What liquids would it be safe to submerge PC Hardware in ? :)

[daw123]

Transformer oil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_oil

I'm not sure how easy this stuff is to buy, though

 

[daw123]

I was curious about Lead-bismuth eutectic, so had a look on Wikipedia:

As compared to sodium-based liquid metal coolants such as liquid sodium or NaK, lead-based coolants have significantly higher boiling points, meaning a [nuclear] reactor can be operated without risk of coolant boiling at much higher temperatures. This improves thermal efficiency and could potentially allow hydrogen production through thermochemical processes.

Lead and LBE also do not react readily with water or air, in contrast to sodium and NaK which ignite spontaneously in air and react explosively with water. This means that lead- or LBE-cooled reactors, unlike sodium-cooled designs, would not need an intermediate coolant loop, which reduces the capital investment required for a plant.

Best not try sodium and NaK then 🙂

 

[Idontcare]

My contribution to the thread:

Dousing Your Athlon FX-55 With Eight Gallons Of Cooking Oil?

Page three they talk about their (failed) attempts to use distilled water.

Sorry in advance that it is a tomshardware link 🙁

 

[Rubycon]

Horse laxative. (mineral oil) :laugh:

The hobbyist should not be using askerol or fluorinert.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
My contribution to the thread:

Dousing Your Athlon FX-55 With Eight Gallons Of Cooking Oil?

Page three they talk about their (failed) attempts to use distilled water.

Sorry in advance that it is a tomshardware link 🙁

that article was written january 2006. check out these component prices:


An AMD Athlon FX-55 available for $1,079 as the processor - a GeForce 6800 Ultra PCIe graphics costs $359. Among further components are a motherboard from Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI with an NForce-4-SLI chipset that costs just under $220 as well as DDR400 memory (1 GB) for $120, and an IDE hard drive from Maxtor with 320 GB capacity for the reasonable price of $155.



anybody who says that computers aren't dirt cheap today is crazy.

 

[coolpurplefan]

Originally posted by: daw123
I spoke to my dad re. your question (he is a chartered controls engineer for subsea installations) and he recommended:

• Silicon oil
  Transformer oil

What about which is flammable? I mean you wouldn't want it to explode if you had a careless friend who was smoking close to it.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Denithor
That's kinda scary, industrial chemicals available on eBay...

What's next, tactical nukes?

Honestly it is a totally inert substance though.

Its not like your buying nitro-glycerine or something.

:roll:

I know, I'm a chemist by training & trade...but I still find it odd that industrial-grade chemicals would be for sale at eBay. Because it could just as easily be an explosive or toxic or whatever chemical and somehow I doubt eBay would screen for properties very thoroughly.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Denithor

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Denithor
That's kinda scary, industrial chemicals available on eBay...

What's next, tactical nukes?

Honestly it is a totally inert substance though.

Its not like your buying nitro-glycerine or something.

:roll:

I know, I'm a chemist by training & trade...but I still find it odd that industrial-grade chemicals would be for sale at eBay. Because it could just as easily be an explosive or toxic or whatever chemical and somehow I doubt eBay would screen for properties very thoroughly.

They sell Windex and Hydrogen Peroxide too.

I'd be much more worried about getting Windex or H2O2 in my eyes/mouth/etc than flourinert.

(even though windex isn't going to kill/blind/maim me either, but NH3 will sting a tad if you douse your eyes with it)

Gotta keep things in perspective. Big badass sounding chemical names do not kill people, big badass molecules with lots of unpaired lone electrons kill people 😛

 

[GeezerMan]

Originally posted by: Denithor

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Denithor
That's kinda scary, industrial chemicals available on eBay...

What's next, tactical nukes?

Honestly it is a totally inert substance though.

Its not like your buying nitro-glycerine or something.

:roll:

I know, I'm a chemist by training & trade...but I still find it odd that industrial-grade chemicals would be for sale at eBay. Because it could just as easily be an explosive or toxic or whatever chemical and somehow I doubt eBay would screen for properties very thoroughly.

I'm not a chemist, but Fluorinert contains perfluorocarbons. I wonder just how inert this stuff is? Probably safer than dental amalgam though. Jeez, amalgam. What were they thinking?.

 

[daw123]

I went out with a client last night (corporate entertainment; free booze 😀) who is an electrical engineer. He has a 5 gallon drum of transformer oil at his house. He said that I can have as much of it as I want.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: GeezerMan
I'm not a chemist, but Fluorinert contains perfluorocarbons. I wonder just how inert this stuff is? Probably safer than dental amalgam though. Jeez, amalgam. What were they thinking?.

So does teflon, in fact you ingest teflon everytime you eat something that was cooked on a no-stick pan with a teflon (or generic version thereof) coating. Teflon is no-stick because it doesn't stick to itself too well, it sticks to your food really well. Not saying its good for you, just saying its not so bad as to be dire to your health when ingested so probably even less a hazaard to breath a few vapors or have some touching your skin.

