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Using a oil in your PC cooling system
AnimeJanai:
Those window mount air conditioners are remarkably cheap. For the price of all the cooling system parts, one wonders if you could simply put the airconditioner unit completely outside in its own shielded "doghouse" size protective shelter and have the cool air ducted thru one of those flexible ducts thru the open window to your PC. The extra cold air should help your air-cooled heatsinks (no water cooling) a lot. The noise of the air conditioning unit remains outside too. If your room gets too cold, you can connect a 2nd flexible duct and mount a USB powered 120mm fan to push air to the outside. Or you can *har har* run folding on your graphic cards' processor cores to generate some heat. In the summertime, that air conditioner might come in handy too just to keep yourself cool.
Micharus:
ATOMIC magazine actually made a PC that was completely submerged in some sort of fluid, everything except the PSU that is.
But, to be on-topic a bit, Brake fluid/Auto-trans fluid would probably do the trick nicely.
They are both very close to water as far as liquidity is concerned and I'm betting they are both non-flammable and non-conductive.
datora:
.
--- Quote from: Micharus on July 11, 2011, 05:53:15 AM ---But, to be on-topic a bit, Brake fluid/Auto-trans fluid would probably do the trick nicely.
--- End quote ---
Brake fluid is highly flammable. It burns very much like motor oil. We used to fill a can with chlorine tablets (used to treat pool water), then pour brake fluid into the can until full. After a minute or three, it would auto-ignite and create a column of impressive flame a good few meters high. Nice improvised 4th of July display. ;D
Trans fluid I can't speak to direct experience, but it is a petroleum oil, so I suspect that it will ignite at some temperature or another. Suggest google and wikipedia as a first-stop check on that ... include "MSDS" or "Materials Safety Data Sheet" in google search string and you will get the exact ignition temperature. Might be safe enough at lower temps and if isolated from oxygen.
There are specialized silicon oils. I used to use a vacuum bell jar that used heated oil to pull a hard-space level vacuum. Can't remember the details on it anymore; too many years ago. But, I think it ran about 200 degrees C for normal operating temps. Can't remember the proper name for the type of pump it's called (condenser oil pump?) ... but the oil in it handles high temp without cracking or igniting. It's probably an acceptable material for this type of application. I'd definitely want to look up its heat capacity to guess at its efficiency; there's actually almost nothing that can beat good ol' H2O for heat capacity, though.
kitamesume:
--- Quote ---Fluorinert is the trademarked brand name for the line of electronics coolant liquids sold commercially by 3M. It is an electrically insulating, stable fluorocarbon-based fluid which is used in various cooling applications. It is mainly used for cooling electronics. Different molecular formulations are available with a variety of boiling points, allowing it to be used in "single phase" applications where it remains a liquid, or for "two-phase" applications where the liquid boils to remove additional heat via evaporative cooling. An example of one of the compounds 3M uses is FC-72, or perfluorohexane (C6F14). Perfluorohexane is used for low temperature heat transfer applications due to its 56°C boiling point. Another example is FC-75, perfluoro(2-butyl-tetrahydrofurane). There are 3M fluids that can handle up to 215 °C, like FC-70.[1]
--- End quote ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert
something to look at.
the best design would be placing a passive heatsink on the CPU while submerging it on Flourinert.
Tegh:
The best coolant for a PC...I'd go with Liquid Nitrogen. Sure you'd have to be running the PC in a vacuum, and change out the liquid nitrogen every week (less or more depending on the size of the system and boiling rate of the liquid nitrogen), but hey...it's worth it to say that your PC is running at -15 degrees at all times lol.
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