Topic: Submerge your rigs in liquid (Read 14833 times)

As I explained the other day in another thread: and yes I have tried it.

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As for cleaning oil off the components then here is my advice:

1. hang the card up by a piece of wire or leaning upright so most of the oil drips out / off
2. rinse off most of the oil with huge quantities of cheap dish washing liquid + hot water. this should remove the majority of the oil. And no, washing many kinds of computer components in water while they are off does not usually damage them so long as you are 100% sure it is completely dry before you power it up. Again the problem of unsealed electrolytic caps remains the only exception and problem here...
3. get yourself a few liters of your typical hardware-store-grade mineral turpentine (usually just $3/L...) and then immerse the card in a bath of it. It will dissolve the remaining traces of oil. It will also help remove any water, because they are completely immiscible liquids and you will see they will separate nicely from one another in the bath. If the oil you chose to use was not effectively removed with the mineral turpentine, try methylated spirits / denatured alcohol which is also very cheap.
4. Remove the card, hang it up near a powerful fan to dry for a long time.
5. your card is now back  to normal, ready for new thermal interface material and heatsink / fan assembly re-installation.

I highly recommend low viscosity oils.

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Deionized water is quite corrosive. It will impress you with its ability to drag ions out of whatever it is contact with! For example if you put DI water into a stainless steel vessel, leave it a week and you'll come back to a unsighly mess! As for if it could do this with lead, I am not sure. It will do it with copper before it has a chance, just ask anyone who's put DI water into a watercooling rig with copper or brass components in the system. Even if you have it in contact with the atmosphere, it will attain an equilibrium with CO2 from the air, and hey presto, it's now no longer deionised and its conductive again. The only way to get a system to function with DI water @ 18.2 MOhm is to buy ion exchange/absorber packs that chemistry analytical labs use to get 18.2 MOhm DI from RO water. These are also used in some industrial settings. The downside? They cost a fortune. The ones I've seen in a few labs cost about $400 per canister which will last a few months in their indented mode of operation. Do yourself a favor and use something other than DI water, it will just drain your money and kill your equipment if you stuff it up the slightest bit.

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As for the Novec 7000 and boiling liquid video, that is a good idea, I had considered doing that with diethyl ether or perhaps butane in a lightly pressurized container made of polycarbonate. I concluded the butane would be safer because for the same volume of ether it has much lower overall energy stored in the event of a fire. Their temps of 60+ deg C without a heatsink and under light / short term loads shows that a small heatsink would've been a good idea, there is still just too much heat to be removed from a small area (~1 inch square).

As for scaling it up, well they are going to have interesting times. The entire system in their prototype relies on extremely inefficient peltier cooling to remove most of the heat from the system. The other thing to consider is that assuming it was air tight (which would be a good idea given the cost of the liquid, you don't want it flying away...) then you would have an increase in pressure if a lot boiled in a short time, eg going from low to high load on the CPU. Increasing pressure in a sealed vessel increases the boiling point of vapourisable liquids. So if the peltier / heat pump was overwhelmed then you could find yourself in a situation where the liquid can no longer boil, and depending on the thermal conductivity of the bulk liquid itself you may find your components suddenly at catastrophic temps. Maintaining a pressurisable vessel with lots of cables going in an out and a heat exchanger as well is also non-trivial! And by pressurisable I don't mean 'held together with duct tape'!

In any case a look at the Novec products MSDS shows they are fluoro-ethers which are $$$ I would be willing to bet a few liters would set you back a couple of hundred dollars. And as for their 'non-toxic' statement in the video well I don't agree that means they are safe, since most organofluorine substances will overcome you just as well as their organic hydrocarbon precursor will (if inhaled). I would personally stick to oil for now because its simple, cheap, and works.

And how do you clean oil off your hardware?

Simply put it in a dishwasher (believe me it works)

About cleaning the mess: the liquid from OP is chosen as it boils at ~34C. You just need to warm up the gear above this temperature, and it all evaporates.

I enjoy the video, Although this is very nice technique, I like this.

You could use distilled water, provided the water is well, pure.

The only problem you would have with normal water is the fact that the water would leech ion salts off the board. Mainly the flux nasties that didn't vape off during reflow and then other unwanted gunk on the board such as fingerprint oils and what not.

I do suppose one interaction that may be chemically significant is the water and Pb (lead) in the solder itself - the local electric current on the board might cause the two to interact in the presence of other solutions, forming some weak f***'d up version of a lead acid battery.

