Bathe the motherboard in inert fluid?

[pH(x)]

Anyone familiar with the concept of encapsulating all of the componenets in a heat-conductive fluid? I was thinking of using a circulation pump and external T.E.C. devices to make a completely self-contained system.

Is there a desireable fluid to do this with? And if so where would I go about obtaining some of this wonderful stuff? :D

[Thrilla]

There's a few threads on this already, it's very messy and not easy to do, those non-electrical but heat conductive fluid with high flow velocity cost quite a bit too.

[Bloody_Sorcerer]

i think it was charlie who did it on an FX-55 and liquid nitrogen to great great effect

[Weedsqueezer]

search tom's hardware guides, they did one bout a year or 2 ago. used a mineral oil or something like it.

[pH(x)]

i think it was charlie who did it on an FX-55 and liquid nitrogen to great great effect
All I've found is a one FX-55 LN^2 thread by gigi77

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=61147&highlight=fx-55+nitrogen

Though he did a very good job, it's not what I'm looking for. Are you sure it's not another model CPU? :)

[Richie P]

search tom's hardware guides, they did one bout a year or 2 ago. used a mineral oil or something like it.

Was January this year, (14th?) - look in the achives for it. And i think they actually used cooking oil?! I personally couldn't trust a watercooling system near my pc so i'll be damned if i drop it in cooking oil!

Each to their own i suppose...

[YanBooth]

yeah THG had a big thing on it check it out (yes, it was cooking oil).

[pH(x)]

I've found charlie's thread! It's too bad none of the pictures exist there anymore.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=52004

And subsequently, DSI Fluids (Dielectric Systems Inc)

http://dsifluids.com/

[vertol]

We were just talking about this ,but in 30 to 50 year old electronics. lol
Science and real world (US Military, German ,and Russian ) used a type of synthetic oil ,at that time extremely (cancer causing) synthetic oil and submersed the circuit boards into them to cool them ,and shure enough it
worked. Still sounds too messy ..Good luck

[pH(x)]

We were just talking about this ,but in 30 to 50 year old electronics. lol
Science and real world (US Military, German ,and Russian ) used a type of synthetic oil ,at that time extremely (cancer causing) synthetic oil and submersed the circuit boards into them to cool them ,and shure enough it
worked. Still sounds too messy ..Good luck
Well, vertol luckily for me -- and the rest of the world, this OptiCool fluid is completely bio-degradeable! :cool:

Also, according to charlie, it doesn't take much more than the dab of a porous cloth to remove it from any surface it's not longer supposed to be on.

What an age we live in! :D :clap:

[buff]

I think 100% distilled water will do.....with some additives, due to water being corrosive to electronics :P

[generics_user]

I think 100% distilled water will do.....with some additives, due to water being corrosive to electronics :P
here it is: EDIT: llol didn´t display it :P (http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/09/strip_out_the_fans/page2.html)


should work well, you only have to get an aquarium for 24/7:D

[XS Janus]

Distilled watter will not do, because it also has a very small amount of free ions and will cause system to crash periodically.
That's why THG went with cooking oil although their first try was distilled water.
________
Subaru Tribeca History (http://www.toyota-wiki.com/wiki/Subaru_Tribeca)

[niexa77]

i believe about a year ago there was a few threads over at OCAU about it...
quite a few attempts/working models. mainly people that worked for electrical companies; as the best stuff (lowest gel-point) to use is the same stuff that is in those transformer boxes (the weird buzing things up on power-poles) they draw the heat away from the components and the whole device acts as a big heat-sink...
cant remember the exact name of it. but there are different grades.

the elec company guys(cant remember any names, sorry) were using:
-reconditioned stuff (half price through thier work, when the fluid in the boxes is changed-out it's filtered and re-sold for less mission-critical systems) still about 90-110us a litre i think
-one guy was using half a barrel that was being thrown own due to water contanimation, though he had a method to filter the water out of it for his uses, the elec company was not willing to ris its use....

hope these clues help :P

EDIT: the fluid is made by 3M... ill try to find out more details

[crackmann]

no matter how distilled the water and clean the mobo surface you still will get dissolved substances that will cause the water to conduct....

[Stigma]

I think 100% distilled water will do.....with some additives, due to water being corrosive to electronics :P

Distilled water will fry it. even if you get 100% pure deionized water, the water would pick up particles from the surfaces of the components, get charged and zap something in very short order.

What you want is either vegetable oil (poor mans choice), mineral oil (not as smelly), or preferably (if you have the cash) fluorinert, which is the least messy and by far the better heat transfer material.

-Stigma

[Pipi]

Yup, distiled won't cut it. Deionized sounds like it would do the trick but then it's not stable enough and picks up metal parts from components to ionize itself. Would just corode your stuff.

[pH(x)]

Thanks for the ion-interaction info! :D

I called up the distributors of DSI Inc. not just a few days ago, and subsequently recieved the pricing info of $250 for 5 gallons of Opticool Di-Electric Fluid, or $950 for 55 gallons. I was informed this radical price difference is because they did not vacuum-package their laboratory productions for individual sale of small parcels.

I managed to convince her to make a pitch to her marketing department, to crack certain storage barrells immediately into smaller packages for sale. In an effort to cut cost and facilitate specifically the esoteric overclocking community :D

edit: I will look into Fluorinert too :fact:

[Stigma]

Fluorinert is ideal in many ways, but it has 2 big drawbacks that you MUST be prepared for.

1) it evaporates like holy hell. if you leave a kitchen glass with this in room temperature, it will be totally gone in an hour (probably a lot less, I am being conservative in my estimate here). You NEED a sealed system, or your precious (and pricy) fluorinert goes bye-bye...

2) it is extremely vicous, and I mean _extrememly_. This stuff will leak through pretty much ANY crack, no matter how small. Water-proof is NOT good enough. Gas-proof is NOT good enough. This stuff WILL leak out through for example PVC tubing, and most other plastics. The only proper way to contain it is using metal, and the metal joins should preferably be brazed together and not just soldered (because soldering usually leaves microscopic holes).

if you can handle the two points above tho, then fluorinert is allmost as good as water in all respects, and is 100% electricly insulating. Very exciting stuff :)

-Stigma

[古強者死神]

I read the whole article and even saw the videos of the one that was in the cooking oil, they had several other attempts at other less messy things like distilled water but they said it always leads to failure as air hits the fluid and other factors uventully always led to a short.

However the thick and divided nature of cooking oil was perfect and they indeed had no issues. You should have seen the cooling fans trying to spin in that thick mess.