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Water Cooling

EastBayDave said:
:wow do they actually use WATER in these, or some other type of coolant?
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most use distilled water, usually mixed with an antibacterial agent and often some coloring.

You can also just dunk the whole PC in mineral oil if you want to have fun with it.

submerging-your-computer-in-mineral-oil-sounds-crazy-but-its-super-useful-heres-how-to-do-it.jpg
 
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ScarySpikes said:
most use distilled water, usually mixed with an antibacterial agent and often some coloring.

You can also just dunk the whole PC in mineral oil if you want to have fun with it.

submerging-your-computer-in-mineral-oil-sounds-crazy-but-its-super-useful-heres-how-to-do-it.jpg
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pretty ain't they?

Yeah, pretty nifty except the gnawing feeling by this long retired electronic engineer of water near anything electric/electronic is very, very bad.

If a connector leaked even a tiny bit....= POOF! :wow
 
So I got the "shipped" email from NCase...estimated delivery date is "up to 8-10 weeks" :(. On the plus side though there's some people on another forum saying they got theirs in 2-3 weeks so I'm crossing my fingers.
 
UDRider said:
Makes sense. Specially with servers moving to ssd drives. Basically now days only moving parts are fans. As the article said, biggest issue with servers is heat management.
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Yeah if you think about it; they wouldn't need the fans moving air anymore, only pumps moving liquid? So that fan load on the pc power supply would be gone, but the building load (at least in that server room vid) would still be there/maybe more? (thinking electric liquid pumps) Hmmm...

I bet moving those liquids requires liquid cooling too. So I think yes, you lose load in 1 place only to be required to increase it in another. :laughing

Six of one to get half/dozen of another. :twofinger

Least the cpu's/memories/& everything runs....uh...cooler? :cool
 
From the article I linked above:

Intel found that oil-cooled systems only needed another 2 or 3 percent of their power for cooling. That’s far less than your typical server, which has a 50 or 60 percent overhead. The world’s most efficient data centers — those run by Google or Facebook, for example — can get that number down to 10 or 20 percent.
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Water cooling pumps for PCs have higher flow rates, longer durability / MTBFs, etc compared to aquarium pumps. I'd imagine scaling things up for a data center is the same.
 
I like the oil idea. Shouldn't it keep everything in the case super squeaky clean too? No dust problems etc? Can I make my millions by producing an oil filed PC case for gaming nerds?
 
That thought's crossed my mind as a way to do an ultra slim / compact gaming build, but to my knowledge there are 0 components currently available for the consumer market and even for corporate type stuff it's still pretty experimental. Could definitely be a perfect time to get ahead of the curve.
 
Mike95060 said:
I like the oil idea. Shouldn't it keep everything in the case super squeaky clean too? No dust problems etc? Can I make my millions by producing an oil filed PC case for gaming nerds?
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Probably not. Oil cooled PC's are a cool idea but in practice for a consumer market they are too much of a hassle. Plus the few builds I have seen have been large, heavy, and messy.
 
ScarySpikes said:
Probably not. Oil cooled PC's are a cool idea but in practice for a consumer market they are too much of a hassle. Plus the few builds I have seen have been large, heavy, and messy.
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Isn't that how all computers were back in the day? You may be right i'm just pointing out that there may be a way to build a better mousetrap in there somewhere. If cooling is the limiting factor in PC performance and power usage, maybe that is where the innovation should happen next.
 
Mike95060 said:
Isn't that how all computers were back in the day? You may be right i'm just pointing out that there may be a way to build a better mousetrap in there somewhere. If cooling is the limiting factor in PC performance and power usage, maybe that is where the innovation should happen next.
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Partially true. right now on the consumer market, heat is not really a big issue. As cool and fun as a watercooling (and potentially oil cooling) build is. The most powerful consumer grade processor can be cooled adequately with a 50 dollar air cooler and a few fans, and processors are mostly trending toward greater efficiency and less power use, not more.

If you look at servers, heat is always a big issue, and the metrics change.

That being said, if you were able to somehow build a mineral oil based case and cooling setup that is self contained and relatively easy to implement, I'm certain that the gamer crowd would embrace it.
 
Look up the Dan case A4 I think. Tiny ITX build that can support a full size vid card, uses a 90 degree riser to mount the GPU behind the motherboard. I'd say that would be a prime candidate for your oil cooling idea - if you can make it work in something that small, you're golden for everything bigger.
 
ScarySpikes said:
If you look at servers, heat is always a big issue, and the metrics change.
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It's not the heat itself, it's dissipating said heat due to physical space (rack space, heat sink space, etc) being the limiting factor. Cramming as many servers into as small of an area as possible while still providing the minimum of acceptable cooling is the challenge.

That being said, if you were able to somehow build a mineral oil based case and cooling setup that is self contained and relatively easy to implement, I'm certain that the gamer crowd would embrace it.
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Eh, I doubt we would. The water AIOs are a nice step up from copper heatsinks as it allows us to move the cooling around, increase cooling surface area, and not have several pounds of metal hanging off the board.

User built watercooling is still a niche market. The initial build and recurring upkeep on them is prohibitive for many. I watercooled for nearly a decade back when heater cores and custom simple fin'd copper blocks were the norm. It just lost it's appeal as I was moving for college a bunch and worried about spilling, things coming lose, having to constantly clean the loop semi annual, etc.

Mineral oil is just an extra pain in the ass as the oil will climb out of the case and follow cords plugged into it if it touches them and can maintain surface tension (think of siphoning). And anytime you need to make a change, time to make your room look like Dexter was there. There's also a cool patent troll out there.
 
NorCalAthlete said:
Look up the Dan case A4 I think. Tiny ITX build that can support a full size vid card, uses a 90 degree riser to mount the GPU behind the motherboard. I'd say that would be a prime candidate for your oil cooling idea - if you can make it work in something that small, you're golden for everything bigger.
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Phanuel said:
It's not the heat itself, it's dissipating said heat due to physical space (rack space, heat sink space, etc) being the limiting factor. Cramming as many servers into as small of an area as possible while still providing the minimum of acceptable cooling is the challenge.
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I don't see how those statements disagree with one another.
Eh, I doubt we would. The water AIOs are a nice step up from copper heatsinks as it allows us to move the cooling around, increase cooling surface area, and not have several pounds of metal hanging off the board.

User built watercooling is still a niche market. The initial build and recurring upkeep on them is prohibitive for many. I watercooled for nearly a decade back when heater cores and custom simple fin'd copper blocks were the norm. It just lost it's appeal as I was moving for college a bunch and worried about spilling, things coming lose, having to constantly clean the loop semi annual, etc.

Mineral oil is just an extra pain in the ass as the oil will climb out of the case and follow cords plugged into it if it touches them and can maintain surface tension (think of siphoning). And anytime you need to make a change, time to make your room look like Dexter was there. There's also a cool patent troll out there.
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Figures that there is a patent troll to ruin the fun.

I think the market for oil cooled PC's would be roughly similar to the current market for hardline, open loop water cooling. It's not huge, sure, but it's enough for quite a few companies to exist that primarily or exclusively cater to that crowd. If someone were to put effort into it, I would expect something similar could happen.
 
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