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Surely many have you already heard of Novec 7000, a product of 3M non-conductive which boils at 34 ° C.

He who does not know much information see the web and youtube.

This is a prototype to test it with mining equipment of all kinds, both FPGA and ASIC.

The equipment consists of a sealed tank, a heatsink to cool gases of Novec for return to liquid state, one peltier to forces heatsink cooling, liquid cooling system can also be a heatsink if you want and finally a conduit which reaches below the liquid level to pass cables out without gas escapes.
In the coming days I will receive a few gallons of Novec and we can test it.

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/5313/0e3y.jpg

http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/9800/nyi5.jpg

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/4145/7paj.jpg

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/3126/t1ne.jpg

What is the cost of a gallon ?

250$\gallon omg...

So its $1k to cool this container. Sinks and fans will be cheaper. What is the business model for the fluid ?

Cool stuff. Post more pics when you are done.

I've seen 3M do this on Youtube before, their setup is pretty cool and similar to yours.

http://www.youtube.com/user/petuma1?feature=watch

Gracias ;D

3M Thermal Management  fluids kinematic viscosity charts

I was considering using this to cool Bitfury 400 units and mount them vertical.

http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=tttttvW9lEgUmy7VPZA_qZ0t2XW62EW9iXut2Xut2tttttt--&fn=bro_heattrans.pdf

Its sounds like a fun experiment.   Have you visited these forums? 3m-novec-7000-group (http://www.overclock.net/t/1209583/3m-novec-7000-group)  They have posted  data and some conclusions on using Novec cooling fluids for servers and other electronic devices.

I am looking into a solution like this to expand my present setup.

http://www.grcooling.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/DSC_0043.jpg

Below is a pump and heat exchanger that moves heat outside so it can be dissipated by chillers.
http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/grc-liquid-server-cooling-mineral-oil-photo-02.jpghttp://media.gridtoday.com/images/Green_Revolution_enclosure.bmphttp://www.grcooling.com/wp-content/gallery/cache/92__x_cooling-tower-002-edit.jpg

Youtube Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkuCFA1Vtio

Thanks for the link

The price is 86 € per kilo and has a density of 1.4 kg/m3.

This week I should get the liquid, for now I will track the performance of an FPGA to compare air cooled using liquid after this.

Average 946 MH / s

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/9229/7ev7.jpg

A running fan in closed area, and where is the hamster? :D

Quite interesting..

Is it just me or does that seam like an awful little heatsink for that big a tank? :)

How many asic's / fpga's are you planning on putting into the tank?

Are you going to be circulating the fluid via pump / fan?

The tank itself is a huge radiator.

If the phase change cooling works as advertised you would need a condenser with similar surface area to the heat sink on the FPGA.

EDIT: Provided that condenser is just going to be air cooled. If I understand correctly OP is trading the expense of the compressor in an air conditioner for this fancy refrigerant. By using a peltier it could be much smaller.

 :) :) :)

The cooler at the top is just to condense the novec gas back to liquid form. This is a air sealed system. technically, the fan isnt necessary at all.

what if ambient gets over 34C ? would the whole thing explode due to pressure?

Novec 7000 is just pure nerd porn  ;D

What are you going to submerge? For the ~600Watts of heat of an Avalon the condenser set up looks a little weak. What's the concept?
Is what we are seeing is a peltier with it's hot side liquid cooled? How much power can it take if it's properly cooled? Got a link to a datasheet?



No, the container is not pressure tight. But the first little leakage will cost ya 1k$  :o

awesome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN3m1bJvS4Q&list=TLNjX4E-7_4No

beautiful :) I'd love to see some hashing ASICs submerged into this magical stuff

Here is the evidence of the liquid, has improved the performance of a single plate 946 to 963 MH/s, putting three plates have begun to have a pressure problem and I had to stop.

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/1060/f0z8.jpg

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/3646/xy5i.jpg

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/9036/lx16.jpg

And a pretty cool video with the three boards running.

Looks pretty cool... The pressure problem was because of you not able to condense the vapour fast enough?

Yes, it should be a very good design for the condenser, not worth anything like heatsinks are used with air.

A theory that was pressurized to connect all 3 plates was that I had too much air inside the tank, I personally do not share but hey I have been tested:

http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/3786/tgi3.jpg

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/4104/ssmp.jpg

By connecting the second plate pressure starts to rise, the peltier or heatsink not enough.

