Intel tests submerging servers into oil to cut power and cooling costs.
While mineral oil-cooled systems have been around for quite some time now, it seems like a modern iteration of the idea has caught Intel's eye. After a year of use, the company stated that it was pleased with the results of its latest server cooling endeavor. Utilizing Green Revolution's CarnotJet mineral oil cooling system, Intel was able to cut both cooling and power costs.
According to Intel, the tested servers only needed another 2 to 3 percent of server power for cooling, down from the typical 50 or 60 percent overhead of standard servers. In comparison, the world's most efficient data centers from Google or Facebook still run with about 10 or 20 percent overhead.
The major advantage of mineral oil cooling is that it is relatively cheap and can be adapted to work with a variety of systems ranging from small computers to massive servers. Since it is non-conductive, the oil doesn't short out circuits and is harmless to computer hardware. On the other hand, dunking your hardware into oil will void the warranty, and it can be difficult to clean and remove mineral oil from the hardware once it has been submerged.
The cooling alternative is definitely appealing to massive server arrays, saving precious energy and cooling costs. The only downside is that things can get a bit messy, and the oil needs to be flushed and changed every ten years or so.
... wish my car could last without an oil change for 10 years
Why would you want or even need to put a fan on any of the components you just submerged it in mineral oil? And the mineral oil is far more efficient thermal conductor than air any day of the week.
You would need to leave it submerged, because once it is removed from the oil, it heats up (quickly). Servers (and all computers) need continuous cooling, not just once every hour, or every time a process is run (processes are always running).
... wish my car could last without an oil change for 10 years
However, if submerged, you lose the ability to place a fan over the hottest components. Hopefully a passive heatsink over the CPU is enough once submerged.
You would need to leave it submerged, because once it is removed from the oil, it heats up (quickly). Servers (and all computers) need continuous cooling, not just once every hour, or every time a process is run (processes are always running).
I wonder what are the cooling properties of tapioca pudding. Second thought, cooling your PC with something delicious doesn't bode well for the long-term stock of your cooling solution. =]
Why would you want or even need to put a fan on any of the components you just submerged it in mineral oil? And the mineral oil is far more efficient thermal conductor than air any day of the week.
I can imagine a pre-constructed, modular-designed "pod" complete with server blades, SSD arrays, redundant power supplies and I/O connections all immersed in a sealed tank of mineral oil with built-in circulators that a company would lease for say 3-5 years. When done, the equipment would get reused and redeployed for a less-demanding task, or recycled for its metals and mineral oil.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/09/strip_out_the_fans/
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php
They claim no problems even with submerged fans. They were cautious with mechanical HDDs, though.
The article does, in fact, mention the CarnotJet cooling system in the 1st paragraph.
As long as the reservoir is big, I think you can; working under the same premise as the passive coolers: big ass CU/AL fins that dissipate the heat. (plus a pump to move the oil)
In the end they might still need AC for cooling the servers but I think that it would be less.
Yes, you still need a cooling solution, but this is hardly a problem. The hardest part of cooling is getting extreme temperatures away from very small areas, which the mineral oil does quite nicely. Once that is done you can do the rest through heat-pipes, radiators, or even some sort of refrigerant, but because the heat is so easily dispersed from the most dense areas, you can use much lower impact cooling solutions to do the cooling, thus the cooling costs of ~2-3% compared to a normal cooling solution in a traditional server of 40-50%. The same amount of over-all cooling (heat dispersion) is required, but it is simply much easier to cool something with a surface area of several hundred square feet (like a radiator), compared to cooling something small like a U1 or U2 heatsink.