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Full Immersion Cooling Comes To Desktop PCs

Posted by timothy on Wed Aug 27, 2008 04:28 PM
from the please-don't-drink-the-flourinert dept.
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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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Firehose: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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Full Immersion Cooling Comes To Desktop PCs 25 Comments More /

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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, @04:40PM (#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, @04:41PM (#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.
        • 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.

      • $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.

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

    by Bromskloss (750445) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @04:32PM (#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?

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

    by sabatorg (1279426) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @04:38PM (#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) <datsun510NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday August 27 2008, @04:43PM (#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...

  • Unrealistic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HermMunster (972336) on Wednesday August 27 2008, @04:46PM (#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, @05:48PM (#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.

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