[Case Gallery] oil cooling test bed mkii

[shadapar]

To view this case mod, go here.



Specs:
Amd Sempron 1250
Gigabyte GA-M61PME-S2P
1GB DDR2 800
Scythe SCORC-1000

Mods:
made a motherboard tray and back from lexon, removed the red LEDs from the tri color fans, removed the cover from the power supply and mounted a 120mm fan. added some aquarium rock, an air strip (which does have an effect on cooling) and filled with 5 gallons of mineral oil.

This is an update to mineral oil on the cheap. I've been through 2 eclipse system 3 aquariums now. As near as I can tell the heat and oil make the acrylic brittle over time leading to cracks....so I rebuilt it in a five gallon glass aquarium. We'll see how it goes. As before the purpose of this mod is not speed or cooling. Its a pure endurance testbed, I'm looking to see if I can get 2 years of reliable service out of this. Its mainly the motherboard, CPU, and memory I'm interested in testing at this time. The temp photo is what happens when you fill with cold mineral oil.. the temp actually stabilized at 26F. Other than the air pump its dead silent, and by upgrading to a whisper series air pump you can't even hear it.

 

[huraco]

i´m always suprised about the fact the system does run under these conditions, its a cool look for a pc as media center.
i would be pleased if u keep me up2date about ur testings etc.

9/10!

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

sexy

 

[shadapar]

okay...

not to be an emo kid... but two votes of 1 by someone who won't identify themselves and another 1 by someone who just joined today? if you're going to give that low a rating, it would be helpful if you identified:

1.)the reason you don't like it.
2.)the reasoning behind that decision
3.)suggestions for improvement.

because as it sits it looks more like someone trying to artificially boost their own score by low ranking others. That may or may not be true, however without some kind of explanation I have no way of knowing.

 

[Jstn7477]

I gave it a 9/10. I have always been intrigued by mineral oil cooled setups.

Now all you need are some fishies that can live in mineral oil.

 

[shevanel]

Is that mommaboard and stuff submerged in the mineral oil?

Nice.

 

[Jstn7477]

Is that mommaboard and stuff submerged in the mineral oil?

Nice.

Yup, he even has a PSU in the fish tank too.

 

[shadapar]

indeed

everything except the hard drive is submerged in oil. hard drives cannot be submerged unless they're soild state disks.

 

[shevanel]

let me ask this.. once you do this, that hardware is pretty much "scarred" for life? the hardware remains oily right? Dumb question but I wouldn't be surprised if you told me otherwise.

 

[Jstn7477]

let me ask this.. once you do this, that hardware is pretty much "scarred" for life? the hardware remains oily right? Dumb question but I wouldn't be surprised if you told me otherwise.

Good question, something I would like to know myself. I also wonder if the oil can work its way under BGA chips and the CPU socket and get stuck there.

 

[shadapar]

sorta

it does to an extent. you can wipe of the excess and put it near a heat source blowing hot air (not too hot) and the rest of the oil will eventually evaporate away.

I spent a lot of money on fans and heatsinks to get my phenom ii system running under 20db. So I'm using this system as a test bed. If it survives 2 years, then the next major system i build is going straight to the tank.

 

[shevanel]

Can you list a short set of pros and cons for this type of setup, please?

 

[shadapar]

pros.

1.)silent
2.)stable temperatures.
3.)eliminates the 'hot' areas you sometimes get with air cooling
4.)temperatures are more equally dispersed, and it takes a long time to heat that much oil.

cons.

1.)messy
2.)price. the cost of the equipment in this test rig is less than $300.. but the cost of 5 gallons of oil is about $75.
3.)crack the acrylic case, or the glass in this case, and be prepared to wipe up a lot of oil and point a hair dryer or space heater at the rest until it evaporates.

Over all the pro of Silent means more to me than the cons.. provided i can get a reasonable life span out of it. As I said I was having a problem with the smaller acrylic cases cracking after about 3 months. I know you can get the oil to evaporate from previous bad experience.

If I were to run this with something like my phenom ii and crossfire I would definitely add a water cooling pump and radiator. If i did that I'd probably wire a temperature sensor to a fan controller. cooling passively unless the temps rose above a certain level.

 

[Jstn7477]

Probably the difficult issue with using the mineral oil bath is cooling the oil and getting it to circulate, although you can probably use the same principles you might use in water cooling to circumvent this issue.

 

[shevanel]

Something tells me you love it quiet around the house.. If I slept at your house I'd probably just barely hear my heart beating over the sound of the worms digging holes under the house, no?

LOL..

thanks for the info man, this is cool thread.

 

[BraveSoul]

im fascinated by this

 

[t77snapshot]

I have a feeling that all these 1/10's are posted by the same person registered under different names. What do you have against shadapar? I think you should take your immature actions elsewhere because the people at TPU respect one another.


*Anyway very nice build! I've always liked oil submerged rigs, it gives a PC that non-computer look and is a great way to experiment with different ways of cooling your hardware. Good job man! 8/10

 

[cgoodman381]

Never seen anything like this.... very cool

 

[shevanel]

I gave it a 9. i7 in oil gets a 10

 

[mAfia_boy]

i gave this rig a 7/10 because im new to oil cooling but am curious all the same, this is the 1st one ive seen so far, i wanna look into this some more though, looks awesome, great attempt at a new type of cooling!!

 

[deadlyrhythm]

I voted 10/10 because:

just awesome

 

[facry 3]

I voted 1/10 because:

0

 

[TechnicalFreak]

I voted 9/10 because:
1.It's "odd", I like odd stuff
2.I don't have one like that..
3.That is a mod..

 

[huraco]

I voted 10/10 because:

it's real cool and i hate the 1/10 vote that has no discripttion at all..

 

[Play3r]

I voted 10/10 because:

Haha thats epic!