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Using a oil in your PC cooling system
Freedom Kira:
Uh, yeah, flash-freezing and keeping the computer frozen constantly is an excellent idea. As is living in a vacuum. ::)
bork:
And so cost effective also!
Its only $1,200 for a 20 liter storage Dewar and about $1,100 for a transfer container. There will also be the cost of the Nitrogen and the delivery charges to keep your supply tank full.
The tank will evaporate off its 20 liters in about 20~25 days.
Liquid Nitrogen has a boiling point of about -196C (-320F), it will condense oxygen out of the air. This would be a interesting mixture of plastics and LOX.
Some semiconductors will stop working at Liquid Nitrogen temperatures, there is a limit on how cold you can make a CPU.
Tegh:
Lol
I was simply trying to point out how ludicrous some of this was, with something even more so!
Can it be done? Sure. Would you ever want to or would it EVER be worth it? Hell no!
There are as many ways to cool a computer as a person can think of really. But, there is a reason for the "normal" methods; cost and usability. Any time a person thinks about doing something with a computer they should cover those two things first. Can i cool a computer with oil? Yes, it's cheap too, but it's not much cooler, it's a pain in the arse, and can cause more problems then solve...so usability is out. All questions on computer cooling solved...NEXT!!!
x5ga:
The best coolant for a PC cooling system is distilled water. There are companies that sell "high-end" coolant liquids, but their performance is similar, if not worse than that of distilled water. If you're worried about corrosion or something, there are corrosion-blocker substances that can be used to treat the distilled water.
Also, liquid nitrogen is not that cold... in many applications it's considered kinda hot actually (liquid helium is preferred in many cases). So at 77K or so that the LN2 has (note how I didn't even take into account the temperature "loss", which would make the CPU run at 100K or so probably), the state where the semiconductors become an insulator in most cases isn't reached. Cooling a circuit in 99% of the cases reduces resistance and improves conductivity. Dunno how the actual speed of the system would be affected tho :/
I've seen a few years ago a system cooled with liquid nitrogen and overclocked from 1.7GHz to 4.5GHz or so (because the mobo couldn't go further), and it was stable while running Q3Arena testdemo.
About oil cooling, a friend made an "ultrasilent" system by removing all fans and submerging the whole system (PSU included) except HDD/DVD drive into a fishtank filled with mineral oil, after following some sketchy instructions found on the interwebz. Funny enough, the thing worked... stable for 48hrs running burn-in tests. Afterwards her realized that it looked dumb and changed it back to air-cooling ;D
AnimeJanai:
Brake Fluid is highly penetrating of seals, so you will have to keep an eye out for it wicking out.
As for immersion into oils, some electronic parts are not made to withstand long exposure to oils and so the oils may get inside after time. For example, electrolytic capacitors are not made with longterm oil-proof seals. I suspect the person who immersed the whole motherboard had to mod any emergency sensor connectors like for loss of CPU fan speed. Oil has thickness that resists fan blades, so I assume the fan in the power supply was disconnected since it would have problems trying to spin its blades in oil and that would cause the motor to heat up.
The world overclocking champions use liquid nitrogen to cool the CPU long enough to obtain an overclock value that meets the rules. The CPU is destroyed by the process. There are specific ways to have the liquid nitrogen flow onto the CPU without creating too much ice that gets in the way of cooling. It requires careful precooling before powerup. Ice forms on all nearby surfaces so you have to consider that you will have water on your parts and motherboard in short order which is why liquid nitrogen is usually a destructive process. Use of liquid nitrogen is actually shown in one video by fansub group Doremi since the japanese documentary centered around 4 people of which one was a dedicated overclocker and it showed him prowling akihabara for parts culminating in a liquid nitrogen overclocking attempt to set another overclocking record. There are two versions of the video. The Doremi one is fansubbed and the other is officially dubbed with english narration explaining what is going on and giving background information. I saved both because it gave a nice walkabout look at various parts of Akihabara I had missed visiting.
FANSUB VERSION: [Doremi].NHK.Akihabara.A.St ory.at.the.End.of.t he.Year.[2005][09E84822].mkv
ENGLISH NARRATOR: Akihabara_Geeks_[docu,DVDrip,x264]_-_OiNkERS.mkv
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