Oil cooling.

mrschultz

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Anyone else see this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/strip-fans,1203.html

Crazy, sink the entire MB in cooking oil....

I wouldn't use any plant based oil, to easy to oxidize. I'm also not sure about motor oil, don't know the conductivity of the additives they put in.

Silicon or mineral oil would be best, silicon is a bit expensive but can take very high heat and would not harm the electronics or the plastic tank.
 
Wow, that is freaking awesome! I looked into this a bit more, and people have their power supplies, fan and all submerged as well. Obviously the disk drives are not (at least the moving parts/spindle). Properly distilled water, I believe is void of conductive minerals too. That may hold more oxygen and cause corrosion though. Yes, that's crazy stuff. TY
 
Properly distilled water, I believe is void of conductive minerals too. That may hold more oxygen and cause corrosion though. Yes, that's crazy stuff. TY

Yes, very pure water is non-conductive, over 18 mega-ohms. But pure water will suck ions out of anything it can, so when you dunk your motherboard into it the water will not stay non-conductive for long.

Only way you could use water would be to have a bag of deionizing resin in the tank, with a conductivity meter always running to tell you if the water is getting too conductive.
 
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i first saw these online about five years ago, i think using mineral oil.

IIRC there was a potential problem- the oil was an excellent heatsink, but if the volume used wasn't suffificient, it wouldn't be able to exchange off the heat into the air fast enough and would eventually hit maximum carrying capacity... heating up and causing potential damage to your PC. and IIRC the oil holds onto it's heat much longer than water does, for some reason.


on a mostly random side note- just saw this video today about holding liquid nitrogen in your hand via the leidenfrost effect:
Code:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjsMV1MglA4
 
i first saw these online about five years ago, i think using mineral oil.

IIRC there was a potential problem- the oil was an excellent heatsink, but if the volume used wasn't suffificient, it wouldn't be able to exchange off the heat into the air fast enough and would eventually hit maximum carrying capacity... heating up and causing potential damage to your PC.


on a mostly random side note- just saw this video today about holding liquid nitrogen in your hand via the leidenfrost effect:
Code:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjsMV1MglA4

Sure, you need some way to get the heat out of the oil to run the PC for more than a few hours. Most large transformers are filled with oil, the big transformers you see at substations have oil flowing through the fins attached to the sides. Even many of those can shaped ones on poles are filled with oil, both as an insulator and to transfer heat to the can.

I do the liquid nitrogen thing all the time at work, loads of fun, feels weird also. The trick to pouring it on your hand is to keep your fingers apart, if you have your fingers close together little beads of liquid nitrogen will get in between them and quickly overcome the leidenfrost effect. Other thing I've seen is someone dipping their hand into a vat of molten lead, after soaking his hand in water, do it fast and there's enough water to create a steam barrier between your hand and the lead.

We also do the liquid nitrogen ice cream a few times a year for the students. Takes about 5 minutes to make a quart of really smooth ice cream.
 
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OK, here's a setup.... Use salted distilled water and add some fish for fish oil, then when the fish start jumping out of the aquarium that will signal you to shut down. I remember using salted ice to make ice cream in high school, back when... with the tele-type machines that used the punch roll tape for memory.
 
OK, here's a setup.... Use salted distilled water and add some fish for fish oil, then when the fish start jumping out of the aquarium that will signal you to shut down. I remember using salted ice to make ice cream in high school, back when... with the tele-type machines that used the punch roll tape for memory.

My parents had one of those ice cream makers, had a little can with a crank inside a wooden barrel, you put the ice cream stuff inside the inner can and filled the outside with layers of ice and rock salt. The salt lowers the freezing point of the ice and gets you down near 0°F or -15°C so you can then freeze the cream/sugar mix.
 
My computers are on the floor under my desk with a $15 Dollar fan blowing on
them to add more cooling power. No Greasy Problems yet :)

( I make a killer tasting "Key Lime Italian Ice" using an ice cream maker.
Maybe I will post how to do it in the Food Thread if anyone is interested.)
 
Funny you should mention the hand-crank ice cream makers! I was in a grand opening of a Target Dept. store near me and sure enough on the shelf in the appliance section sits a smaller version, of a genuine hand operated crank handle ice cream maker. it is smaller than the one I remember, (or maybe it's because I was younger and tinier back then!) but I remember turning that crank for hrs. on hot summer days back in the 60's! (ah the simpler times before computers, cells, mp3, blogs, twittering) when we as kids actually played OUTSIDE in things called parks in stuff called dirt!
 
