mineral oil pc build died

[MineraloilPc]

So I submerged intel NUC in few litters of baby oil without CPU cooler. I also installed few fans to spread the heat. I ran prime95 for few hours. It worked well for few days. 

 

Today when I stressed CPU , the system crashed, it rebooted okay. But keeps crashing whenever I stress CPU. Now it doesn't start at all.

 

I live in high humidity environment, wondering what went wrong before I try it again. 

[Blue4130]

9 minutes ago, MineraloilPc said:

So I submerged intel NUC in few litters of baby oil without CPU cooler. I also installed few fans to spread the heat. I ran prime95 for few hours. It worked well for few days. 

 

Today when I stressed CPU , the system crashed, it rebooted okay. But keeps crashing whenever I stress CPU. Now it doesn't start at all.

 

I live in high humidity environment, wondering what went wrong before I try it again. 

Well you still need a cooler on it... No fan obviously, but you still need the cooler to spread the heat generated by the IHS/die.

[Blue4130]

12 minutes ago, MineraloilPc said:

So I submerged intel NUC in few litters of baby oil without CPU cooler. I also installed few fans to spread the heat. I ran prime95 for few hours. It worked well for few days. 

 

Today when I stressed CPU , the system crashed, it rebooted okay. But keeps crashing whenever I stress CPU. Now it doesn't start at all.

 

I live in high humidity environment, wondering what went wrong before I try it again. 

Also, baby oil has additives. It's not pure mineral oil. You should not use baby oil.

[MineraloilPc]

Just now, Blue4130 said:

Well you still need a cooler on it... No fan obviously, but you still need the cooler to spread the heat generated by the IHS/die.

I placed few fans on top of PCB specifically on top of cpu and GPU to move the oil 

[Blue4130]

2 minutes ago, MineraloilPc said:

I placed few fans on top of PCB specifically on top of cpu and GPU to move the oil 

Haha Yea, that is not going to work...

[MineraloilPc]

2 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Also, baby oil has additives. It's not pure mineral oil. You should not use baby oil.

Hmm interesting. Another question is what happens if I submerge this small fish tank inside a bigger fish tank with chilled water. 

[mariushm]

A heatsink increases the surface the heat dissipates from and acts as a heat "buffer", otherwise the chip surface is too small to properly radiate the heat into the mineral oil. 

 

Others are correct, baby oil has extra stuff in it, it's not ideal.  

 

Also, even with mineral oil, it's a good practice to cover sensitive areas (ex the surface mount decoupling capacitors behind the cpu socket) with some insulator, like for example a bit of clear epoxy, so that there's less risk of having shorts between ground and cpu voltage.

 

[MineraloilPc]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

A heatsink increases the surface the heat dissipates from and acts as a heat "buffer", otherwise the chip surface is too small to properly radiate the heat into the mineral oil. 

 

Others are correct, baby oil has extra stuff in it, it's not ideal.  

 

Also, even with mineral oil, it's a good practice to cover sensitive areas (ex the surface mount decoupling capacitors behind the cpu socket) with some insulator, like for example a bit of clear epoxy, so that there's less risk of having shorts between ground and cpu voltage.

 

That is new. Intel NUC is very small, it's gonna be trouble finding what to insulate. 

 

Also what happens if I place this fish tank inside a bigger fish tank with chilled water. Any thoughts on condensing or any other issues

[8tg]

I think you really should’ve researched how these builds work before having committed to it.

 

The die is not enough surface area for cpu heat dissipation, and baby oil is not mineral oil. Some components on the board may not take well to being coated in oil, namely that it can cause excessive resistance in some permeable parts like ceramic coated surface mount resistors.

Take it out, fully clean it with alcohol, reassemble the nuc as it was originally, and see if it works. If it works you can move on to a proper mineral oil pc but you may have killed this nuc.

 

Mineral oil PCs need a Heatsink and oil circulation, generally they’re very low power too, as the heat doesn’t really go anywhere without radiators. A nuc is a good choice for this if it’s done right as it’s a low power system, but regardless there needs to be a Heatsink and oil circulation because otherwise you just have a bunch of hot oil over the cpu.

Even those 3M novec builds run usually an open water cooling block for extended ihs to cooling material coverage, and they have large condensing arrays above the fluid to transfer heat out of the system. They don’t cool a bare die.

[Blue4130]

20 minutes ago, 8tg said:

I think you really should’ve researched how these builds work before having committed to it.

 

The die is not enough surface area for cpu heat dissipation, and baby oil is not mineral oil. Some components on the board may not take well to being coated in oil, namely that it can cause excessive resistance in some permeable parts like ceramic coated surface mount resistors.

Take it out, fully clean it with alcohol, reassemble the nuc as it was originally, and see if it works. If it works you can move on to a proper mineral oil pc but you may have killed this nuc.

 

Mineral oil PCs need a Heatsink and oil circulation, generally they’re very low power too, as the heat doesn’t really go anywhere without radiators. A nuc is a good choice for this if it’s done right as it’s a low power system, but regardless there needs to be a Heatsink and oil circulation because otherwise you just have a bunch of hot oil over the cpu.

