So I'm goofing off in my man cave playing with creating a submersion computer like the puget systems aquarium computer ( http://www.pugetsystems.com/mineral-oil-pc.php ) using my own parts that are lying around..etc.

It works but the nvidia 285 card I had sitting on my shelf worked like a champ, until it hit the oil at which point it died.

The rest of the computer works fine, but bios boot gives one long 2 short beeps which means dead video card.

Does nvidia have something that detects submersion and prevents it? Why would the mineral oil kill it?

Thoughts?

In their description of their V2 system, they (Puget Systems) say they had a GTX 285 working fine in oil. Of course you may have a different brand.

Due to the viscosity of the oil the fan won't spin at anywhere near normal speed. Perhaps your GTX 285 monitors the fan RPM via the fan tachometer and if it finds the fan RPM isn't correct for the amperage it's delivering to the fan then it assumes the fan isn't functioning correctly and refuses to startup?

Maybe Puget Systems' 285 doesn't check if the fan RPM agrees with the amperage? Have you tried cleaning the oil out to see if it runs at all or is it fried for good?

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BOINC <<--- credit whores, pedants, alien hunters

So I'm goofing off in my man cave playing with creating a submersion computer like the puget systems aquarium computer ( http://www.pugetsystems.com/mineral-oil-pc.php ) using my own parts that are lying around..etc.

It works but the nvidia 285 card I had sitting on my shelf worked like a champ, until it hit the oil at which point it died.

The rest of the computer works fine, but bios boot gives one long 2 short beeps which means dead video card.

Does nvidia have something that detects submersion and prevents it? Why would the mineral oil kill it?

Thoughts?

Thoughts?

It seems some companies are working on this to cool servers. I think this articles are interesting:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/cooling-a-computer-server-with-mineral-oil/?_r=0
http://www.grcooling.com/

I look throught the web and there are a few videos on youtube of computers with submersion cooling. I read and it seems mineral oil don't smell. Somepeople are using Jonhson's Baby oil (90% mineral oil).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eub39NaC4rc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiqKycb7uh4

Reading more the original article you posted the "V3 DIY Kit Launch" pulls 820W out, so I don't see any reason why these system won't work. I don't know how much noise will the 9 fans on the rear do.

I found this too. It's a liquid called Novec. You don't need heatsinks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novec_1230
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIbnl3Pj15w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_X_hgtlJpA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw9px3ittDg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NymeDU96pac&list=TLKR_in1Sisci7_2px05luN0i-sTaXia7G

This liquid has 36ºC boiling point
http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=tttttvW9lEgUmy7VPZA_qZ0t2XW62EW9iXut2Xut2tttttt--

And here some interesting discussion on this liquid:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1209583/3m-novec-7000-group
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HOW TO - Full installation Ubuntu 11.10

@Palamedes. I missunderstood your question (matter of my "perfect" english). I've been reading about this stuff.
More thoughts:
- Maybe as ETA is saying there's dust in your oil causing micro shortcuts. The solution to this is filtering. I saw some desings on the internet. People filtering with cofee filters, but I would give a try a Aquiarium filter with passive materials (I could help you with this).
- I don't think you have a conductivity problem with the mineral oil becouse otherwhise you should have problems with the board too. And probably you would have a power loss throught ground causing your Residual-current device activate.
- If I have to give a guess I would say that oil is not cooling properly the card. Did you take out the case and make sure the oil was moving properlly?
- If you put bubbles, there could be the cause of the problem. Normal air pumps puts condended water into the oil. I would put a dried air pump or a aquarium pump to move the oil as much as possible.

@ETA

If you're boiling the liquid you'll need a sealed system to recover the vapour. Otherwise it will be a short run. And I'd be at concerned about a high concentration of this stuff in the air I'm breathing. I don't know anything specific about this Novec, though.

Another thing, if anyone can answer about mineral cooling I'll apreciate it.I'm thinking in doing some hardware with Arduino to make a quite coplex cooling system with temperature control (just for fun and I'm bit sick of the fan's noise).

1. mineral oil
   
2. a container, perhaps an aquarium, or it could be something opaque and cheaper than a transparent aquarium
   
3. a large U shaped aluminum or copper heatsink
   
4. 2 stir propellers driven by 12 volt gear-motors
   

Think of a container filled with mineral oil and an aluminum heatsink in the shape of an upside down U. One leg of the U is immersed in the oil while the other leg is outside the container. It is easy to find 6 mm (.25") thick aluminum plate and create a U shape. The width of the plate would be slightly less than the length of the container. To keep it simple and easy to fabricate, it doesn't have fins. Instead of fins it relies on large mass and the large surface area of the flat plate.

