Mineral Oil PC - 4/7/2010 Houston, we have liftoff!! *56K Warning*

[legoman666]

So...... I bought 2 red CCFLs. Hotttttt. These are all CLICK FOR BIG. The first pic especially looks nice in the original resolution.










The lighting is much more even in reality. The rear of the case gets more light than the pics show.

 

[legoman666]

I really hope that this oil is just seeping out finally and not from a new leak...

Fack. It appears that I have a new leak(s). I haven't pinpointed all of the locations yet, but it looks like the damned seals on the bulkhead fittings are going to pot already. On top of that, the tank itself is leaking in the back. There may be more locations. I swear, I have the worst luck with liquid cooling. I've lost 3-4 video cards to the water cooling gods and now this is the second leak in my oil cooled machine. I want to literally throw the thing out the f*cking window.

This is the bottom threading of one of the bulkhead fittings that transfer the oil from the tank to the rads. The seal is degrading rapidly or expanding or something. Either way, it looks like oil is leaking through 2 of the 3 fittings. Fack.

Even more serious is this leak. I got $10 on this leak being due to the acrylic expanding. I f*cking knew I should have sealed the joints with silicone. fack fack.

And so out all of the oil comes. I'll deal with this crap some other time when I'm not so angry.


And it was all going so well.....

Bwahaha. One thing after another. Today's is: The 1 gallon milk jugs that I drained all of the oil into were leaking all over my god damned bedroom floor. Gah! I had them sitting on an oil soak pad and I walked into my room after work and decided that I definitely filled the jugs more full than that. So I picked one up to check under and yup, freakin' leakin'. The oil must have eaten through the thin plastic. I thought I had read online that the oil in milk jugs was resistant to mineral oil; guess not.

Now all of the oil is back in the original 5 gallon steel containers in the garage.

On the other hand, this has given me an excuse to purchase some new hardware! I picked up the following:
Asus M4A78T-E 790GX AM3 mobo
AMD Phenom X2 550 BE 3.1ghz cpu
OCZ ModXStream 700w modular psu
OCZ 3x2gb DDR3 1600 ram
MSI GTX275 gpu (holy crap this thing is a lot faster than my hd4850's)
4x1Tb Hitachi HD's (at $75 a pop, it's kind of hard to resist)

New hardware in a temporary case until I build up enough will power to get oil all over myself.

And as a side note, my wood case is making a come back! I bought a new mini Crystalfontz LCD for it and took the metal inner frame to get powder coated glossy black.

 

[legoman666]

OK, here we go. It's time to get this damn thing back into operation.

My last updates said that I was experiencing technical difficulties. The gaskets were swelling and leaking, the silicone was swelling and leaking, and the tank itself had a small leak.

Here you can see the small bead of oil along the joint.

And oil leaking out of the bottom of the tank.

I let the machine sit for ~6 months because I was so frustrated at it. It's time to fix it.

I ordered Viton o-rings for the bulkhead-through-fittings. Viton is a brand of fluoropolymer elastomer rubber that is supposed to be extremely oil resistant. We shall see... The caulk tube is Dow Corning 735, a supposedly oil resistant silicone.

Close up of the O-rings. These weren't cheap.

You have no idea how difficult it was to get the old ones off. I had to stop and take a break because I was getting so frustrated.

Here's the old ones; swollen, squished and leaky.

 

[legoman666]

I sealed the leaky corner with silicone. I hope the stuff is able to stick to slightly oily surfaces. It's impossible to get all of the gunk out of a corner.

I took the motherboard off. This thing is junked now...

It's hard to get a decent shot showing the bulging caps.

Here's one that swelled so much that it popped completely off the motherboard. I picked it off the bottom of the tank. I'm about to place an order on http://www.mouser.com for new caps. My intent is to desolder all of the caps on my current AM3 board and replace them with caps of equal value that do not have the rubber base.

Another interesting thing to note, the PVC Tygon tubing I used is completely hardened. It does not appear to work well with mineral oil. It shrunk and hardened so much that I can't get it onto the 1/2" fittings anymore. I'm afraid it's going to crack or something, so I'm going to replace it with Viton tubing, which is expensive as hell. $28.73/ft. Luckily I only need about 2 feet. This is only for the runs between the rads and from the bulkhead-fittings to the rads.

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Gratuitous spam deleted.

Harvey
Senior AnandTech Moderator/Administrator

 

[aigomorla]

LOL...

i remember that machine..

I changed the title of your thread to put a 56k Warning at the title.

If you need active moderation shoot me a PM, and i'll moderate your thread.