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1082/6bde.jpg

We can measure the actual temperature of the FPGA by not having a heatsink above, confirms that the Novec 7000 boils at 34 ° as promised.

Video:

The problem is already discovered, was that the gas pushing the air up an the capacitor is on top of all the gas tank completely emptied the air and the next thing is to escape over the edge of the tank, the solution is down the condenser and let the lid no hermetic so air tight that moves can leave and re-enter if the FPGAs shuts down and gas down.

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/9955/mm51.jpg

Just plug and starts to condense and the peltier does his job:

http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/139/iu87.jpg

But when the FPGA begins to reach 230Mhz the condenser cooling capacity declines and reaches 30 º where condensation stops and looks like nothing and dries clear, begin to increase the gas level:

http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/8840/572m.jpg

The cooling necessary to have a condenser at 25 ° or 16 ° which would be the ideal is too demanding for some equipment I do not have to necessarily work at 34, can work very well at 50 °.

U mean using a different liquid with boiling point 50 °C ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC-72

Boiling Point: 56C

Yeah that is another option for working fluid.  IIRC they used Novec 649 (boiling point of 50C).
http://solutions.3mmagyar.hu/3MContentRetrievalAPI/BlobServlet?lmd=1351678101000&locale=hu_HU&assetType=MMM_Image&assetId=1319241050803&blobAttribute=ImageFile

It has a higher boiling point of 50C.   I think a fluid around 45C to 55C is probably the sweet spot for chip cooling. The lower the boiling point relative to ambient temp the more difficult it is to cool the gas to below the boiling point so it condenses back into a liquid.  The issue the OP had with pressure is that the heatsink/peltier were insufficient to extract heat.  The FPGA was injecting x watts into the working fluid and the heatsink was removing y watts.  y<x so the amount of the fluid that was in gas form increased over time.  A larger heatsink, more powerful peltier, or an active compressor would improve stability.  Still one way to avoid it is like aTG said it is easier to just work at a higher temperature.

The again you don't want too high of a boiling point because you start to run up against the thermal limits of ASICs and FPGAs.  If the working fluid reaches a max temp of 50C, then the surface of the chip package will be ~50C.  The internal die temp will higher.  How much higher depends on thing like the chip design, surface area, and chip package.  Using CPU and GPU as a data point they have thermal diodes as part of the die to record the internal temp and they run 10C to 20C higher than working fluid temp.  In a two phase system (liquid->gas->liquid cycle) the package surface is never going to cooler than the boiling point as the boiling is what "removes" the heat.    A different route would be using a much higher boiling point and some circulating pumps with a heat exchanger (radiator) and just keep the entire system in one phase (liquid).  The system would never boil and would use circulation to move the heat from the chip to the radiator, but where is the fun in that. :)  Anyone know what the upper safe limit is for various FPGA & ASIC designs?  If any have thermal throttling where does it kick in at? On edit: Looks like Avalons default is 60C and BFL is 65C.  Not sure if that can be pushed higher.

Semi-OT but my rant on the excessively high cost limiting what a lot of potential innovation
Novec 649 is still ~$300 a gallon though.  Actually I don't know of any working fluid that has a high Dielectric Strength that isn't $300 per gallon or more.  Pricing is also tightly controlled so no free market at work.  3M is the only major supplier, it holds a lot of patents which it aggresively defends (so chance of startup making a Novec-649 "compatible" fluid is essentially nil) and it doesn't allow discounting.  Distributors or retailers that get caught risk being blacklisted and with only one supplier that means you are out.    It is as shame 3M has never been able (or willing) to bring the cost down.  I know it is a highly profitable niche market and I am sure 3M margins are something like 90%+ but imagine how many more applications would be economical at $20 or even $50 a gallon.  Part of the problem is 3M doesn't really want there to be a cheap solution.  For example one commercial application is for the cooling of lasers.  It kinda is the same scenario as cooling a CPU/GPU/FGPA/ASIC but it is a lot more energy (like 1000W or more) in a much smaller space.  The laser isn't immersed the laser shell is filled with the fluid.  This means much less is used.  A typical laser might only use 250CC (~1/16th of a gallon).  The system is completely sealed so they only replacement fluid is what is lost during maintenance.  Trust me the stuff is treated like liquid gold but you usually need to top the laser back up (maybe 20CC or less).  Maybe someday another company without the vested interest to keep prices high will design and patent a much cheaper working fluid.  If they do the cynic in me says 3M will buy them out and jack the price up 1000%.

