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.

Duh

[shawnce]

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:Rancid Oil?

[Gonarat]

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:uuh.

[Soporific]

When did doing something have to be productive or particularly useful if the do'ers found it exciting and fun? I took up watercooling just because it seemed interesting...

~S

Alternative to oil?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first heard of submerging a computer in oil I Googled the web to see if anyone had successfully done it. I came across a discussion board where a high school kid wanted to use the idea of computer cooling for his science fair project. He wasn't, however, keen on destroying a perfectly good computer with oil. He asked the group if submerging the computer in ethanol would be a better choice, since it would evaporate off when he was done.

Someone in the discussion said, while the cooling properties of alcohol are well known, and his hardware would likely come clean, the possibility of fire, and probably even large explosions wouldn't make it worth while.

Good thing the kid bothered to ask first. I can only assume/hope he got the advice in time.

Re:Put an Intel in there

[krakelohm]

But substandard oil tastes sooooo much better.