Mineral Oil Submerged Computer

[Smirnof]

I was looking at this stuff but i don't know how much it costs (its probably a metric shitton of cash)... just throwin more ideas out there.

http://www.dsifluids.com/OptiCool%20Fluid%20Page.htm

[washu9]

Won't work anyways... i just came back from the shop and my ohm meter tells me that the toyota antifreeze isn't dielectric enough, or anything else we tried... If it would have worked you would still be talking about a 10 year + coolant change life... given that the envirnoment you subject tthe coolant to in a pc is much less harsh than that of an car... That and i imagine i will start having stability problems when its time to change the coolant... but alas its too conductive.

You ever get into a lake and the water is nice and warm and then you float out to deep water and swim down... and the water gets cooler... Heat rises. at least for water and air anyways... Im not sure how much it would effect anything given the design is quite small to begin with, and leaving 1 fan in the case (despite the friction) should be plenty to keep the oil temp constant.

And what did you mean by too much to lose with the silicon oil idea.. just because silicon oil is expensive or what... cause from my understanding its dielectric and shouldnt do any more harm than mineral oil... in fact it should do less in that it doesn't eat away at the rubberized components.

I also picture your water growing algea in the bottom of your pc... dunno how well thats gonna be, but if your going to go through that much effort you should put some fish in the water for fun... make sure you leave a space to feed them

Now if you took a radiator of some sort and ran some water throught it (radiator submersed into the oil) and used it as a heat exchanger and used another one outside with a fan on it you might have an efficient design, but i see just running the oil through a radiator (or in my case a heater core) to be simpler and more effective.

Another idea i was tinkering around with... how difficult would it be to say... i dunno.. spraypaint the components on your board... submers it in thompsons waterseal or something like that... then you could use whatever you want... the big downside is you would have to have everything plugged in and seal up around your ram and your videocard and your empty pci slots and your ide/sata cable and your power cable... and man that sounds like a pain in the ass. Just a thought for any more adventurious modders out there.

Ok, first of all let me apologize about the confusion with the silicon oil idea.
The quote was not meant to be placed there at all. the comments was meant for your radiator coolant idea. Not for the use of silicon oil.

Actually, I quite agree with you on the silicon oil as a better medium.



In regards to your deeper water being colder, it is true, BUT the cause of it being colder is not simply because heat rises.

1) Shallow water means that the sun rays is heating up less water in a square meter of lake, thus it gets warmer faster.

If you also consider the clarity of the water, you can also account that some IR radiation left after the sunlight hit the bottom of the lake gets reflected back up thus heating the water some more.

2) Do you know that deeper water have higher pressure? One of the very reason that submarines have a depth limit on their structural integrity. This is caused by gravity. The closer you are to the center of the earth the more gravity with exert it's force. The same can be said about air.

Ok, now, remembering the facts I just mentioned, and the other fact gained from http://www.sciencetheatre.org/ask_st/042496.html, it can be concluded that

YES energized matter (hot stuff) does tend to rise for all liquid (or any other material with variable density throughout it's body) provided that gravity it being exerted upon it.

BUT heat itself doesn't rise through a medium. Try it this way, if you have a block of SOLID (non-variable density material) copper and you put a heater on 1 side, would the upper part of the copper get hotter faster than the bottom part (imagine the block of copper to be suspended in mid air to remove the possibility that the heat that reach the bottom part may be transfered to any material you're putting the copper on)?

So... you're quite correct in thinking that the oil on the bottom would be cooler, but since we're tanking a difference of less than quarter a gravity, the temp difference would be very small.
Even more so it there's 1-2 agitators in the oil; which both you and I agree would be good to have in any case.

If you want to account for heat being more commonly place itself up, then I have a suggestion for MattZani there.

Since you're sealing the water reservoir already, why don't you put the position in reverse?
The water reservoir on top and the oil filled container on the bottom part.
You'd just need to redesign the fins going through the oil part to avoid any components and extend it even more downwards.
The fins with touch the coldest water and hottest oil.

One major advantage of this design is that the water part can be removed to easy cleaning (since the top doesn't need to be sealed) and you can also clean the bottom (oil filled) part as well. The pump can also be put inside the reservoir since it's no longer sealed.

Another improvement to this would be to put heat pipes replacing the fins. We couldn't do this before with the water being below, but if it's above, it can be done. Expecting 50 deg average load temp is not a far fetch anymore.

We're going on MODULAR DESIGN on this one, that's soo cool.

Just a major concern on this new design though. If it leaks... the water WILL go through your oil filled container, and it will be A LOT more than tiny bubbles of water vapor that I was concerned about in my own design.