Why not just build a pressure chamber since you have to condense the working fluid and use R134a as its a fraction of the cost?  Would only take 80-100PSI to hit a similar range.

The cost of pressure chamber, the cost of compressor, the ongoing electrical cost. 
Still it is an interesting idea.  Essentially building an air conditioner around the heat source.  Would be a cool experiment.

Yeah. Its not just about the total watts. At higher temperature delta more watts is going to get transferred. It is very possible that with same setup 50C liquid cools just fine...

I probably wasn't clear but that is what I was saying (or trying to).  Too bad the easiest change (working fluid with higher boiling point) isn't a cheap switch.  Still very cool experiment.

I personally would be afraid of building a pressure vessel to contain the R134a. I suppose you could reuse something like a boiler or other already existing pressure vessels that would be sufficiently large. Immersive cooling with fluids that change phase at low temperatures brings all sorts of issues with safety.

It would be very interesting to see if any chips could scale in performance with temperature. Eventually, when chips are cheaper, I'd like to do such testing but sadly now is the time for that to potentially make economic sense. Use 1-10x more power to achieve 1-2x higher hash rate = more profit given the high fixed costs of the chips and general low power requirements. I imagine in the future when I can afford to blow up dozens/hundreds of chips in testing, the fixed costs of the chips will be a fraction of their expected energy consumption over their lifetime and thereby make the process of chilling them a waste of money.

I have not contacted them but still closely at their designs and their results, They use Novec 649 in some of their projects.



I've been researching this product and is a different family of 7000, this is a acetone that can break down the coating of the wires, we are studying other solution is to use the Novec 7100 has a voiling point to 61º and mix it with the 7000 to reduce it, this tells 3M is possible.

One thing you may want to consider is Novec 1230.  It isn't designed to be a working fluid it is designed to fire supression however it has a high dielectric strength (designed to be sprayed into datacenters).   Getting a hold of it might be tough because it is only sold to OEM who do fire suppression installs.  However if you could acquire some my understanding is that is is only ~$40 per kg and thus substantially lower in cost then Novec 7100 and it has a boiling point of 49C.  If availability was a little better is may be a poor mans immersion cooling fluid.  I don't have a clue where you could acquire it as you likely would need to find a creative OEM.

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/3MNovec/Home/ProductCatalog/?PC_7_RJH9U5230OOA50IEKHCMDN11H0000000_nid=D7B0VRPJHSbeJ7332M26RCgl

Did you watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ivVoANqFBuY&t=568 ?

Yes, I have seen the full video and I'm basing on the design to make the final tank, now I have the problem of deciding which chiller used, i think I'll buy a HAILEA HC-2200BH.
I will install 15 avalon in a space of 80cm and hopefully with this chiller is sufficient but the truth is that i have no idea.

http://www.hailea.com/e-hailea/product1/HC-2200BH.htm

I don't find the cooling power specs of this chiller, however 7A electrical means 7x230=1610Watts, which is roughly double of what I have installed for my 3 Avalons.
My chiller is absolutely at the limit with the temperatures we are having at the moment in Shanghai.

I would recommend to use a fluid with higher boiling point and not use a chiller at all, just a dry or wet cooling tower, depending on your location and the fluid.

aTg have u decided which chiller you choose? keep us updated will ya :)

It is weird that the company gives all the specs except the important one. If this reseller is accurate it looks like it can "remove" (transfer from water to air) up to a 3300W heat load.
http://www.orionairsales.co.uk/hailea-water-chiller-hc2200bh-1800-watt--2200-litre-cooling-capacity-1796-p.asp

That would make sense 3300W heat transferred / 1800 W power = COP 1.83   Larger (think whole house) heat pumps have a COP of 3 to 4 and cheaper ones close to 2.5.  So 1.83 at peak capacity for a smaller unit makes sense.

