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Full Immersion Cooling Comes To Desktop PCs

Posted by timothy on Wed Aug 27, 2008 03:28 PM
from the please-don't-drink-the-flourinert dept.
Hardware Hacking Toys Upgrades Hardware
mr_sifter writes "After three years of research and around £100,000 of R&D costs, UK-based Armari has unveiled its XCP prototype. It's a full immersion liquid cooled PC which supports standard ATX components. Unlike conventional liquid cooled PCs, the components are all easy to swap in and out as they're swimming in liquid, rather than under waterblocks. It also looks amazing, pumping around 70KG of electrically inert cooling fluid (salvaged from an old Cray) around its military grade perspex shell."
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Submission: Full immersion cooling comes to desktop PCs by mr_sifter (1000807)
[+] Ask Slashdot: Coating a Motherboard In Thermal Resin? 272 comments
Bat Country writes "I've had an idea in the back of my head for some time (and I'm surely not the only one) that it would be a worthwhile project to coat a motherboard in thermally conductive electrically insulating resin — complete with all of its various components — for the purpose of immersion, shock resistance, whatever. I'm curious to find out if anyone's undertaken a similar project or if it's known to be a shockingly bad idea (due to shrinkage during the curing process) already. Thoughts?" If you've done anything similar (even an experiment that failed), how did you go about it?
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  • No offense, but this just seems like an elaborate waste of money. We've seen immersion pc's before ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M80eUcUVrmw [youtube.com] ). Other than a fancy case and a waterfall, what makes this any different? Why is it worth £100,000 versus a fishbowl PC that'll set you back $200? Give us some decent benchmark results at least; as of now though, I see nothing really original other than a cool case mod here.

    • Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:5, Funny)

      by lgw (121541) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @03:40PM (#24770189) Journal

      Ah, but this is just step 1. In step 2 they add a trained octopus to each tank that will do your PC repairs for you. Then you'll really see the value! Just don't forget to feed your octupus, or it will come looking for food on it's own.

    • Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by b4upoo (166390) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @03:41PM (#24770211)

      It can be a superior mode of building. A waterfall is not what is called for. Rather a radiator like device is sufficient. That puts the cooling fans outside the case for easy maintenance.Dust inside a PC as well as corrosion are warded off completely in such devices. If done right it is a superior build. If done wrong it can make a mess.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Chad Birch (1222564)
      The summary said that the R&D costs were £100,000, not that it was the price of the PC.

      I know, actually read the summary, must be new here, etc.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ian Alexander (997430)
      Um, it never says that the case costs £100,000. It says that bringing the case to completion took them that much in R&D. Making something is cheap. Working out how to make it right is expensive.
    • no doubt.

      Wake me up when they put a pc in a high vacuum. You could even put the turbo pump in a different room.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by pcutilisateur (1349815)
      I will add my voice to the flood. Yes, this seems to be a waste of resources. These days we need cpu which consume less resource because vast majority of us are buying laptop PC. I love desktop computers because they can be upgrade but I don't think I would built a machine that require an AC. I wish companies will reseach in building batteries that will last six months, and pc manufacture & software companies will spend their time building technology that will consume less energy. This is where the mar
    • And get much better performance. All you need to cool on a PC for top performance is the CPU and the northbridge, maybe some of the voltage regulators, and the GPU if you want to overclock that.

      • $400 ? I'd love to see a link.

        True phase-change cooling usually costs a grand for the kit, then you still have to gut your chassis to fit the ginormous cooling colon^H^Humn. Plus it's noisy as hell. It would require substantial improvements in both areas before ever being considered for general use in PCs.

        This fluorinert jobby is probably whisper quiet, but I don't see anyone racing to order one. In a Cray, the liquid made sense because they were huge machines and it wasn't realistic to even try to cool them with air. Today's computers are reduced to a single board, with a few very localized heat sources.

        Having a big body of liquid will actually hinder the heat dissipation, because the liquid moves far slower than air, and your CPU is putting out 100+ watts of heat in a tiny area, or in my case 350 watts, turning the area near the CPU into a mini deep fryer - definitely not cool!

        Given how today's air coolers can run whisper quiet (at stock speeds and voltages), I just don't see where immersion cooling could possibly fit in the PC market. It doesn't work any better than a high-end air cooler (Ninja or TRUE120), doesn't overclock anywhere near as well as TEC+water setups or phase change, and costs 50 times more.

