Bitcoin Forum

Recently I've been looking into mineral oil as a cooling solution for bitcoin miners, namely my Antminer s5. I've found a few threads, all of which were on this forum, though most are at least a few years old and pertain to gpu miners, not ASICs. The biggest objections to this solution that I could find are as follows:

Most Concerning

1. Capacitors cannot withstand the conditions and will quickly wear out. This does not appear to be a problem in high end computer motherboards with "military class" construction, but that may just be for marketing as far as I know.
2. Without heat sinks, the chips will quickly overheat. Attaching heat sinks to the chips would require mineral oil resistant adhesive, which I'm unfamiliar with. 
3. Finding an adequately suited enclosure (preferably acrylic) for the cards might be difficult, and it may even be necessary to build one.

Least Concerning

4. Mineral oil of any type is messy and destroys the resale value of any miner.
5. Just like hard drives, SD cards cease to function in mineral oil.
6. Mineral oil can creep up wires, such as the ethernet cable, making an even bigger mess.
 
Can anyone disprove any of these objections or recommend suitable parts (pump, enclosure, etc.)? It certainly is an interesting way to cool a miner. I am in no position to judge these claims, so I'm asking for your input before I attempt anything. I'm also considering buying a "throwaway" Antminer s1 for $30 or so just for testing if none of what I learn here is conclusive. I've heard that in some circumstances a radiator is necessary for mineral oil cooled pcs, but I don't know if this is one of those cases. The S5 outputs just as much power as a mid-range gaming pc (590w, according to my Kill-A-Watt).

why  do you want to do this?

do you desire a monster over-clock?

is the fan too loud?

Just curious as to your reasons why.


Some where on site there is a thread where a guy did one in a fishtank of coolant.  but the coolant must be pumped out of the tank and into a radiator to cool it.

Your looking the wrong way.  Get a C1 and an S5 if for some reason you cannot use the fan's.   Mineral oil just seems like chances are a lot of work and I doubt it's made for it.

If you want silent look at Avalon 4.1's used.  They are VERY VERY quiet.

Mineral oil seems like it could be a good alternative to the Noctua NF-F12 industrialPPC-3000 PWM Fan I've been using for reaching 1300 gh/s because it offers the same if not better capacity for overclocking with much lower noise levels (even though the Noctua fan is pretty quiet compared to the stock fan) and hopefully ridiculously good temperatures. I understand that I'd probably still need fans for a radiator, but they wouldn't need to be as powerful and loud as the Noctua since dissipation of heat would occur in both the tank and the radiator, right?


Thanks for your recommendation, for some reason I overlooked that miner when I was looking for something to get into mining with. My miner is located at home in a room fairly close to my computer and runs at 375M. I can just barely hear it when I walk by; temperatures are my main concern. I've read here that optimum temperatures for the S5 are around the 50's to the mid-sixties (Celsius of course). It runs at about 64c on one board and 68c on the other, with the peak for both being about 71c. It's been a week since I posted this and forgot about it and considering the responses I've gotten, it doesn't seem as clear-cut as it used to. I'll definitely look into liquid cooling a bit more, though.

Is it possible? Sort of. Should you? No.

Immersion cooling with low BP liquids is the way to go ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5-BaH8_SAk