Your experiment has got me designing a immersion cooling system.   To lower operating costs I am considering a two stage cooling loop.  "Hot" water from the condenser is pumped to an aircooled heat exchanger (radiator and fan assembly) which lowers the temp to within 5C to 10C (depending on how large/expensive of an assembly you want.  Preferably this would be outside so the waste heat is simply dumped.  Now in cooler temps this alone likely would be sufficient but on hot summer days it might not be enough so the water then flows to a chiller and back to the condenser.  The only issue is picking the right boiling temp.  Air cooled heat exchange is more efficient the larger the temp difference between water inlet and air inlet.  Water is never going to be hotter than the immersion boiling point.  

Have you found a suitable condenser.  That has actually been harder then I thought it would be.  Really one just needs a bundle or tubes, nothing more complex.  I am sure a radiator would work but that doesn't seem optimal.
 

For your gas to water condenser look into brazed steel plate heat exchangers. I've used the ones sold by dudadiesel as heat exchangers in my cascades/autocascades and other refrigeration systems with no ill effects. Just be careful if you are condensing liquid such that you don't end up with a liquid trap. This is a bigger issue with oil for compressors in refrigeration systems though and luckily I used oil carrying refrigerants to minimize this problem.

All the water loop stuff should be a piece of cake.

I am not sure how I missed this thread of awesome but kudos to you ATG.  This is an interesting project so keep us updated.

I think there may be some confusion.  I looked up the consdenders made by dudadiesel and they are liquid to liquid.

http://www.dudadiesel.com/img/HXflow2.jpg

In open batch immersion cooling the primary working liquid (Novec or Flourinert) boils and the gas rises.  It isn't piped anywhere it just rises until it contacts the "cold" (cooler than boiling  point) condenser which causes it to condense, and "rain" back into the batch as a liquid.   I guess I am missing something or you misunderstood.

Ah, for that a large coil would be sufficient and the flourinert will just drip off the coil's fins. My mistake, I was thinking of something else.

Any updates?  My immersion fluid should be arriving soonish.  Interested to compare notes.  I don't have any FPGA and am waiting on ASICs so while I could use a GPU as a test load instead I am going to use a bank of these ...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/612z-glRpEL._SL1100_.jpg

At 12V they will pull 8.3A and dissipate 100W.  By varying the number that are powered it will allow me to run some tests on a non-hashing prototype.

Cool let us know how it goes..........with pictures. ;D

I've been thinking of making something similar. I wish Novec 700 was much cheaper, but its out of the budget for most. I would go with mineral oil. the only downfall is that it takes a while to clean it off, i think the green revolution uses it. Also what about a cooling system where the oil goes through a heatsink cooled by water from an outside maybe portable pool?

Mineral oil is an option however I will be working with either Novec 7000 or Novec 7100.  One advantage that ASICs potentially have is extreme energy densities.  Compared to a run of the mill server or GPU rig you have a higher energy usage relative to the size of the system. 3M has provided me with some data on experiment where they cooled 4KW (that would be >8 TH/s using 28nm chip @ 0.5 J/GH) using just 1 Liter of Novec 7000.  That level of energy density is probably not possible (at least not without custom designed boards) but it shows the fluid is capable of incredibly energy transfers.  The challenge is finding a solution to minimize the amount of working fluid required relative to the power consumption and hashrate.

Still mineral oil is an interesting idea however while the working fluid is cheaper everything else has higher cost and complexity.  I already watercooled a server rack of GPU rigs so I need to bump up the extremeness to have any fun.

Will do.  I had a dream last night the UPS guy dropped the bottles and all that expensive Novec ended up on the ground.  :(  I probably will start a new thread but aTG first experiment gave me the inspiration.  I am just wondering if he has made any more progress.  From where he stopped I see two solutions, the first being a larger radiator and the second using Novec 7100.  Still I would prefer to see Novec 6000 working as it will result in lower board temps.

The business model is close to the LED lamp, or the glass-fiber bus. (In Chinese, "用者自負")

Before this, I have checked different things including using vegetable oil to control the total cost. However the drawback is messy cleaning but the fluid, includes the hidden cost so if using this, then you no longer need to do messy thing repeatedly, the fluid is always ready for setting up without problem.

I now am interested with chemical as the business becomes more mature than before. Also if not for mining, I can use this for professional drawing without problem.

The goal isn't to fill the container and for it to be economical you are going to want to stack the head loads very tightly.