Gear-motors are a combination of a small electric motor and gear reduction box in one unit. Robot hobbyists use them and I think they are not too very expensive. They are available with various gear reduction ratios and horsepower. The stir propellers and gear-motors would be immersed in the oil to circulate it around the tank, past the CPU, GPUs and hot side of the heatsink.

Does that description give you an idea of what I am thinking about?

I wonder if a heatsink that large would conduct enough heat to keep the oil cool. Of course it depends how much heat is being generated but let's say it's an i5 Haswell plus 2 X GTX 780 system. Does anybody know some simple formulae for calculating the heat carrying capacity, in watts, of a plate of common grade aluminum with known length, width and thickness?

Here is another idea, I call it "the calorie scoop"...

It consists of a container full of mineral oil and a circle of aluminum or copper, call it "the wheel". The wheel rotates slowly, maybe 2 or 3 RPM. Half of the wheel is immersed in the mineral oil while the other half is exposed to the air. The half in the oil picks up heat as it rotates through the oil while the half exposed to the air sheds its heat to the air. You could say it scoops calories and dumps them into the air. There could be a soft wiper blade just above the oil to wipe it off the aluminum to facilitate flow of heat from aluminum to air. Or you could weld fins to the wheel to increase surface area or just bolt fins on but welded fins conduct heat faster. The fins would stir and circulate the oil.

While I'm at it a third idea...

All mineral oil bath cooling systems I've heard about use a glass or plexiglass fish aquarium for the tank, probably because used ones are inexpensive and you can see inside the tank. The problem is that neither glass nor plexiglass conduct heat well so the large and potentially useful surface area of the tank is wasted. Then one must add potentially noisy and possibly expensive pumps, radiators, etc. to remove the heat. If the tank were made of aluminum or copper it alone might conduct enough heat. If it were made of corrugated plate it would conduct much more heat. A large, slow, quiet, ceiling fan would make it even better. The beauty of it is the only moving part is the fan but they run for many years and they're very inexpensive.

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BOINC <<--- credit whores, pedants, alien hunters

More I think, more I see this challenguing...
Maybe the "mistake" is to talk about this here and not in a specific cooling forum, there's a lot of people that have tried this, but don't seems there's a lot of sucess.
Anyway, I think copper is not a good option because of corrosion with mineral oil. That could make the mineral conductive with time.
Building a box with all aluminium but the front with cristal won't be difficult. The silicon used to build aquarium is very strong and heat effective.
I think any system like this should have a filter. An aquarium filter should do to clean big particules from dust.
I saw this interesting idea too, it's from a aluminium radiator. There you can see the size needed depending on water temperature and size:

I will have a look a RS232 temperature sensor to control the fans. That might be good idea too to fan control.

If copper (Cu) reacts with the mineral oil over time, then aluminum (Al) will do more easily as copper is a more noble metal then aluminum. The less noble a metal the more easily it will react. However there are additives for the oil to prevent this, but the oil need to be refreshed every certain period, depending on the grade of the oil.
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Greetings from TJ

Regarding your 1st idea: relying on u-shaped metal won't be very effective in transferring the heat. A heat pipe should fare much better. I'm assuming your reservoir contains water? If your oil immersion tank was made from metal, you could contact this directly with the water and have a massive surface for much better contact than trying to build a "heat bridge" between the two containers.

The 2nd idea: I don't think it's a good idea to break the systems sealing. And it wouldn't be all that necessary, I think. Exchange the top plate on the oil for a metal plate and it will already pick up quite some heat. Put fins on top and you've got enough surface area for that ceiling fan (or slow spinning, big PC fans - probably more expensive but higher quality and may consume less power). Also add some bottom fins to the metal plate and you've already got some powerful cooler.

As you see from these comments I'm all for that metal case. You can extend this concept of "fins in, fins out" to all sides. And you wouldn't need some water reservoir nearby, the oil itself is probably already enough (compare that volume to how little is inside water cooling loops).

To judge overall cooling capability one can approximate that the heat generated from the PC components is distributed evenly inside the oil. In steady state the cooling system has to dissipate just as much heat as is being produced. So one would have to consider the air cooling as the limiting heat exchange. Given some geometry and air flow there will be a oil temperature at which the two powers are equal.

Real chip temperatures will be somewhat higher, due to temperature gradients being present (the heat is not evenly distributed instantaneously), but I think this would be a sound first approximation. Some data and material properties would be needed, though.

