I built a thing

pgdave

1503

Mineral Oil Cooled PC

For about 6 years now, I've been wanting to build a mineral oil submerged computer. I first heard about them from Puget Systems (https://www.pugetsystems.com/mineral-oil-pc.php) and I was hooked. Finally this year I had need of a new computer and the money to do so. Unfortunately, they no longer sell their kit due to patent infringement issues, so I had to do it all on my own. Parts list here: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Z3cPwP

Radiator and fans

Massive radiator, with eighteen 140mm (5.5") fans.

CPU cooler

I got the largest passive CPU cooler I could find, figuring that fans wouldn't be much use. Soda can for scale, because I couldn't find a banana.

All my cooling power

The fans look great on the radiator, though I'll eventually need to figure out some better cable management

Motherboard and RAM

32 gigs of ram - I can't imagine I'll ever use it all, but at this point I knew it was time to go big or go home.

Processor

My last computer I went with an amd processor and wasn't thrilled, so this time I went intel - i7 4950k

Video Cards

Two 980ti cards let me game at the highest quality on a 4k monitor without any issues at all.

Sound Card

Probably unnecessary, but it was pretty and might be slightly better than onboard sound.

Testing components before I dunk them.

Put everything together on my dining room table, aimed a fan at it, and made sure it all booted up. Then spent a day installing windows, drivers, and other basic software.

It's Alive!

It looks great and runs really cool - after stressing my video cards for 12+ hours they only got up to about 75C and the rest of the oil was at about 50C.

Cat Tax

My two cuddly cats, Charlie and April :-)

yayboobs

the sound card is not only unnecessary, but a considerable nuisance. creative drivers are 90% bloatware and infamous for their unreliability

10 years ago |

boozz

Instructions unclear.. my motherboard is now deepfried

icejet

We built one of these in computer club when I was in college! It was awesome for a while, but watch for leaks!

[deleted]

8 years ago (deleted Feb 11, 2018 12:14 PM) |

8 years ago |

kinggoosethefirst

Looks fantastic OP! I'd love to give this a go when i need to upgrade.

It's pretty fun, though it's more expensive than I'd expected when I started down this path.

BabaLovesAll

That’s cool, never knew this is a thing! So this is 7 years ago, u got a new setup right?? What u have now? Greetings from Amsterdam!

4 years ago |

No new setup yet, still running strong - does BG3 fine, at least. Probably building a new computer next year though.

8 months ago |

underaserpentsun

doesn't the oil get dirty from dust etc? it's probably a giant pain to change it.

Nope, there's a piece of plexiglass that's over the top, so dust doesn't fall in.

so will it last for a few years? also, can you upgrade without making a giant mess?

Upgrading will take some work, but with the components I have I won't need to upgrade for 5+ years.

StratificationGuaranteed

Is it just a thing? You fuck. Like wow some of these posts are so fucking stupid.

9 years ago |

DontcallmeLen

Should have built a 3M Novec cooled one.

That looks pretty damn amazing. Though I think I prefer the $12/gallon mineral oil to the $300/gallon that would cost me.

I've been trying to find a UK supplier, but you have to be a corporate buyer it seems. I think its a bit easier in the states.

I looked into a few other heat transfer oils but most of them you had to be a corporate buyer, and all were much more expensive. Luckily 1/2

I was able to find not just cheap mineral oil, but light mineral oil, which is less viscous, on a veterinarian supply site. 2/2

Bohneik

All I can say is I hope you don't have carpet. Every mineral oil PC I've seen put in a store-bought aquarium, the aquarium eventually broke.

10 years in and no leaking yet! Leaching, though, up all the wires.

And I do hope that the aquarium doesn't break - not much I can do to prevent that, other than making sure that it doesn't get too hot.

HighFive1

Put the aquarium inside a bigger aquarium. Voila!

Brilliant!

I don't know tech, but I do know redneck engineering