Immersive cooling, anyone done it yet?

[Rallywagon]

I am wondering if anyone has done a submerged cooled PC setup yet here. If so, what were you running, and how did it perform. What sorts of obstacles did you run into?
For anyone not in the know, a submerged cooled system is basically just using an aquarium as a case and filling it with mineral oil to use as a cooling agent. mineral oil is non-corrosive and non-conductive, is far denser, and there for far better for pulling heat out of the components, and statistically keeps everything cooler. A bit more info can be found here.
I run AMD and my system gets hot. I'd like to try some over clocking, but not until I am liquid cooled. I'm bored of my case, and want something quiter (I have huge server fans in my case moving air, and still hit over 65°c on CPU and GPU) cost wise it is not much more, if more, than building a custom liquid cooling setup to fit my needs. It has an added bonus of being a pretty cool looking rig that I wouldn't mind putting somewhere other than under my desk. I have an idea of what parts I'll get and what tank I will use, as well as an idea of how I going to build the top panel, where the drives and such will all sit.
I am curious to know some tips and tricks from someone with experience. The amount, if an, of cooling that was required, ideas on where to draw in fluid to the pump and where to push it back out into the tank , what temp differences did you see before and after, stuff like that.
If I am the first, then I will be sure to post the same of my experiences.

 

[Grayfox]

Linus Tech Tips did this.

Putting your old PC hardware into some oil just for looks is just that a "Look at me" thing.
If you game the oil will get hot unless you have something to cool it down with.

 

[Dennisch]

Linus Tech Tips did this.

Putting your old PC hardware into some oil just for looks is just that a "Look at me" thing.
If you game the oil will get hot unless you have something to cool it down with.

Pump, radiator and a fan should do the trick?

 

[Grayfox]

Pump, radiator and a fan should do the trick?

you will need a powerful pump since oil is thicker than water, when you cool oil it thickens, which can be tgick enough to block the small passages in a radiator.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

Might look cool but doesn't seem very practical. Big weight increase and probably really hard to clean components if you do get bored of it.

Wouldn't it better to just spend the money to upgrade to an Intel Skylake computer so you get much better performance and less heat output, probably would cost similar if you sell old parts too or maybe even less.

 

[BobK]

Might look cool but doesn't seem very practical. Big weight increase and probably really hard to clean components if you do get bored of it.

Wouldn't it better to just spend the money to upgrade to an Intel Skylake computer so you get much better performance and less heat output, probably would cost similar if you sell old parts too or maybe even less.

That's the common sense route. We're not doing that here. It's being done because it's so off-beat.

 

[Rallywagon]

I also have no intentions for playing the sell and buy game. The day I upgrade, it will be a complete unit and cost way more than a couple hundred bucks. My plan is to do something similar to the V3 system the company did in the OP link.
It will be cooled with a radiator, as they were showing, without one the temps, after 8 hours of heat soaking topped 80°c. 88 I believe. They left it running non-stop like that for over a year though and it didn't harm anything and the computer was still performing the stress tests without faults til the day they pulled the plug on V1. They think since the oil dissipated the heat better, it kept all of the board and components at the same temp, instead of localized hotspots that would strain solder points and such from constant, uneven expansion and contraction.
Adding the rad and pump dropped the temp nearly 40°c and kept the computer at about 50°c at full tilt. I believe their V3 was/is running Intel and nvidia, so less heat than an AMD setup, but I expect to see about the same results.
That said, I am going this route, so no need for the "why, when you can do this" posts. Just hoping to pick some brains about it.

you will need a powerful pump since oil is thicker than water, when you cool oil it thickens, which can be tgick enough to block the small passages in a radiator.

That is a good point. My idea is to pump from the top, getting the hot oil that has hopefully risen to the top and should be thinner, push it through an inline filter and through the rad. The return hose I think I'll try to place it as such that the cooled oil feeds back onto the GPU and CPU.

BTW, thanks for the reply everyone.

 

[sesselpupser]

Might as well try it and let us know how you do, it's only really expensive if it breaks after all... From what I can tell you just have to add mineral oil to a fish tank, drop your (presumably thoroughly clean) PC in and call it a day. If you find it needs additional cooling, try an automotive oil pump and oil cooler but I'd be concerned about introducing conductive contaminants that way - so maybe you'd also want filters.

Then again maybe you could just get a really powerful electric fan to move the heated oil around. I expect keeping the oil moving through the CPU and GPU coolers - with all their oil-trapping fins and such - is the important bit. Oil can move a lot of heat around but in order to actually do that usefully it has to be moving somehow.

I want to try this now.

Disclaimer: I've barely read any of the other posts in this thread, so... Yeah.

Edit: pumping from the top would be fighting gravity (wait, would it?), I mean I don't know anything about fluid dynamics but that seems like a bad idea. What I would do is pump from the side to get a horizontal circulation going, say left to right so you get cooled oil moving to the right through the heatsinks and then the heated oil passes out of the tank again.

 

[Rallywagon]

I think in this case, I would rather fight a bit of gravity than try to seal holes in the side of the tank.
As for tanks. My idea is to go to Meijer (Michigan Walmart) and get one of the smaller acrylic bowfront tanks. I have a tank that will work, but its glass. Glass I believe is more susceptible to thermal shock, and will just break. Acrylic, in my experiences using it, generally show signs before failure, such as stress fractures and flaking.
I plan on taking the covers off of everything, attaching it all to a piece of acrylic. Then attach that to another piece that will bencut to fit the top.
Wicking is an issue, so I think I will get some extension cables for the ports on the mobo GPU and power. Then either modify the tank cover, or build one to house the pump, drives and attach the port cables too. Oh, maybe an SSD and a NAS box would be better. The SSD could be sunk and the NAS hooked up through an eSATA port.

