Mineral oil PC submerged in aquarium tank

The Mineral Oil PC Is Back!

History

In May of 2007 we blew your minds by building a PC that was fully submerged in liquid, and then selling kits to make your own! Ten years ago we discontinued production those kits, and ever since we have heard your cries asking for this. Well, we finally got tired of all the phone calls asking for aquarium tanks, filters and pump parts, so we’re bringing back the Mineral Oil PC!

The ALL NEW Mineral Oil PC!

We went back to the drawing board and took inspiration from some of our early prototypes for the original Mineral Oil PC. Our original design used Crystal Plus 70T White Mineral Oil, but we asked ourselves, who realistically has a drum of White Mineral Oil in their garage? Veterinarians, that’s who! Statistically speaking though, you are probably not a veterinarian, so to ensure the NEW Mineral Oil PC is as easy to maintain as possible, we have made sure it is compatible with ANY type of oil you might have access to, from 10W30 Motor oil, to extra virgin olive oil, pour it into your NEW Mineral Oil PC and your good to go! Pro tip: to really spice up the aesthetic of your build, we recommend layering a few types of oil for a nice color gradient!

Since 2007, CPU power and heat generation has increased by an order of magnitude, meaning regular old room-temperature oil was not going to cut it anymore. This time around, we are attaching the system to an oil freezer! Imagine the consistency of Jello, that is about the viscosity of the chilled oil in our NEW Mineral Oil PC. Don’t worry, we’ve improved on the design of the circulation as well and can definitely move that Jello oil around the chassis! One side effect of chilled oil is that condensation will build up as a layer of water at the bottom of the tank. You’ll need to make sure you drain that regularly before the water level reaches the electronics!

An AI generated image of a Mineral Oil PC.

Here’s a totally real, not AI generated photo of the NEW Mineral Oil PC. Take note of the custom water loop cooling. Our debut double liquid cooled system is a world first. You read that right! We are also announcing custom water loops starting today! To start, these will only be available in the NEW Mineral Oil PC, because adding liquid cooling to hardware that is already submerged in liquid definitely makes sense and absolutely looks cool!

Testing and Graphs

The reputation and confidence we have garnered in the industry comes in large part to our thorough testing and benchmarking, and we aren’t cutting any corners with the NEW Mineral Oil PC. We couldn’t make an honest claim that oil is the best cooling medium without testing alternatives, and test we did! Based on the results of our testing, we still recommend Crystal Plus 70T White Mineral Oil for best performance, but if you add a bit of wax, it is possible to emulate the effect of a lava lamp, giving the system a very cool retro aesthetic, just be mindful that clumps of wax may occasionally become lodged in the hardware requiring additional cleaning and maintenance.

Joke graph of cooling performance in various fluid mediums

When Can I Buy This!?

The ALL NEW Mineral Oil PC is available now! Click here to be redirected to our product page for the NEW Mineral Oil PC and to configure your system (Robo-fish sold separately).

April Fools!

The Real Future of Immersion Tech

This post is an April fools joke. We hope you were entertained! The Aquarium PC kits are a really fun piece of our history and we enjoyed the novelty. At heart, we are technology enthusiasts! Unfortunately, it still is not feasible to produce these, for reasons that have been discussed previously to be sure, but also, between the final days of the Aquarium kits and now we have narrowed in our focus on delivering the absolute best hardware for your real world applications and workflows. The aquarium PC served mostly as a really cool PC tech novelty. Immersion cooling is a real technology with real practical uses for high end server and datacenter hardware, but the aquarium form factor introduces more risks, inconveniences and complexity than necessary and is not the best use of immersion cooling tech, but more of a proof of concept.

Here are some resources where you can learn more about real immersion cooling applications in high end servers and data centers. Puget Systems currently does not have near term plans to offer immersion cooling solutions, but as we enter further into the high end server space, we remain committed to staying on the cutting edge of computer hardware developments.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Solutions/immersion-cooling

https://submer.com/blog/what-is-immersion-cooling/

https://www.grcooling.com/immersion-cooling-101/