Mineral oil + sub zero ?

[prezzz]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this but I always noticed one of the main problems keeping sub zero cooling from being a viable regular cooling solution is the condensation. Would it be possible to combine the concepts from Linus' sub zero water chilling videos and the mineral oil pc to keep water from condensing directly on the board/parts or would it just cause other problems ?

[Tostr4]

Nothing new here. This question passes trough about every two weeks. I have been thinking along the same path. The main advantage is clear, as you say: there will be no condensation buildup around the processors when submergerd in oil.

 

There are a few drawbacks. First and foremost: maintenace is a b**ch. I can very well speak from first hand experience, since I am currently working on an oil cooled rig. Check out my build log if you're interested. I just finished replacing my PSU and CPU cooler, and it took me all in all a day and a half, and I still have a mess to clean up.

 

Another long term issue will still be condensation: The condensation buildup on the glycol coolant tubes towards the cores will form drops and fall in the oil bath, and in the best case scenario pool together at the bottom of the oil bath. If one of those drops hits a PCB soldering however, you're done.

 

And the quality of the oil ( mostly electrical insulation ) will deteriorate faster when in contact with high humidity. Gluck M is luckily quite resistant, but the standard mineral 'baby' oil is hygroscopic, so you will at some point fry your PSU when the oil gets too conductive

 

Futher issues will be the right choice of pump to withstand the high temperature drops.

 

Subzero is good to get up on that overclocked wall of fame, but it is rarely used for extended gaming. This means that your setup of high end state of the art components will be covered in oil, and cannot be used for anything else anymore, because of the excessive dust buildup you will get if you use oil covered parts in an air enviroment.

 

My idea would be to mount water blocks on CPU and GPU, and cool them with 2 loops from a standard beer tap cooler, with both the reservoir as the medium filled with pure glycol. The tap cooler schould be upgraded so that the reservoir schould reach about -20°C. With extra insulation, and again some adaptations to reduce condensation buildup in the reservoir.

 

Technically I can build this, but it is too much of a bother right now. Perhaps when I retire...