Immersive cooling - ultimate cool?

[red930]

I would think that heatsinks would provide more surface area for the heat to dissipate from the chips before it is removed by circulating oil though.

 

If you're going to the effort of doing this, you might as well sink everything.

 

However, I don't believe that aheatsink would suffice for the cpu. A pure waterchiller or phase change unit of some kind should be employed here, just as on the graphics cards.

 

The point of this whole endeavor (as I view it anyways, others may not agree with me) is keeping the board itself and all components on it cold, that are not normally messed with. I wouldn't even attempt to cool the liquid to -100C or beyond, getting it to 0 would be more than enough.

[jm76]

If your solution is cold enough and the flow is high enough then the thermal compound will actually become a barrier for heat transfer...

 

Think about the thermal compound that you might want to use in this setup -- it was to be completely nonconducitve and insoluble in your solution. If it is even slightly conductive and gets washed onto something there goes your system. If it is even slightly soluble then you have no idea where or when it will percipitate out of the solution which could gum up lines, pump, or any moving parts.

 

The thermal compounds that we use now a days are rather ineffecient when you think about it -- a direct connection between the solution and chip would be ideal as long as you guarantee that there is suffecient flow across the chip to guarentee that no hot spots in the solution form. This is where circulation becomes important because it is necessary to have a high enough flow to always keep a constant supply of cold solution running across the chip.

 

BTW, I can think of one reason that you might be tempted to use some sort of heat sink on a chip and that would be to avoid/dampen temperature spikes, but for this to occur it would imply that the solution used in the bath was not a good thermal conductor.

 

Jim

Jim

[Evil_inc]

Now how could I do this and have the case be under $500? lol

[maka_RTH]

i've also heard of this being done with distilled water. i just remember this type of setup is not usually practical. and, if i remember right from the pictures i looked at, the PSU was also out of the water. but yeah, it could be a lil more practical in OC'ing than using liquid nitrogen as that only works for a short period of time, then you run out, lol

[scyphe]

Of course, it's messy to change components. But since it's non-conductive, non-corrosive etc. you shouldn't have to do anything to protect the components.

 

You'd need to have a pump, huge butt radiator, perhaps a cooling unit if you want lower temps, filter etc. to keep the Galden fluid in a constant stream around the components. The filter would definitely be needed to filter out metallic particles etc. that will come loose from any metal parts of the system.

 

Seriously though, if I had a lot of extra cash and stuff I'd love to experiment.

[Evil_inc]

Unless you are getting an extream cooling unit I wouldnt even use galden because it is so expensive. Just use vegatable oil, its easy to get, and you can buy it by the barrel full.

[ReelFiles]

That case would be way heavy, my standard acrylic case is pretty hefty, and it's panels are less than 1/4" thick. You're talking about using 2 sections of 1/2" each, wow. I think 1/4" would be sufficient.

[Evil_inc]

That was if I was going to make a complete vaccum with in it, that puts an insane ammount of stress on all sides of the casing. If i just put fans on the outer layer and circulate fresh air around the inner case then it prevents condensation and I can have 1/8th inch plexiglass for each case. The cases would be heavy anyway because you have about 2 gallons of oil + all of the radiators and pumps on top. its going to way in excess of 50 lbs anyway.

[scyphe]

I don't know the viscosity of Galden but the viscosity of veggie oil is high and increases when the temps drops. Galden is a heat transfer fluid with low viscosity which means it'll flow better around the components (ie. more fluid matter will absorb heat) etc...

 

http://www.inlandvacuum.com/galden.html

 

I'd go with Galden HT anytime if economy permitted.