I've been thinking about the cooling solution that KNC provided, and have been trying to figure outa way to cool these things enough to squeeze out another 50GHz/s. I have been considering the notion of stripping the PCB from the case, stripping the fans from the heatsinks, and flipping the board 180 degrees upside-down with the Heatsinks immersed in a mineral oil bath instead of the traditional full board immersion techniques people have tried.
The immersion pool would have a fan cooled radiator and would utilize a large liquid pump such as the kind you would see in a large fishtank providing circulation for the oil. Anyone have any thoughts about this?
if you're going that far, why not watercool? ==>> Not messy.
I had the same idea as him. pretty much because I don't have the right formfactors for a watercooling device - mineral oil is quick and dirty but works imo
There are tons of waterblocks out there, the universal brackets are trivial to mod with a cheap drill (if for some odd reason the footprint is non-standard -- would be an odd design choice). Edit: I mean CPU waterblocks.
I never had good luck with oil -- heat transfer coefficient is 3 to 4 times worse for oil, it's messy, it wicks, is more viscous (doesn't flow as well) etc., etc. Oil is also a pain to circulate well in the tank itself, especially around heatsinks designed for forced air, and don't forget that it wicks. And it wicks. Drop a wire into the tank, and have a puddle on the floor in the morning. 4realz. Anything dipped in oil becomes a pain to rework, no matter how much solvent you use (trust me, it will get on the board even if the board itself is not submerged. And it *does* have a smell. There's fun stuff i've only read about -- boiling point ~30 - 40 C, but it costs way too much. Something like that.
