Mineral Oil vs Other Cooling Methods.

[z.snafu]

I want to know what people's thoughts are when it comes to a fully submerged oil mineral set up and how it fairs against other methods. Is it as good/better than water or air?

 

[Convicted1]

In my opinion... It's nothing more than a novelty... Something to do just because you can.

 

[z.snafu]

You would think it would have better cooling if you hook up a rad to it! Though I can't find any stats.

 

[SolidxSnake]

People have done it a couple of times... it suffices, but it seems like it's more of a hassle than it's worth. Sorry for not providing any links, if I find anything I'll be sure to link you. There should be a few in this section, though.

 

[TsunamiJuan]

The problem with mineral oil is it degrades over time, the stuff to use is called flourinert made by 3m corporation its designed for immersion cooling of electronics. Originally it was used by CRAY and later SGI to cool there large super computers. Depending on the version you are using it changes states at different levels from a liquid to a gas.

The problem is you really dont want to breathe the stuff, and its extremely exspensive but its amazing stuff.

 

[Diggrr]

Neat to behold, total pain to work with.
How much time would it add to clearing a CMOS jumper, or adding a harddrive?
Never seen anyone do things quite properly though, they're always in a hurry to make it run poorly.
Trying to use air cooling fans under the oil...viscosity kills. They should have used 1cm thick fans instead, or built a pump that works in that fluid using a regular motor and a centrifugal disk/venturi.
Never seen a proper tank built for it either, always aquariums.

I've seen one refrigerated, which was effective for a while, but his pond pumps kept giving out, and the hygroscopic nature of mineral oil became problematic with the condensation getting in.

Air to cool your board, water to cool your hottest parts (CPU/GPU). Hard to beat a time tested formula.

 

[TsunamiJuan]

I spent alot of time researching and planning out an immersion build last year, only to have the flourinert i was planning to buy get sold to someone else (it was at a large discount that i would of been buying it at). To do it correctly you have to use pumps and heat exchangers. its really not to much more work to change components when they are in a submersion system.

if your using a mineral oil submersion system a a few trips through the dishwasher will clean the oil off the board if you ever decide to go back to conventional cooling systems.

As far as hard disk and other components usually you run the cables out of the tank to hookup to them, spinning disk drives hate submersion, and theres really no need for it anyways. Plus its probably gonna destroy the warranty sticker thats on most ssd's aswell.

 

[Diggrr]

Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about submerging drives, that's murder. There's vent holes covered with a paper filter, and the drive would fill up.
However most connectors are going to be along the bottom of your tank assuming an I/O plate on the top...replaced more than one SATA cable too.

**You could use eSATA on the back plate or card...

 

[z.snafu]

The problem with mineral oil is it degrades over time

Wouldn't you just need to flush the oil much like you flush and replace the water in a water cool system?

Trying to use air cooling fans under the oil...viscosity kills

I think people leave fans in there for a certain look. Mainly to create bubbles.

I've seen one refrigerated, which was effective for a while, but his pond pumps kept giving out, and the hygroscopic nature of mineral oil became problematic with the condensation getting in.

If you put the board on the side of which ever case you go with, the water will sink to the bottom and your board wouldnt have to worry about the condensation getting in.

Hard to beat a time tested formula.

But doesn't innovation come from not following a time tested formula?

Never seen a proper tank built for it either, always aquariums.

Puget Systems has a pretty well done tank with some really hardcore rads
The price is pretty steep. Just doing a quick estimate, it seems to be about as much as a case and custom cooling...not sure how much the oil would be. or how often it would degrade over time like TsunamiJuan mentioned.

 

[z.snafu]

I also want to add that I have no plans on doing this any time in the near future. I just think it's interesting and thought I would get the communities thoughts.

 

[Diggrr]

It was innovative in '02 when Koolance had one at CES...now, not so much.

 

[muddocktor]

There are multiple problems with using mineral oil (or vegetable or synthetic) for submersion cooling. First is that oil has a dreadful heat exchange capacity as compared to water. I have easily seen 20-30 degrees difference in fluid temperature between water base drilling fluids and invert emulsion fluids when drilling in the same area to the same depths and bottom hole temps. Second, is finding an oil that will not degrade components on the motherboard and add-in cards. Most of the mineral and synthetic oils I have messed with in various water-in-oil emulsions in the drilling industry have at least a few different plastic or rubber products that they will sorely mistreat and degrade over a short period of time. And of the 2 different mineral oils I have run as oil based fluids, 1 was extremely temperature sensitive as far as viscosity goes. The other wasn't bad on that aspect though (Conoco LVT2000).