Even those 3M novec builds run usually an open water cooling block for extended ihs to cooling material coverage, and they have large condensing arrays above the fluid to transfer heat out of the system. They don’t cool a bare die.

Really though, there is next to no reason to dunk a nuc, they are so low powered already, that its easy to make them silent.

[MineraloilPc]

24 minutes ago, 8tg said:

I think you really should’ve researched how these builds work before having committed to it.

 

The die is not enough surface area for cpu heat dissipation, and baby oil is not mineral oil. Some components on the board may not take well to being coated in oil, namely that it can cause excessive resistance in some permeable parts like ceramic coated surface mount resistors.

Take it out, fully clean it with alcohol, reassemble the nuc as it was originally, and see if it works. If it works you can move on to a proper mineral oil pc but you may have killed this nuc.

 

Mineral oil PCs need a Heatsink and oil circulation, generally they’re very low power too, as the heat doesn’t really go anywhere without radiators. A nuc is a good choice for this if it’s done right as it’s a low power system, but regardless there needs to be a Heatsink and oil circulation because otherwise you just have a bunch of hot oil over the cpu.

Even those 3M novec builds run usually an open water cooling block for extended ihs to cooling material coverage, and they have large condensing arrays above the fluid to transfer heat out of the system. They don’t cool a bare die.

I highly doubt if it's due to heat dissipation. I also mentioned that I installed fans to move the oil close to cpu. CPUs generally throttle if they get hot.

 

My guess is either baby oil is bad but I see lots of people using it. 

Humidity in the environment can make oil conductive over the time.

 

[MineraloilPc]

17 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Really though, there is next to no reason to dunk a nuc, they are so low powered already, that its easy to make them silent.

The objective is not trying to make nuc silent.i run cpu heavy workloads , so trying keep it cool

[Kilrah]

It was probably keeping itself cool much better on its own. 

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, MineraloilPc said:

The objective is not trying to make nuc silent.i run cpu heavy workloads , so trying keep it cool

Which version of the NUC is it? There are MUCH better ways to cool it that tossing it in mineral oil.

[jaslion]

2 hours ago, MineraloilPc said:

The objective is not trying to make nuc silent.i run cpu heavy workloads , so trying keep it cool

Under 100c is fine for the nuc.

 

But really running ANY cpu without a heatsink is enough to kill it be it in mineral oil or not. The heatspreader is NOT enough to coop the cpu and it needs a way to spread out its heat instantly to a bigger heatsoaking surface. Just running cold oil over it is NOT enough.

 

Also if you just want a very cool nuc get like a asrock deskmini and mount a big cooler to it (leaving the sidepanel off).

 

Do you have a picture of the setup?

 

Also baby oil will still conduct electricity due to the additives

[MineraloilPc]

39 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Under 100c is fine for the nuc.

 

But really running ANY cpu without a heatsink is enough to kill it be it in mineral oil or not. The heatspreader is NOT enough to coop the cpu and it needs a way to spread out its heat instantly to a bigger heatsoaking surface. Just running cold oil over it is NOT enough.

 

Also if you just want a very cool nuc get like a asrock deskmini and mount a big cooler to it (leaving the sidepanel off).

 

Do you have a picture of the setup?

 

Also baby oil will still conduct electricity due to the additives

Baby oil doesn't conduct electricity, lots of people used it previously instead of mineral oil.

 

If you watched Linus videos , you knew that CPUs don't die to to lack of heatsinks. 

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, MineraloilPc said:

Baby oil doesn't conduct electricity, lots of people used it previously instead of mineral oil.

 

If you watched Linus videos , you knew that CPUs don't die to to lack of heatsinks. 

The more you know about computers, the more you realize how inaccurate Linus' videos are.

 

BUT As you can see, with first hand experience, mineral oil PC's are not reliable or straight forward without some major prep and understanding.

[MineraloilPc]

8 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

The more you know about computers, the more you realize how inaccurate Linus' videos are.

 

BUT As you can see, with first hand experience, mineral oil PC's are not reliable or straight forward without some major prep and understanding.

It's good to know that you think Linus videos are inaccurate.

 

mineral oil pcs are reliable enough without much understanding

[Blue4130]

21 minutes ago, MineraloilPc said:

It's good to know that you think Linus videos are inaccurate.

 

mineral oil pcs are reliable enough without much understanding

Running for a few days and they dying does not sound that reliable to me.

[IkeaGnome]

26 minutes ago, MineraloilPc said:

It's good to know that you think Linus videos are inaccurate.

 

mineral oil pcs are reliable enough without much understanding

Even if we ignore accuracy discrepancies, Linus and Luke still used a heatsink in their mineral oil computer.

The heat sink is a huge difference there. Heat spreaders are way too small to be able to cool a CPU on their own.

[jaslion]

20 hours ago, MineraloilPc said:

Baby oil doesn't conduct electricity, lots of people used it previously instead of mineral oil.

 

If you watched Linus videos , you knew that CPUs don't die to to lack of heatsinks. 

