Mineral Oil Submerged Computer

[tred]

I am looking to perhaps make a rig submerged in mineral oil and i was lookin at the website you got the oil from. what viscocity did you use for this?

[PCC-Jon]

The lightest we could find, but horse laxitives don't have too many choices

[Grogfantastic]

Fantastic idea! I think i will do the same with my alienware comp... its starting to run too hot.

I do have some questions, my hardware savvy is about three years out of date.

1. If you have two hard drives working as one, is there any sort of exterior casing you can use?
If not, will it work submerged?

2. Can you describe how you had the hard drive set up to run? everything else makes sense to me but that.

3. If i have a wireless card, how am i going to set up the antenna? inside the oil?

[PCC- Builder Dan]

You really should keep hard drives out of the oil. The oil seeps into them, and that ruins them.

The hard drive in the oil PC is in an external USB enclosure. It's rather like a gigantic USB memory stick, with the operating system installed on it. Seeing as you're running a more complicated setup (and probably want to keep your data intact), it would probably be easier for you to run the hard drive cables out the top of the tank, and plug straight into the hard drives there.

3rd, sealing off the back of a PC is all but impossible. We set ours up so the back of the motherboard and cards (where everything plugs in) was just above the surface of the oil, with everything extending down into the oil. That way, all the plugs were dry, and easy to plug things into.

[Gorle]

As you know, normal cases have a power switch on them to turn the computer on. What did you do for your switch? Also, If you wanted to change some of your hardware around (change CPU, GPU, ect.) would you just pull the motherboard out and put it in?

thanks.

great idea by the way.

[binouz24]

this was a great idea,
im going to do this during the summer with a friend
just wondering (so we can start saving up),
how much money did you spend on the powerful computer(2nd one)?
not including the monitor and keyboard, but only with everything else inside and outside the aquarium.

thanks a lot,
binouz

[Viacrucis]

Awesome happy to see the PSCC being hardkore

I'm going to spread this video around for you guys

[stips]

Over on the comments section for youtube there is a poster who said this :

"Mineral oil will degrade the rubber seal on any of the capacitors that are not of a solid-state type and they will eventually come loose from their leads. So unless you specifically buy a motherboard with solid state capacitors on it or replace all of the non-solid state ones your hardware will eventually fall apart."

Any truth to this? I also found this for anyone curious about the long term usage of this oil rig :

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FNLtrDTTFaE

5 Months and going strong. I'm just concerned about that degrade the rubber seal thing.

[kitizz]

Simply beautiful. A lot of people, including myself, seem to be considering doing this with a mate during the upcoming holidays.
I'm in Australia, myself, and it has been more difficult to get hold of the required equipment, but I've managed to score an old free pc from my school. No vets sold mineral oil in the quantities that I needed, but I found an Aussie site (lubrimaxx.com) that sold it for AU$92 since STEoil does not ship to Australia, plus i think I've found a decent tank for around AU$40. Cheap as!

Just one or two questions though; When you talked about sealing up the CPU, was that to do with what 'neodeltai' was talking about, with the hot-spots or something else?
Also, I notice that you have quite a large fan on the final spec computer, was/is that necassary or is it ok to use a smaller fan? (My own pc has a P4 3Ghz)

Thank-you, Kitizz

P.S. I also forgot to ask; what search term should I use to find a motherboard tray like the lian-li? I've tried almost anything under the sun and can't find anything in Australia, lol, but yeah. Thanks

[washu9]

Several things I'd like to point out here (I haven't tried any of this myself so please excuse my ignorance and correct me as you see fit ):

1. About the choice of oil media. I seem to recall mineral oil having a detrimental effect on rubber sealant over time. Wouldn't non-solid capacitors (in most non-highend motherboard) be messed up?

If you consider this, then even if you get an ALL-solid-capacitor motherboard, wouldn't there be some left in the PSU (Power Supply Unit) and/or the video card as well?

Some people recommend the use of silicone oil instead to solve this problem.


2. I wouldn't recommend people submerging Hard Disks into oil. For one thing, it will spin A LOT slower than it should. Even if it doesn't break the mini-motor, that will undoubtedly make a major dent in performance.


3. This one goes without saying to most people. Don't forget to clean all components you're going to submerge. Those dirt will become a rather unsightly goo in a short while.

Same thing in regards to blowing air bubbles. If you're in a relatively dirty environment, don't bother doing it. The oil would filter the air being passed through it (the bubbles).

If you're considering that the use of air bubbles would make the oil cooler, don't bother.
The oil is taking FAR more heat off the computer components than equivalent volume of air would. Considering that, you'd need to blow so much bubbles that you'd make waves on the oil surface to get anywhere near the temp you're thinking of.

Using a radiator like Zalman's Resarator unit may be a far better choice to get some of that heat off your oil (not to mention more expensive). You may want to add/replace the pump though.


4. For people who didn't notice, they're still using heat sinks and fans (that's why they would turn on the computer before they actually put in the oil in the water tank) That's how they make sure that the oil keep moving and cooling critical parts.

Yes, it should be fine to use fans in oil. I'd imagine it'd rise the electrical load requirement, but it should be ok.


5. Putting some sealant on the bottom of the processor would be recommended. The close proximity of those pins might cause a short circuit.