Mineral Oil Cooled PC - Question

[JekTek]

Hello all, 

             I have a few questions on mineral oil cooling and what will work/what will not will not. Most of these I figure will be alright to do, however, before I drop a couple of grand on a mineral oil Pc I want to make sure it will start. It has been awhile since Linus made his mineral oil build so I want to make sure that newer computer parts/features work with mineral oil.  

1.) I presume that the new motherboards with RGB lighting on them will still work under mineral oil as mineral nonconductive, however, will the mineral oil do anything to the lighting controller on the motherboard. More specifically I am going to be using the Asus - TUF X299 Mark 2 Mobo will that work under mineral oil.                                                                          2.) Can I use an m.2 drive? I know that a mechanical hard drive cannot work as the spinning disk will be stalled by the mineral oil and eventually break. Does any of the properties of an m.2 drive not work under mineral oil? Or does an m.2 drive work similar to an SSD where it can operate under mineral oil?

[Enderman]

1) it works fine

2) yes

3) don't do mineral oil cooling

[Lord Nicoll]

6 minutes ago, JekTek said:

Hello all, 

             I have a few questions on mineral oil cooling and what will work/what will not will not. Most of these I figure will be alright to do, however, before I drop a couple of grand on a mineral oil Pc I want to make sure it will start. It has been awhile since Linus made his mineral oil build so I want to make sure that newer computer parts/features work with mineral oil.  

1.) I presume that the new motherboards with RGB lighting on them will still work under mineral oil as mineral nonconductive, however, will the mineral oil do anything to the lighting controller on the motherboard. More specifically I am going to be using the Asus - TUF X299 Mark 2 Mobo will that work under mineral oil.                                                                          2.) Can I use an m.2 drive? I know that a mechanical hard drive cannot work as the spinning disk will be stalled by the mineral oil and eventually break. Does any of the properties of an m.2 drive not work under mineral oil? Or does an m.2 drive work similar to an SSD where it can operate under mineral oil?

The boards still obey the laws of nature, so do LEDs, and their controllers, and yes.... An M.2 SSD is still an SSD so that'll work fine. Lot of reading in that for not much content. 

[sazrocks]

0) Don't build a mineral oil PC.

[Damascus]

The answer to both questions is "it'll work, but why would you do it?"

[keskparane]

2 minutes ago, Damascus said:

The answer to both questions is "it'll work, but why would you do it?"

Because during intense sessions you can cook french fries. 

[Vizzaral]

1. All the oil does is slow down moving parts, which an RGB switch is just wiring and electrical currents, therefore will work fine.

2. An m.2 drive is an SSD. m.2 is the connection protocol. Unlike SATA, it is faster, and the drives used are just smaller SSD's.

 

PS. I wouldn't recommend doing a mineral oil PC, as it's a huge mess, you have to know what you're doing, the cooling benefits aren't as great as you'd hope (unless you're running some serious radiators to cool the oil) and your upgradeability is small and it's near impossible to sell old parts.

[Damascus]

10 minutes ago, keskparane said:

Because during intense sessions you can cook french fries. 

The perfect crime 

Quote

Mineral oil is used to treat constipation. It is known as a lubricant laxative. It works by keeping water in the stool and intestines.

https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-153865/mineral-oil-laxative-oral/details

[Guest]

This went left quickly...

[Alias Fakename]

Also, some mechanical drives come helium filled and sealed from the environment (such as this one). I'd bet that one of those would work while submerged in mineral oil while providing large amounts of storage.

[Tsuki]

a lot of people are gonna tell you not to cool your computer with horse laxatives, and they're right. 

 

its a lot more effort than its worth.  the cooling performance isn't as good as you'd think. Mineral oil isn't cheap. your computer is going to weigh a fuck ton. if you break the case, you'll get oil everywhere and its a bitch to clean up. swapping parts is the biggest pain in the ass and the old parts have to hang dry for over a week before you can do anything with them.

 

its not worth it. but if you insist, yes the board will work, yes an m.2 will work.

[andrewmp6]

It was a cool shock value in the 90s but after water cooling upgraded from a car heater core and fish tank pumps to what we have now,The whole mineral oil idea slowly died out over the years for many reasons that are already listed.

[LinusTech]

Got a video coming soon. We tried the mobo and video card from our mineral oil PC to see if they still work.

 

Hilarity ensues.