Has Anyone Here Built a Linux Oil Box?

[Simon]

Ok you know we are all geeks or we wouldn't be here eh? Today my roomy asked me about making a PC "quiet". I told him there are a few ways to go about doing this;

Clean and Oil Your Fans
Personally I break my PC down about once every 6 months and hit it with a small air compressor I bought for my car. Then I spray the fans with WD40. Just a short squirt inside the plastic to lube the barrings. I wipe off any excessive drips, I am not an electrician so I don't know what effect the oil might have on circuits.

Dip Switches on Case
Something I heard but never done myself. Some guy up North of me (I am in Canada near Detroit) said he placed on/off toggles on his case. Drilled holes and ran extra wires to the individual fans (3 I think he said). Because it is cold in the winter he shuts some of them off and runs a CPU monitoring tool. This sounds pretty risky to me, so I am not one to try it. He claims that he only runs them in the summer mostly and even sometimes not all at once.

Oil Filled Case
Finally like the title asks, oil filled cases made from aquariums. Some people used corn oil but it decays and makes and smell. So many recommend mineral oil from a hardware store. I have read and seen different results. Some say you need a pump to cool the oil, but others immerse the fans and allow them to pump the oil around the tank. This option is definitely not for someone who opens and upgrades the hardware often.

My roomy is no IT major and says he would like to try it. He has an older PC (early 2000's model) and it has no OS to speak of and he doesn't really care if we kill it. Asked me to assist, sounds like a nice summer project to keep us busy. We are going to scrounge up the parts we need... but I am betting we kill it. Because I am a genetics major and he is a hematologist major. So has anyone reading this had any experience or words of wisdom?

[bweinel]

Back in the early 90s, when I worked for a 3 letter government agency, we used water/glycol cooled machines to do alot of our processing as the water/glycol solution removed heat from the machines much more efficently and sent it to radiators on the roof without requiring massive air conditioners to cool the entire room. It worked pretty well. However we didn't immerse the processor boards in the solution as this would have lead to corrosion and damage to the PC board traces. Rather we used 'water jackets' (which were essentially large heatsinks with cooling tubes in them so that the water/glycol solutions could flow through and remove the heat). The 'water jackets' were then mechanically attached to the processors and had thermal grease between the processor and jacket contact surface to aid in the heat transfer process.

There are currently small water/glycol cooling systems available for PCs (...and they are especially useful if you like to overclock your processors.) I would think that would be a better way to go if you really wanted performance without risking damage.

cheers,
bill

[dibl]

Some say you need a pump to cool the oil, but others immerse the fans and allow them to pump the oil around the tank.

I was a zoology major, but even so I know better than to stick a fan designed for moving air under a liquid and call it a pump! That won't work worth a damn. I would not advise running an electric motor (which a fan is) under liquid, unless it is a pump designed for this purpose, unless you have your Masters in Electrical Engineering, if you don't want to burn the house down.

Honestly I'm not sure what the point of such a drastic cooling system would be. Motherboards don't get hot, resistors and capacitors don't get hot, cables and connectors don't get hot. Only CPUs, GPUs, memory chips, and maybe some chipsets dissipate very much heat, which is why you have air-cooled and water-cooled heatsinks designed for this specific purpose.

[Simon]

we used water/glycol cooled machines

This uses a non-conductive mineral oil which sometimes is called baby oil but used also by painters. No water, but I understand the process you are talking about. That would be far too large and cumbersome.

was a zoology major, but even so I know better than to stick a fan designed for moving air under a liquid and call it a pump!

Well here shown below is, one of many working, liquid oil cooled computers. This should give you a better idea of what I am talking about;



As you can see they emerged the PSU in the tank. They don't place the drives in there, just the mobo and PSU. There are tons of how to vids on this, I have some emails out to the people who have done this, and I promise to be careful. Thank you for your concern.

[Detonate]

I won't get into whether or not this is a good way to go, but I will point out that baby oil is nothing but mineral oil with a fragrance added, and at a significant price increase.

[Simon]

Ok started a blog on here about this project. Like I said above, I am not an electrician and neither is Frank. I doubt we are going to be soaking our hands in the tank while it is running. One email returned, came back with some positive results.

Thanks for writing us Simon. We have two working oil filled PCs one is on display in our store front and customers gravitate to it. Many people think it is a hoax, even had one man tracing the video cables looking for a junction box. The first one we build was a bit sloppy and is at my home in the tool shed. It ran for two years right up to the day I stored it. This one in the store front is only six months newer and has zero hardware maintenance. Since it is hooked up to wifi and internet we had some issues with software and malware. We don't use a pump but there is a fish bubbler in there just for show. The existing fans stir the oil and temps are very low 24 to 28 C. There is no noise unless we turn on the bubbler air pump.

Words of advice? Hard drives are not air tight they have little filters in them, so don't put it in the oil. Some people have experimented with other liquids (cooking oil) but none more successful than mineral oil. People claim that the oil will eat through the capacitors but hasn't happened to us. Some joker came in our shop last year and told us he built one with distilled water, which cannot be done with any margin for safety. There is a company online who sells kits but we built our model from scratch just to draw people in to look around. They are fun projects, but in practice - I would just buy some quieter fans. Have fun building your machine.

I guess that answers one question, no pump needed. Frank wants some plastic fish inside the tank...

