Oil Cooled Motherboard

[OS]

Originally posted by: glugglug

I suspect the exact same thing will happen with most oils, so the oil will have to flow within its own airtight system (or at least not directly on the mobo), just as you do with a water-cooling system - if the oil dissolves dust/dirt from your case, it will no longer be such a good electrical insulator.

Won't happen. The reason why water becomes conductive is because of the dipole nature of the water molecule, each side of the molecule has a slight charge because of it's arrangement. This separates particles into it's ionic compounds and these free ions act as charge carriers for conduction. Oil OTOH, doesn't have this property so contaminants don't create ions, and thus carriers, within the liquid.

 

[Agent004]

Someone did have this done quite a few years ago, it's not a 'new' overclocking solution as such. But anyway, that guy had his motherboard submerged in a kitchen sink full of mineral oil............ it's apparantly so effctive, the oil starts to condense onto the motherboard, if the oil didn't have a freezing point higher than the water...... it would be indeed ' rock solid '

 

[f95toli]

...or you could try this http://www.sunpower.com/products/index.html

Expensive and the cooling power is a bit too low. But I gets cold!

 

[DeathByDuke]

Some of the drawbacks I can see already are:
1) It's a darn mess
2) The system really needs to be sealed to avoid contaminants

3) Can't upgrade?

 

[Sundog]

My boss worked in at a company that 10 years ago way making "supercomputer" mainframes that were in the several million $$ price range. He has told us of them submersing multiple cpu boards in liquid nitrogen for cooling.

 

[scorp00]

I saw a writeup on it a few years ago where a guy used mobil 1 synthetic in a bathtub. He also had radiators and a small engine to circulate the oil. If I remember right he hit around 3ghz back before 1 ghz was hit aircooled.

The motherboard and cards were in the oil, while the drives were out of it. It was some crazy guy overseas who had more money than he knew what to do with and wanted to be cool and have a fast computer.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: scorp00
I saw a writeup on it a few years ago where a guy used mobil 1 synthetic in a bathtub. He also had radiators and a small engine to circulate the oil. If I remember right he hit around 3ghz back before 1 ghz was hit aircooled.

The motherboard and cards were in the oil, while the drives were out of it. It was some crazy guy overseas who had more money than he knew what to do with and wanted to be cool and have a fast computer.

motor oil??? isn't taht really toxic?

 

[Telsari]

------Posted by glugglug------
Pure water is an INSULATOR, not a CONDUCTOR...
------------------------------------

He's right about that, like he mentioned, the ions and contaminants cause the electricity to flow. As mentioned before, deionized water would work... until the microscopic particles inside your case contaminated it. Personally, I think you are quite insane to try submersion cooling at this point. It would cost quite a bit and oil tends to be environmentally hazardous. As for me, I use a good old HSF combination on an Athlon... and the temperature stays in the 100 degree Fahrenheit range, very good for an Athlon.