        • I'm not sure where you got the idea I was suggesting a different immersion liquid. If you checkout the rest of the comments on this story you'll see that I discuss fluorinert at least 3-4 times. I'm merely suggesting that wasting ~10k USD on coolant and then building a giant gaudy waterfall enclosure isn't exactly how I'd go about doing a project like this. A much smaller volume of liquid in a much smaller container with radiator/fan cooling could be assembled for about 2-3% of the cost they've incurred. Likewise a conventional closed loop cooling system that isn't fully immersing the system could be built for only a few hundred dollars and effectively cool all the components nearly as well and certainly be more cost effective. If you wanted performance you could build a whole cluster of either of the systems I've described for the cost that this article is advising.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by PitaBred (632671)

          ...right. OSHA totally rates mineral oil mist [osha.gov] as a 1 (slightly flammable). Mineral oil is even used commonly in HV transformers, which reach MUCH higher temperatures than will be experienced by even malfunctioning computer parts.

      • An interesting thought, however as they are advising that the case could be used with standard off the shelf ATX computer components it seems highly unlikely that any sort of fluid dynamic or thermal analysis is going to be relevant across the wide spectrum of components that could be used in it. I'm thinking that the 10k USD worth of flourinert was their major cost incurred and the rest was spent on tacky LED lighting and heat forming that giant ugly acrylic case. The 100k USD r&d cost is probably mark

  • "You can't use water, of course" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bromskloss (750445) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @03:32PM (#24770119)
    "so the XCP is filled with FLUAHRGHPT." Huh?! What's that again? I can't hear what he is saying. What liquid did they use?

    • Re:"You can't use water, of course" (Score:5, Informative)

      by nycguy (892403) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @03:39PM (#24770177)
      They used flourinert [wikipedia.org].

      • They used flourinert.

        ...which is why this prototype will never see production. They got their flourinert from an old supercomputer, and that's not a viable supply for fullscale production.

        That makes me wonder about their motivations for this PR stunt. Venture capital, anyone?

        More seriously, I wonder if transformer oil could be used for this sort of thing. Flourinert may be overkill... or maybe transformer oil has enough capacitance to cause problems for the extremely high frequencies used on PC motherboards. Anyone know?

    • Fluorinert [wikipedia.org]

      • There's also hydrofluorinert (generally available from 3M) which has some slightly different properties (higher vapor pressure, for one, so it evaporates easier). However, before anyone goes out to play with HFE, they should know that it likes to dissolve [into] silicone seals a bit more aggressively than the other fluorinerts. This is a good thing sometimes, but in the case of a computer cooling system, it might cause big problems.

  • Was I the only one who read it as " Full Immersion Coding Comes To Desktop PCs" ?

    I had a picture in my head of a waterproof system. Perhaps it's a metaphor for coding while drinking a microbrew....

  • All I can say is.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sabatorg (1279426) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @03:38PM (#24770169)
    I am happy that I do not work for the geek squad anymore... can you imagine asking grandma to bring in her 300lbs pc?

  • Fluorinert (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dfn_deux (535506) <datsun510@DEGASgmail.com minus painter> on Wednesday August 27 2008, @03:43PM (#24770233) Homepage
    Flourinert [3m.com] is readily available from 3M in a variety of different compositions. It is the only exotic portion of this type of project and it's cost is the main reason why we don't see more full immersion cooling. I don't know about the rest of Slashdot, but I'd prefer not to spend several hundred dollars per gallon on cooling liquid in exchange for saving myself a little hassle removing cooling blocks from a [more] traditional closed loop contained coolant system. Not a whole lot to be gained from going to full immersion. Also, IIRC, California recently added Flourinert to it's list of potentially cancer causing chemicals, which IMHO makes it less than ideal for a warm LED lit water fall in your living room or office...

  • After the Sony rootkit fiasco [wikipedia.org] why in the HELL would anyone name a computer product "XCP"???!!! [uncyclopedia.org]

    I'm not sure I'd want one. I don't care how quiet it is or how far I can overclock it. If they're dumb enough to screw up with its name, well...

