Submerge your rigs in liquid

[farlack]

Has anyone tried this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuNkB_8fJeY&feature=related

I would have to assume it would save power not having to run fans, + air conditioner to cool down rooms.

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[Frequency]

that looks great firts you think were are the fish then u see the gaer damn cool...but greassy 

[stevegee58]

It's probably fine except when you want to work with the hardware i.e. adding/replacing boards etc.
Everything will be slick with mineral oil which sounds yucky.

[Arto]

A handful of Intel servers just emerged from a yearlong bath in an oil-based coolant, and the results were remarkable. The servers ran at a PUE just above 1.0, and showed no ill effects from the oil. Is oil immersion coming to a rack near you?

The idea of immersing servers in oil to keep them cool isn't entirely new--passionate gamers have been housing their systems in vegetable oil for years. But it's time to take notice of this trend when Intel starts singing its praises as a potentially revolutionary method for slashing the price of running a data center.

The microprocessor giant just finished a yearlong test of Green Revolution Cooling's mineral-oil server-immersion technology and is very happy with the results. According to Mike Patterson, senior power and thermal architect at Intel, not only does the technology appear perfectly safe for server components, but it might also become the norm for anyone needing maximum computer power or building out data center capacity. [...]

And the technology is incredibly effective. Patterson said that whereas traditional air-cooled server racks often operate at a Power Usage Effectiveness rating of about 1.6 (meaning cooling tacks on a 60 percent increase over the power needed power the servers' computing workloads), Intel's oil-immersed servers were operating at a PUE between 1.02 and 1.03. It's possible to achieve similarly low PUE ratings with traditional air- and liquid-cooling methods, Patterson said, but getting there can require some serious engineering effort and cost a lot of money.

As for concerns over the effect of all that oil on the servers' processors, hard drives and other components, Patterson says companies probably shouldn't sweat it. When its test period ended, Intel sent its servers to its failure-analysis lab, which, he said, "came back with a thumbs up that a year in the oil bath had no ill effects on anything they can see."

[AmDD]

It still gets hot... Think of it like a deep fryer, the heat you put in the oil doesn't magically vanish, you need to cool the oil. It may not be true with a low power computer but with a mining rig, cooling the oil would be needed.

Also consider that because of the oil everything in it will heat up to whatever temp it is at. Even things that are normally cool, like USB controllers, capacitors, etc which could cause problems if heated up too high.

There was a guy who did this however, I think it was in the "pics of your mining rigs" thread.

[farlack]

It's probably fine except when you want to work with the hardware i.e. adding/replacing boards etc.
Everything will be slick with mineral oil which sounds yucky.

I've seen people on here who have 10-20+ rigs, all maxed already, so adding wont be an issue, and replacing wont either, as no dust gets to your components. I've been seeing online 3+ years with 0 problems.


The energy cost savings alone would make it worth while of having a sticky part if you needed to access it. You could get creative of ways to make eco-heatsinks to zero your heat energy bill.

[farlack]

It still gets hot... Think of it like a deep fryer, the heat you put in the oil doesn't magically vanish, you need to cool the oil. It may not be true with a low power computer but with a mining rig, cooling the oil would be needed.

Also consider that because of the oil everything in it will heat up to whatever temp it is at. Even things that are normally cool, like USB controllers, capacitors, etc which could cause problems if heated up too high.

There was a guy who did this however, I think it was in the "pics of your mining rigs" thread.

That's why you cool the oil, there are many different ways you can do it, and off the top of my head..

Hook a heatsink to frigerator coils.
Hook a heatsink that's buried into the ground.
Hook a heatsink thats connected to a pool.


Where I live, you dig 2 feet down and you're at water. A free source of heat dispersion.

[AmDD]

It still gets hot... Think of it like a deep fryer, the heat you put in the oil doesn't magically vanish, you need to cool the oil. It may not be true with a low power computer but with a mining rig, cooling the oil would be needed.

