Soak Your PC in Mineral Oil: Puget Systems Announces DIY Aquarium Cooling

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actually...according to Puget's own website, their newest version of the Submerged PC does have the hard drive submerged. They did it by using a Solid State drive.
 

estreetguy

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[citation][nom]symota[/nom]actually...according to Puget's own website, their newest version of the Submerged PC does have the hard drive submerged. They did it by using a Solid State drive.[/citation]

Actually...Try reading it again, he said you COULD submerge solid state drives. Jeeze, do you people even read at all ?
 

kelfen

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This could turn out really good if they some how are able to solve fan promblems customize them in such a way that it would move the mineral oil as if it were air or have fans on the top ventalating the hot air out of the case. and some how bring cool air in. plus bring on the mechanical fish!!!
 

Neog2

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This is not anything new. I remember back in highschool in the late 90's
I did a science fair project about the usefulness of non conductive liquids, and actually had a liquid cooled machine similar to this but
a lot less pretty.

And I think tomshardware actually made a machine like this about two years ago.

Cool stuff but yeah like they said. Once its submerged there
really is no way to clean it since its oil and anything
that would be used to clean it would probably be corrosive.
 
So for about $700 you can have your own computer in a fish tank.......

What stupid product in they invent next? I'd rather put $700 into system upgrades, or something more useful. a good case and some fans does well enough for my tastes.
 

smalltime0

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[citation][nom]jerreece[/nom]So for about $700 you can have your own computer in a fish tank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aquarium .......What stupid product in they invent next? I'd rather put $700 into system upgrades, or something more useful. a good case and some fans does well enough for my tastes.[/citation]
Its more than that.
If you are overclocking madly this is brilliant, instead of the standard water block solution for liquid cooling, all the components are submerged, thus all components are cooled. As an added bonus it should be extremely silent.

If you do not realise the significance of a completely submerged unit you should probably not be reading these news reports.

Of course that aquarium looks pretty standard, like something they got for $80 at the petshop, I seriously doubt its worth what they are asking.

Now are the fans on the radiator temp controlled?
 

pwolf72

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Regarding the fan issue, you don't need them when dealing with a liquid like this. They use aquarium pumps I think to move the oil for cooling already, just set up the return to point at the CPU and Video heat sinks, that will work just fine. I would not mount the power supply inside the tank though. It would be much easier to deal with the drives and external power requirements with a dry supply IMO. The fewer cables that need to snake out of this monster the better.

One problem I have seen with using mineral oil and other viscus oil like liquids in other aplications. Depending on the environment outside of the tank you can encounter a wicking effect were the oil crawls up the cables. Even inside the cables given enough time. It is not as fast or disruptive as water in this process, but it can impact other hardware and make a mess over time.

Also you will need to do something to cover or mitigate the smell of it, LOL. it may be fine in the garage, but try living with this in your house LOL, major wife/girlfriend agro.
 

noobe1981

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The fan issue, probably wouldn't be that big of an issue. You got to remember the mineral oil is gonna be flowing anyways *radiator, pump*. You wouldn't need to turn your fans on high. You could probably keep them on low.. And while it would still stress the fans, but I could still see them lasting a while.

I think the biggest problem would be the smell the other stuff you could work out. Not to mention.. Something as simple as this I could build myself for probably half the price.
 

ultim8wpn

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[citation][nom]Darkk[/nom]Isn't mineral oil flammable?[/citation]
yes it is sir, those Hawaiians use it to spitfire/ and firespin XDDD
 
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mineral oil has been used in power transformers for years, whoever said the smell of it is bad is right
 

sticks51412

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I have done this befor to a PC. It is pretty cool however do not do this if you ever plan to removed the PC from this. The Mineral Oil will stick on the board for good. I still have the mainboard we used to do this and there is still oil residue left over from over 5 years ago.
 

Blessedman

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A very thin liquid like this would seep into a sealed bearing and wash away the grease which would contaminate the oil (I would imagine). So like another poster stated the liquid would alone would provide enough thermal dissipation.
 

gm0n3y

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So how about running a sealed water cooling rig on the major components (CPU, GPU, Chipset, etc) and then submerging that in the oil. You get the superior flowrate of the water cooling and the entire system cooling from the oil. Hey you could even throw it in a freezer since condensation wouldn't be an issue.
 

ammezz

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Sweet, I just got my new gtx 280, can't wait to pop it in and run crysis...

can't imagine the process of making a simple upgrade
 
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it would be sexy to come home one day to find a dead rat floating around in a case like this.
 
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