Fishtank Mod

There was a article about this a few years back on Tomshardware. This setup has a few problems as I saw it.

First: You'll need to cool it on a modern system and oil is much much more viscous than water, so most likely you'll need a special purpose pump ($$$).

Second: Maintenance is going to be a real problem, you'll need to do a oil change at some point and changing parts is a real problem.

Third: It's gonna cost you, and it might perform worse than other solutions such as water cooling (and definitely phase change).

Also don't know if they submerged the HD but one of the comments suggest they did, big no-no for anyone thinking of doing this.
 
well, since oil doesn't conduct electricity, it should be very safe, and the fans will last much longer as well.

The only real problem with this setup is that it isn't practical, it looks like he put in 20 - 30l of oil, which is much heavier than water - so that could be a 40KG+ machine!

I'd love to try it out ons day though, and see how it works, I'm sure I could put together an old working P1
 
SoftDux said:
and the fans will last much longer as well.
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Actually I think the fans might die prematurely, according to wikipedia the viscosity of air is 18.27 x10^-6 Pa.s whereas oil ranges from (olive oil) .081 Pa.s to .985 Pa.s(Caster Oil). In comparison water has a viscosity of 8.94 × 10^-4 Pa.s. I doubt the fan would even move.

Also fans have a high RPM, wikipedia lists some of the oils as non-Newtonian (which means the higher the sheer stress the less viscous the material becomes, the example they use is that you can sink in honey if you walk on it very slowly but run (by pounding on it with your feet), it becomes hard as rock).

EDIT: I just looked at the video, it's a bit hard to tell but the fan they submerged (PSU) seemed to go slower and slower, it looked to me like it was going to stop but they cut away before it did, I think it'd be best to remove the fans...
 
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yes, but even though there's oil flowing through, it doesn't need to "push" the oil away like a boat does. i.e. it doesn't have much counter resistance, and since it's in oil, the bearings will be lubricated the whole time - which is normally why fans pack up - the bearings run dry. The other advantage is there's no dust build-up, another common problem with fans, they are "dust magnents"

And the oil will help cool off the fan motor as well. From their update it's been running for a bit over a year, which is a good time for the factory standard fans (they didn't mention which fan they used)
 
HenryJ said:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php#update

You guys need to read this. All the questions are answered there.
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ya, pretty much everything thats been asked here was covered there...

the fans arent really an issue anyway if you use one of those pump things... and if you dont want bubbles you can just put the inlet and outlet of the air pump in the tank so it just pumps the oil around...

in fact, im not even sure if there would be a big difference between circulating the oil or just leaving it because it should conduct the heat fairly evenly anyway (i think)

im curious about the heatsink they had on the cpu... would that make much of a difference? i mean, the oil is pretty much all around the cpu anyway (or at least the parts that arent sealed)

and they used an external hdd...

where can one get one of those motherboard trays though? i dont think i've ever seen them being sold separately...
 
What they should do for oil circulation is put the whole things on some sort of motorized seesaw that gently socks back and forwards, circulating the oil around. And they could chill it hecticly in a big freezer and then leave it permanently in a coolerbox, with just the cables going in and out.
 
Or leave the fishtank idea and use one of those juice machines to circulate everything :) Anyone wanna sponsor some equipment for me? I wanna try this... :D
 
Ok ... seeing as there are a few of you upgrading soon ... I need help trying to get my friend a PC ... he can't afford a new one ... and wants to buy a component from me per month ... but that will take 3 months ... and I can't afford to help him. Let me know if any of you are getting rid of or selling cheap DDR2 mem, LGA 775 Boards and P4 Processor ... he has everything else. Preferably all 3 in one swoop. The only thing I can give him is a Via board with 1ghz processor which is basically what he is running now (Old old old P4).
 
eitai2001 said:
Ok ... seeing as there are a few of you upgrading soon ... I need help trying to get my friend a PC ... he can't afford a new one ... and wants to buy a component from me per month ... but that will take 3 months ... and I can't afford to help him. Let me know if any of you are getting rid of or selling cheap DDR2 mem, LGA 775 Boards and P4 Processor ... he has everything else. Preferably all 3 in one swoop. The only thing I can give him is a Via board with 1ghz processor which is basically what he is running now (Old old old P4).
Click to expand...

What are you posting this in here for though? :confused:
 
sn3rd said:
Or leave the fishtank idea and use one of those juice machines to circulate everything :) Anyone wanna sponsor some equipment for me? I wanna try this... :D
Click to expand...

I can organise you good prices :D ... my step-dad owns the company in SA that makes the Juice Churners ... but they not cheap, and he won't sponsor for this :P
 
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