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

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1:50 PM - October 29, 2008 by Aaron Heibert

Been eyeballing that old aquarium in the garage (the fish long since gone) for your next extreme system mod and cooling solution? Probably not, but Puget Systems now offers kits for those of you that are interested and brave enough to venture into submerged cooling mods.

Custom PC maker, Puget Systems, has announced the availability of their DIY ‘Aquarium PC’. Puget claims that they have been running their own system for over a year with no ill effects on the hardware submerged within. Some people may cringe at the thought, but mineral oil is completely non conductive of electricity – meaning you could drop anything electronic into it and it will continue to run just fine.

Standard liquid cooling systems have nothing on this baby. Since the entire motherboard and everything attached to it gets entirely submerged into mineral oil. With the aid of a pump and external radiator, everything in the aquarium gets it share of ‘liquid cooling’. As depicted in the images, you can see that the power supply is even inside the tank. A cooler is installed on the CPU – but really all it is there for is to move the mineral oil across the fins as though it were air.

Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that standard fans can move air a lot easier than liquid – since liquid is heavier and denser than air, you may want to ensure that the fan on your cooler and in your PSU will stand up to the increased stress of moving liquid. All current fan manufactures of course do not have a ‘liquid’ rating on their fans, so this would be entirely a trial by fire situation. Puget was unavailable at this time for comment regarding this issue.

We can also see, according to the images anyway, that the hard drives are not contained within the tank itself – this would be for obvious reasons, anything gets inside your drive and its pretty much toast since what goes on inside them happens at a severely high degree of accuracy – something you do not want to mess with. This leaves you with eSATA for your storage option. You could however submerge solid state drives into mineral oil without issue. Keep that in mind. Your CDs and DVDs will not be going for a swim either.

Puget would also like to caution potential buyers that submerging your hardware into any liquid will obviously void your warranty – could you imagine returning a oil-logged video card to EVGA? Yeah, not going to happen. Puget also mentions that mineral oil is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to clean from your hardware – making your hardware dunking madness a one way ticket. Don’t put it in there if you don’t plan on leaving it in there.

The system can be purchased in two separate pieces, the Aquarium Module, and the Cooling Module. Puget’s site claims the cooling module is only needed for ‘high-end’ systems – this would imply that lower-end hardware would not require the massive radiator module. Since nobody buying this would be planning on dunking 8500GTs, it’s a good assumption that you will need the cooling module as well.

The Aquarium Module costs US$312.50 and the Cooling Module US$375.00. More information and parts can be found at the Puget Systems Website.

Source : Tom's Hardware

Talkback
Add your comment
DXRick 10/29/2008 8:19 PM
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Man, for that price you would think they could throw in some fish!

Duncan NZ 10/29/2008 8:26 PM
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Probably wouldn't do too well in mineral oil

joz 10/29/2008 8:32 PM
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If they were geneticly enginereed they would! OMG! USE SLIME EELS!!!

Anonymous 10/29/2008 8:34 PM
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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.

Shadow703793 10/29/2008 9:19 PM
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How is the Toms oil cooled PC now? Did you guys take it down or is it still running/being used?

estreetguy 10/29/2008 9:54 PM
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symota :
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.



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

kelfen 10/29/2008 9:59 PM
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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!!!

one-shot 10/29/2008 10:12 PM
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Isn't that what he had just said? Maybe you didn't read.

Neog2 10/29/2008 11:05 PM
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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.

jerreece 10/30/2008 12:50 PM
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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 10/30/2008 2:29 AM
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jerreece :
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.


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?

eklipz330 10/30/2008 3:10 AM
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passive cooling at its finest

pwolf72 10/30/2008 3:43 AM
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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 10/30/2008 4:07 AM
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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.

Darkk 10/30/2008 5:01 AM
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Isn't mineral oil flammable?

ultim8wpn 10/30/2008 5:23 AM
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Darkk :
Isn't mineral oil flammable?


yes it is sir, those Hawaiians use it to spitfire/ and firespin XDDD

Anonymous 10/30/2008 6:09 AM
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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 10/30/2008 6:34 AM
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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 10/30/2008 7:03 AM
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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.

cl_spdhax1 10/30/2008 8:02 AM
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all we need a couple of cats, and we'll have a good-ole oiled cat-fight.

Hellbound 10/30/2008 8:11 AM
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If you have enough oil circulating, you wont need fans.. The oil is replacing air. Fans are pointless in a bath of oil.

gm0n3y 10/30/2008 6:26 PM
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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.

hurbt 10/30/2008 10:07 PM
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Why cool the oil at all? OC the crap out of your proc, then dump in some fries!

ammezz 11/01/2008 7:01 PM
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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

Anonymous 11/03/2008 10:00 AM
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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.

Anonymous 12/11/2008 3:44 AM
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Well I think this a good idea but it takes a lot of work if you want to find good results and quality I will do my own case with glass then I tell you how it works..

Fadamor 03/05/2009 1:44 AM
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On the plus side, the fan's bearings would ALWAYS be lubed. :) If you forgo the circulating pump/radiator, imagine how QUIET the system would be. Even if you go with circulation, there are submersible aquarium "powerheads" with an intake and a discharge. I have a 50 gallon tank with one of those powerheads for aeration. VERY quiet operation. The bubbles are the only audible noise and they can be valved off.

outacontrolpimp 03/15/2009 11:53 PM
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jerreece :
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.



Thats a pretty dum question, why do people go out of their we to do lots of things. Why add noss to your car, why make planes faster, why study medicine more, why make lights more efficient. Why not? America is about having the best, being the best, making a submerged aquarium PC is one of the best ideas ive seen (ONE of the best). Your a small minded person who only thinks in the box, grow your imagination.

By the way, when people started adding designs to their computers, you probably said the same thing. I have a case and some fans that works fine, why color your case or put it into a table (ect) when you can just have a normal computer.

Fadamor 03/22/2009 2:57 AM
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ultim8wpn :
yes it is sir, those Hawaiians use it to spitfire/ and firespin XDDD

Yes, fireeaters do use it to "breathe fire". But to do so they have to spray the oil in a fine mist. The flash point of Mineral Oil is way up there (like 600 degrees, farenheit) so it does NOT create vapors until you've heated the oil to that point. If you throw a lighted match in a bucket of mineral oil at room temperature - or the temps a premium system might get the oil up to - the match will just go out because there is no vapors to ignite. Heat that oil up to its flash point, however, and you'll get a different result.

Anonymous 04/22/2009 1:57 PM
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If it is ever necessary to remove a component you can clean it with contact cleaner!!

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