Readers' Responses to Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil

VIDEO 18 FOR DOWNLOAD: The Fascinating DIY Oil PC

The Oil PC under construction: We filled the case for our test machine with eight gallons of vegetable oil while a benchmark was running to finish up our silent Athlon FX-55 system! It also includes a GeForce 6800 Ultra as well as other components. Video 18 presents a completely new chapter in the annals of PC cooling for high-end systems: Here, you'll see a custom-built case with working components filled with eight gallons of oil. All this, while our benchmark keeps on running! These videos from the Munich THG labs have been viewed by a huge audience since their introduction in 2001.

As in earlier videos, we offer Video 18 in three different formats for our readers. We've also taken all possible steps to deliver optimal image quality while using a relatively modest data rate for our video stream.

To grant the wishes of various readers who didn't want to have to install another video codec, we offer this new video in WMV-9 Format for the MS Media Player as well as in Apple QuickTime (H.264) format as well.

Apple's QuickTime makes up for earlier versions and is now easier to serve up than competitive offerings. The video is encoded using the H.264 standard.

In addition, the file is compressed using a ZIP utility, so that users must download a file that's about 20 MB in size. With a playing time of 3 minutes and 45 seconds including stereo sound, this means an average data rate of 5.7 MB/min or 93 kB/s.

Our preference for the DivX Codex has also changed, because the new version 6 does a poorer job of encoding as compared to the preceding 5.2.1 version. Thus, we decided to go with the "old" version for this video. But this whole market has been transformed by new compression methods, in that the Microsoft WMV 9 codec shows equally good characteristics when compared to the DivX 5.1.2 version - and it is also much easier to obtain. Apple's QuickTime Pro 7.0.3 has also made strong efforts to catch up, and now works with a modern H.264 Codec. Handling is better and easier than for DivX or WMV 9. Anybody who downloads the Apple version of the video can quickly confirm this for themselves.

You can download the new video as follows:

If the video won't play back on your system, please download and install the compatible player: Divx Player, Microsoft Media Player Apple Quicktime Player