 

[davidrees]

Fantastic documentation.

The one thing I thought of was that they make these big tray like things to put under a washing machine so that if it leaks, it will not ruin the floor. Have you considered using some kind of similar mechanism to protect against leakage as you continue to improve your design?

Mineral oil on the floor can't be good.

 

[legoman666]

LOL...

i remember that machine..

I changed the title of your thread to put a 56k Warning at the title.

If you need active moderation shoot me a PM, and i'll moderate your thread.

Cheers. Who has 56k nowdays? The ability to post more than 10 pics per reply would be awesome but I don't know if that's something you can change. I had to break up several updates into multiple parts.

Fantastic documentation.

The one thing I thought of was that they make these big tray like things to put under a washing machine so that if it leaks, it will not ruin the floor. Have you considered using some kind of similar mechanism to protect against leakage as you continue to improve your design?

Mineral oil on the floor can't be good.

Thanks! I kind want something like that in case of a catastrophic leak when I'm not around. It'd need to hold ~7-8 gallons to accommodate the whole tank though. I'll look in it

 

[aigomorla]

lol the 56K warning also applies to people who have slow internet.

It tells them beware of long load up times required.

 

[Ika]

Damn there are so many pictures on the first page. My scroll bar was TINY.

 

[Zap]

legoman666, what I'm interested in are the details of the 8" LCD. Where and how much? What kind of power/data interface?

Mineral oil on the floor can't be good.

Depends on the floor. You can use mineral oil to treat wood surfaces. I do that on my wooden chopping boards in the kitchen.

 

[legoman666]

legoman666, what I'm interested in are the details of the 8" LCD. Where and how much? What kind of power/data interface?

I bought it used off of the bit-tech message board. I think I paid $35 for it and another small LCD. It had 3 inputs on the back, VGA, s-video and composite, but I only soldered up the VGA. For power, I soldered up a molex connector. Lemme find a pic....

Here you go: http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c241/legoman666/mineral pc log/log_progress174.jpg

It was a bare panel when I bought it, so I was never really able to find out a lot of information about it. It took me a while just to figure how to get the damn VGA working.

 

[Ben90]

Lol, for my mineral oil project I just dumped all the parts into a fish tank and it worked well enough lol. Got hot as hell cuz there was no active cooling, but made for a great hand warmer in the winter

 

[Zap]

legoman666, thanks for the info and pics. I've always liked the idea of having a tiny monitor mounted in/on the PC case, but the affordable ones are usually composite input (often made for mobile video applications) and the ones with a computer video input are prohibitively expensive.

Were you provided pinouts for the VGA input when you purchased it?

 

[legoman666]

legoman666, thanks for the info and pics. I've always liked the idea of having a tiny monitor mounted in/on the PC case, but the affordable ones are usually composite input (often made for mobile video applications) and the ones with a computer video input are prohibitively expensive.

Were you provided pinouts for the VGA input when you purchased it?

No problem Unfortunately, I was not provided pin-outs for the monitor. The guy I bought the two screens from was never able to get either of them working so I got them for cheap. I experimented and Googled a bit before asking for help on xtremesystem's forums: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=217928 where I received immense help.

Lol, for my mineral oil project I just dumped all the parts into a fish tank and it worked well enough lol. Got hot as hell cuz there was no active cooling, but made for a great hand warmer in the winter

Lol, it's all good as long as it works! My comp was pulling 500w from the wall, so I don't think passive cooling was an option.

 

[legoman666]

I just received my viton and teflon tubing today:

The teflon is really stiff, but it'll be ok for what I have in mind. I also bought 20' of heat shrink.

 

[legoman666]

Been messing with my tubing. The old stuff was shrinking and getting stiff. I was afraid it was going to get brittle or crack or something. So I bought some teflon tubing and viton tubing from Amazon to replace all the old stuff.

I also bought a new drain valve. The old one was barbed and the barb was too small for 1/2" ID tubing. This one is threaded and is the proper size.

Installed in place of the old one. I had to drill the hole a little bigger. It's much higher quality than the old one.

Here's the other side of the valve. Bending the teflon tubing was tricky; I had to use a heat gun to get it soft enough to bend, and then use cold water to bring the temp back down so it'd stay put.

Here's the other runs I replaced. I ordered new T's so the silicone for the temperature sensors can get a good grip on the plastic. These old ones are covered in oil.

That's all for now. I'm waiting on the new polypropylene fittings. Once they're here I'll swap them in and then leak test.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow! That is quite impressive that you machined all that stuff yourself. Very good work on the case!

