It would be advisable in general to keep in mind natural convection heat flow when looking at cooling your rig. Since heat rises naturally, any case that is cooled by blowing air in at the top is not a good idea. The same principle that helps a fireplace work well applies to case cooling. When the flue of a fireplace fills with warm air, the rising air draws more cool air in the bottom. Forced cooling using fans should be set up to aid the natural convection flow of heat for higher efficiency. This is true also for liquids.
Warmer water or oil will rise to the top of a tank. bringing in the cooler water at the bottom of a case and letting it rise up and out the top will be more efficient and will provide a higher efficiency. If you are playing with the oil, adding an aluminum heat sink to the opposite wall from the board as in the featured article tests will cause the oil to circulate in the case and improve cooling. A similar effect is used on utility transformers where you see ribs or pipes sticking out the sides of the tanks, they create cooling oil fins that naturally circulate the oil.
As an electrical desig engineer in the transformer business, I have worked with some smaller oil cooled transformers. There are high tech oils used in some of the larger utility transformers but smaller ones typicaly use mineral oil as a coolant. It is lower viscosity than motor oils and won't suffer problems you will find with vegetable oils like oxidation from exposure to air and drying to the greasy goo you sometimes find around the caps of vegetable oil cans. Although it has not been tested (to my knowledge) on a computer board, it is of the highest dielectric strength and a good conductor for heat.
After seeing a few unique set-ups, It occured to me that you could possibly build a cooler using the water cooling parts and a home made heat exchanger from copper refrigerator tubing made to your custom taste that will act as a condenser and run isopropyl alcohol as a cooling medium. It has an excellent cooling characteristic and if it leaked, open the wndow and it will evaporate away (as a preferred medium to water) and it is relatively cheap and available at any drug store.
Warmer water or oil will rise to the top of a tank. bringing in the cooler water at the bottom of a case and letting it rise up and out the top will be more efficient and will provide a higher efficiency. If you are playing with the oil, adding an aluminum heat sink to the opposite wall from the board as in the featured article tests will cause the oil to circulate in the case and improve cooling. A similar effect is used on utility transformers where you see ribs or pipes sticking out the sides of the tanks, they create cooling oil fins that naturally circulate the oil.
As an electrical desig engineer in the transformer business, I have worked with some smaller oil cooled transformers. There are high tech oils used in some of the larger utility transformers but smaller ones typicaly use mineral oil as a coolant. It is lower viscosity than motor oils and won't suffer problems you will find with vegetable oils like oxidation from exposure to air and drying to the greasy goo you sometimes find around the caps of vegetable oil cans. Although it has not been tested (to my knowledge) on a computer board, it is of the highest dielectric strength and a good conductor for heat.
After seeing a few unique set-ups, It occured to me that you could possibly build a cooler using the water cooling parts and a home made heat exchanger from copper refrigerator tubing made to your custom taste that will act as a condenser and run isopropyl alcohol as a cooling medium. It has an excellent cooling characteristic and if it leaked, open the wndow and it will evaporate away (as a preferred medium to water) and it is relatively cheap and available at any drug store.
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