Oil Cooling ????

[Quad Dreamer]

Here is a whacky idea

I am currently looking at building a quad core WC system, but everyone knows that there is always the chance of a leak leading to potential disaster, so i thought why not use oil instead, I use oil with electrics in my work becasue it is good at keeping sea water out of the ROV electrics and and preventing the exspensive demise of the electric hardware.

So with this train of thought why could we not use something like transformer oil to cool the pc parts either in a normal water block, rad, pump setup or going even more far out, completely submerge the mobo, psu, gpu, cpu etc in an oil bath and circulate the oil around a rad to keep it all cool.

For obvious reasons it would not be possible to have the whole case in oil becasue of hard drives etc with the moving parts, but i can see no reason why everything else can't be in an oil bath.

The gpu, cpu etc would need an aircooled heatsink to dissapate the heat into the oil and a pump, rad setup to cool it all down.

Asi said earlier, i use oil on the ROV's and there is voltages of anywhere between 5 - 500vdc and 3000vac in these systems with no problems in regards to insulating so it should be possible to use this in a pc with no worries.

What you think?? just a mad idea or pure genius...

 

[MjrStryker]

I think this has already been discussed in depth in the extreme cooling section. Some people were having problems with the oil eating away at the rubber seals on the capacitors and the recommended cooling liquid for fully submerging the motherboard was fairly expensive.

--EDIT--------

Correction, it was in the case mods section. Linkage.

 

[Crazy Larry]

Puget Systems did a fully submerged system in mineral oil here:

http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

 

[Arcygenical]

I've done it. It was a bad idea through and through. It wouldn't be good for a quad-core unless you can chill it somehow.

 

[Xer0_P0INT_Xer0]

if its not going to ruin my system, then its fine by me, also, and im assuming it would be cheaper than other water cooling systems. mmm deep fried computer.

 

[game14]

had that idea too , but doesnt make much sence.U can read here :
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1119259&highlight=oil+instead+of+water

 

[Arcygenical]

if its not going to ruin my system, then its fine by me, also, and im assuming it would be cheaper than other water cooling systems. mmm deep fried computer.

It won't ruin it... but you need to watch it carefully.

You have to have it covered so no dust makes it's way into the oil.

You need some sort of heat exchanger to remove the heat from the oil.

You can't ever RMA the board afterwards.

 

[Warl0rd]

I guess once you make the brave decision to submerge it, it must stay there forever

 

[Quad Dreamer]

Thanks for the links, guess i should have done some searching before mouthing off, not going to leave it here tho, i will give this a bash sometime coz i can get the oil for free, should be interesting.

 

[mwin]

You should post anything you find out here. It's pretty good reading for anybody considering immersion.