The oil doesn't conduct but the other particles in baby oil DO. They collect near parts over time and can cause shorts. 2days is quite quick so that is very unlikely.

 

As for your case here cpu's without heatsinks DO flat out die. Yes they have safety mechanisms but those are only meant to be triggered a couple times. You running WITHOUT a heatsink of any kind was asking to kill the cpu.

 

A cpu without a heatsink on it doesn't just hit 105c and then shut off it reaches HUNDREDS of degrees for a couple seconds before a shutdown.

 

Now your mineral oiled system basically had to be thermal throttling but was cooled just enough to be running ok. HOWEVER this does not mean other parts of the cpu weren't cooking to death during this because there are only a couple sensors on them and the expected usecase is that they have a thermal sink on them so more than those is not needed and individual pieces monitoring is not needed because they aren't meant to function without a heatsink.

 

So next time. Use a heatsink and proper oil if you do this again. Like literally just dump the nuc with the heatsink and fan that it has on it by default in the tank and it will be fine.

[MineraloilPc]

On 6/10/2022 at 2:39 PM, jaslion said:

The oil doesn't conduct but the other particles in baby oil DO. They collect near parts over time and can cause shorts. 2days is quite quick so that is very unlikely.

 

As for your case here cpu's without heatsinks DO flat out die. Yes they have safety mechanisms but those are only meant to be triggered a couple times. You running WITHOUT a heatsink of any kind was asking to kill the cpu.

 

A cpu without a heatsink on it doesn't just hit 105c and then shut off it reaches HUNDREDS of degrees for a couple seconds before a shutdown.

 

Now your mineral oiled system basically had to be thermal throttling but was cooled just enough to be running ok. HOWEVER this does not mean other parts of the cpu weren't cooking to death during this because there are only a couple sensors on them and the expected usecase is that they have a thermal sink on them so more than those is not needed and individual pieces monitoring is not needed because they aren't meant to function without a heatsink.

 

So next time. Use a heatsink and proper oil if you do this again. Like literally just dump the nuc with the heatsink and fan that it has on it by default in the tank and it will be fine.

You are answer is very thoughtful. It makes complete sense that cpu only has few sensors.

 

I'm planning to do this again with a NUC type of Chinese of system

 

Here are few questions

1) what oil should I use

2) should I be concerned about dust when dunking hands occasionally

3) what happens if I submerge fish tank A(Containing oil and build) inside a bigger fish tank with ICE cold water 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jaslion]

13 minutes ago, MineraloilPc said:

You are answer is very thoughtful. It makes complete sense that cpu only has few sensors.

 

I'm planning to do this again with a NUC type of Chinese of system

 

Here are few questions

1) what oil should I use

2) should I be concerned about dust when dunking hands occasionally

3) what happens if I submerge fish tank A(Containing oil and build) inside a bigger fish tank with ICE cold water 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1) Pure mineral oil

2) Not really it will get in there you can use a filter if it gets too much. But really a miner oil pc is all about setting it up and sealing it. Only the external radiator and pump really move the liquid outside the tank

3) You get a warm second fishtank. Ice cold water will warm up in half an hour or so.

 

I feel like you don't full grasp what you need to do here? Were you cooling the oil with ANY external watercooling radiator?

 

This time make sure you at least put the stock heatsink WITH the fan on the cpu.

 

I assume this is just for fun at this point? Cuz if you want silence I know at least 6 ways to get there without this mess :p.

[MineraloilPc]

17 minutes ago, jaslion said:

1) Pure mineral oil

2) Not really it will get in there you can use a filter if it gets too much. But really a miner oil pc is all about setting it up and sealing it. Only the external radiator and pump really move the liquid outside the tank

3) You get a warm second fishtank. Ice cold water will warm up in half an hour or so.

 

I feel like you don't full grasp what you need to do here? Were you cooling the oil with ANY external watercooling radiator?

 

This time make sure you at least put the stock heatsink WITH the fan on the cpu.

 

I assume this is just for fun at this point? Cuz if you want silence I know at least 6 ways to get there without this mess :p.

You are right this about fun

 

You said the outer tank will heat up soon. If I can make the outer tank to stay at sub zero temperatures would I cause any problems? Like condensation or any other things

 

The CPU I'm using this time is a Low wattage CPU of 5W with a really small surface similar to Amazon firetv 4k. It doesn't come with heat spreader or CPU fan. But it does heats up 2L of oil within a hour. 

[jaslion]

9 minutes ago, MineraloilPc said:

You are right this about fun

 

You said the outer tank will heat up soon. If I can make the outer tank to stay at sub zero temperatures would I cause any problems? Like condensation or any other things

 

The CPU I'm using this time is a Low wattage CPU of 5W with a really small surface similar to Amazon firetv 4k. It doesn't come with heat spreader or CPU fan. But it does heats up 2L of oil within a hour. 

Can you show what you are getting?

 

Also is this thing just in a small bin?

 

Yes you will get condensation. You NEED a liquid cooling loop to cool the mineral oil.