Most engineered fluids are ~$50 per Liter.  1L = 1000 cm3.  So we are talking $0.05 per cm3.

Now imagine you have a KNC board you wish to cool.  This isn't a recommendation however it is the type of board that would be a good fit because it has a high energy density.
The board is roughly 15cm x 15cm.  Now put the board on its side and put a 1 cm spacer between it and the next board.  Do that for 10 boards.   You end up with a cube roughly 15cmx15cmx15cm.  The fluid would fill the space between the boards a rectangle roughly 1cm x 15 cm x 15cm.  So there will be 225cm3 of fluid between the boards.  It is actually less because the surface mount component will displace some of the fluid.  225 cm * $0.05 = $11.25 per board.  Now that is just the cooling fluid you will need condenser and if the condenser is water cooled, pumps, tubing, and either a chiller or dry tower.

However this simplistic example should show how while the cost per gallon is high the goal is to use as little as possible.  It also allows incredible energy densities.  In the example above 10 boards (1,000 GH/s) occupy a space of 3375 cm3 or 3.4 cm3 per GH/s.  Now you still need space for the vapor height and the condenser so lets triple that to roughly 10cm3 per GH/s.

You could never air cool KNC boards with only 1cm on clearance between boards.  KNC stock design is for 4 boards (400 GH/s) in a 4U rackmount space.  So roughly 100 GH/s per 1U.  A datacenter rackunit is 19" x 24" x 1.75" = 798 cubic inches. To use the same units that is ~13,000 cm3 or 130 cm3.

10 cm3 vs 130 cm3.  A 13x improvement in density.  While you wouldn't need to rackmount these you could fit about 50 TH/s of KNC gear (90KW) in the same space as a datacenter rack.  If Cointerra or HF can deliver 4x the efficiency it would be more like 200 TH/s per datacenter rack.  :)

Very interesting info. Thanks

Hi

No need for air cooling, no need for a water cooled cpu block, if you are serious about increasing your mining density then immersive cooling solutions are for you.

Miners currently use a 4U foot print with Air Cooling or GPU block cooling solutions. When space is a limitation or you just want to increase your hash per square metre then our solution is your ideal choice.

We are developing a gravity fed two phase cooling system with Novec used in an aluminium extruded immersion tank.
The cooling system is modular, hot swappable with built in safety and redundancy with minimum maintenance required.

By using Novec as the coolant we can place the mining boards about 1mm apart, increasing mining board density substantially.

Useful hot water out of the system with a temperature of around 50C.

The only moving mechanical parts are the water pumps in the base sucking the water out of the system.

The idea is to maximise the mining board density.

Imagine how many KnCMiners you could fit into this type of system.

GPU's can also be catered for.

We are based in the UK, I have been a lurker for some time on this forum and started mining around May 2013.

Interested parties oem's please pm me.
Investors please use seedco.in, pm me for details.

Who told you that Novec 649 is acetone? It is Fluoroketone, tested to be inert enough for such purpose.
Also I have official 3M response that Novec 649 is recomended fluid for immersive cooling.
You can check here
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4509386&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4476516%2F4509347%2F04509386.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4509386
http://solutions.3mdeutschland.de/wps/portal/3M/de_DE/Novec/Home/Product_Information/Products/?PC_Z7_RJH9U5230OLLB0I4HB8HRT3OC0000000_nid=F55Z1XTKWXbeQQBXSJ1LVVgl

Im getting quotes of $1100/gallon

3M sells direct in the US for about $250-$300 USD per gallon.  Mine was delivered in less than a week from order date.  Either someone is trying to rip you off, you pissed someone off, or you're international and there are other things going on.

Has any one put any thing iin to a product or solution regarding this?

Like this?

Building a board to fit those.

You don't have to.  You could put a Cointerra 4U Terraminer in there (it's 19-inch).


That's just a recommendation by the designers so that the miner doesn't need to always redo everything once the next hardware is around the corner. And to up the density.

Whatever fits in a bathtub will fit in one of these. They are 19-inch bathtubs. Why should a few dozen mining device manufacturers always need to work on their own boxes, cooling, infrastructure when all he market needs is delivering boards on chips? That's why CPUs and DDR memory comes in a standardized form factor. Makes sense?

Ya we have to and we are hoping to get it tested in HK at Allied Control.