Seal up the solder joints themselves (hot glue!), clean the board so that it's holier than Jesus, and you should be fine - not that most of that work is worth it when you can pick up mineral oil for $2.50 a quart haha

haha brilliant

Just look at all of y'all complaining about the oil getting hot.

Even with the lower specific heat of oil compared to water, it will still not heat up very quickly. Then with its high viscosity, the heat, as long as it is medium differential (not very hot) will either a) sit where it is (not influence other components in the bath) or b) rise to the top of the bath.

Yes, cooling is needed. But at the rate of change of temperature of that bath, your pump only has to have the speed of about a hamster wheel, and only a bit more torque.

On a technicality, you could use pure (DI) water - it is a non-conductive substance - however, your board has to be 100% chemically sterile.

Another option is a Freon tank. Freon (R-12) was the coolant used in the immersion fountains for the Cray (1 I believe) supercomputer. Run that through a HX / radiator and you have grade A cooling, plus you don't have to worry about conductive impurities in your oil.

The other way is reverse radiation. That is, instead of pumping the HMW oil through a chiller (which requires a torque-capable pump), immerse a radiator in the oil. Instead of moving the hot into the cold, you're moving the cold into the hot. Same principle.

Some users of mineral oil said that the hardware (like GPU) can be cleaned with alcohol and a lot of patience.
You can't shot-circuit with something non-conductive.

You have truly spoken for yourself.

Who would resell parts? I think entire rigs only, and I would surely buy if they're nicely made and still working.

Also a great way to turn the resale value of your hardware to $0. Nobody wants a nasty greasy piece of computer hardware, plus it will alienate 99% of people who would have been interested in a non-greasy hardware. They'll think it's ruined and short circuited.

it wouldn't work, mineral water has minerals in it that would conduct elec. and fry the card...just like if you tryed regular water...even distilled water doesn't stay "clean" long enough...read that somewhere


no fan is that strong, the oil is pretty thick...and really you wouldn't even need to run the fan more then 20% or even at all because the oil is suppose to do all the cooling, not the fan...

KABOOM!!!!

Yeah its geo thermal,but we are not designing for a heatpump app .....................yet  Just cooling for now.

Our pipes are copper (hard drawn) 1/2" outside with a 3/8" inside of it,water table is about 2-4 feet below ground level.I think it came out to about 20' per ton (2-10' sections) water jetted into the ground,a little angle seems to work better than straight down.Water temp was around 70F,not an ideal delta,but it does work very well.

Sorry to disagree

I used to be a scuba diver. We always reloaded our air tanks by putting them in big water containers to absorb the explosion energy if one of them had the bad idea of exploding. It also helped cooling them because compressing increase heat.

SERIOUSLY Incorrect!!!!!!!!!!
1. you CANNOT compress a liquid, that is how hydraulics work!! ( & depth charges), any explosion inside a liquid transfers the energy to the edges of the liquid. (watch some old war movies where charges detonate inside a liquid)

2. With that reasoning, there would not be  "chip pan"  fires.

so basically youre talking geothermal. hope youre aware of the length of pipe youll need, my 3 ton geothermal unit (A/C, heat, preheat for DHW) needs 2000 feet of pipe buried 5 feet down, although since its for heating also it takes more pipe as it needs to pump more heat around for heating the house and DHW. heating around here takes more exchange area than straight cooling as the max temp difference is greater. IE 10 F outside to 72 inside in heat mode vs 100 F outside to 72 inside in cooling mode.

maybe 1/2 the pipe? 1000 feet call it?

Maybe not. Liquids are good at avoiding things to get on fire and at absorbing exploding energy.

Fixing it stays a mess tho.

+1

This "oil" bathing is all well and good until.........

1. An Ecap explodes, spraying oil everywhere.
2. You have a "Chip-pan fire" during a critical failure.

HC

Interesting locations are fun!

With volcanic rock as your starting point you're talking 300% deeper than normal to find a stable temp. So you're basically talking about digging 30-50 foot hole... putting sand (or pulverized lavarock) in the bottom over your heat exchange tubes and then filling the hole back up with rock pieces.

I don't suppose you've got a handy fissure or cave on your property? Otherwise, I think making this sort of hole happen in that location would be too expensive... maybe if you were also sinking a heat exchange system for your house at the same time...maybe.