plan for extreme cooling setup, need advice and technic assistance

[hzuiel]

I'll start off basic and try to get everyone's input on my plan to see if its practical. I want to build a plexiglass case to submerge a system in mineral oil, with a cooling system to pump the mineral oil through a radiator. Then I want to connect the CPU and video cards to a phase change unit. The catch is I would like a phase change unit capable of temps that could be used to break overclocking records, possibly using liquid nitrogen. I don't know if that's possible on a budget but I know they use liquid nitrogen as an actual coolant in cryogenics, not just pouring it in a a pot and letting it evaporate into the air and wasting thousands of dollars on liquid nitrogen. at the very least Iverify seen people on here with phase changes running at -180c which is amazing enough, I'm just hoping to go a step higher.

The reason for the mineral oil is that it will protect a sub ambient system from condensation and the mineral oil itself can be chilled to cool the whole system and the mineral oil won't become too viscous to circulate until extremely cold temperatures.

Once I get more input and find out how big the cooling system is gonna be I can start planning out the case. I may still fabricate the cooling system first just to be sure of the necessary case design.

Additional Comment:

Well I guess I'm on my own then.....

[flocko]

First of all WELCOME to the forum . Glad to see you here

Well , the reason your not getting any feed back is because this has been discussed quite a bit here and around the net . Most folks that have tried oil for cooling eventually gave up. Not because of failure per say but due to the AWFUL mess it creates and the smell AND the fact that your equipment warranty's are gone. Do a search here at the top of this page and type in "mineral oil" or "oil cooling" . A chill box would be a better concept to try to achieve. Or better yet , why not just insulate your board .

Breaking records happens all the time . However, unless your going to do some multiple ,humongous cascade system and are real proficient with blending refrigerants you may want to ease into that goal a bit more realistically

Just my .2 cents

-flocko

[hzuiel]

Originally Posted by flocko

First of all WELCOME to the forum . Glad to see you here

Well , the reason your not getting any feed back is because this has been discussed quite a bit here and around the net . Most folks that have tried oil for cooling eventually gave up. Not because of failure per say but due to the AWFUL mess it creates and the smell AND the fact that your equipment warranty's are gone. Do a search here at the top of this page and type in "mineral oil" or "oil cooling" . A chill box would be a better concept to try to achieve. Or better yet , why not just insulate your board.

-flocko

Usually it's not difficult to get RMA's through newegg and the oil can be cleaned off. It's the same difference as removing the stock heatsink on a video card to put a water block on, and many other mods. Even overclocking is supposed to void a person's warranty, or at least it did, maybe they've changed that with the growing popularity of overclocking. The anti water spray that a lot of people use to protect their motherboards before putting on the foam for sub-ambient cooling, is difficult to get off and has to be removed with a chemical. That's not really any different than using alcohol and a minor amount of detergent to remove oil.

I'm not sure what you mean by the smell, mineral oil doesn't smell strong by itself, does it get funky after a while? I guess I'll find out pretty quickly.

Some of the best insulated boards still manage to short out after months of continuous use. It's chemically impossible for mineral oil to fail because water and oil can't mix.

Here are videos of my first test phase with some old hardware. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkaCNYddCPo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HCIxfuEQyk Gonna try to find out about all the ups and downs of mineral oil and maybe explore the possibility of some other dielectrics. Then the next step is to get a phase change of some kind and do a little more testing, then I invest in a system upgrade and do some overclocking.

So now is the cooler express that has two connections for the cpu and gpu the best option for a phase change? it's $1500 or $1600. Would it be practical to build one that can go colder and handle more watts of heat dissipation, or could I build one for cheaper? I don't know what kind of expenses you guys incur building your own phase change units.

[Drewmeister]

I would keep the gpu's on water or chilled liquid, especially if running sli or cf. Forget the retail units for benching. A custom unit would be much more powerful. I would go with a rotary ss or cascade for the cpu. The initial investment in refrigeration tools and equipment is pretty high. Might want to find a builder for that. You can always build yourself an a/c chiller to get yourself started with benching.

Personally I would just insulate and keep the humidity in the room under control. That or build an airtight chillbox like flocko suggested. I heard the vegetable oil breaks down over time and will smell.. never heard that about mineral. If you really want to use oil then make sure there is good flow inside the tank to cool all the components. I would chill it a little... just to like 20c so you won't need an expensive pump.

Nice videos.. thanks for posting.