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Question The future of cooling could change drastically with underwater cooling

CorrosionX. They ran a tv that was submerged in a tank of the stuff for (at least) a year. there is a video on their site about some Kiwi who submerged a treated cell phone in water and it still worked.

I've used the stuff on electronics for 30+ years, especially in marine applications where the salt is highly corrosive.

Edit. The tv was treated with CorrosionX then placed in a tank full of water. I had the details wrong. There are several videos of people treating electronics with corrosionx and sticking them in water where they continue to function as expected. I saw one with a RC helicopter in a tank of water...

 
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Certainly you could totally coat every component of a mobo and all attached devices in something that is waterproof so it can operate without stray electrical conduction paths. BUT that coating very definitely will REDUCE the ability circulating air (or water, or whatever) to remove the HEAT being generated. Now, maybe water circulating over a component with an insulating layer on it can still remove heat as well as air flowing over the same BARE component - who knows? I do NOT think this is a good general practice!
 
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igor_kavinski said:
So I just spray it on my mobo and any other devices, making sure it is applied to every nook and cranny and just put it underwater? Does heat dissipation cause the layer of CorrosionX to disintegrate or something?
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You definitely do not want to coat anything that will make it water proof, unless it requires 0 thermal transfer, or you have heat pipes connected to it, under the coating, and its radiating somewhere.

I remember when ocz tried to make a graphene waterblock.
We all thought that would be the best thing since copper.

Well, graphene is hydrophobic, means its reject waters.
I am assuming that if it makes the components hydrophobic, it will have the same result as graphene waterblocks, which was a expensive failure because you need contact for thermal transfer.

But i am assuming CorrosionX probably makes a hydrophobic layer, somehow radiates the heat out the system otherwise the components would just heat up and shut down.
 
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aigomorla said:
You definitely do not want to coat anything that will make it water proof, unless it requires 0 thermal transfer, or you have heat pipes connected to it, under the coating, and its radiating somewhere.

I remember when they tried to make ocz tried to make a graphene waterblock.
We all thought that would be the best thing since copper.

Well, graphene is hydrophobic, means its reject waters.
I am assuming that if it makes the components hydrophobic, it will have the same result as graphene waterblocks, which was a expensive failure because you need contact for thermal transfer.

But i am assuming CorrosionX probably makes a hydrophobic layer, somehow radiates the heat out the system otherwise the components would just heat up and shut down.
Click to expand...

I edited my post. They treated the TV with Corrosionx then put it in a tank of water. I also linked a video of some guys with an RC helicopter in a tank of water. There's lots of that stuff on the net. I was kind of kidding when I suggested using it as a PC cooling medium. I really have no idea how that would work.
 
LTT built a mineral oil pc about a decade ago. I remember seeing a DerBauer video from CES using 3M Novec.
 
Coatings can be useful but to do it with the express purpose of submerging electronics into water is misguided.

Outside of very niche applications, there is no good reason to do it, aside from the novelty when showing it to people who have the mistaken belief that anything electrical will immediately implode when exposed to water.

At the same time you have to factor for the circuit voltage vs conductivity of the water and the sensitivity of the circuit to voltage change.

With typical consumer grade product PCBs there is yet another issue, that quite often the manufacturing process does not completely rinse away the water soluble flux, so once it gets wet again, that creates a conductive and corrosive liquid. For that reason, if you were to DIY coat something, I would thoroughly clean the PCB first, not assuming "new" means "clean".

Particularly an issue could be getting under the BGA chips, especially those with significant thermal/expansion dimensional changes, where if your coating ends up with a gap and water pools inside, you may end up with the flux residue causing problems.

I see it mostly as "look at me tempting fate". Coatings are a 2nd line of defense when you've already tried to mitigate damage from an environment, not supposed to be an enabler to deliberately try to create a problem environment that didn't need to exist.
 
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