SpudFiles

ok well this is what my first thread was about" the one with just a link..."

this is my computer its a pretty old computer i got from my grandpa, "didnt want to do this project with a brand new comp"

anyway i dunno the exact system specs but mainly all i do is surf the net on it anyway heres what i got from the "my computer properties button"

compaq
presario
AMD athlon(tm)XP 3000+
2.10GHz, 448 MB of RAM
110GB hard drive

anyway i got this idea from Puget custom computers. what they did was they put a desktop computer in a fish tank and filled it with mineral oil.

so i did the same thing but i don't have a sata hard drive so i have that stupid big ribbon wire making everything look bad." im buying an adapter to "convert my ide hard drive to sata" and i added four 4" inch uv cold cathodes and a 24 green led strip and a 14 inch green cold cathode, and to top all that off i got a remote control setup on the green leds and the green cathode.

i left my cpu fan hooked up but after leaving my comp running for an hour then restarted it said cpu fan failure and just kept shutting itself down, so i plugged the cpu fan into the spot where the case fan would go and i plugged a new fan where the cpu fan was plugged into but i left the fan part out of the oil.,

i also took the casing off of my power supply

i downloaded a program called speedfan which lets me monitor the temp and control the speed of both the fans., im not sure if the temperature part works tho cause it always says its somewhere around 100f when i start the comp then from there it rises to around 113
i have a bubble pipe in the tank to but when its on it just fills the tank with bubbles to the pont of not being able to see anything.

i didnt put the hard drive in the oil.. didnt think it would be a good idea.

im sure someone will ask how much it costs so here you go
petsmart--111.00
ste oil--116.00
performance pcs--160.00
total 380+.00

anyway heres 2 pics of it.

Any mechanism to cool the liquid? I can think of a few ways you could do it.

well none that i can think of that are cheap. ive already spent WAY more on this then i planned.

but what are your ideas?

Well I was jus tthinking get a small water pump, you can get them for not very much, and use it to pump the mineral oil through some thermally-conductive tubing. You could weave the tubing through the grill of an oscillating fan, heck, you could run it through some container with ice in it. Just use the pump to pump the oil through somethng that'll wick away the heat.

EDIT: Then make sure the tube ends up somewhere near the CPU, to best use the newly-cooled liquid.

moisture occurs when "whatever" is cooled below room temp.

so if i did that an ran it thru ice wouldnt the oil get cooled below room temp and then wouldn't moisture get introduced into the system?

Well first, moisture condenses when the temperature of an object drops below the dew point, a temperature which is dependant on humidity and barometric pressure. and no, as long as you kept the actual system sealed it'd be fine. Have a solid, one-piece lid that seals with a gasket. Then have the tubes run through two holes in the lid which are sealed with silicone caulk or something and it'd be perfectly fine.

oh well i cant seal it. first cause theres a hole in the motherboard tray where a fan used to go and now i use that hole to stick my hand in and fix anything that needs to be fixed.. or rearranged.

i was thinking about this. and just not using the coolant that comes with it.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=EC-WC-301-HDD

You could do something like that, though that says it's for hard drives.

yea but instead of connecting the output and input hoses to the hard drive block i could just put them in the tank

Go to a junk yard and buy a radiator (or steal it, and then pump the mineral oil through that with a few "borrowed" fans blow air onto the radiator. And there you go, a ghetto oil cooling system. Heres a link to a cheap radiator/condenser thing that should work and you could also try if you wanted a nicer set up....
http://surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2 ... me=engines

As long as you were to put your inlet and outlet hoses in far opposite corners and and had a lid for it that had caulking dried before putting in on (ie a gasket) with holes cut out perfectly for everything to come out of the tank, but still fairly sealed, I think the system would work fine running it through ice, but if you dont want to go through that much work, zip tie the polyvinyl tubing to the grille of a "box" style fan in a zig zag grid pattern (condenser coil style) then that would work as well, you could even run the pump off of the computer power source, so when the computer is on the pump system will come on. Brilliant!!!!

Some CaSO₄ could possibly be used in your system to dry any moisture out of your system, if you're afraid of that. I still don't know whether it reacts with mineral oil or not, so you'll have to look that up. Look up "Drierite" or "Calcium Sulfate". I've gotta run soon.

Well Hell, the computer is sitting in mineral oil, I think if he was worried about moisture in his system, he wouldn't have dunked it in mineral oil. Sorry was being a smart ass.
Umm, I think Calcium Sulfate only works on water based moisture. Same with basically any dessicant.
If you are worried about any sort of water built up, you could take apart a filter dryer out of an old A/C system from a junkyard car and run it inline with your cooling system and it will filter out any water/moisture build up.

I've done this exact experiment before.

You'll want to change the oil reasonably frequently, at least every other month, or the oil will get dirty and start to conduct electricity.

You can buy non-conductive coolant fluid such as FluidXP, it's more expensive than oil but lasts a lot longer. A system submerged in such a liquid, IN AN AIR-TIGHT CONTAINER, will last a long time.

Good luck.

Peace,
Pete Zaria.

116 Dollars a pop to fill the tank, i'd be making it airtight
What about using glycerine like they do in air gauges.

Edit: Glycerine or Glycerol is hydroscopic, so it would suck.