Bitcoin Forum

Some people are having problems with dust, noise and heat with their mining rigs. Running your rigs in a tank of mineral oil would eliminate all three of these problems. You could even cool the oil with a radiator if you wanted to run it hot.

Is anyone doing this already?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sP45uBj4-k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0Tj4wMF5EY

nope, but I thought about it, but came to the result that it is just to messy if you have to exchange a part of the computer.

People take this up and you are just asking for a flood of reports on http://www.bitcoinminingaccidents.com/

Adding capacity wouldn't be a problem. Just drop in another rig.

Not to mention that you probably wont be able to sell your hardware if you stop mining, ever tried to clean mineral oil off?

LOL.

Oil just has 2 many drawbacks for me.... mess mess mess mess.

plus Don't you think cooling might be an issue if your running say 4x whatever space heaters set to extra hot. Atlest you would not have to run your chip fryer when your hungry :)

i hate that people did that. every time i'm talking about cooling to my dad, he ALWAYS refers to how fun it'd be to fill a comp with oil. :<

Can you buy kits/cases for setting up an oil tank PC ?

If so, then can you tell where, especially if there are any vendors in the UK ?

Just use an aquarium tank if you want it to look pretty. Otherwise a plastic storage container will do.

I have not seen any kits around. go to your local pet shop get a fish tank then go to a car shop and get some oil. add chips and away you go :)

LOL, chips :)

okay, thanks guys

I've been wanting to do this but haven't pulled the trigger yet.  THere's a good write up and kit that they sell here:  http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

I remember back in the day when oil was used as fuel for power, and when you wanted to cool your CPU, you'd blow on it. Now they're trying to use wind power to generate electricity, and oil to cool computers. The world has gone backwards one me.

If you're mining with even one decent card you'll want to use a radiator regardless.  The heat dissipation through a flat surface (container wall) just isn't that effective.  There's a reason every piece of computer hardware uses fins.  If you use a glass aquarium than you will dissipate some heat.  If you are using an acrylic aquarium or plastic tub then you will lose less heat through the walls.  Having a pump attached will help circulate the oil which is also a good thing; relying on natural convection for your fluid circulation will raise the temperatures.  If you're using multiple cards than you will certainly need additional cooling.

Both my mining and gaming rig are in oil, but I would recommend against it unless you have some idea what you are getting into, and you enjoy that sort of thing.  Puget systems does have a good kit and explanation, which makes it much easier.  I tried their kit some time ago, and decided that the aquarium they were using was a bit too fragile.  However, the oil is not cheap (~$20/gallon), is very messy, almost certainly voids warranties, and still requires additional cooling equipment.  Also, your hardware is difficult to get to, and your computer becomes damn near unmovable.

If this is the kind of thing you enjoy doing, then by all means, do it.  But don't get into it thinking its going to be cheap and easy.

the point is that you have to cool the oil, which is not easy.
the heat has to go somewhere and if you dont use massive heat exchangers /radiators your rigs would run hot after a few hours.

oil is nice for gaming and such, I have read an article where they talked about 8 hours under full load or something until they hit 90 degrees celsius. for mining it is just stupid and a real mess to go along with it

Do you leave the fans running and on? I would have thought the chips would be naked to the oil, and that the fans wouldn't run when submerged. But they seem to chug along in the video.

there has to be some sort of movement to avoid hotspots. I would think. Still If you really feel the need I would just watercool. Less mess cheaper. easy to buy kits etc

I tried using an older cpu with no heatsink, and got hot fast (I shut the computer off as it climbed past 90C).  You need something to increase the heat-transfer surface area.  With the same cpu I have had good success using a low-profile passive heat sink.

I haven't had any problems with fans in the oil.  My guess is that the increased resistance is offset by the increased lubrication and cooling provided by the oil.  The video card fans seem to be pretty effective at moving oil through the heat sink.  The squirrel cage fans they typically have aren't much different in concept to an impeller pump.

Cheaper, easier, and better to just water cool your hardware.  Plus it's easier to resell the components afterwards.

yikes.. go for it, and report back ;D

I agree, though I don't know about better.  Oil cooling does make it easier to use sub-ambient cooling methods without worrying about condensation.  My gaming rig is hooked up to a home-built chiller.  My idle temperatures can run as low as 18C in the summer.

Only go for oil cooling if its something you're interested in.  Its got lots of disadvantages.  Although I'd probably say the same about liquid cooling.

I've been pondering this with some degree of seriousness.  Especially since I just had a 55 gal fish tank become free for this use.

It basically comes down to if I expect to be able to resell the components or not at this point.  Tough call! :)

-Phil

You could almost build an entire other computer for what you will spend on the oil.  It's not like you just dump vegetable oil in it and turn it on.

Actually you can do just that.  Obviously there are some precautions to take, but you can use vegetable oil.

I've heard it goes rancid and smells bad eventually though.  People definitely do it though.

I know this topic is old but it seems to be the only topic on this. So i wanted to know whats the advantage from it? I mean it should be better cooling but that makes probably only sense if you plan to overclock the asics. So is it possible anyway to overclock the asics? I read somewhere in the forum, i dont find it anymore, that one could overclock it up to 300? but met a wall there. I dont know what he referred to. So how can, for example an asic from avalon be overclocked anyway? Clockrates? Changing volts or what ways are possible? And the wall the one person spoke about... is it breakable with better cooling or is it a wall that cant be broken? I thought about mineral oil myself but if it doesnt lead to a higher hashrate through overclocking it doesnt make much sense to me.