Want to submerge your PC?

P

phasmatis_nox

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 24, 2003
Messages
1,519
Mineral oil is nonconductive and clear. It's long been ruled out by modders as a solution 'cause you'd have to buy lot of little bottles of it and it's fairly expensive. I recently found a local place that handles up to 6500 gallons of mineral oil at a time, and if anyone is interested I could look into getting it by the gallon/bucket.

Let me know.
 
Yeah, I'm all for mineral oil except it would make my fans stop turning and overheat everything... j/k (that really was my stupid first thought tho)

i am a nūb at this sort of extreme cooling though... would all components be submersible, or would hard drives and psus have to be out of the mix?

if it's oily, how would you clean it off everything when you're finished? and how much does it cost?

thanks for entertaining my annoying questions!
 
I'm guessing it'd reak havoc in other ways. Many, many parts are designed to move and are not designed to have a fluid inside them. Your CD drive couldn't read discs, and yes a hard drive has moving parts too.
 
Using this style of cooling is not intended to cool Cdrom's and such, just designed to submerge the mother board and CPU and maybe GPU if you make it deep enough. I've seen an experiment w/ this stuff before. It's best use is to stop condensation from forming when your using very extreme cooling solutions like LN2 or something. You could even design and suberge a coil of evaporator in the oil to absorb and remove the heat.
 
Come on use your heads guys. :rolleyes:

You're not going to submerge anything that has moving parts. If you do it won't be of much use to you for long afterward.

This stuff is a bit thicker than water so you would need a strong, probably industrial grade pump to move this stuff around. Or as gclg2000 stated, put some kind of cooler element submersed into the oil with your gear.
 
gllg and wolf are right- you submerge the motherboard, CPU and GPU and whatever else is directly connected to the motherboard, like sound cards. Leave the drives out of the mix. Theoretically, PSUs can be dunked as long as you keep fluid running through them- fans probably won't like to turn in mineral oil all that much, as it's much less viscous than air.

Hard to clean? Yes. I think drug store acetone will cut it though, haven't tried it myself.

If somebody wants to send me some dinery for the oil, I'd be glad to do a bench test if I could get some dummy components.
 
could re-work a PSU with fans removed and a submersible pump directing a stream of oil into the normal intake area...........

i would think that you would do the same with the CPU and GPU: have submersible pumps directing jets of oil at heatsinks attached to them as normal, with fans removed and some kind of phase change heatpump chilling the whole volume of oil.........

if someone were to do it, heatsinks intended for low noise/passive cooling use would probably be best, because they are designed with widely spaced fins that would allow for better oil circulation, as compared to the tightly packed fins of active coolers.
 
This is cool idea's guys. But i've seen this all done before. The thread i saw the guy put it all over his mobo, and it keep the LN2 from making extreme condensation over everything, The oil was at about -10 C. Except w/ LN2 you have to keep supplying it. With a coiled of evaporator in the oil it would be continuous, and stop condensation.
 
Any technical specs comparing these mineral oils to Midel 7131. I can get Midel relatively cheap but they tell me it can be bad for rubbers/plastics.
 
Damn. Just Damn.

I wonder what the problem was. I bet it was the PSU.
 
Zinn said:
Yeah, I'm all for mineral oil except it would make my fans stop turning and overheat everything... j/k (that really was my stupid first thought tho)

i am a nūb at this sort of extreme cooling though... would all components be submersible, or would hard drives and psus have to be out of the mix?

if it's oily, how would you clean it off everything when you're finished? and how much does it cost?

thanks for entertaining my annoying questions!
Click to expand...
hdd's are certainly not submersable and i probably wouldnt go as far is submersing the psu
 
Decker87 said:
I'm guessing it'd reak havoc in other ways. Many, many parts are designed to move and are not designed to have a fluid inside them. Your CD drive couldn't read discs, and yes a hard drive has moving parts too.
Click to expand...
Umm...it's called either a.)mod it or b.)get a case made for submersion...
 
Just a quick question,

how come no one has tried submersion in distilled/deionized water or another really clean kind of water?

Also, why is it considered expensive? According to one dealer I found, 5 gallons is just $50. That's very little compared to water cooling, and 5 gal is certainly enough to submerge a motherboard/cpu.
 
Dude, water is a conductor....no matter how clean it is, it will fry your computer...that would be like submerging your comps' innards into your bathtub...you need to use a non-conductive fluid.
 
No, clean water is not conductive. We humans regard it as conductive because the salt on your skin, when in contact with the water (salt is ionic) comes off and makes the water conductive (dirties it).

EDIT: Just to add, a friend of mine who engineers wastewater treatment plants noted that they actaully measure "TDS" of the water in their plants, or "total dissolved salts".
 
Even if you had a "non-conductive" water, it still would cause corrosion. Heh....I can see it...........post: " anyone know why my motherboard is covered in rust?" :rolleyes:
Unless you can buy your equipment in gold.
 
So, let me get this straight.....the thing(s) that actually cause water to be conductive are the imperfections in it? The particles? The microbes?? Is that how it is? Wow, if that's so, I really did absolutely not know that! That's some good information though, thanks. :)
 
well, it's the ions in tap water that make it electrically conductive.

at anything above absolue zero, even the purest of pure H2O contains some OH ions and H3O ions from self-ionization, but distilled water has a VERY low conductivity.
 