More I think, more I see this challenguing...
Maybe the "mistake" is to talk about this here and not in a specific cooling forum, there's a lot of people that have tried this, but don't seems there's a lot of sucess.

Anyway, I think copper is not a good option because of corrosion with mineral oil. That could make the mineral conductive with time.

Building a box with all aluminium but the front with cristal won't be difficult. The silicon used to build aquarium is very strong and heat effective.

I think any system like this should have a filter. An aquarium filter should do to clean big particules from dust.

I saw this interesting idea too, it's from a aluminium radiator. There you can see the size needed depending on water temperature and size:

I will have a look a RS232 temperature sensor to control the fans. That might be good idea too to fan control.

If copper (Cu) reacts with the mineral oil over time, then aluminum (Al) will do more easily as copper is a more noble metal then aluminum. The less noble a metal the more easily it will react. However there are additives for the oil to prevent this, but the oil need to be refreshed every certain period, depending on the grade of the oil.

If copper (Cu) reacts with the mineral oil over time, then aluminum (Al) will do more easily as copper is a more noble metal then aluminum. The less noble a metal the more easily it will react. However there are additives for the oil to prevent this, but the oil need to be refreshed every certain period, depending on the grade of the oil.

Aluminum is very reactive. If exposed to air it very quickly oxidizes but the oxide forms a hard layer on the surface that oxygen cannot penetrate. Formation of that layer is an example of passivation. The layer of oxide is usually just a few nanometers thick but it prevents further oxidation. If the oxide is removed then oxidation begins again and continues until a new layer of oxide forms.

I am not sure what chemical reaction occurs when mineral oil contacts aluminum but apparently it does happen and apparently passivation does not occur so the reaction continues.

Iron is fairly reactive though not as reactive as aluminum. It oxidizes too but the oxide layer is porous therefore it does not passivate. Oxygen penetrates the oxide and reacts with non oxidized iron below the oxide. Also, the oxide is not hard and tough like aluminum oxide so it easily separates from the iron which of course decreases it's ability to passivate. Most alloys of iron and carbon, steel, do not passivate either. The notable exception is an alloy called Corten which does passivate. Stainless steel, an alloy of iron, carbon, and various amounts of nickel, chrome and columbium are extremely non-reactive at normal temperatures and pH level. Some grades of stainless steel are resistant to hot acid. Ferric chloride, however, will eat through stainless steel and nearly every kind of metal very quickly.
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BOINC <<--- credit whores, pedants, alien hunters

There is a lot of information in Wikipedia but not all is true or the only truth.
I know what I studied at university about the oxidizing reactions of metals.
You can test it easily. Take, aluminum, copper, iron, non magnetic stainless steel, silver, yellow copper, what you can find (a golden (wedding) ring as it will not react). The pieces have to be the same size or the same mass. Put a strong (same amount every time) acid on all the metals and see the results. Do it outside, not in the wind and wear always safety goggles. Take the same metals and pour a strong base (bicarbonate of soda) over and see the reactions.

I am not saying that mineral oil will react that spectacular, but if it reacts with copper, it will do for sure with aluminum. There are also different processes to purify (melting)aluminum from bauxite. And so you have aluminum with different properties and strength.

And at last, keep in mind that most mineral and all crude oils are not healthy, they are hazardous and become smelly when heathen. Therefore is silicon oil used in laboratories to make oil baths (same like water baths) but can heated up to around 400­°C. I don't know the conductivity of silicon oil, never measured, but it is very expensive. Perhaps Wikipedia has other information, but it is you call. I know what I know.
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Greetings from TJ

There is a lot of information in Wikipedia but not all is true or the only truth.
I know what I studied at university about the oxidizing reactions of metals.
You can test it easily. Take, aluminum, copper, iron, non magnetic stainless steel, silver, yellow copper, what you can find (a golden (wedding) ring as it will not react). The pieces have to be the same size or the same mass. Put a strong (same amount every time) acid on all the metals and see the results. Do it outside, not in the wind and wear always safety goggles. Take the same metals and pour a strong base (bicarbonate of soda) over and see the reactions.

I am not saying that mineral oil will react that spectacular, but if it reacts with copper, it will do for sure with aluminum. There are also different processes to purify (melting)aluminum from bauxite. And so you have aluminum with different properties and strength.

And at last, keep in mind that most mineral and all crude oils are not healthy, they are hazardous and become smelly when heathen. Therefore is silicon oil used in laboratories to make oil baths (same like water baths) but can heated up to around 400­°C. I don't know the conductivity of silicon oil, never measured, but it is very expensive. Perhaps Wikipedia has other information, but it is you call. I know what I know.