Also consider that because of the oil everything in it will heat up to whatever temp it is at. Even things that are normally cool, like USB controllers, capacitors, etc which could cause problems if heated up too high.

There was a guy who did this however, I think it was in the "pics of your mining rigs" thread.

That's why you cool the oil, there are many different ways you can do it, and off the top of my head..

Hook a heatsink to frigerator coils.
Hook a heatsink that's buried into the ground.
Hook a heatsink thats connected to a pool.


Where I live, you dig 2 feet down and you're at water. A free source of heat dispersion.

You did not mention that in your first post, it looks like you assume the heat just goes away.
A big heat sink would work well but wouldn't it just be easier, cleaner and probably cheaper to water cool the GPUs?

[HDSolar]

Yes, someone on here is running their rig in mineral oil and mining.  They made their own setup and it is working with I think five cards.  There are pics of it under the pic of my rig thread.  The only issue I can think of that would be a real pain is that the oil can get contaminated once things like dust and other forign items enter the mix.  The would then cause you to have to shutdown and drain, clean and reload as needed which could be a real pain.  I have thought about this and I would say that if your going to attempt it that you basically plan that the gear you put in will be tossed after two or three years if you get that far.  Otherwise it is really interesting idea for us heat and noise producers.

[farlack]

It still gets hot... Think of it like a deep fryer, the heat you put in the oil doesn't magically vanish, you need to cool the oil. It may not be true with a low power computer but with a mining rig, cooling the oil would be needed.

Also consider that because of the oil everything in it will heat up to whatever temp it is at. Even things that are normally cool, like USB controllers, capacitors, etc which could cause problems if heated up too high.

There was a guy who did this however, I think it was in the "pics of your mining rigs" thread.

That's why you cool the oil, there are many different ways you can do it, and off the top of my head..

Hook a heatsink to frigerator coils.
Hook a heatsink that's buried into the ground.
Hook a heatsink thats connected to a pool.


Where I live, you dig 2 feet down and you're at water. A free source of heat dispersion.

You did not mention that in your first post, it looks like you assume the heat just goes away.
A big heat sink would work well but wouldn't it just be easier, cleaner and probably cheaper to water cool the GPUs?

Well I gave a suggestion, not the solution in the first post lol. Probably would not be cheaper to water cool, I'm not to familiar with watercooling, but looking online, each is $100+, if you need 25 of them, you're spending a lot of money.

You will still have to buy the mineral oil, but at a bulk purchase, you can get a lot of oil, relatively cheap, and you can put a bunch of rigs in 1 tank with oil.

[farlack]

Yes, someone on here is running their rig in mineral oil and mining.  They made their own setup and it is working with I think five cards.  There are pics of it under the pic of my rig thread.  The only issue I can think of that would be a real pain is that the oil can get contaminated once things like dust and other forign items enter the mix.  The would then cause you to have to shutdown and drain, clean and reload as needed which could be a real pain.  I have thought about this and I would say that if your going to attempt it that you basically plan that the gear you put in will be tossed after two or three years if you get that far.  Otherwise it is really interesting idea for us heat and noise producers.

Before I posted this I was doing a bit of searching, and YT videos, the one said after 3 years, everything is still going well without switching oil, the only thing is the oil is a little darker.


Even if this did happen, I would think a siphon technique going into a filter, and just keep adding the clean oil back into the mix would take care of that. Possibly saving a few hundred a month on 10 minutes of work if needbe is a good trade.

[os2sam]

It still gets hot... Think of it like a deep fryer,

Yet, another use for GPU's, Turkey fryer.

[crazyates]

See this post here, and read the following conversation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.msg1253938#msg1253938

The end result was that while oil can work amazing for gaming, where you're not dumping a lot of heat into it 24/7, it's not the best idea for miners. It will initially (first 12 hours) keep your GPUs very cool, but once the oil heats up, it's very hard to cool the oil (and the system) back down.

[stevegee58]

Like any cooling system you have to remove the heat in some fashion.  For liquid cooling the warm liquid has to be pumped somewhere to cool, just like a car's radiator.

