Would this work? Rather theoretical

[Arithorn]

Ok, I was busy doing my science lab on the specific heat of oil, and I suddenly had an idea - would it be possible and an effective cooling solution to submerge all computer parts in oil? Obviously harddrives, CDroms, etc would have to be waterproofed, but wouldn't oil make an incredibly good coolant - it takes a huge amount of heat to raise the temperature of oil... So? What do you think? Tell me how stupid I am!

 

[dbcrossfire]

try it and see what happens.

 

[tweakr]

It's been done before, but I can't remember where I saw it, and I haven't found anything through a quick search on google. The one example I'm thinking of had the motherboard and cards submerged in a tray mineral oil, and an oil-cooled PSU (scary-looking, but it worked - I believe he coated the PSU components with thermal epoxy).
You don't need to submerge all the computer parts in oil, as components such as CD-Roms and HDs are sensitive to things like being dunked in big tanks of oil - HDs have air filters built-in, and waterproofing a HD would most likely cause it to be warmer, not cooler. Also, CDRoms need to open and close, is kinda difficult to waterproof something that you regularly need access to .
IMHO, it's not worth it, unless you supercool the oil...but by all means, try it if you dare

cheers
tweakr

<edit> I think I'm mixing up two seperate projects, the oil-cooled PSU was related to making a silent PC I think </edit>