If you would want to look into this later on down the road, don't just confine yourself to mineral oils only. You can also look into synthetics too, which aren't too expensive nowadays. We are using a synthetic marketed by Baker Hughes Drilling Fluids on this well as a lubricant/ROP enhancer called GT3000 that sells for around $9.00 a gallon. I have also used a synthetic sold by Halliburton (Bariod division) called Accolade Base that might be one to research as a coolant too. Neither is extremely viscous and might be able to be used as a coolant for submersion cooling. Fumes from those 2 aren't too bad either and neither are hydroscopic to a great degree.

 

[CoolBlade]

Hi everyone this is my first post. I read what you guys and girls said and its like you are all become downers in this thread. I reviewed peoples ideas and inventions on this subject and have seen a lot of cool neat ideas but what about a picture wall mounted aquarium? "Aquavista 500 Wall Mounted Aquarium" I first was looking for a small form factor solution that was flat and something that can house this mother board and graphics card. (ASUS Rampage IV Extreme X79 Motherboard - ATX, Socket R (LGA2011), EVGA GeForce GTX TITAN SC Signature Video Card - 6GB GDDR5, Intel Core i7-3930K Unlocked Processor - Six Core, Corsair CMPSU-1200AX 1200-Watt Power Supply - ATX, Kingston Hyper X Beast KHX24C11T3K2 16 gig) very expensive gaming machine that probably would last 3 years the most. After reading this thread I believe their are people miss calculating Time and Technology. Some of you are talking about how long the components would last and I think your idiotic for remotely saying anything like that! How long have you had your hard drive? motherboard? computer? How long do you think your components are going to last in comparison to the newest technology in programming? their are graphics cards 5 years ago no longer supported by video graphics card companies. So your motherboard will corrode or fall apart in 3 years by then you will be buying the newest 12 core CPU computer that your motherboard will not support. So please give up your mission on corrosion of rubber parts or plastic parts! when has anyone bought back your 3 year old components? a poor kid in a 3rd world country? please... spare me the negativity and please post positive ideas and more ones that could help us to build better computers. If not just don't post at all.

 

[Soulcatcher668]

Nice first post. Resurrecting an almost two year old thread.

Did you have a question? We would be happy to help.

 

[Automata]

CoolBlade, I'm honestly not sure what you are arguing. As mudd stated, oil will degrade components faster when submerged. In addition to that, it is going to more difficult to build (compared to a custom watercooled setup) and it makes working on your system much more work than necessary. And all for what, worse cooling capacity?

You mentioned something about component longevity, but as I stated, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Not everyone upgrades their components every three years and (good) hardware certainly lasts much longer than that. Using that as an argument to degrade components faster with a complex and unnecessary setup is absurd.

 

[RGE]

CoolBlade, I'm honestly not sure what you are arguing. As mudd stated, oil will degrade components faster when submerged. In addition to that, it is going to more difficult to build (compared to a custom watercooled setup) and it makes working on your system much more work than necessary. And all for what, worse cooling capacity?

You mentioned something about component longevity, but as I stated, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Not everyone upgrades their components every three years and (good) hardware certainly lasts much longer than that. Using that as an argument to degrade components faster with a complex and unnecessary setup is absurd.

+1. Coolblade, the OP asked how mineral oil/submersion cooling compared to air and water. And he got an accurate answer. Submersion oil cools worse than water but is a novelty, ie for looks. Nothing wrong with building one for looks, but that wasnt the OP's question. Mineral oil or novec 7000 have thermal conductances of 4x and 8x lower than water respectively, meaning they transfer heat 4 and 8 times slower. And specific heat of each is ~ 3x lower than water, so they heat up 3x more when cooling same wattage. Thermals of oil is a downer, but they are facts. Even using low boiling point and convection, novec did not cool a low tdp dual core any better than stock intel air cooler.

 

[RnRollie]

of course, there are alternatives... like Liquid Butane submersion:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1346823/subambient-full-submersion-phase-change-cooled-pc

 

[NiHaoMike]

It can actually be a great way to keep it cool in harsh environments like in a factory or outdoors.