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

Eberhard Rau From Erdmannshausen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany)

Can't submerge these in the oil bath: All hard disks are sealed in, and equipped with air vents to permit access to the external atmosphere

Andreas Mösli: Why Not Put Disk Drives And PSU Inside The Oil Bath, Too?

Dear Mr. Völkel,

My congratulations on your article on the ultimate oil-cooled PC. I couldn't help but notice that not all components were submerged in oil in your build. Did you make any attempts to completely submerge the hard disk and power supply in oil as well? My idea was to build an all-aluminum enclosure with cooling fins sealed from within, and further sealed on the outside with elastic caulk, so that I could submerge all system components in a special type of mineral oil called silicon oil. This way, you can finally build an absolutely silent PC, which nevertheless delivers top-notch performance! By comparison with conventional oil, silicon oil is more expensive, but also confers absolute certainly that no current flow can occur. This type of oil has long been used as a coolant in large-scale computers, if not in such a rudimentary fashion.

In general, I'd also like to give THG a big thank you for all the various topics and articles you bring to my monitor every day. I find myself dropping in several times a day, just to see what's up!

With best wishes,
Andreas Mösli (Richterswil, Switzerland)