Wow, I can't beleive I never learned that.... :mad: I'm pissed at every science teacher I have ever had! This is insane to me....imagine thinking something was a certain way for so long, and finding out that it's totally not what you thought....insane, wow, I'm very amazed here...just, wow...crazy! Well, thanks guys. Also, if water is at absolute zero, it can't conduct electricity? Can electricity get frozen at absolute zero?
 
at absolute zero, electrons stop moving. the motion of electrons is what conducts electricity in most substances, therefore at absolute zero, nothing conducts electricity.

my point was more that water will always conduct SOME electricity, even when perfectly pure, just not a whole lot.

when you get really close to absolute zero, some things become superconductors, but at absolute zero, nothing conducts anything.

problem is: you can never acutally get to absolute zero. you can get really close, but never actually hit it.
 
mwarps said:
It's a dielectric.
Click to expand...

It can be used as a dielectric or as a swimming pool. That has nothing to do if it is electrolytic or not. Electrolytic conductivity (like that of water) is when dissociated ions are what carry a charge. Electrolytes can be dielectric or nondielectric depending on how they are used and their purity. I study in chemistry a lot, so sorry if some of you here are lost. This doesn't have much to do with cooling, so

DFI Daishi said:
well, it's the ions in tap water that make it electrically conductive.

at anything above absolue zero, even the purest of pure H2O contains some OH ions and H3O ions from self-ionization, but distilled water has a VERY low conductivity.
Click to expand...

This is correct. Water always has some ions, in fact you need some ions for common electrolysis of water.

DFI Daishi said:
at absolute zero, electrons stop moving. the motion of electrons is what conducts electricity in most substances, therefore at absolute zero, nothing conducts electricity.

my point was more that water will always conduct SOME electricity, even when perfectly pure, just not a whole lot.

when you get really close to absolute zero, some things become superconductors, but at absolute zero, nothing conducts anything.

problem is: you can never acutally get to absolute zero. you can get really close, but never actually hit it.
Click to expand...

This simply is not true. At absolute zero the kinetic theory dictates that molecules/atoms stop moving, however movement within them is not stopped. Kinetic theory basically says that everything stops, however the field of quantum physics has proven this wrong experimentally. (no, they didnt get to abs zero, but they dont have to)

In fact, although kinetic theory says that everything stops (In theory, a perfect solid) the basis of quantum mechanics, the heisenberg uncertainty principle, actually states that there is no exact phase/state at this temperature, and experiments have shown that rubidium very close to ABS zero does show different phases. Odd, huh?
 
lesman said:
Wow, I can't beleive I never learned that.... :mad: I'm pissed at every science teacher I have ever had! This is insane to me....imagine thinking something was a certain way for so long, and finding out that it's totally not what you thought....insane, wow, I'm very amazed here...just, wow...crazy! Well, thanks guys. Also, if water is at absolute zero, it can't conduct electricity? Can electricity get frozen at absolute zero?
Click to expand...

Also, the flush of toilets has nothing to do with the coriolis effect. :) It was kind of funny when my old HS chem teacher told the class that, and I disproved it.

Also, to what I said above, wikipedia said a lot of the same stuff I did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_zero
 
electronics like we use would mess up before you get to those temps. We already start to run into problems w/ we get to -140 or so. Things start crashing and burning.
 
Thia is toward one of the purified water statements....
So if ions and movement of them and other things in water are what conducts electricity, then even the tiniest amount can still short out the comp if it's submerged in it, correct?
 
lesman said:
Thia is toward one of the purified water statements....
So if ions and movement of them and other things in water are what conducts electricity, then even the tiniest amount can still short out the comp if it's submerged in it, correct?
Click to expand...

gclg2000 said:
ya, it can. Still have H30+ and OH- ions though. Which will still conduct some.
Click to expand...

No. pure water has mainly free H ions and OH ions.
To be exact, pure water has a resistivity of about 1.8 * 10^5 ohm-m, making it around 3000 times more resistant to the flow of electricity than the most resistant silicon used in computers. In fact, its more close to the resistivity of glass.
 
Decker87 said:
No. pure water has mainly free H ions and OH ions.
To be exact, pure water has a resistivity of about 1.8 * 10^5 ohm-m, making it around 3000 times more resistant to the flow of electricity than the most resistant silicon used in computers. In fact, its more close to the resistivity of glass.
Click to expand...
Hmmm, so your saying that it can actually be safer than silicone?

EDIT: off topic, but has anyone here ever drank water as pure as were talking about? Does it taste good? Just wondering! ;)
 
yes, i have. it tastes like nothing. litterally nothing. you should be able to get sealed bottles of it at the drug store.
 
Decker87 said:
No. pure water has mainly free H ions and OH ions.
To be exact, pure water has a resistivity of about 1.8 * 10^5 ohm-m, making it around 3000 times more resistant to the flow of electricity than the most resistant silicon used in computers. In fact, its more close to the resistivity of glass.
Click to expand...
maybe my prof is just behind the times, but he indicated that it was a bit of a toss up between the ions being free H+ and the H+ being bound up as H3O with any H2O that recieves the extra hydrogen passing if off instantly to the next.
 
DFI Daishi said:
yes, i have. it tastes like nothing. litterally nothing. you should be able to get sealed bottles of it at the drug store.
Click to expand...
Really? I'd like some....I wonder if it's good for you...I mean, the extra crap in tap water is supposed to "good" for you, as it contains certain minerals and whatnot....hmm, I'll think about picking some up.....I wonder what differences it would make if I drank that instead of tap or normal bottled water... :confused:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top