[dibl]

Well here shown below is, one of many working, liquid oil cooled computers. This should give you a better idea of what I am talking about;

Yep, I see the picture. Assuming it is what it purports to be (what IS that internal plastic hose all about?) those fans trying to move mineral oil is just plain goofy. Find your nearest half-witted mechanical engineer, and ask him or her how effective a fan and motor combination designed to spin 1500 RPM and move air is going to work as a mineral oil pump. Prepare to pick him up off the floor, and he might need oxygen when the laughing fits wear off.

Put another way -- about how many airplanes have you seen using an outboard motorboat engine and prop?

'nuff said.

[SteveRiley]

Put another way -- about how many airplanes have you seen using an outboard motorboat engine and prop?

Dunno about that. But the other day I attached a jet enigne to my wave runner and WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!1!!11!

[Simon]

As it stands I have 2 machines, this would be a dumb idea for my laptop. I mean sure it would be steampunk cool and geeky to trot from class to class sloshing oil all over the campus. Now my desktop is another story, just last month my graphics card cooked itself. The Galaxy I had in there for 3 years was making waves on my screen and I checked and it was running hot at 171C. So I went to the local shop and got a BFG cheap enough to replace it. My concern would not be it the quiet or the cooling but how I would replace the cards that go ka-PRang! Again this is Frank's machine and I am assisting him. I doubt the fans do much, I believe this works much on the principle of a lava lamp. Oil gets hot goes to the surface cooled oil returns to the bottom. The tube was explained in the email I received as the "bubbler" which is off in this picture. Meanwhile Steve, that is no longer a wave runner, they call those pod racers when you do that.

I updated the blog.

Blog updated on Thursday.

[woodsmoke]

I've modded many, many cases, and used to be able to provide pics but the hosting sites went belly up half a decade or so ago.

One of my two best buds, the GregMan had an oil filled case, that had a radiator that was outside the bedroom window under a shade with fans blowing on it.

He had clear "silicone/whatever/acrylic" pipes running from the machine, out the window and then back to the machine and a pump from NewEgg ( or some place ) to push the fluid.

He overclocked massively and was into divx when divx was in it's infancy.

He also ran one of the very early versions of MythTV.

He also cleaned the gaps between the tile in his computer store with a toothpick when there were no customers to serve or equipment upon which to work...

But....he was the guy that got all that sweet stuff that I was able to donate....before it all went south....as in south of the border...and disappeared from the U.S. shelves in the space of a few months...

But....he did have a SWEET oil setup.

Me....I leave the side off the case and have several multi-coloured fans blowing on all the parts, and a hard drive standing on end outside the case with a multi-coloured fan blowing on the bottom of it.

only a geek would appreciate that. lol

woodsmoke

[HalationEffect]

There's an article today on Ars Technica that might be of interest: http://arstechnica.com/security/2013...n-mineral-oil/

Some useful tips in there, e.g.:

A few modifications are required before taking the plunge. One involves removing all the fans. Another is replacing the thermal paste that binds a CPU's heat sink to the mother board with a special foil that absorbs the temperature of the cooled liquid.

[aria]

Just few words about the WD40:
WD40 is not a lubricant. It's an anti-rusting agent. WD stays for water displacer (not Western Digital - place for a smiley). It cleans, also lubes temporarily(!), than vitrifies (thus the anti-rust protection).
It was a habit years back, to treat film cameras and lenses, at so-called professional repair stores, with WD40 (they put it even on dry mechanisms like shutters and apertures...). The consistent results were that these cameras and lenses worked for the next 6 months, than got stuck. On eBay it was a praise to sell CLA (cleaned-lubed-adjusted) film cameras, but I always avoided them.
Instead using WD40, use sewing machine oil (I believe Baby Oil is the same liquid, but didn't try it to see if vitrifying or not). Using sewing machine oil, also solves the vitrification issue of a previously used WD40. Just be careful not to drop too much oil, because this one migrates.
In fact, I wouldn't oil the fan more than once all 2-3 years. Same with braking down the laptop box: taking off and plugging back all those flat cables can only damage the machine. I only hit some compressed air in every ventilation slot and that's all.

[verndog]

... those fans trying to move mineral oil is just plain goofy. Find your nearest half-witted mechanical engineer, and ask him or her how effective a fan and motor combination designed to spin 1500 RPM and move air is going to work as a mineral oil pump. Prepare to pick him up off the floor, and he might need oxygen when the laughing fits wear off....

I'm wondering if those fans are even working. Maybe unplugged - if they are spinning, then why don't we see tell-tale signs like swirling liquid or maybe that PC is turned off.
In either case, I would prefer to investigate those gargantuan cpu coolers, rather than immerse my pc in liquid.

[oshunluvr]

Those air fans don't have the HP to spin oil. They're disconnected. I researched all this a few years back seeking a quiet OC'd PC. Basically, the cost of the oil setup - if you do it right - is at least twice the cost of the PC you're cooling. Why bother? spend 90% less on a good water cooling setup and high quality fans like I did. 25% OC'd with $200 not $800. Fun mental gymnastics but not practical by any measure.

[Simon]

The blog on this is finished, feel free to comment on it. I will upload some photos once Frank is done with his decorations. He wants some LEDs and crap. I have to put a power switch on it yet, for now we jump start it, very GTA. His machine is running Debian with a Gnome GUI. It has a completely immersed wifi card, and yet he gets better signal than I do on my laptop. Frank's PC is not a "power" PC just something for him to surf the internet and impress the ladies.

I pray this heatwave will end soon!! :P