can we have more info about that plz XBTec?
what would you consider a serious customer for the custom 0.5-5Ph mining rig with immersion cooling system?
When is it supposed to ship?
This looks like oil immersion. And more like a home built tank without lots of design experience (PC, cable binders, PVC tube). I've seen far better stuff on youtube, mostly gaming rigs but also a few Bitcoin rigs. There are already commercial systems available (Green Revolution Cooling).
Oil is unfortunately a bad idea except if you like tinkering with a small system and a mess at home. Better to stick with air cooling IMHO if you are not in a hot environment to begin with. I've been working around oil tanks for years and everyone who has ever used it hates it. It was the only option for a few years, but now there is 2-phase immersion cooling with 3M Novec Engineered fluids as used in the ASICMiner system. It will soon be the only immersion cooling around.
For serious (as indicated the * in the image) as in commercial miners, oil is unusable. It may look cheaper on the surface, but it's a bloody mess and you only need very little Novec to cool compared to oil. 200cc Novec for 4kW of heat (the cost of a coffee at Starbucks or less than a pizza?).
So, unless you are loaded with cash and have a maintenance team with rubber boots and rubber gloves to keep the oil cooling system running, or you like looking at a greasy mess in a fish tank, it's really a bad idea.
Here are a couple of reasons why:
- Oil is good at storing heat, that's why they put it in oil heaters (oil radiators)
- You need oil pumps, or your chips will overheat (noise, maintenance, energy)
- Oil cooling still needs the heatsinks, so what's the point?
- You can't use thermal grease, need expensive indium foil instead (still good with QNF probably and silicon pad -> BE200)
- Oil comes out at the other end of the cable ;-) (capillary effect)
- Get used to rubber gloves and rubber boots, lol
- The oil absorbs all sorts of stuff, needs to be changed
- You need to wash your hardware with dishwash liquid (I am not making this up)
- You spend a lot of time cleaning, and the freaking oil just doesn't go away
- Oil pumps fail, just like fans, oil filters need replacement
A couple of other things on safety/security:
- Fire department, insurance, and data center is not going to like it.
- If you follow the rules, you need secondary containment or you risk the authorities shutting you down
- You need to disable water sprinklers (flames, water and oil, get it?) or you risk the authorities shutting you down
- If you disable the water sprinklers, they still shut you down
- Oil is dielectric, but it's also a static accumulator. Sparks and oil are bad
(earthing your system is extremely important, so is electrical wiring and good quality power supplies)
- How many gallons of mineral oil do you need for 5PH?
- Most countries require a license to "store" such amounts, even for transporting it in a car/truck (separate license)
- Where do you dispose it? Needs to go to a licensed company as well
For oil cooling, in addition to all the oil pumps and water pumps (there are heat exchangers), you need to use an evaporative cooling tower (wet tower). This means you constantly need to refill water, which costs money. Worse than that, the evaporative cooling towers are extremely messy because they are open and bacteria grows in them. That's why in some countries they are regulated and they can't be put near people/windows (people get Legionnaires' disease from them). You need to add chemicals, and you need to clean them once a month or so. That's why you need two (unless you don't mind shutting down your mine for a half day or so while you clean up the mess). In a small system (gaming PC) you can use a radiator instead, but what's the point if you are spending more energy instead of less?
Cooling tower cleaning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49KVBk-2wP8Example of oil mining rig that actually consumes _more_ electricity than less:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpNERMxvPTk(radiator, pumps, spinning fans, etc)
if you look at the best and most expensive oil cooling systems around (ie. Tsubame-KFC, a 30kW system at some university in Tokyo, it's the no. 1 on the Green 500 list) you get a
PUE of 1.15 (15% for oil cooling) in October (when it's relatively cool in Tokyo). With passive 2-phase immersion cooling you get a
PUE of less than 1.01 (less than 1% for 2-phase cooling) even in the desert. And all that with a lot less stuff (no heatsinks, no oil pumps, etc).
Tsubame-KFC:
http://www.titech.ac.jp/english/news/2013/024456.htmlPUE (Power Usage Effectiveness):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectivenessIn summary, oil cooling is immersion cooling of yesterday. 3M Novec/DataTank is immersion cooling is immersion cooling of today and the future. Going back to oil cooling makes no sense. Ask any oil and gas company that tried it for HPC - if even the well funded oil and gas companies don't like oil cooling, that should teach us a lesson ;-)
There are probably a few more downsides, but it's 4AM so I may forget a few points. Going to sleep!