your help.

Click to expand...

I recently built a mineral oil rig. I basically just took my pc turned it upside down, and stuck it in a tub of 20 gallons of horse laxative.
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/750428-20-Gallons-of-Horse-Laxative-4-5Ghz

I can say with certainty that you will get cooler temperatures for your cpu and gpu.

If you only use a fishtank with a small amount of mineral oil the oil will eventually heat up to the point where it is no longer keeping your pc cool. It takes a while for mineral oil to cool off especially if it's in a glass container. But if you use a lot of mineral oil, or in my case 20 gallons of horse laxative, you won't run into the problem of your cooling oil getting to hot.

Some people pump the heated mineral oil around some complicated radiator system complete expensive fans and copper tubing. This is not necessary. Just put your pc in a larger container with more horse laxative and you don't need all those pumps, fans, and tubing. With 20 gallon of horse laxative heat escapes the fluid faster than heat enters the fluid.

The trick is to quickly move the mineral oil around the cpu heatsink to prevent a hot spot in the mineral oil from forming and over heating your processor. I did this with an aquarium current maker usually used in fishtanks.

Keep in mind you will be able to overclock your cpu a bit more than you would normally be able to do with air without the current maker, but if you want better results you need to push around that horse laxative.

The down side here is that you will never be able to sell a horse laxative pc. People just get creeped out by it.

I recall this music server for a slice of crazy...
http://www.coreaudiotechnology.com/package-deals/aquarium-music-server/

marketed and at such a reasonable price... (I ain`t emailed to ask if he`s ever sold any )

if you did market some variant then throw in a bubble wall for aesthetic merit

as Edog says niche market action... more passion than profit