 

[Calculator83]

u realize you're prob not going to get even close to a vapochill. save some time and energy. paint ur mobo and get vapochill. Hell u could even get 2 vapochill so u can cool everything with it. 6ghz FTW. Making crysis playable to exactly 3 people world wide.

 

[Avalon]

Saw someone at a LAN that had a PC engulfed in either vegetable oil or peanut oil. He had it sealed in this clear plastic crate. It was interesting, and it worked, but by the end of the night my god did that smell.

 

[coolpurplefan]

Originally posted by: Avalon
Saw someone at a LAN that had a PC engulfed in either vegetable oil or peanut oil. He had it sealed in this clear plastic crate. It was interesting, and it worked, but by the end of the night my god did that smell.

omg did that make me laugh. Can you believe someone complaining about your smelly computer? hahaha

 

[Acanthus]

Yeah i would certainly not want to use oils long term... youd likely have something growing in there since it never exceeds 50C or so.

My problem has been in finding a liquid that can stand temps of -100C without gelling, and still have long lasting dieletric properties.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
My problem has been in finding a liquid that can stand temps of -100C without gelling, and still have long lasting dieletric properties.

Liquid nitrogen avoids gelling provided it remains above 55K. Does that help?

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Acanthus
My problem has been in finding a liquid that can stand temps of -100C without gelling, and still have long lasting dieletric properties.

Liquid nitrogen avoids gelling provided it remains above 55K. Does that help?

Not at all.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Avalon
Saw someone at a LAN that had a PC engulfed in either vegetable oil or peanut oil. He had it sealed in this clear plastic crate. It was interesting, and it worked, but by the end of the night my god did that smell.

I was thinking that same thing. It seams to me that if you used vegetable oil, your entire house would smell like the kitchen of a Taco Bell, in no time. It seems like if you made the case airtight, that wouldn't happen, but with an airtight case, it wouldn't cool nearly as well, since the heat has no chance to escape.

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Acanthus
My problem has been in finding a liquid that can stand temps of -100C without gelling, and still have long lasting dieletric properties.

Liquid nitrogen avoids gelling provided it remains above 55K. Does that help?

Not at all.

Care to share why not?

 

[Calculator83]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Avalon
Saw someone at a LAN that had a PC engulfed in either vegetable oil or peanut oil. He had it sealed in this clear plastic crate. It was interesting, and it worked, but by the end of the night my god did that smell.

I was thinking that same thing. It seams to me that if you used vegetable oil, your entire house would smell like the kitchen of a Taco Bell, in no time. It seems like if you made the case airtight, that wouldn't happen, but with an airtight case, it wouldn't cool nearly as well, since the heat has no chance to escape.

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Acanthus
My problem has been in finding a liquid that can stand temps of -100C without gelling, and still have long lasting dieletric properties.

Liquid nitrogen avoids gelling provided it remains above 55K. Does that help?

Not at all.

Care to share why not?

you wouldn't submerge metal + plastics into something that cold. it'll compress to diff ratios and something will crack

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Calculator83

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Avalon
Saw someone at a LAN that had a PC engulfed in either vegetable oil or peanut oil. He had it sealed in this clear plastic crate. It was interesting, and it worked, but by the end of the night my god did that smell.

I was thinking that same thing. It seams to me that if you used vegetable oil, your entire house would smell like the kitchen of a Taco Bell, in no time. It seems like if you made the case airtight, that wouldn't happen, but with an airtight case, it wouldn't cool nearly as well, since the heat has no chance to escape.

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Acanthus
My problem has been in finding a liquid that can stand temps of -100C without gelling, and still have long lasting dieletric properties.

Liquid nitrogen avoids gelling provided it remains above 55K. Does that help?

Not at all.

Care to share why not?

you wouldn't submerge metal + plastics into something that cold. it'll compress to diff ratios and something will crack

You are assuming the poster wanted the liquid for submerging metal + plastics...something which they did not state. The request was to identify a liquid which would not gell at -100C.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Avalon
Saw someone at a LAN that had a PC engulfed in either vegetable oil or peanut oil. He had it sealed in this clear plastic crate. It was interesting, and it worked, but by the end of the night my god did that smell.

I was thinking that same thing. It seams to me that if you used vegetable oil, your entire house would smell like the kitchen of a Taco Bell, in no time. It seems like if you made the case airtight, that wouldn't happen, but with an airtight case, it wouldn't cool nearly as well, since the heat has no chance to escape.

But assuming the components didn't generate enough heat for that to be a problem, airtight sealing would be viable, no? Anyways since I've read this thread I've been thinking of building one as an HTPC for my parents, seems like it'd be a fun project 😛 Plus Puget Systems did a very nice version of it imo, one which I'd probably emulate. Puget's oil cooled system Any additional thoughts on an oil-cooled system? 😕

 

[Dazed and Confused]

an Intel QX9770 overclocked to 4.6GHz, 8GB of DDR3-1600 memory, and a NVIDIA GTX280 video card. It ran at 50C under full load, and that was with our fans on the low setting!

The winner, Mineral oil 🙂