Sub ambient cooling in an oil bath

[Hulgarth]

I was just wondering what the result of this would be? assuming the Cpu is cooled by a separate block and the oil is left at ambient temperature. The oil should not really cool down much so no problems with condensation and if you insulate the lines from the cpu block it should not cause water ingress. You could even seal the oil bath to prevent water getting in. Even if it did it should separate out I would have thought when you shut the system off.

 

Would be a fun and fairly easy experiment to try 

[Tostr4]

I have been thinking in the same direction; Once the oil around the CPU cools down, it wil become more viscous, and eventually harden, but that will probably even increase the insulation from the rest of the system. You can cool your CPU / GPU to - 20°C without having to worry about condensation. ²

[Mike.jpg]

You would probably want to insulate your CPU/GPU waterblock so that heat isn't transferred to the oil. If you do this, there is very little chance the oil will cool much. If you want to cool the oil too, mineral oil has a freezing temp of -4C. This can be lowered further by circulation. A small pump moving the oil around would probably be enough to prevent any freezing and would act as extra cooling for your MOBO.  

[Lipe123]

Why would you overcomplicate things? Just cool the mineral oil directly and put large passive heatsinks on the cpu and gpu. 

However any solution that involves mineral oil is a disgusting mess. 

 

Lastly, what's the point of attaining sub-ambient? If you can cool a cpu and gpu to 40 or 50 Celcius there is almost no additional gains for overclocking or anything until you get into LN2 territory.

[SolarNova]

On 6/8/2020 at 10:15 PM, Hulgarth said:

I was just wondering what the result of this would be? assuming the Cpu is cooled by a separate block and the oil is left at ambient temperature. The oil should not really cool down much so no problems with condensation and if you insulate the lines from the cpu block it should not cause water ingress. You could even seal the oil bath to prevent water getting in. Even if it did it should separate out I would have thought when you shut the system off.

 

Would be a fun and fairly easy experiment to try 

 

So long as the sub ambient temps are not to low (like subzero) this can work, however the oil bath will be getting warmed by other components and will be in full contact with the blocks, this will put more load on the sub ambient cooler.

 

In all honesty, the work u'd have to put in to the build the oil bath, and the mess involved with maintenance, u would be better of just building a dry air case instead. Either a chillbox or a sealed case filled with dry gas.

 

The chillbox method is the easiest, all u need is a relatively seal box and a chilled loop with a rad inside the box, this will chill the air. The same loop can be used to cool the components so long as ur chiller can maintain low coolant temps. With the intenral box temps lowered, so to is the dew point, allowing u to run the liquid in the loop lower, which in turn lowers the air temp more and so on.