^^^ cool facts; thanks for the info.

is there a food thread here, rick? that would be fun. i've been talking on another forum lately about how to turn an ordinary oven into a pizza-baking oven by the use of terra cotta and firebricks.

how about a deep fry and an aquarium all in one?
http://www.ohgizmo.com/2007/03/29/japanese-deep-fryer-has-aquarium-within/


EDIT: btw rick, i owe you a food treat. did you ever track down those shepards pies?
 
^^^ cool facts; thanks for the info.

is there a food thread here, rick? that would be fun. i've been talking on another forum lately about how to turn an ordinary oven into a pizza-baking oven by the use of terra cotta and firebricks.

how about a deep fry and an aquarium all in one?
http://www.ohgizmo.com/2007/03/29/japanese-deep-fryer-has-aquarium-within/


EDIT: btw rick, i owe you a food treat. did you ever track down those shepards pies?

Hey Nic You are right. There is no food thread here. The one
that was stuck in my head is at another site. And I never did find those
nice Shepherds Pies. If I remember correctly it was a pot pie with
mashed potatoes as the crust/topping. I had given up my search
a long time ago.

Also I tried using a pizza pie stone years ago. It was very porous and I
could not think of a way to clean it after each use so I gave up on using it.

And You don't owe me anything,, my friend.:rockon:
 
There's a great kitchen store in the outlet mall near Lancaster, PA, called Reading Glass. Found a great pizza stone there about 20 years ago, nice big one that only has a few inches clearance around it in my oven. Very dense firebrick of some kind, anything that tries to stick to it can be scraped off easy, any little bits behind just turn to carbon the next time you turn on the oven.
 
There's a great kitchen store in the outlet mall near Lancaster, PA, called Reading Glass. Found a great pizza stone there about 20 years ago, nice big one that only has a few inches clearance around it in my oven. Very dense firebrick of some kind, anything that tries to stick to it can be scraped off easy, any little bits behind just turn to carbon the next time you turn on the oven.

That sounds perfect Mr S I want one of those. I will search for a
better pizza stone. Maybe they are available in my local stores.
The hunt begins,,,,,,,,and I will report back when I find a good
pizza stone.

Rick
 
@marty,
yea, most pizza stones just can't do the job by themselves since they're not big enough to hold enough heat. that kind you mention sounds real good, hopefully able to get the heat up to about 800 F or more in order to make pizza like the parlours do. if someone happens to have one of the standard pizza stones they can still use it, but they'll want to surround it with firebrick, like this.


@rick,
i've had a version i wanted to send you at some point (i had successfully taste-tested it), but checking just now the online store i had in mind carries a different recipe now. but if you're up for giving it a try, i'm up for ordering it. :)
 
the best liquid-coolant that's safe is alcahol,
but you have to have a sealed system with an expansion system or it will evaporate & cause a health-hazard.

it's the substance used in heat-pipe type heatsinks. :)
 
@marty,
yea, most pizza stones just can't do the job by themselves since they're not big enough to hold enough heat. that kind you mention sounds real good, hopefully able to get the heat up to about 800 F or more in order to make pizza like the parlours do. if someone happens to have one of the standard pizza stones they can still use it, but they'll want to surround it with firebrick, like this.

Yea, the problem with most is they are too small and too thin.

This one I found is just over 13 inches diameter and about 3/4 inch thick.

I do normally preheat to my oven max at 500, then drop the temp to 425 for the cooking time. I used to make my own dough and sauce but have gotten lazy since trader joes moved into town, they have some great frozen pizza imported from Italy, only frozen pizza I've ever tried that's actually good.

the best liquid-coolant that's safe is alcahol,
but you have to have a sealed system with an expansion system or it will evaporate & cause a health-hazard.

it's the substance used in heat-pipe type heatsinks. :)

Problem with alcohol is it absorbs water from the air and then you have all the problems associated with water. So you'd have to have the tank sealed and some molecular sieves or some kind of drying agent in the alcohol.
 
