Linus COULD build it...

[talkIRC]

ok, i've watched and watched, and i feel at home when i do, reminds me of this box of old magazines i have, with years of copies stacked up from the good old days of pushing a PC to the Maximum, haha.  well i've got a "case" idea that i've had for years, and these days i know i'll never afford to build it myself, so i'll throw out the idea to someone who might enjoy pushing things hard.

 

what you'll need: mini fridge (yes we're going there) ; bleeding edge hardware ; lot's of mineral oil ; a sheet of thick (.5 inch) plexi

now think: door off mini fridge, bleeding edge hardware inside, total immersion of system inside minifridge

cables and so on would be routed through fridge shell via holes dirlled and sealed (there are mineral oil friendly sealants out there)

use the plexi to replace the door by drilling holes in both plexi and fridge frame then screwing plexi down with mineral oil friendly sealant.

build system with hardware that will still be good in 4 or 5 years and enjoy.

 

could also be done with a chest style freezer, but you'd have to ensure that it didn't drop below freezing temp for mineral oil (24 f or -4 c)

 

enjoy the always cool system (cold even with the chest freezer)

 

just an insane idea i've tossed around for years...

[8uhbbhu8]

He has already tried a pc in a fridge system. More ghetto but the idea is the same. Pc produces too much heat for the fridge to compensate for. MAYBE a large freezer or fridge would work but thats just a huge waste of power and space where you could just spend on a sub zero cooling system.

[talkIRC]

read closer to my set up, he put a pc in a fridge to test the idea, full of AIR, which isn't going to hold the cool like mineral oil would, there would be little to no air at all inside the "case", none the less it's just a crazy random idea.

 

[Theguywhobea]

Due to the specific heat of mineral oil being higher than the specific heat of air, it would actually take more energy to remove the heat from the same volume of mineral oil as air. Since a fridge was designed to cool objects from room temperature, to below room temperature; it would still struggle just as much trying to remove the heat from things that are actively generating heat. You also missed the point with saying it will be easier because it wont be full of air, but the PC components will still be generating the same amount of heat regardless of if it's in air or mineral oil, so the cooling load remains the same.

 

 

[talkIRC]

the idea is to cool the whole lot down prior to power up of the heat producing system, the liquid would retain the cool longer and would distribute it better then the air... once read a guide on how to lower the work load of your fridge that basically says the more empty (air space) there is the harder the cooling unit has to work to cool the empty space, with the oil there is technically NO empty space, the 10 to 20 gallons of oil would stay cool much longer then the air, and likewise would reduce the load on the cooling system of the fridge.

 

at this point i'll give in that no one reading this clearly understands the whole idea or the scientific basis for it.  (thermal dynamics at it's finest)