Hardware·18,997 discussions

What would be a good gaming mineral oil submerged rig?

Locked

I am starting to write up all the components I would need to build the best gaming rig I can. I am on a budget of no more than $1000. That includes shipping.

I know I am going to submerge it in a case full of mineral oil. Doing this I know I would need a solid state hard drive. I plan on getting it overclocked as well. The games I will be playing are COD2-Modern Warfare, WoW and Aion. Also, I will be running Windows 7 for my OS.

Any suggestions on a good build would be greatly appreciated. I will be updating this post with components I come up with along the way. Thank you for all the help.

Topic

Clarifications

In reply to What would be a good gaming mineral oil submerged rig?

Clarifications

submerge?

In reply to What would be a good gaming mineral oil submerged rig?

Ok here is the question.
Why would you submerge it?
You want to keep it cool, submerging it in oil will not be the greatest thing.
If you submerge it in oil, where is the movement of the hot oil away from the CPU?
The CPU will still heat up and for what I know the heat transfer from oil is not as great as you think.

You should rethink this idea.

Here an idea i read about it some years ago. There was a tower that was air tight and it was build like a freezer, so the whole thing was cooled down.

Maybe you would like to do this, but you have to find out how to keep the water away. But hey you are a student, you should be able to make it better.

Not to mention the Thermo Dynamics of Oil

In reply to submerge?

It’s a thick vicious fluid that doesn’t conduct heat all all well.

Probably be better to immerse it in Liquid Nitrogen provided that the rig never gets any Vibration as it would then shatter. 😀

Col

You opening a Fish&Chip shop ? …

In reply to What would be a good gaming mineral oil submerged rig?

You’d be able to fry lots of crispy chips in THAT rig, including all those of the electronic variety! 😉

This ‘PC’ doesn’t have any graphics card so …

In reply to What would be a good gaming mineral oil submerged rig?

How do you possibly expect to be running Call of Duty2-Modern Warfare with only on-board graphics?

I think you are missing the point: all of the internet coverage regarding ‘mineral oil submerged PCs’ mainly only refer to one single project, viewed through a few different authors’ eyes. But one common detail is that the submerged-PC in question was being used as a [b]SERVER[/b] running LINUX.

While I’m typing this post, running Windows 7 64-bit, my Core2Duo E8500 3.16GHz [u]under near-zero load[/u] is sitting at 33’C. My Nvidia GeForce 8800GT is producing 53’C – again under little or no load – certainly zero 3D requirement.

The blokes that produced this ‘ground-breaking design’ would never be generating the heat that a high end graphics card would produce, and by their own admission – in the short-term all the fan motors would burn out due to the increased load placed upon them trying to turn within a medium with the same density as thinnish paint.

What do you reckon would happen to a reasonably powerful graphics card under those same conditions?

Before you begin calculating the component costs for the PC itself, you better deduct about $400 at least to accommodate the cost of the aquarium (consider that mineral oil weighs almost three times as much as water – which is ALL the aquarium is built to withstand the pressure of) and the exorbitant cost for between FIVE and SIX GALLONS of the mineral oil itself.

Once the tank is filled I doubt you would be capable of ever moving it again since it would have a dead weight in excess of EIGHT STONES.

Good luck.

oil

In reply to What would be a good gaming mineral oil submerged rig?

I have read about people using normal cooking oil for fun, naturally these are old P1 and 486DX, If you can get hold of transformer oil it has a high resistance so it wont conduct elitricity and absorbs heat.

You still have the problem of the oils Thermo Dynamics

In reply to oil

Oil doesn’t conduct heat like Water or other low viscosity coolants commonly used in the Auto Industry.

It heats up in layers and doesn’t easily allow heat to pass between layers or in the event of Thermo Siphoning allow the oil to move all that much or easily.

If they where to try to do this they would need to include a Oil Pump and direct the Oil to flow over the Hot Spots like the CPU, GPU and North Bridge as a minimum.

Transformer Oil is for a different purpose where high Temperatures are involved which thins the oil out. This just couldn’t happen with low Wattage Computer parts in any sort of manner to allow the parts to cool. The oil would tend to cook the components before it could absorb enough heat to start the fluid moving at any appreciable speed to allow cooling to start happening. 😉

Col

Transformer oil is toxic

In reply to You still have the problem of the oils Thermo Dynamics

It contains Dioxin, among others.

Yes I know

In reply to Transformer oil is toxic

But the PCB that they used to use as a Coolant for High Voltage Transformers is even more dangerous. 😉

Still it’s not ideal for an low temp application like this. And if you wanted to kill someone off there are much easier ways particularly where Electricity is involved. :0

Col 0:-)

Oil

In reply to What would be a good gaming mineral oil submerged rig?

I thought the heat would be a problem as well. After reading reviews of some people who have done this. This has been an on going study done here http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php. I too believe the fans will eventually burn out but that’s not a big deal replacing them.

We can deduct the cost of the case and the mineral oil as I have already received that and it is not part of my $1000 budget. The budget is only for the hardware. Here is the case I got. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJWWyKsnr7k

Once the whole computer is built, I do not plan on moving it at all. Weight is not an issue.

I plan on being able to run COD2-Modern Warfare on full settings.

Again. Thank you for the input.

I dunno the whole case mod thing seems to have

In reply to Oil

gone to new heights in the latest and greatest war.

While cool looking, cool is only good for so long until something else is cool, then the original cool isn’t cool anymore.

then your stuck spending wads of money just to be cool.

I’d rather save the cash.

Put a freezer on it……………..

In reply to Oil

As some one already has said on here, it would be much easier to add on a freezer to lower the temp that you would be getting while running at full blast plus it would be more environmental friendly, and the Extra plus, it would not weigh too much.

Now that is a case mod idea.

In reply to Put a freezer on it……………..

make a PC Gaming rig out of one of them mini refrigerators. one could even leave the rack there for cold beverages.

Heat would never be a problem. If anything, brittleness of the PCB boards might come into play because they get to cold.

OK a few observations about the stuff from your first link

In reply to Oil

[i]http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php.[/i]

They are wasting both energy and hardware doing this at the very least they need to remove the Fans which are doing nothing but slowly spinning.

By all means keep the Heat Sinks in place but remove the fans as they are unnecessary in a situation like this. Even with Light White Oil all that they are achieving is disturbing the oil and interfering with Heat Transfer.

Ideally you should use Bigger Passive Heat Sinks to increase the Surface Area in contact with the oil and the fins on the heat sinks should be [b]Straight Up[/b] to improve any Thermo Siphoning Effect that can be created. If the Fins are Parallel to the Bottom of the case they will be trapping heat and not doing anything to cool the parts that they are supposed to. If you keep the Fan/s in place they will not be moving Oil over the entire surface area of the heat sinks and will be creating Hot Spots that will allow the component in question to Overheat.

Also I would be very careful when it comes to Heat Sink Paste as this will react with the Oil and most likely stop any heat transfer to the Heatsink. In this type of installation it would be better not to use any Heat Sink Paste at all.

NVidia Video Cards have a bit of a reputation for running hot and the Chips dieing so it may be a better idea not to consider them in an application like this. When they fail it’s way too messy attempting to repair the system as you [b]Can Not[/b] degrease it in any useful form. 😉

Col

[Author]

Replies