Our group is not going to rely on Cointerra. LOL. We got some other plans for the variety of chips we already have in or will have in hand soon.

Hammer Whiteface
AM BE200 Whiteface
Minion Whiteface
"R" - Whiteface

Very interesting times indeed.

This would be interesting to cheap if not were so so expensive!

Sorry, cross posting with rig photos thread...

I think he is running Novec 7000 which changes state at 35? Very difficult to condense the vapour on something like that unless you are in very low ambient temps or you have a crap load of below ambient cooling (a single pelt uses as much power as it transfers so hardly an economical option). Novec 7100 boils at 65 which is a perfectly acceptable temp for most chips to run at and a lot easier to condense the vapour from 65 than 35.

The thing with HFE's is that they solve all your the chip cooling problems and move them along the chain; if your asics are pulling 1000w then you then need at least 1000w of cooling to condense the vapour. 1000w of cooling is not so hard from 65 but it is quite a challenge from 35 depending on you ambient temps.

The main benefit of HFE is that it makes the heat usable; you can condense vapour from 65 with a radiator and water at 60 if you have high enough flow so that water is hot enough to be useful to heat water and such like. If your chips are happy to run at higher temps you can use 7200 or greater which allow the cooling water to be heated to higher temps which are even more useful.

smracer looks to be rocking the 7100 which is easier to work with and still yeilds chip temps of 65 for almost unlimited heat dissipation.

I'm not sure how I will get on with it at this early stage but my intention is to use Neptune at a 2kW water heater by the time winter comes to England.

u27

its a lot easier and cheaper to cool a closed-loop coil within the vapour area, and then extract the heat of that loop outside the building or with fewer fans than would be needed for air cooling.

http://www.grcooling.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/DSC_0043.jpg

Below is a pump and heat exchanger that moves heat outside so it can be dissipated by chillers.
http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/grc-liquid-server-cooling-mineral-oil-photo-02.jpghttp://media.gridtoday.com/images/Green_Revolution_enclosure.bmphttp://www.grcooling.com/wp-content/gallery/cache/92__x_cooling-tower-002-edit.jpg

Both 7000 and 7100 can be used with the same closed loop system.  The point is that the larger the difference between ambient (i.e. outside) temp and the condensation point of the working fluid the more efficient the operation.   Now obviously a fluid which boils at 400C would be very efficient but it would also mean the processors would be 400C as well which wouldn't be good.   So the optimal working fluid in a two phase immersion cooling system is one with the HIGHEST boiling point which is still maintains the processors at an acceptable temp.

Yep, 34 (N/7000) is not really workable but 61 (N/7100) is fairly easy to condense and also a good working temp for chips; I would not be comfortable at 98 (N/7300) but 76 (N/7200) might be workable once the cooling is dialed in.

Higher boiling point also increases the usefulness of the hot water returned.

u27

What's the price of the N7200?

Last I checked £248 for 5.4kg / 4L.

I just wondering, in a close loop system, if bottom is the miner board, top is radiator/condenser, would it work this way? or I need to have two separated system (Novec + miner = first system; Radiator + fan module = second system) and link up with an aluminum plate to do heat exchange?

One system is fine; water loop just moves the heat from the condensing rad to the cooling rad.

EDIT:
A friend has managed to get a Neptune board up and running in Novec 7100 now:

http://i57.tinypic.com/sdo6ti.png

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=313978.msg7865759#msg7865759

I'm just waiting my FREE (yay !!!!) Novec 7000 and 7100 delivery, i'll put 9 Gridseed Blades in it, so 18 PCBs very close to each others. I'll mix the 7000 and 7100 together to have a perfect boiling point at 47,6 °C. 34°C is nice for the GC3355 chips but too low for coils and things, and 61°C is too hot for the chips. So i think we can get the best results when mixed up ;D

I'll post some pics when making all the stuff ;)

How did you get it free??

Also are you sure you can just mix the fluids like that? Why not use novec 649 which boils at 49C?

Yes please...do tell! :)

I would strongly advise not mixing these fluids until you speak to a 3m engineer. They may very well not mix at all and just settle on top of each other - depending on the properties.

Also, you really suck. :-)

Yes, please explain free; I have only ever been able to get hold of very small samples.

