The first review on the HD5970 Sapphire Edition 4GB on Newegg stated something about submerging in mineral oil. I didn't believe it.

Gotta love what Enthusiasts will do.

$671.46? That had better come with a drain basket and a frozen bag of Jalapeño poppers.

Good idea.

However I think they are going about cooling totally backwards. I would take a freon unit from an old drinking fountain and submerge the evaporating coil in the aquarium. Then circulate the oil around in the tank. Use two drinking fountain units if necessary, and try to keep the aquarium oil below room temp. Then overclock the p!ss out of it.

Now THAT is friggin cool.

Does mineral oil coagulate at a certain temperature?

condensation?

The reason oil works is cause it doesn't transmit electricity. Add some water to the mix... things may change.

Guess you've never heard of condensation before, eh? Your idea will fail miserably. Engineering is definitely not your subject, lol.

This whole thing seems kind of stupid. Once you submerge your components, you'll never be able to resell them, or revert back to air cooling - like the article says, it's nearly impossible to clean the oil off. You'll be stuck throwing them in the trash at upgrade time. Furthermore, you've now made your PC a permanent fixture in your home. You cannot take it to a lan party, to a friends house, or anywhere! Even from one room to another will be a big hassle with spilled oil no doubt. What an awful concept.

LOL man this is not for practical use, this is for enthusiasts. This looks cool and is fully functional and enthusiast does not know what the word convenient is. If you expect this thing ti be practical or mobile then im not sure what to tell you.

Dude, it's Puget, not pudget

it is my subject.

And no, condensation occurs only on surfaces EXPOSED TO AIR. Submerging in oil solves that problem. I can't believe I even wasted time responding your post.

No, it thickens gradually. If it clumped up as you suggest, your car engine would be in trouble in the winter. Big Big trouble.

Uhh, you wanna explain how water is going to condense when there isn't any water to condense in the first place? If you submerge something cold as hell into a tank full of oil, there is no water in that oil, and therefore no water can condense on the cold object.

I would learn some basic chemistry before I start bashing someone about their engineering potential there wotan.

And as long as you kept the temp above freezing point of mineral oil.. Something like -30 degrees F then it should be fine.

Maybe id put some mutant oil fish from the gulf of mexico in it just for decoration. The best thing about this setup is watching the fans move in slow motion while tiny bubbles rise from the heat sink. ooh this speaks to my inner geek from the good old days hehe. Outragously expensive though. I did it with a 20$ aquarium tank and a car heater radiator. Was back in the dual celeron days.

I used destilled water and it worked fine with the electrics. However things began to rust and degrade after a while.

Actually, I think putting a cooling system in the oil tank is a GREAT idea. I don't know why you people are thinking there would be condensation in it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensation
Read that. Now, condensation occurs when an object is cold enough for water in the air to condense on it. How can water in the air condense on parts that are submerged in oil? Water would condense on the outside of the tank since the oil would be cold, but that wouldn't hurt anything. Like loomis and abel2 said, you're the one who needs to learn about engineering.
Anyway, if you would be able to get a cooling coil in the oil with the rest of the system, and assuming you have oil that wouldn't coagulate, I'd think you should be able to overclock that think like there's no tomorrow. Not only is your CPU cool, so is the rest of your motherboard... all of it... along with your graphics card, RAM, everything is cold, with no worry of condensation. I'd really think this would be perfect for large amounts of safe overclocking.

I suppose water could condense on the surface of the oil, but you could easily seal the system to prevent that.

I might have to go check that out, it looks pretty nice

Fan-less PC - just add water! No, wait...

Seriously, ten gallons of mineral oil in a PC sounds like a big fire hazard in my opinion. And what about the fumes from the oil?

Just because the system would be submerged in oil it wouldn't make it immune to the effects of condensation.

Water will still sink to the bottom of the oil because of the simple fact that waters intermolecular forces make it more dense than oil. Cool the oil to below the condensation point of the surrounding atmosphere and water can and will condensate on top of the oil and sink.

You could of course make it air tight and try and get a vacuum seal though.

what is the air tight nonsense? Let's say the upper surface of the oil was exposed to air and water condensed on it. The water is heavier and would sink. It would hit the bottom of the tank and STAY THERE. how the hell do you explain any water droplets migrating through super cold oil and attaching to a hot CPU on a main board that is several inches above the bottom of the tank?

