Using Alcohol Instead Of Water In Your Loop

[Tanner8]

I read that your PC can work submerged under alcohol or Oil. Since the viscosity of oil is high that wouldnt flow to well. But I was wondering if you can just use alcohol in your loop that way if you get a leak of some sort it wouldnt do any damage at all to your rig. And it would even evaporate fast. Would this work? Has it been tried?

[PhoenixDance]

has it the same thermal systoms?

[marauder16]

I believe that water is still better because it has a (much) bigger thermal capacity...

[magg]

Submerging your PC in oil has been proven to be completely inefficient and not much more, if at all, more effective than standard watercooling. Just use the standard mix of 80/20 water and anti-freeze and you should be fine.

[Go_Big]

lol everyones standard is different. 80/20, 90/10, 50/50. I think 90/10 is better. but everyoen is different.

[magg]

Originally Posted by Go_Big

lol everyones standard is different. 80/20, 90/10, 50/50. I think 90/10 is better. but everyoen is different.

Just as long as it's not alcohol

[WiCKeD]

I'm guessing with the loss in performance, you would be better off air cooling. It evaporates a whole lot faster so a PITA to maintain.

[gothchick]

I've never tried running alcohol in a loop.... The Russians use Alcohol to cool their high powered radar assemblies on the MIG-25s (Wikipedia). I have also heard in WC circles that it does carry and disipate heat better than water. But that it also eats away at anything made out of aluminum and isn't too friendly to different plastics and rubber...... I think good ol' fashioned coolant 90/10 is best. Anything more than 90/10 makes it more viscous and less effecient in a pc wc loop. My temps were slightly better using 90/10 as opposed to 80/20 or 70/30.

[Citizen_Insane]

I can tell you for sure that alcohol has a much lower specific heat capacity than water. This means that per gram, more energy can be added and not raise the temp as much w/ h2o. I think the best way alcohol could be used would be to evaporate it and then condense it somehow. I know I've frozen water by evaporating Pentane (in HS Chem Class). Then again, that gets into the whole evap system thing and some serious $$$. But hey, what do we know. Maybe you should pioneer the next great thing in liquid cooling and go to the local drug store and get 10 bottles of Isopropenol.

[gunbo13]

We apparently have this underway:
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...d.php?t=226902

But I strongly advise against it as I did in that thread too. It is grossly inefficient and messy as all hell.

[gothchick]

Yeah, after submersing the rig in motor oil... It should probably *stay* in motor oil... Whew... Messssy....

[Tanner8]

This thread isnt about submerging the computer in alcohol. Its about running alcohol inside your loop instead of water. Some people got that but others cant read. The point of it was so that if a tube falls out of place and leaked all over the place, it wont short your hardware.

[johnny45]

Alcohol is a very bad idea, and has been brought up very often. It has a low flash point (depending on the concentration, I believe it is lower than room temperature).

For those of you that skipped out on high school chemistry, that means that if you have a short, say good bye to your house.

[jackdog]

Been doing a lot of research recently on various coolant additives and found this interesting one over at overclockers.com on using methanol (methyl alcohol) as a water additive.

http://www.overclockers.com/articles609/index03.asp

For those not interested in reading the link.

A 33%/66% methanol mixure would cool really well, better than glycol/water and at that ratio not be flammable. Methanol is not dielectric and will still short your board out. The fumes are hazardous and cause health problems, so unless your system is 100% vapor tight you would need to wear a respirator when using it . Also it is corrosive to your system so it would shorten the life of your waterblocks. So while it does have some good points the bad points out weigh them.

For the best thermal capcity and thermal conductivity water with a bit of biocide still seems to be the best for a system w/o aluminum in their water system. Water with a small amount of propylene glycol which is a type of antifreeze that is less toxic than the ethyl glycol variety seems to be the best for those with aluminum waterblocks or fittings.