Mixing them is very unlikely to work; I imagine you would just boil off the 7000 first even if they do mix. Same as distilling alcohol from mash; even when mixed you can cause the alcohol to evaporate leaving the water behind.

u27

The 3M guy told us that we can mix them together since they use the same chimical elements. But you can't mix a 649 with any 7000 series liquid, it's not the same chemical
It's designed that way so you can select the perfect boiling point for what you want to cool.
But the guy wasn't an engineer, just a representant. Wait and see, i sendt a mail to the 3M staff, my Novec will be delivered within one week, so i have the time to verify if it's true or not :) I'll give you the truth from them ;)
If it's false, idk, i'll have some liters for something else, maybe my Zeus miners.

I have them for free because a friend of mine who owns a datacenter told them that he must do some tests of this kind of application and if it works like expected and not a pain to install and set up all the entire system, he will order a lot more of Novec for cooling his entire datacenter... so, yeah, they're interested as fuck for the deal ;D

He could well be right but I would be wary of this advice; if it were so simple why do 3M sell      34    61    76    98    128      boiling points and not say a 50 which would save a lot of people mixing?

u27

I was told by a 3m engineer you can mix them to dial in any boiling temp you want.

Mega waste of time and money.

Gratz

I don't think you're understanding this technology fully.

The whole point is to save time and money.

Cooling the electronics better than any other method is just an added bonus.

not at scale it's not.

This guy has clearly done his reading thoroughly; I can't see any reason to question his conclusion/

Update, I just received 6L of Novec 649 but tomorrow i'll go to Deutschland for a couple of days, next week i'll make you some pics of all the stuff working. See you there ;)

Whats the life expectancy of this liquid?

It is stable so in theory there is no limit; however depending on your setup you will always see some loss from either opening the tank or from leaks, expansion, contraction of the gas in the process. All these things can be reduced with better seals, bellows to allow expansion without venting and so on but it is very difficult to eliminate all losses/

1% per month is a number I have heard banded around but I have a buddy running this stuff and his losses are higher that that so far.

u27

With 1% per month there is definitely something wrong with the design of the system, especially for Bitcoin mining where power is constantly on full throttle, tanks don't actually need to be opened often and hardware goes in and out very seldom.

Close to zero (as in 0.0x%) losses is what we achieve with our systems, but they are our third generation built on industrial grade and we have spent a considerable amount of engineering since early 2012. And only if you ignore the "spilling" when people handle the fluid, but that's down to human errors.

What's also more important is the loss after a hardware refresh, for instance when you retire some 40nm hardware and move to 28nm. When everything is said and done, how much fluid did you "throw out" with the old hardware? We've been working hard to minimize that - and the spilling of course  ;D

Getting fluid loss under control is what consumed most of our resources. Large systems would mean large losses if that is not handled properly.

(contrary to popular belief we have to pay 3M for the Novec so every little bit counts)

Are you running 7100 or what?

All of them, including 649, 7000, 7100, 7200 and some older fluids on the smaller scale/tests (we use some of them for vapor phase soldering). Depends on the chip mainly.

It is my understanding that the efficiently recovered energy in the form of hot water is then wasted with your systems? For instance I recall seeing a couple of external cooling units at asicminer?

Have you looked into using the energy?

It heats our office in the winter for a month or two, but apart from that there is not a lot you can do in Hong Kong with the warm water (reuse in restaurant kitchen maybe, or warm some fish pond, if you'd have that in your vicinity).

We've been heating with the immersion system since the FPGA clusters.
http://www.allied-control.com/blog/heating-office-with-fpgas-and-servers

The DataTanks have an option for a heat exchanger for reuse as well.

With higher boiling points you could theoretically run reverse chillers, or even better produce electricity.

Look at the Panasonic developments for thermoelectric tubes, it's early but promising if true (820W/m3 with waste heat of 96°C water). I think the catch is that you also need cold water at the same time (river?) to create a high temp difference.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20140416/346700/
http://panasonic.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/en110630-4/en110630-4.html

With a chip that likes it hot (some 28nm that was just released for instance), you could run it at 110-125C and create your electricity back. One can only dream I guess.

Are you guys all building this as a hobby, to build a large mine, or for professional use (job/company)?

