Want a Cool and Quiet PC? Dunk it in Oil

The Last Gunslinger writes "Tom's Hardware Guide has published an article (complete with video) showing how they employed their own approach to the liquid cooled computer. To offset the loss of normal airflow around their Athlon FX-55 and GeForce 6800Ultra, the mad scientists in the lab decided to fill the case up with 8 gallons of cooking oil. The oil temperature leveled off at a comfy 104F during benchmarking operations intended to tax both the CPU and GPU to their limits. Interestingly enough, they first attempted this operation using deionized water. It worked for 5 minutes before developing short circuits...but the hardware was amazingly undamaged." Slashdot has covered similar projects in the past but it was neat to see the differences in oil and the look at capacitance around the CPU pins.

Put an Intel in there

[homerules (688184)]

...and make french fries.

And for those one-handed computing sessions...

[R2.0 (532027)]

the lube is right there!

Pre-warmed, even.

mineral oil is what you want in there

[swschrad (312009)]

if it's good enough for x-ray and broadcast transformers and particle accelerators, it's good enough for your pc. it's less likely to grow crud, very much less likely indeed to harbor water, and readily availiable.

What's that, boss?

[mmell (832646)]

The quarterly financials? Sure. Oh, and the software projections? You've got it.

Would you like fries with that?

Duh

[shawnce (146129)]

they first attempted this operation using deionized water. It worked for 5 minutes before developing short circuits

Have to say that is kinda of dumb to try... de-ionized water is a great solvent and would love nothing better then to leach ions from material it comes in contact with.

Re:Duh

[Vellmont (569020)]

I'm sure in hindsight it's a dumb thing to try, but sometimes you can get unexpected results. I think there was probbably enough garbage on the motherboard to provide enough ions to establish a current. I wonder what would have happened if they had rinsed the motherboard first.

Re:Duh

[tjebe (830017)]

Also, vegetable oil is a good solvent for a lot of polymers. And I imagine that there are several oil-soluble polymers on a motherboard. It might not dissolve them quickly, but it'll do it eventually.

Re:Duh

[Fishead (658061)]

I don't know, the last place I worked at had a LASER welder that used De-ionized water flowing over the flash lamp (~400 volts) to keep the bulb at a set temperature. We would buy distilled water from the grocery store and change the water about once every 3 months. What probably made the difference though was that there was de-ionizing resin in a chamber that the water would flow through on its way to the Flash Lamp. It was really expensive if I remember correctly. I don't know much about it, but it consisted of really tiny plastic like beads about .5mm in diameter that also had to be changed at the same time as the water.

Oil Change Intervals?

[twiddlingbits (707452)]

Do you have to change the oil and filter every 3000 programs? On the bright side, you can use to old oil to make bio-diesel!

Previous such experiments

[jd (1658)]

There was one experiment covered on Slashdot a looong time ago in which the person used mineral oil. Full emersion cooling has a major problem in that it would be easy to get backwaters in which there is little or no circulation. Air bubbles can also be a headache, for a similar reason.

You've got to watch the thermal range, if you're wanting to do extreme cooling OR run really hot hardware. Some of 3M's synthetic liquids are excellent for this type of project - well, they would be but only a handful of enthusiasts have ever been able to afford them.

Finally, although you only need to extract the amount of heat being put into a total emersion system, you've got to cycle through most/all of the liquid in a reasonably short period of time. You shouldn't rely on the heat simply transferring through the liquid. Besides, if you do that, some regions will be hotter than you'd like and others colder, even if the average is just fine. The average doesn't matter, because no component will see the average.

Ugh

[voice_of_all_reason (926702)]

Did this guy take pointers from the William Shatner School of Websites?

You get like half a...

a sentence and then...

have to click Next Page...

Cooling With Oil? Welcome to 1999

[ferrellcat (691126)]

No pics left but archive.org does have a few pages achived from a guy who subsubmerged his Celeron 333 in oil back in 1999. I'm sure even earlier attempts exist...

http://web.archive.org/web/19991122030011/www.accs data.com/drffreeze/FAQ.htm [archive.org]

Note on water damage to electronics

[Savantissimo (893682)]

It's not the water that damages electronics but rather the salts and other ions in the water that allow short-circuiting, and if concentrations are as high as in tap water will often leave conductive salt bridges between pins. (Washing ciruit boards in the dishwasher can be ok, though, if you know what you're doing.)