In my design if it leaks, it just create a mess... ok a BIG mess, but your computer would still be ok (since I'm still having the heatsinks and fans). If you have water with impurities touching components, it'll create short circuits.

You can always place the reservoir on the side instead of directly above the tank. It'll be far more complex though. Otherwise you can just make extra sure not to have any leak in the first place.

OR, you can have a second (empty) rather small room just below the water reservoir channeling any water droplets to the side of the case. You can design it like the water collection design in a rice cooker.

[Smirnof]

Me personally, im just gonna pump the oil through a radiator. I think that will be the most efficient way of cooling the system down... and its much simpler.

Another thing im tempted to try is using a whole transmission cooler (which should be about the size of the side of the case... smaller actually...) and then see if i can't get it to be passivly cooled... That would be one quite machine until i ran the antivirus scan . One of these days i would like to get one of those expensive solid state hard drives... but for now i havta deal with my budget.

Im just trying to think of the next badass mod...

Also i think you could get the amount of liquit and the containter for your mainboard pretty small if you built it right... and i was tinkering with the idea of removing the power supply from its case and taking all the heatsincs off of them... it should be pretty small at that point, and you could fit a great deal of your computer into a space as big as 9x12x5 1inches, and that would give me about 2.33 us gallons... which while it won't keep the pc very cool for very long without a radiator, all my designs are going to incorporate one into them. Im tempted to do like a triangle design... or a 4 sided something like...
_____
| : : : \
| : : : c\


Where the outline is my plexiglass, the colons represent pci and video cards and the c is where the cpu would be... only on a shallower drop... whatever is necessary to go from the video card (high point) to the edge of the pc (Low Point). Just to make it smaller and use less fluid.

And then something like:
______
| : : : p|
| : : : c|

Where the p would represent a taken apart psu and inverted and mounted to the top of the plexiglass upside down... the biggest downside being that you would have to build and seal your container around your board making it very difficult to repair or upgrade. anyways im done ranting lemme know what yall think.

[Smirnof]

Oh ya... and that page... while i understand everything on it and it is accurate, looks to have been written by a 5th grader

[kitizz]

lol... let's not get off topic now XD
this is about submersed PCs, science debates are for other forums.
Anyway, with regards to the power supply; I don't really want to put that under aswell, I'd liek to keep it up out of the water, but I'm having trouble trying to think of a practical way to do it and still have the overall thing lookign good. It makes it more dificult due to the mess of power cords you need to get into the tank from the supply.
Ideas welcome.
Cheers.

[washu9]

Oh ya... and that page... while i understand everything on it and it is accurate, looks to have been written by a 5th grader

Hahaha, it's written FOR 5th grader. Once in a while, there's always kids who ask these sort of questions and made the teachers wish the end-of-period bell rang a bit sooner.

Ah, not that I consider you to be a fifth grader of course. I just think it's simple and to the point.


Hmm, now you're thinking of making a micro ATX form PC.
I don't think that form factor can fit any of the high-end video card.
They're huge.

I never tried building a micro ATX before so I couldn't give you any input on the position and stuff, but your concern about having a sealed container is quite valid. Even if the motherboard is not broken, you'd need to damage your setup just to add more drives.

[MattZani]

if a water cooling pump could pump the oil, then that would be great, or if there was a similar low cost low noise pump.

on another forum discussing this, someone had the idea to make the whole curved front section, and the side thats the front sealed off, and used for fish, then it would appear that fish are swimming around your PC. that could also be a way to keep the oil cool, because the water would need to be warmed for the fish, and the heat would transfer into the water, THUS cooling the oil, and having fish in one tank. it would be soo much easier, and give you fish, and might off set some of the cost (by saying its a fish tank) or let you have a slightly bigger tank.



NOW IN 3D!!!!!

all the panels are acrylic plexi glass, Except the outer shell, which is the fish tank.

[PCC-James]

Hi MattZani,

Nice work on your oil cool pc #2 with fish plan. Only one problem. While the temperature of the oil is fine in PC terms, the amount of heat that would be transferred to the water would be deadly in fish terms.

[MattZani]

damn, i thought it would be about 30 deg? im only going to put an old P4 and ATI Rage GPU in there, not a brand new 8600!

[washu9]

Hi MattZani,

Nice work on your oil cool pc #2 with fish plan. Only one problem. While the temperature of the oil is fine in PC terms, the amount of heat that would be transferred to the water would be deadly in fish terms.

I concur with the assessment. Unless you have some way to effectively remove heat out of the water you'd end up with dead fish.

Also to note, underwater plant-life is more susceptible to environmental changes. I doubt you can keep one for long in these.

Another thing you might want to consider. I got a fish pond. Those fish sometime jump out of the water through the top for no reason. You might want to consider having some type of lock on the lid.