Peenie Wallie

The reason is to keep the computer cool (as in not overheating) without all of those noisy fans. A big deal if you're into over-clocking the CPU; those things get hot. Although, according to the guy's site, the CPU is a 550 Mhz Celeron, so the oil tank seems to be overkill. You can buy water-cooled cases from Koolance.



See http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/11/1756259.

Aquarium Full of Oil For PC Cooling

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday May 11, @04:30PM
from the because-you-can dept.

JaredOfEuropa writes "Forget fancy watercooled CPUs or complicated heat pipes. Annoyed with the noise of the forced-air cooling in his computer, this guy simply dumped his entire motherboard in an aquarium filled with mineral oil. (coral cache). No modifications were necessary; he even left the fans running to keep the oil moving about. The only thing not submersed in oil is the hard disk."


Re:In case of slashdotting (Score:5, Informative)
by linuxwrangler (582055) on Wednesday May 11, @04:39PM (#12502945)

I'm surprised that the PSU and all the cables (like speaker/CAT5) work at all, I feel so uneducated.

Why wouldn't they? Oil doesn't conduct. That's why it's used for cooling in electrical devices such as transformers, dummy-loads and such. I recall one vendor who demonstrated the high breakdown voltage of their oil by running a TV set in a vat of the stuff. Almost anything has better heat removal ability than air and for silent running it's not a bad idea.

There is still the problem of removing the heat. If there is enough surface area to allow the heat to be removed then you are ok, otherwise the oil (and everything else) will get too hot. Encasing everything in a metal box with fins on the outside would probably keep things even cooler.

i would like to know where he purchased oil like this if you could answer this please email me back at amrkanidot@gmail.com

The best oil to use is white mineral oil (no smell, doesn't rot like vegetable oil) and it is cheap.

There are a lot of places you can buy it.

I have access to a full machine shop and can precision machine a really nice case. I am thinking about making one for myself. I can also make some for other people too. If you are interested send me an email (nukeitout@yahoo.com).

I am a mechanical engineer and I do electronic packaging for a living so I can make something very cool!