Deionized water temporarily has no ions but disolves some out of virtually anything, making it an undependable resistor. It also has a whopping dielectric constant that would be a bad idea in any case for a bath for high-frequency circuits designed to run in air.

Transformers have used oil...

[slashname3 (739398)]

Tranformers have used oil for a very long time for cooling. The problem with putting it in a computer case is that over time the oil would most likely work its way into the slots on any cards you have installed and cause the system to stop working. And you have the maintance problem, you want to upgrade that video card but now you have several hours job of draining the oil, removing the existing card, cleaning the slot connectors carefully, installing the new card, sealing the system up, refilling with oil, only to find out that you forgot to set the options on the card correctly, back to step one.

BTW: I saw a tranformer on a pole catch fire once. Spit oil and other stuff all over the cars below it. Very impressive.

Re:Transformers have used oil...

[poot_rootbeer (188613)]

Transformers have used oil for a very long time for cooling.

They also compress and store it in 'energon cubes' and transport it via the Space Bridge in support of the war efforts back home on Cybertron.

Dot 5 Brake Fluid

[itomato (91092)]

Brake fluid (Dot5, silicone based) seems like it would be a good candidate.

Dot3 has awesome heat transfer ability, but collects water, and plays hell with paint (I imagine sensitive electronics to feel similar pain).

Silicone is a dielectric, right? How about PEG? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_glycol [wikipedia.org]

Oil-filled electronics is fun!

[by Anonymous Coward]

We've been immersing electronics in oil for decades. Difference is, we build sonar systems, so we're doing it so the electronics can survive a high-pressure environment, and also because oil provides lots of heat sinking and you don't want to put fans and such in a sonar receiver. Like others have posted, though, it gets heavy: one of our units is only about as big as a Shuttle XPC box but weighs over 75 pounds.

I haven't seen the rancid oil problem, but we've only used a couple kinds of oil: a synthetic type (I'm told it's often used as a base for cosmetics), and castor oil. I have seen circuits change their operation when submerged (due to increased capacitance), but only once: a microprocessor reset controller changed its timing (it used a capacitor connected to a pin to determine how long to wait before letting the machine out of reset). You just have to be careful and watch for these things when designing the circuits.

Water leaks are bad, though water will tend to head down to the bottom. Our equipment is usually made to much tighter specs than any PC case, though (titanium housings and electron-beam welding, and sometimes an anti-corrosion coating). You get what you pay for.

A couple of things we deal with that your average PC builder won't: we have to forgo the use of any component with air inside it (e.g. aluminum can-type capacitors, some clock oscillator chips, really big power transistors), since they'll collapse under pressure (thousands of pounds per square inch), and we have to put a flexible window (or something similar) on one side of the enclosure because the oil volume will change with temperature.

Also... that oil gets on everything, man. No fun to work with. At least it doesn't smell too bad when you have to solder through it. But your hands feel greasy for the rest of the day, even after washing them.

Re:Rancid Oil?

[Gonarat (177568)]

Of course, once the oil turns rancid, things could get interesting as well as smelly...

I thought the same thing -- interesting concept, but cooking oil would either have to be changed every few days or so, or it would get stinky. Of course, they included a plug at the bottom of the case to make draining the oil easier.

They say at the end of the article that they recommend motor oil for long term operation. They used cooking oil for proof-of-concept. I still don't know if I would want the top of the case open as they did, even with motor oil, so I guess some sort of heat exchanger would have to be included to run this with a totally sealed interior. You'd need something to keep the oil at 104 deg F or cooler with the top on -- I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to design something.

Re:Rancid Oil?

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

Always remember the five enemies of oil: SWACH

Salt
Water
Air
Carbon
Heat

These five things will slowly reduce the quality of your oil, forcing pre-mature replacement, and adversly affecting the taste^W [operation] of the product^W [computer].

Salt is introduced into the oil when [you eat] the french fries are salted too close to the vat^W computer. This has immediately damaging affects on the oil. Always ensure that you salt the fries [you are going to eat] in the bin^W^W^W [on your desk] rather than over the vat^W [computer].

Water is naturally introduced into the oil from the air around us, and the moisture contained inside the french fries.^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W Try to shake off excess ice before cooking the fries.