Ok, now lets look at reality. A real tank would have a lid on it and would be sealed up. maybe not air tight but unless you pulled a vacuum on it you wouldn't need air tight. The moisture in the air pocket above the oil would lose all it's water content to the surface of the oil and then condensation WOULD CEASE. The condensation on the surface of the oil would then sink to the bottom of the aquarium AND STAY THERE...until someone tapped a drain valve on the belly side of the aquarium and drained it out, of course. (oh sh!tballs, did I say a drain valve? oh my golly, i must be a fraken genius...or not)

Now, let's say there is NO DRAIN VALVE. The water would accumulate down at the bottom. Let it stay there. Who the frak cares? If the water level gets high enough to touch the bottom edge of your motherboard, then you can worry. Then you have options. you can stick various chemical substances down there that are hydrophilic to draw down the water level. The simplest one would be a cotton ball on a stick. Jam the stick down to the bottom and let it sit there for a few hours. the oil would leave and the water would soak up. Then grab the stick and pull it up.

tada, no more water sitting on the bottom of the aquarium.

I'd just like to pile on and tell wotan31 that he really looks like a jackass bashing someone's engineering skills when he himself is wrong.

Wotan: condensation of water occurs on cold objects submerged in air that contains water. Mineral oil isn't full of water, and cold coils can't magically make water appear there. Your rude comment would make you look like a jackass even if you were right, but man, it really looks bad considering you're dead wrong.

Such anger, such anger.

Notice the tense I used?

The word COULD is used in the sense of what POSSIBLY can happen, in reply to those who were saying it couldn't.

You are a self-proclaimed engineer so you SHOULD recognize every angle possible. Including the one I mentioned. No need to get angry.

You said you would circulate the oil, as you should, the water that SHOULD stay on the bottom COULD become circulated as well.

Besides in your anger you SHOULD have recognized I was replying to people who were scoffing at the idea that moisture could get into an oil rich system. I was not pooping all over your grand master scheme that you so vehemently spent years designing and are now defending to the death.

Good luck with your anger management.

If I owned my own PC shop I would build one of these for decoration.

@aft_lizard01&loomis86
...I'm pretty sure I addressed the issue before either of you even brought it up.

Seal the system. Caulk around the wire exits and tape the edges where the cover meets the case. Tada. No more air can get in. That means the only condensation will be from the tiny amount of water in the tiny amount of air you seal in the system - which is negligible.

Condensation sounds so simple, yet so few understand it.

If you take a cold soda can and put it in a hot room, water vapor from the air condenses and collects on the can. If you put it in oil, or even an arid room then there is no water to condense and therefore condensation does not occur. This is so simple, and really shouldn't detract from the fact that this tank works, and people probably already use radiators in it anyway. It's not engineering, it is elementary
science.

If you cool the oil, though, water will condense on the surface of it. It'll then sink to the bottom and has the potential to short-circuit something on the way down.

omg who ever is saying this doesn't work go watch the video and note how long they say it's been running. water and oil don't mix, mineral oil is heavier then water, water floats on mineral oil, test it at home in your garage for yourself like i did.
i wonder if this will work with vegetable oil, despite veggie oil being thicker.

Condensation. I bought my first submerged equipment from puget over a yer ago. I remember when they where first testing the orginal concept some years ago and someone suggested the same thing. They tried it out but the thing would get to cold and form ice, and that would eventually lead to condensation and water. Good thing is oil and water arent the same weight but water is conductive and can wreck havok.

But I have a I7 920 orginally overclocked to 4281.4Mhz on air in a Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard. I took my old rig out of the oil which was a core 2 quad. I placed my I7 920 and asus motherboard in there and was able to overclock the I7 920 up to 4.5ghz stable without a problem. I was able to reach higher clocks but it wasnt stable.

I liked the orginal concept they had so I'm going to check this one out as well. Have to see what all they have changed.

Can I turn off the radiator for a bit and boil some eggs there?

It is your subject? Well how embarrassing for you then! Guess you've never heard of this thing called the "dew point". This aquarium is not operating in a vacuum, it's operating in a room full of air. Chill that oil to below the dew point, and condensation is going to form all over the aquarium. That condensation is made of water. Water is heavier than oil. You will have little droplets of water falling down through the mineral oil and shorting out the mobo as they land on it. Sorry, but a forum full of teenage arm-chair "experts" doesn't change the basic laws of physics, lol.