  • Unrealistic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HermMunster (972336) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @03:46PM (#24770291)

    Is never happening ever for the average person and thus makes it just a novelty item. Their design is excessive and cumbersome, not to mention has excessive weaknesses such as cost to maintain, cost to purchase, time to maintain, etc.

    It was tough to decipher their speech as well. Word use and pronunciation were a bit distracting. It's tough when your target audience are distracted by your speech instead of focused on your product.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by VeNoM0619 (1058216)
      Apparently its approx $500 a gallon [octools.com] for the Fluorinert solution.

      Once again, an article that sparks my interest, then someone comes along and destroys it with reality...

    • Re:Unrealistic (Score:4, Insightful)

      by asc99c (938635) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @04:48PM (#24770973) Homepage

      Oh come on - they're asked to show a dream PC and they've come up with a mini and modern Cray-2 - fits the bill perfectly. It's a concept PC - having some interesting ideas, not making people think yeah that's practical. I don't want a BMW with a flexible rubber 'skin' but I think it's a good concept.

      And the speech is just a English accent - a real one! (many British actors on American TV have to learn the English accent generally used on TV). I have similar difficulty understanding a Texas drawl.

  • What a load of bullshit. There's howto's all around the net on how to do this, and has been for a long time.
  • . . . to link to an ad-filled TFA with bandwidth-consuming cheesy music. I hope their server fries.
  • So, you spend $10k on a top of the line rig like this, overclock your CPU to double or even triple normal... which, according to Moore's law means you may have gained 3 years of non-obsoleteness. Don't get me wrong, it's really cool, but is this really more economical (in terms of flops per dollar or some such) than buying a $3k machine, a $3k machine 3 years later, and a $3k machine three years after that?

    • Re:Practical use? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Fulcrum of Evil (560260) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @04:17PM (#24770649)
      since when do computers get twice as fast every 18 months? That hasn't been true for a couple years.

    • If you really need the FLOPS - you'd do it too. I'm working on a project now that requires 9k of custom hardware acceleration. I'm already spec'ing the next gen product to run on a $100 video card in the next year or two.

      I really doubt I would spec this product... though... it looks like a great addition to some evil genius collection though! Would look nice next to the sharks-n-lasers tank!!

  • Not another... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mpapet (761907) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @04:06PM (#24770541) Homepage

    You desktop jockeys have no idea.

    Datacenter workers are far more aware of the demands and complexity of cooling.

    1. It's a commercial pursuit, which is meaningfully different than one-off's from the lab. They must have some customer in mind. If they don't, well, their investors will get burned.

    2. I can easily imagine a commercial application where, perhaps cooling needs overwhelm a building, this may come in as a cheap alternative.

    Get back to us when you've figured out how to cool a rack full of blade servers working near capacity. This may do it more elegantly than air.

  • Midel 7131 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by vimm (1300813)
    rumored to be about 8$ per gallon.... This is just proof that we're in the last few years of VC funding for "amazing, innovative, and revolutionary computer design" instead of something that works.

  • I can see this for extremely dense packed server blades in a rack. Where today our problems are electrical and heat and not compute power. This would solve one of those problems at any rate.

    It's like the good old days of TCM mainframes with massive 400psi chiller pumps.

  • Big deal... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pedrito (94783) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @04:22PM (#24770713) Homepage

    This has been done before with fluorinert and mineral oil. In fact, there was a posting here on Slashdot [slashdot.org] back in 2000 where the guys did liquid nitrogen-cooled fluorinert. Definitely more cool-points (pun intended) for that.

    Fluorinert is definitely a better choice over mineral oil if you ever intend on being able to upgrade or fix the PC, since fluorinert evaporates without a residue, but it's a bit pricey.

  • Surely the Kingdom of Heaven is near (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mesa MIke (1193721) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @04:29PM (#24770781) Homepage

    .. when we have fully baptized and oil-annointed CPU's.

  • How novel... (Score:3, Funny)

    by kungfoolery (1022787) <kaiyoung.pak@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 27 2008, @08:02PM (#24773521)
    That fluorinert-based cooling apparatus comes with a PC.

    • a nice setup with this liquid means that your hardware will stay cool, no overheating in normal wear and tear at all, that translate into a much longer hardware life.

      Fantastic! Now, instead of old hardware continuing to function ten years after Moore's Law makes it obsolete, it will still be usable A HUNDRED years after it becomes pointless to use!

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