Mineral oil liquid cooling

[stensland]

So I was wondering what people thought about the mineral oil submersion technique as a method of aqueous PC cooling as opposed to cooling with fans or liquid coolers of other types. I found this site to be quite interesting. And seeing as mineral oil is non conductive it's safe to submerge your PC in, the only issue being that if you need to work on your PC, well it'll be coated in mineral oil.

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

-Erik S.

 

[Wendig0]

Mineral oil systems are nice, albeit rare. The problem I see with them is that mineral oil acts like an insulator, and does not dissipate heat very well at all.

If someone were to make a low power "net top" computer for browsing the internet and doing basic office tasks I could see where they would work well, while giving your workspace feng shui. They don't seem to be practical at all for gaming though.

 

[captaincranky]

The original Cray supercomputers were cooled with an oil bath. (To the best of my knowledge).

 

[Wendig0]

I stand corrected. Apparently I failed to read through the entire article, and did not see the update after 2 months, that dealt specifically with conquering the cooling problem. Now I am very intrigued!

 

[captaincranky]

Wiki; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cooling

Googling "Cray computer oil cooling" nets a wealth of returns about this subject.

As a footnote, The Pennsylvania Railroad's Massive GG-1 electric locomotive's transformers were cooled with an oil bath. The transformers stepped down the voltage from the overhead catenary. (And once again, I can spell something that Firefox can't).