We've been playing with the thought of doing some sort of internship program for a long time (we have done that in the past) but this needs a bit of planning as training and visas are involved. We certainly have plenty of development tanks sitting around and experiments to be conducted.

Just curious, this is not really related to Bitcoin.

I heard many people are heating their house with the heat generated from miners.
How are you heating you office? Direct or via any heat exchanger?
Isn't it a very unhealthy or charged air ? Any heat concerns?

I just figured that running 4kW+ of Neptunes (when the other five cubes arrive), expending energy to waste the heat generated by them and then paying to run a 3kW immersion heater at my house for our hot water is kinda stupid.

No reason I can't run the lowest coil in an evap. cooling system through a big tank of water 24/7 and then only waste the energy if the 60 degree 7100 vapor gets to the next coil up; at least then I get free hot water for running miners.

I would have it up and running by now if I wasn't so busy with work. Likewise I would love to get involved with what you guys are doing; but I just don't have the time.

u27

Also the R134A available in auto parts stores 30 lb. cylinders for $199 probably contain lubricant and who knows if the lubricant is conductive.  Those 30 lb. cylinders are sold with a clear stipulation that the R134A contained is not to be use in electric vehicles.  There are research articles describing R134A cooling of electronic car propulsion electronics.

LOL soy you dug up a thread from Aug 2013???

lol but seriously any updates on the rig?

The best liquid cooling agents i think is the 3M Fluorinert, Novec is use more in fire extinguisher sytems.

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Electronics_NA/Electronics/Products/Product_Catalog/~/3M-Fluorinert-Electronic-Liquid-FC-770?N=4294412737+5153906&Nr=AND%28hrcy_id%3AMHLSRZTBD8gs_0B7JCKFWS6_N2RL3FHWVK_GPD0K8BC31gv%29&rt=d

no, novec is their newer stuff and is the one they intend to use for liquid cooling.  there are multiple versions of novec that boil at different temps and you can mix them together to dial in almost any temp that you wish it to boil at.  there are even green novecs that are less polluting in the atmosphere.  fluorinert is their older product.. as used in cray supercomputers.  the one you linked to boils at 95 degrees which is a little too hot for most electronics, which wouldn't be the best solution for liquid cooling as we WANT it to boil, to utilise the two-phase nature of Novec.  if you didn't want it to boil you'd use a much cheaper liquid, like mineral oil!

the whole point of using Novec is that you decide what temperature you want your boards to run at, e.g., say 75 degrees...  and you dial in the right novec liquids to boil at that temperature... and then above the liquid you have coils to cool the vapour back into liquid form.  it rains back down into the novec tanks, and you carry the heat away in the coils to somewhere where you can use it or lose it.

I first saw people doing the mineral oil thing in the early 90s.
I built a peltier water cooled system and fell in love with the idea of submersion cooling, but did not pursue it due to R&D cost, but now it seems for a large scale mining operation with the right backing this could be viable. Not the mineral oil per say but the 3M products.

Is anyone successfully  running a mining rig setup long term this way?
If so, what is the cost versus air?
Does the density provide the savings?

I could see this as being most useful for higher ambient mining. Say some home miner must shut down int he summer due to heat, and are limited anyway due to noise. Take a fish tank and mine year round?

Just curious...

there are several people doing immersion cooling for bitcoin mining rigs, and the most large scale to date (that i know of) is Allied Control in hong kong, most recently acquired by bitfury, but have previously done their own bitcoin mining and also are the guys who setup the asicminer immersion mining project.

Yay it was a long time ago but i made two vids for showing to my friends how it works.

You can see them here :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSKq2q9vkRY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSKq2q9vkRY)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyfDD0jfKI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyfDD0jfKI)

But now, it's really useless to let this shit running, Scrypt ASICS are dead my boys ;D

Sorry for rebooting an old thread, but where can you buy this stuff,  I can't find any retailers in Canada, I haven't bothered to call 3M.

call 3M.

Novec is strictly from 3M and it's distributors. Thought about it myself but damn it is expensive... If BTC was still at last years prices I'd go that route because it is a very slick almost self-regulating way of moving the heat to be removed elsewhere. At current BTCvalue no way right now.

I have a total of about 5 liters worth between 7000/7100 (you can mix to get boiling teams between 35-60 C), if your interested.


btw here is my experimental rig in operation ;)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5-BaH8_SAk