I have been watching people do oil cooled PCs for years and I've decided my old computer is a good candidate for this project, here are it's specs:

FIC AN11 Stealth Motherboard

Athlon XP 1900+ CPU

2x256 Generic SDRAM

Asus 5950U Video Card

WD 30GB Hard Drive

No Optical Drive

Generic 300W PSU

We're going to Wal*Mart tonight to buy the cheapest tank we can, and about 4 gallons of baby oil, hot glue sticks and gun, exacto knife, and maybe one of those treasure chests that blow bubbles for affect

I'll post back the results of this experiment with some links to pictures.

if you can find the slowest fan in the world have it circulate the oil, you'll be THE MAN but until then you'll just be the man

I've got a 140mm fan planned for that, have to try it and see if its enough to move mineral oil. Or i Might just buy one of those water pumps for the tank.

i'd be worried that it'll burn out under the stress

Just submerse the whole thing in oil - minus hard drive/optical drives and the PSU.

I am so keen to see some pics. Good luck!

Baby oil is pretty thin it should be ok, we'll have to test it and see.

It's OK to put the PSU in, many people have done it, just can't do optical drives or hard drives.

I may try and make a "suit" for the hard drive, and then silicon caulk it together, and around the cables.

Dam your gonna dunk a 5950U That was my favorite video card since it was my frist high performance video.

I'm trying to remember if the AN11 Stealth board has any overclocking tools, I don't think it does, so overclocking might not pay off, but it will still be fun.

someone should do a distilled water cooled PC and use a small outboard motor instead of fans...

Distilled water may work, but critters will eventually grow in it unless you completely make it air tight. I don't really want critters in my computer

I can't believe you're gonna do this. That's all am saying like...


Ah... just realised it's not your current build. But still.....

If this goes well, I'm going to consider doing it to my current machine. I mean why not, its basically silent, badass cooling, and no one I know is crazy enough to do it, but me. If I did it to my current machine I think I would use transmission fluid though, you can buy green tranny fluid cheap, so it would match my machine.

This is of course after researching if tranny fluid is conductive.

Tranny ... lol.
Tranny fluid ... ? ... ewwwww.

I did a kerosene cooled PC, didn't take.

PMSL! Tranny! Is the oil not sure what sex it is??? Haha!

Ok, oil you say. Fair play, but, when it comes to maintenance, or when something
goes, it's gonna get messy. And it's gonna be a nightmare getting all that stuff off.

I'm thinking of putting my system in my fish tank.

Baby oil? I've only seen it done with Canola oil. And they recommended removing all the fans first before puring the oil, I don't know how much effective the cooling will be over fans but certainly it will stink after a while I think.

Yeah, vegetable oil is the way to go. As mentioned, I always wouldn't put any electric fans in it since they use electrical coils to produce a magnetic field. The whole system would effectively have to be passively cooled--oil is far better at this than air. If you want to do some forced circulation, a small liquid pump with some ducting would probably be the best. Just take care not to pressurize the oil or stuff capacitors and what not could implode.

Clear mineral oil is what you should use. Any cooking oil will spoil quickly. Motor oil is too thick and will turn dark when aged. Baby oil is too thin and can be too expensive to buy that much quantity. Mineral oil will never spoil, and since it's clear, looks better too.



Damn... someone beat you to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtufuXLvOok

We did it!

Everything worked out flawlessly; except we grossly underestimated how much oil we would need.

We bought 20 pint bottles of mineral oil, 15 lbs of fish tank rocks for displacement, and it still only filled about a quarter of the 10 gallon tank. Tomorrow I'm going to Sam's Club and buy another 30 or so pint bottles.

We bought out our local Wal*Mart's stock, when you take 20 bottles of laxative to the counter people look at you funny, it was quite comical.

Temps dropped 10*C with the little amount of oil we had to test with.

We also decided to put a snorkel on the hard drive, I took a Burger King straw, cleaned it, dried it, and hot glued it over the drives breather hole, then mounded up hot glue to make a good seal, it actually worked!

We put the drive in the bottom of the tank after loading into Windows, then ran disk defrag and a spyware scanner to work the hard drive, never flinched.

I've got some pictures of the build and I'll post them when I can. I'll also post back after I get the whole tank filled with the oil.

Total cost so far is $62 but we need about 50 more dollars of oil.

Ah forget it, I didn't do my math correctly. So you can get bulk for $60 / 5 Gal (5x3800mL=19000mL), so that's about $3.16/L. But you say you can get 30 bottles of pint (30x473mL=14190mL) oil for $50, so that's $3.52/L. So basically the same by buying from local stores. So just go for it, forget the bulk order link.

That's about the same price we are paying, 5 gallon is $66.15 on that site you linked. If we bought 5 gallons in the store it's $72 and we dont pay for shipping.

If I can get out of this mod under or at $100 I'll be happy, I set out on a budget of $75 but as I said it took way more oil than we expected.

LOL we just realise the same thing, I mod my post about the same time.

Do you really need 10 Gal tank for a PC, can be smaller. Look at the youtube demo I posted, it doesn't look like 10 Gal there.