 

[JSt0rm]

hey bro gj. When fermi comes out you can cut the top off the mineral oil and deep fry stuff

 

[Red Squirrel]

hey bro gj. When fermi comes out you can cut the top off the mineral oil and deep fry stuff

Hmm not a bad idea, but how about, put a quad processor motherboard in there, overclock, and deep fry stuff INSIDE the case. :awe:

*CPU temp warning* "Ding fries are done!"

 

[davidrees]

Cheers. Who has 56k nowdays? The ability to post more than 10 pics per reply would be awesome but I don't know if that's something you can change. I had to break up several updates into multiple parts.



Thanks! I kind want something like that in case of a catastrophic leak when I'm not around. It'd need to hold ~7-8 gallons to accommodate the whole tank though. I'll look in it

That is a lot of oil and based on what you have experienced so far - particularly with the way that some plastics react with the oil, a complete, unintentional evacuation of the oil seems highly possible. Possibly even probable.

Even if the oil does not hurt the wood on the floor, 7 gallons of oil is going to cover a LOT of area and a cleanup would not be fun.

If it were me, I would consider some kind of very shallow drain pan under the case and I would make that pan drain into one of those large water cooler bottles or possibly just a large plastic bin from Target - assuming plastic will hold up for a few hours. Now that I think of it, plastic anything might not be good.

What about a 10 gallon fish tank? Will the oil break down the silicon adhesive?

Like I said, if it were me, I would make sure I had already determined where that oil was going long before it thought of escaping.

Keep us posted on your progress.

 

[legoman666]

That is a lot of oil and based on what you have experienced so far - particularly with the way that some plastics react with the oil, a complete, unintentional evacuation of the oil seems highly possible. Possibly even probable.

Even if the oil does not hurt the wood on the floor, 7 gallons of oil is going to cover a LOT of area and a cleanup would not be fun.

If it were me, I would consider some kind of very shallow drain pan under the case and I would make that pan drain into one of those large water cooler bottles or possibly just a large plastic bin from Target - assuming plastic will hold up for a few hours. Now that I think of it, plastic anything might not be good.

What about a 10 gallon fish tank? Will the oil break down the silicon adhesive?

Like I said, if it were me, I would make sure I had already determined where that oil was going long before it thought of escaping.

Keep us posted on your progress.

I'm inclined to agree with you. However, I think you're over estimating the corrosiveness of mineral oil on plastics. I had my machine running for about 2 months before it started to leak. Besides the leak the first time I tried filling, the leaks started off slowly enough for me to catch them before much oil had leaked out. Thanks for the ideas!

Wow! That is quite impressive that you machined all that stuff yourself. Very good work on the case!

Thank you!

Hmm not a bad idea, but how about, put a quad processor motherboard in there, overclock, and deep fry stuff INSIDE the case. :awe:

*CPU temp warning* "Ding fries are done!"

hey bro gj. When fermi comes out you can cut the top off the mineral oil and deep fry stuff

I'll just leave this here

 

[evident]

dude. this is hardcore.

 

[Zap]

I'll just leave this here

"loss of bowel control and/or dripping from the rectum"

Move over, Olestra!

 

[legoman666]

Gratuitous spam deleted.

Harvey
Senior AnandTech Moderator/Administrator

lol?

 

[Rubycon]

Been messing with my tubing. The old stuff was shrinking and getting stiff. I was afraid it was going to get brittle or crack or something. So I bought some teflon tubing and viton tubing from Amazon to replace all the old stuff.

I also bought a new drain valve. The old one was barbed and the barb was too small for 1/2" ID tubing. This one is threaded and is the proper size.




Installed in place of the old one. I had to drill the hole a little bigger. It's much higher quality than the old one.

Here's the other side of the valve. Bending the teflon tubing was tricky; I had to use a heat gun to get it soft enough to bend, and then use cold water to bring the temp back down so it'd stay put.

Here's the other runs I replaced. I ordered new T's so the silicone for the temperature sensors can get a good grip on the plastic. These old ones are covered in oil.

That's all for now. I'm waiting on the new polypropylene fittings. Once they're here I'll swap them in and then leak test.

Oh the irony of Half Life behind your valve. Don't know if that was intentional or not!

Next thing is why use plastic tubing/fittings at all? You have a proper ball valve. Just get flare fittings and break out a flaring tool. If you've never done this practice up on scraps first. I guarantee you will never have a leak again!

Of course having 100% solid fittings and a suitable vessel is not going to prepare for degradation of onboard components such as the rubber of the caps. The board may need to be conformally coated - a similar prep that hardcore oc junkies apply before mounting LN2 pots and such.