Since air is all around us, there is not too much that can be done to stop this enemy of oil. However, keeping the lid on the vat^W [computer] when not in use has been shown to reduce oxygenation of the oil.

Carbon is introduced into the vat^W [computer] as the french fries are cooked. Use the handheld strainer to remove excess carbon from the vat^W [computer].

Heat is a constant threat to the oil. Since the french fries are often cooked at 400 degrees or higher^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W [Since the computer regularly operates at temperatures rivaling a nuclear power plant], it is important to constantly monitor the clarity and viscousness of the oil. Use of a portable strainer can remove destroyed oil, and allow you to rescue the oil that is still in good condition.

Follow these simple tips, and your french fries^W^W [computer] will remain tasty batch after batch!

* tongue planted firmly in cheek

Re:Rancid Oil?

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

I should call 3M and see if they can find me a non-conductive, inert, non-volitale chemical to submerge a PC in. I'm sure they make one.

You should. But I'll save you the trouble.

It's called 3M Fluorinert, and now that it's come up in two separate discussions in two days, I now know more about the stuff than I ever wanted to. (Great use of company time, eh?)

This is the 3M page about it, they make a bunch of different varieties for various purposes. I believe what you'd want to use on a computer is the '77' variety. (I'm told that's what the Cray II used.) 3M Fluorinert [3m.com]
Some people [parallax-tech.com] who will sell it to you in small quantities (3M wants you to buy 11 lbs.)
And here's the obligatory Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert [wikipedia.org]

Re:uuh.

[Surt (22457)]

How's the buff Asian guy next to you going to feel when he and his machine are doused in cooking oil?

Extra Crispy?

Re:uuh.

[stanleypane (729903)]

you'd have 8 gallons of cooking oil that wanted out, and if you weren't at home could very well destroy the board.

------

Leave it to a geek to be worried about his mobo when 8 gallons of oil spill onto the floor.

I'd rather replace my mobo anyday. Try getting 8 gallons of oil out of burbur. Or better yet, try the same mess on hardwood or linoleum. I can see it now:

(slip) Shit, my fscking back. Gotta hurry, must get up before mobo dies!
 
(slip-splotch-boom) Oohhh... My aching head. How am I ever gonna get outta this mess!
 
(bam-slip)(careening into corner of desk, eye-first) Ahhhh! I can't see! I'm blind! My baby! My baby! Don't worry, I'll save you, baby!

[voice from bedroom] Is everything OK dear? Who are you talking to?

(splotch-bam-boom) Everything fine, honey.. Just a few minor diffi.. (bang)

Honey! Quick, call Compusa, STAT! She's not gonna make it!

Wax might be even better

[goombah99 (560566)]

At Los Alamos National Lab, an early star wars prottype, the Beam aboard a rocket program launched a sub orbital sattelite that had electronic dissipating lots of heat for a short interval. Fans don't work well in space. And weight was a premium. The solution was to fill it with parafin. The parafin not only conducted the heat as a solid/liquid but it also has a phase change from solid to liquid which until the transition was 100% liquid clamped the electronics at the melting temperature of the wax. This required no circulation pumps.

Of course once it all melt then you are back to the steady state conduction of liquid parafin. But if you've ever made candles then you know that melting 8 gallons of wax on a stove burner can take a long time. If you can make that last say 12 hours--a work day-- and then let it cool down overnight you might never melt it all (or have two computers and play ping pong: one always cooling while the the other is heating).

How do you prevent voids?

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

That's a pretty interesting idea. Normally when we think of phase-change cooling it's liquid to gas and vice versa, but solid to liquid phase change is certainly an option too.

What I wonder about though, is whether in a conventional (atmospheric) application, you would end up with voids in the parafin (or other material with low melting point) as it heated and cooled. Obviously this would be a bad thing and could lead to overheating of the chips. I don't know much about the physical properties of parafin -- does it expand and contract as it heats and cools? If so then it seems like it could easily form voids around the chips.

I once worked with a liquid, some sort of long-chain polymer, that had a freezing point of around 40F. If you chilled the whole thing slightly below it's freezing point, that might be able to work in much the same way. Provided of course that it's a dielectric.

Re:Shortening, as in

[Arhat (779830)]

So would this mean a machine cooled in such a fashion could be a Crisco Router.