Commercial ovens do not cook pizza that hot. At the many pizza places i worked at as a teen we never had our ovens any hotter than 500. Any good pizza stone will be able to take that temp easily. all you need to keep it clean is use cornmeal under your pizza dough, 1, to keep the pie crust from sticking, 2, to keep any oils from the pie to seep into your stone, in the even you do get something on the stone, trust me the next time you use it the 500 degree oven will cook anything right off it. but you can always invest in a scraper (a dough cutter works well) to scrape off anything that gets on the stone.
 
Commercial ovens do not cook pizza that hot. At the many pizza places i worked at as a teen we never had our ovens any hotter than 500. Any good pizza stone will be able to take that temp easily. all you need to keep it clean is use cornmeal under your pizza dough, 1, to keep the pie crust from sticking, 2, to keep any oils from the pie to seep into your stone, in the even you do get something on the stone, trust me the next time you use it the 500 degree oven will cook anything right off it. but you can always invest in a scraper (a dough cutter works well) to scrape off anything that gets on the stone.

Some do, in New Haven CT, near where I grew up there were 2 places that compete with each other making very thin crust pizzas, they ran their ovens at 800. Normally you had to stand in line for an hour to get in, large square pizza with crust and toppings adding up to about 1/4 inch. Maybe it was the long wait to get it but it always tasted fantastic.

Yea, dough cutters are great cleaning tools for lots of different jobs...
 
> Commercial ovens do not cook pizza that hot.

it depends heavily on the type of pizza you're aiming for IME.

i mean, you can probably cook pizza on a rock in the sun, but that doesn't mean the ingredients / crust will come out very well.

the concept of high-temp pizza baking is similar to the idea of flash frying- you're trying to cook a relatively thin outer layer while leaving the interiors fresh. in pizza baking that means a crusty outer layer while fluffiness is retained in the interior of the crust and moistness is retained on the toppings. you're not going to get that as much using an overall heat of 500, meaning the pie is going to be less nuanced.


> At the many pizza places i worked at as a teen we never had our ovens
> any hotter than 500. Any good pizza stone will be able to take that temp easily.


and the point of the stone is to increase the temperature, so in effect you're cooking at significantly higher than 500 heat.


if you go to certain places you can check out the differences between high-heat style pizza, like bertucci's, and lower heat, like the delivery chains. or in philly, i've noticed that a lot of the places that have slices to go will tend towards high-heat, probably because taste is more of a factor the smaller you go in portion size.

EDIT: places that use low-heat are often probably masking mediocre dough. if you're not getting some interesting air pocket action then you're not going to get that crispy/fluffy effect even if you do use high heat. ordinary pizza crusts are more like bread with moreso a uniform consistency.
 
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back then thin crust wasn't 'in' but, we still had good crust. but we had brick ovens so in essence our ovens were probably hotter than the 500F it showed on the guage. having grown up in North Jersey, i must say that we had some of the best pizza in the country! there and in good ol' New York City just 5 miles away! Good Sicilain pies, too were all the rage in the 70's! those massive square bready pies piled high with everything Italian! we 'proofed' our dough all morning starting at 5am, opening at 11am, giving our doughs time. we used all fresh stuff, going against the norm back then of using all canned for cost-saving. We didn't know squat of eating healthy (it didn't really exist back then) but without even trying we just ate healthier
 
eheh... dough cutters for cleaning. i couldn't figure out what you guys meant, at first:

dough%20cutter%20pro.JPG


LP47820P__large.jpg


i think i got it now. you meant the ones shaped like scraping tools from hardware stores.
 
eheh... dough cutters for cleaning. i couldn't figure out what you guys meant, at first:
........
i think i got it now. you meant the ones shaped like scraping tools from hardware stores.

Yea, the rectangle of metal with a handle on one side, they do look like something you would use for drywall installation...
 
I just can't get it past me the thought that liquids and electronics don't mix. For me I will stick to large high velocity case fans and major noise. :D
 
I just can't get it past me the thought that liquids and electronics don't mix. For me I will stick to large high velocity case fans and major noise. :D

If you want to go extreme in your overclocking you need to get heat out fast, and liquids can carry more heat than air...

But really I think the limitation is the transfer from the chip to the heat-sink fins, so this doesn't help there.

This submerged thing along with a thermoelectric cooler would be way more efficient, those coolers work much better if you can get the heat away from the hot side faster. And with everything covered with oil there's no problem with condensation on the chip. Would still need a prop to stir the oil and a way to get heat out of the oil for long term use.
 
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