 

[Dennisch]

Just showed this to my girlfriend.

"that's really cool"

Wait, what?

I know how my next computer build is going.

 

[TB]

I know how my next computer build is going.

Toilet water.

 

[sesselpupser]

I think in this case, I would rather fight a bit of gravity than try to seal holes in the side of the tank.

True, yeah, I clearly didn't think of that!

I've been watching those Linus Tech Tips videos on the subject, it looks like they weren't too enthused by the performance but it's undeniably a cool project (as long as you don't have to change anything!).

I want to know if LCD panels work while submerged in mineral oil... I mean, they probably do work but I don't know if the oil would affect the panel itself. If you do go ahead with the build it'd be great if you could do a test to see if you could make an all-in-one submerged PC just so you could sink everything except the power cable and maybe one USB cable for an external hub (since, of course, you would have no access to the motherboard).

But yeah, the Linus Tech Tips one hit 80C on the CPU after overclocking, but I don't think they said exactly how it was overclocked. I wonder if it'd be possible to use a specially shaped shroud for the CPU heat sink to get a uniform oil flow through it to shift all the hot oil quickly?

 

[Rallywagon]

I've been thinking about fluid movement, thermal dynamics and all that. I have to imagine that there will be a current caused by the cold and warm spots and heat rising, cold falling and all that. So I am was milling over ideas as to how to get the most effective cool job. Since the oil is to thick to be effected much by the fans, I think I may remove them, then feed lines from the return tube, on the top facing sides of the heatsinks, with a shroud covering them, hopefully forcing the cooler oil through the components first. Then just draw the hot oil off the top of the tank. I'll have to look into how the pumps function a little more, see if they can pull through the radiator instead of pushing the oil through.
As for the screen thing, I can toss an old cell phone in I suppose to give it a test. I have lots. I'll just set it up to stay on all the time and connect it to a usb port.

 

[sesselpupser]

I would imagine it doesn't make much difference where the pump is in the loop, at least I don't think it does in closed loop cooling. Also I found a video of an LCD monitor being submerged in oil, it worked but obviously wasn't a good indication of the long term effects. Someone did ask in the comments if it still worked a year later, the reply was yes, it still works, but it wasn't clear if it was still submerged or not (I'd guess not).

Fans might be a good idea just to stir the oil a bit, though probably more in the graphics card since the heat sink is shrouded. It might be worth thinking about taking the shroud off. Another thing I got from the video is that the oil eats away at the thermal paste which (apparently) isn't an issue when still submerged but if you ever decide to take the parts out of the oil you'll want to reapply the paste.

 

[Rallywagon]

I know it can make a difference to the pumps life in a normal fish tank, I imagine with a thicker fluid it would be exacerbated.
I am going to unshroud... deshroud... I am going to remove the shrouds on everything, thinking of unpacking the PSU as well. Then three tubes feeding the cooled oil to the CPU, GPU and around the PSU internals.

 

[Rallywagon]

Well, the immersed PC will be on hold for a few. My brother in law hooked me up with a case that has an AIO liquid cooler. Swapping my parts over now. I have the cooler attached to my GPU. The CPU is rarely over 57°c currently. I'm hoping to get the GPU around there under load as well.

 

[Lain]

I briefly considered doing a mineral oil build, but I decided not to risk it with my expensive gaming rig.

Maybe later on I'll try it with some cheap hardware, just for the heck of it.

I also was looking into 3M Novec fluid... But at over $300 a gallon, not happening. Still cool though:

 

[Rallywagon]

Yeah, I saw that stuff. Holy crap! They are trying to market it for data center use. I work in a data center. The cost of just one cabinet annually to cool is roughly 7k USD (average annual costs of a full 45u cabinet is roughly 10-15k. Half cooling, half power). The amount of novec needed to fill a 45u cabinet would cost roughly 10 times that. And you still have to pay for the energy to pump and cool the liquid. The over all savings just isnt worth the initial set up cost. There are some serious pros though. Life and performance over time both are greatly improved since temps will be more constant and even across hardware. This might or might not matter to a DC, but does matter to the equipment owners. Since its a dust free environment, there will be less maintenance, which is a good thing considering how mess it can get. And since temps are more level and cooler, over all the machines will perform better/more accurately. At best, I think it would be a speciality case, for servers that are being used for serious number crunching. Be it algorithms or rendering or whatever.

And so I think I know what my next build is going to be, and where I will be immersing. With that case, came a mobo. A bit older, but one that should make a great dedicated server. One I can find a nice place to set, run a power and ethernet cable too and operate remotely. And I agree, would be better to try out one this and not do something I'll regret later on my main PC.

 

[Fat Tyre]

Will you be overclocking the whole thing?

This is in the FAQs, although I guess you've already seen it...

What's the point of this project? Crazy overclocking?

Answer: The custom mineral oil pc project has always been intended as a cool conversation piece, and a fun do-it-yourself project. While there are certainly some thermal advantages, submersion cooling is usually not the best solution for overclocking. Due to the risk of tank failure if the oil reaches temperatures above 50C, we do not recommend submerging overclocked or extremely hot hardware in this system