Fully Submerged Cooling

oil bath computer
Markus Leonhardt has taken the shortest route possible to liquid cooling.

  1. throw motherboard in fish tank

  2. cover in vegetable oil

  3. there is no step 3

Markus has been using this system for over a year. it is quiet and is cooled by the still functional fans circulating the oil. he has swapped components and even successfully used pulled hardware in other pcs. the pages are in the process of being translated to english, but the english forum is already up with links to other projects. I’ve got some extra hardware and fish tanks are cheap, so I’ll give this a try some time. I doubt my roommate will feel this is an improvement over my plan of just nailing the motherboards to the wall.

82 thoughts on “Fully Submerged Cooling

  1. FAO john,
    if you wanna avoid dust and fluff and so on, you’d probably wanna seal it… in fact, its probably best that way because impurities will probably introduce conductivity or something which just isnt good. i dunno though, i’m only going on what i’ve skim-read from the comments so far…

  2. if anyone is interested in using distilled water, keep in mind that it will eventually ionize from all the exposed metal it’s in contact with. fill a clean container with distilled water and dunk an old isa card in it for a week and you’ll see a difference.

    mineral oil would be cheap and readily available but it’s a good idea to minimize its exposure to atmospheric moisture.

    that is all.

  3. Well i want to to this for a school DT assignment. i was thinking of submerging my old computer into a liquid called ‘PC ICE’ instead and then cooling the liquid with peltiers. Im wondering if this would work and how cold i could get it to go? what would be the best wat to keep it all watertight etc.

  4. what is the problem with Hydraulic Fluid? it conducts less than distrilled water.

    I don’t think it will go bad if contaminated. the smell might not be that great but if thats the least of my worries.

  5. Mineral oil sounds the most promising for us with out the money to buy the really spiffy stuff. But would it erode or degrade the plastics on the mobo and cards or the silicone sealant on a fish tank?

  6. I have also built 1 (now 2 actually) of these oil bath pc’s. The smaller enclosure runs @ approx 90*F… and the larger of the two runs @ approx 75-80*F. Not all that bad I would think…

  7. built a revised version of the 2nd machine, and the heat has gone up, but so has the performance specs… anyone out there have a design for a home-made radiator/heat exchanger that might siphon the oil, and return it cooler?

  8. What requirements for a pump for the mineral oil would I need if I was going to submerge an P3 motherboard running at 733? I was thinking about overclocking this P3 so I could get a little more out of it for Linux.

  9. I think Chris has to be joking with the beta-mercaptoethanol (BME). This stuff is a highly toxic poison:
    http://www.stratagene.com/msds/msds_files/1023%20bME.pdf
    and if your health’s not worth saving, it is possibly the worst smelling substance in existance. No, not even if a funny way.
    If you’re concerned about microbes, be the first person to have lights in your case that actually do something and put a UV sterilizing lamp over the oil.

  10. try cyclomethicone — it’s a light silicone oil about the consistency of water. It looks like it would be easy to pump. It’s easy to get, non-toxic, used in cosmetics, perfumes, and hair products as a carrier. Cyclomethicone evaporates easily, though, so your setup needs to be sealed. Cost is not cheap — saw some on eBay for $75 a gallon, so you would have to be careful about your design.

  11. try cyclomethicone — it’s a light silicone oil about the consistency of water. It looks like it would be easy to pump. It’s easy to get, non-toxic, used in cosmetics, perfumes, and hair products as a carrier. Cyclomethicone evaporates easily, though, so your setup needs to be sealed. Cost is not cheap — saw some on eBay for $75 a gallon, so you would have to be careful about your design.

  12. if you want to do this correctly use phase change liquid with pelters on the outside of a conductive box to lower the temp to -130 phase change liquid will freeze solid and maintain an thermal constant over the entire computer then overclock the hell out of it, energy consumption will be incredible possibly parallel computing remains a better option

  13. I found a web site is Thailand that sells those fish oil capsules that take care of the fatty acids. I am not sure that they are healthy to eat but I am tempted by the cost. Any suggestion how to have better control over the food safety of my diet supplements?

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