Over the years, we have seen many projects on the web that cooled a computer using common vegetable oil, including a very popular video by Tom's Hardware.
We felt that by building a computer in an aquarium using clear mineral oil, that we would be able to accomplish a much more attractive result, with less work. We were happy with the results!
We are pleased to present this page showing you the system we built, and giving you the information you need to make one of your own!
This is COOL as heck!!!! Especially with the Air Bubbler is kicked in.
You know... there are some very high power electronics that use mineral oil for their coolant. (Besides your everyday transformer that converts the electricity coming into your home from the grid voltage.)
I've seen some very neat things that could have only been done with using a cooling system where you submerge everything in an oil bath.
With the vegetable oil "tanks" they still had to have the power supply protected from the oil. With mineral oil, is it a different case? Does mineral oil not conduct electricity at all?
It's been a while since I've looked into mineral-oil cooling, and I disremember if it conducts. If it does not, I can however name one very good reason to leave the PSU out of the bath; heat. Those capacitors and transformers can get pretty hot.
You guys should google around for a substance call Fluorinert. Cray (and others) used it to cool their supercomputers, usually by running the stuff directly over the components. They even had a nice waterfall of the stuff (contained, of course) as part of their cooling loop on display out in front of one of their server rooms.
That looks really damn cool. Impractical, but cool. ;D
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I know that if you circulate the oil, youre going to get adequate cooling. I remember one of the reasons people tried cooking oil was that it had ideal properties.
If the mineral oil doesnt conduct, you could submerge your power supply easy. Power supplies are normally air cooled, but he oils are better at absorbing and carrying away the heat than air is.
Oil has a higher heat capacity than water. And it doesn't conduct well. Water, on the other hand, conducts very well with just the tiniest amount of impurities.
