is oil cooling safe?

[craig7]

ive been looking into liquid cooling for about a month now and i just recently heard about oil cooling. you basically just put your motherboard in an aquarium and fill it with non-conductive oil. apparently it works pretty well and it seems easy to do but i want to know if its safe. it seems like if the oil is non conductive it would work fine as long as you keep certain parts dry such as the hard drives.

so.... is it safe?
what oil should i use?
will my fans work in the oil? (just to circulate it all)

im probably not gonna get much response here so ill post this at hard ocp too

 

[JohnA]

You use mineral oil... it works, it is messy, it costs.

You can find a whole video series on it from G4 TV.

 

[agarwalro]

It can be done and has been done... but, if your oil stagenates between the cards or RAM modules, you will be hampering the cooling rather than improving it. And of course, why do this? Using conventional cooling gets the job done just as well at a fraction of the cost.

Great for "build" threads and case competitions, useless for everyday or even game computing needs.

 

[Rickster71]

The Mineral Oil PC - The Mineral Oil PC by Andrew Mollman | bit-tech.net
Looks like it might be interesting to try if you're single and don't have a girlfriend.

 

[Beatmatcher247]

I wouldnt do it because oil gradually raises in temperature onlike air or water. Air is fine for some aggressive overclocks with a decent aftermarket cooler without it sounding like a leaf blower. So if you ran it continuously it would eventually get too hot. your fans will not work cause trying to push heavy oil around will burn out their tiny motors.

I share Agarwalro's concern about the oil around your hotter components heatting up if you leave it running too long.

 

[jonnythan]

It's messy and pointless and ugly.

 

[Adam]

I was looking at that years ago and came across a nice article on someone who built a case and submerged their computer in cooking oil. The upside to overheating your electronics? Tasty french fries.

I agree with the others. If you're doing this as a hobby, then go for it. Heck, if you've got the cash, go the NSA supercomputer route and use Fluorinert (prices change, but it's about $400-500 gallon). For just having a quiet or high-performance (for home) computer, air or water cooling are probably the better choice.

 

[craig7]

yea ive decided its not gonna be worth it. the oil will be expensive, i will have to spend money on a pump and radiator it i want it to stay cool and then my 4870 will be all sticky and stuff if i want to use it in a non oli cooled pc later. i guess ill go for liquid cooling. anyone know any good deals on liquid cooling components?

 

[jonnythan]

Water cooling really isn't cost effective either. If you're doing it just because it'll be fun, that's one thing, but there are no real advantages unless you're going for absolute max performance.

 

[Hi Ho]

If you're looking for quiet operation then a good air cooler is the way to go. Water cooling works but it is not worth the cost unless you're overclocking like crazy. A friend of mine bought a water cooling setup a couple years ago against my advice. He ended up with temps that were about 4 C cooler and fans that were just as loud and just the other day he called me in a panic because his PC kept shutting off. The pump died. Back to the air cooler...

 

[jonnythan]

Yeah, water cooling isn't just more work to set up... it's more work to maintain and many more things to break.

 

[Adam]

Why water cool when you can use liquid Nitrogen?

 

[craig7]

i do want to overclock when i get a new mobo so thats one reason for liquid cooling and i also want something quiet. if you heard my gpu fan you would know why

 

[jonnythan]

"Overclock" and "quiet" don't really go together very well.

Is this for an HTPC or a gaming/desktop PC?

 

[tattoo_Dan]

I did the over clocking thing,and the crazy case thing,and the insane turbo cpu fan thing,


now it's just a couple 120mm fans with filters and a nice quiet and not oc'd cpu with a quiet fan,

it works just fine,and quiet.

I just want dependable now.

 

[Beatmatcher247]

You can get crazy with elaborate cooling setups and MIGHT be able to push it further than you could on air but at the end of the day, your results are more dependent on the tolerances of the particular chip and what batch it came from. You can research what batch# people are having way above average results with, but that is still no guarantee. More games these days are more gpu bottleknecked than cpu, so the difference between 4.8ghz vs even 5.4 ghz on an i7 2500/2600k starts to be really diminishing returns if you look at benchmarks. Is .2 to .5 ghz gonna justify the cost? Most likely not. id invest more heavily in the gpu department.

 

[tattoo_Dan]

id invest more heavily in the gpu department.

that's probably the best advice yet

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

that's probably the best advice yet

Thats exactly the reason I advised OP a while ago to trade Intel Onboard video to my older HD4870
Well, 4870 is a bit noisy then pushed hard - but it does deliver ... I'm sure than OP noticed the vast difference.

I'd recommend aftermarket cooler kits for 4870:
4870 Aftermarket Cooling Options - [H]ard|Forum
Newegg.com - ARCTIC COOLING Accelero S1 Rev.2 VGA Cooler + quite fans

Palit Radeon HD4870 512MB Graphics Card Review - Page 21

 

[Beatmatcher247]

If you turn vsynch on which i highly recommend to avoid tearing and other artifacts, you wouldnt ever see the dismal gains anyway provided your more modest overclock fps and your extreme cooling overclock run over 60fps... Turm vsynch on you are locked in at 60 anyway.