Oil Immersion Cooling Goes Mainstream with Hardcore PC's Reactor

[Blauhung]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fea...corepc_reactor

www.hardcorecomputers.com

Stop. You had us at oil submersed motherboard, CPU and GPUs. You didn’t even have to dunk the SSDs, PSU or create a custom motherboard and bullet resistant tank too to convince us that you’re really hard core, umm, Hardcore.

Of course, if you stare too hard at the tank, you’ll miss all the heavenly glory that the Hardcore PC truly is. From its beautiful aluminum case, to its top port routing and the easy to access hard drives, every centimeter of the machine oozes custom computing. And we can honestly say that after tinkering with the most exotic PCs available on Earth for a decade now. What Hardcore is trying to do is so over the top that no one has ever tried it before on a production machine.

But before Hardcore can ascend to take its place among the top performance PC makers, there are an awful lot of questions to answer. Like can they really make and sell these babies for how much the company claims it can? Does it really work? To find the answer to that read on.

Now this is just plain cool. Impractical to work with, but really cool. A custom designed 790i motherboard by Tyan with x-fi built in. Even has dedicated cooling blocks on the GPU's CPU and NB to cool. And looks like one giant radiator on the back.

I must say the system is nothing I would ever buy, but mighty inspirational

Oh, and here's the spec sheets for possibilities
http://www.hardcorecomputers.com/Pro...oryDetail.aspx

[HawaiianSupermn]

Now lets see some overclocks!

[SafeFire]

What motherboard is that?

I can't see the layout clearly, nor any pci-e ports. The cards in there must be sitting on riser cards or something spiffy.

[Marvin_The_Martian]

I'll pass for $5560 and just oil cooling, but their idea of using external coolers ( talk about pelts but.. ) and if they go phase, then I would be more enthousiastic since it will mean no condensation issues ever. Though I understand that the mobo needs to be prepped for submersion, I don't like the idea of being tied to one board though, if they extend the range to include some intel chipset based board they will certainly increase their potential market share, same goes with the nvidia gpu's.

I think the basic idea is great, but for it to appeal to a large enough customer base to be economical viable they have to expend the lineup. Don't think this company will survive with just this one product, can't think of any company btw which survives on one product

Edit: Safire it's a NVIDIA 790i ULTRA SLI based custom Tygan board.

[naokaji]

What motherboard is that?

I can't see the layout clearly, nor any pci-e ports. The cards in there must be sitting on riser cards or something spiffy.

It's a custom one made by Tyan (they ususally make server and workstation boards), as for the graphicscards, yep, they put them on risers to keep total size down.

I agree with the major downside Maximum pc mentioned, upgrading is going to be a pain as you will be at the complete mercy of the manufacturer due to all the custom stuff.

[biohead]

oil? like sunflower oil ?

[Gunslinger]

All that trouble for ambient oil temps? Seems like a big waste if you're not taking the oil sub zero and clocking the crap out of that thing.

[clonez]

omg

now that is seriously expensive

i guess the casing and guarantee is costly... but the hardware prices are ridiculous

edit: now aint that nice, only 1 year limited warranty, which is void if you overclock

http://www.hardcorecomputer.com/Reso...orWarranty.pdf

[Kuroimaho]

Dr Freeze used mineral oil but he also submerged the cooling part of an air conditioner in the oil as well, was about 10 years ago.

[Think]

omg

now that is seriously expensive

i guess the casing and guarantee is costly... but the hardware prices are ridiculous

edit: now aint that nice, only 1 year limited warranty, which is void if you overclock

http://www.hardcorecomputer.com/Reso...orWarranty.pdf

This is an old idea that fails miserably and as you mentioned - one year warranty which is voided if you overclock?

So what the hell is the point of this thing? A fancy reservoir for my salad??

[ryan92084]

point is its absolutely silent if implemented correctly

[Extera]

I can see the challenge for meself here to build something better... I think making it this neat would be difficult, but it should be possible to build something cooler with phase change or something.

[clonez]

cash makes everything possible

there are quite a few who can build a casing and heatsinks of your favor, just costs $$$$

[CyberDruid]

I dunno what to think.

First off I am astounded that they got Tyan to design a custom mobo for them. How the hell did they get that to happen? They must assume a lot of sales of this unit to pull that one off. Any thoughts on that?

Second it's a lovely enclosure: they got that perfect. Looks great.

Third...is anyone planmning to keep their PC forever? Because there is no way I can see that being upgraded...

I think this must be a litmus test to prove that PC enthusiasts have way more money than sense...which I thought was already common knowledge (looks at $5700 Skulltrail rig on desk)

[PrometheusCon]

Expensive? yes.
Hard to upgrade? yes.
Sexy as hell? YES!

That is probably one of the coolest things I've seen in such a long time. I was pretty amazed too that a custom mobo was designed for this project too. Pure insanity.

[naokaji]

I dunno what to think.

First off I am astounded that they got Tyan to design a custom mobo for them. How the hell did they get that to happen? They must assume a lot of sales of this unit to pull that one off. Any thoughts on that?

According to maximumpc the company behind it has some excessive funding avalaible, they mention numbers in the millions, so it might be that Tyan does custom mainboards if the price is right, only other option I see is that they have a ex tyan employee who knows the right people.
Or third but unlikely option, Tyan does it out of its own interests, I mean cooling servers is a major challenge especially with the energy costs of today.

[evian_26]

nice

[lcrava]

Very nice find. Thanks for posting. This thing is wicked!

[SamHughe]

I'm sure it 's cool to have it but, $5560 and mainstream just doesn't look right in the same sentence. I rather have the DIY version for the fraction of that money (plus it's your creation). The whole oil submersion system cost $145 in that project.

http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

[tiro_uspsss]

I wanna know how much it cost to get a custom made mobo

[clonez]

ask foxconn

[tiro_uspsss]

ask foxconn

why? do they offer such a service?

[Revv23]

Man thats pretty sweet. Rediculous -yes. But sweet.

[Aberration]

Oil doesnt cool as good as water does. If people are worried about conductivity, it would be cheaper to get reclaimed HFE.

[Kaldor]

I'm sure it 's cool to have it but, $5560 and mainstream just doesn't look right in the same sentence. I rather have the DIY version for the fraction of that money (plus it's your creation). The whole oil submersion system cost $145 in that project.

http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

QTF

I think Puget got an QX9770 overclocked to 4.6GHz at 50C under full load. Not too bad. Probably be a touch more than $145 but I think for $300 you could assemble a top notch setup that could easily compete with the best air cooling or water cooling.