[farlack]

See this post here, and read the following conversation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.msg1253938#msg1253938

The end result was that while oil can work amazing for gaming, where you're not dumping a lot of heat into it 24/7, it's not the best idea for miners. It will initially (first 12 hours) keep your GPUs very cool, but once the oil heats up, it's very hard to cool the oil (and the system) back down.

That's only 1 view, with 1 person who didn't do anything different. There are a bunch of creative ways to cool it down.



Edit: A pipe going out a window, buried into the ground, mixing around with ground water. Free after you buy the copper pipe.

[Desolator]

Oil submersion isn't a good idea for anyone that knows how physics actually works.  They think "oh wow, there's this huuuuge amount of thermal capacity in that oil!  That'll work great!"  Well guess what, after a certain amount of time it heats up.  All that massive capacity changes is the amount of time it takes to get to max temperature!  So 2 weeks later, it's hot!  You still need a cooling system to cool the oil and that's much harder than air or water.  Otherwise your cooling is the surface area of the oil touching the air with no movement and no radiator of any sort.  That's not good.  You'd be better off with air at that point.

I believe thermal conduction is thermal conductivity times surface area times temperature differential.  So if you have a copper fin cooler, that has insane total surface area.  It could seriously be 1 square meter if you were to spread it all out.  Then you have a fan forcing air through it so the temp difference is always virtually the same.  Also copper conducts heat better than oil.  So with an oil pool you've got like 1-2 square feet of surface area touching the air which is not moving over the oil so the temp difference is lower as the hot air rises slowly out of the way instead of blasting by with a fan, always feeding in new air.  It's a much worse system.

[RodeoX]

I tried it with an old junk PC and a fish tank. It did work and was the quietest computer I ever had. Servicing it, however,  was as ugly as you would think.

[paraipan]

Oil submersion isn't a good idea for anyone that knows how physics actually works.  They think "oh wow, there's this huuuuge amount of thermal capacity in that oil!  That'll work great!"  Well guess what, after a certain amount of time it heats up.  All that massive capacity changes is the amount of time it takes to get to max temperature!  So 2 weeks later, it's hot!  You still need a cooling system to cool the oil and that's much harder than air or water.  Otherwise your cooling is the surface area of the oil touching the air with no movement and no radiator of any sort.  That's not good.  You'd be better off with air at that point.

I believe thermal conduction is thermal conductivity times surface area times temperature differential.  So if you have a copper fin cooler, that has insane total surface area.  It could seriously be 1 square meter if you were to spread it all out.  Then you have a fan forcing air through it so the temp difference is always virtually the same.  Also copper conducts heat better than oil.  So with an oil pool you've got like 1-2 square feet of surface area touching the air which is not moving over the oil so the temp difference is lower as the hot air rises slowly out of the way instead of blasting by with a fan, always feeding in new air.  It's a much worse system.

Here you go http://www.pugetsystems.com/mineral-oil-pc.php

It also comes with a radiator in case you need it



And another one

[Frequency]

i just can get it why.. al the effort, it looks very COOL..    or combining two hobbies in one

[farlack]

Oil submersion isn't a good idea for anyone that knows how physics actually works.  They think "oh wow, there's this huuuuge amount of thermal capacity in that oil!  That'll work great!"  Well guess what, after a certain amount of time it heats up.  All that massive capacity changes is the amount of time it takes to get to max temperature!  So 2 weeks later, it's hot!  You still need a cooling system to cool the oil and that's much harder than air or water.  Otherwise your cooling is the surface area of the oil touching the air with no movement and no radiator of any sort.  That's not good.  You'd be better off with air at that point.

I believe thermal conduction is thermal conductivity times surface area times temperature differential.  So if you have a copper fin cooler, that has insane total surface area.  It could seriously be 1 square meter if you were to spread it all out.  Then you have a fan forcing air through it so the temp difference is always virtually the same.  Also copper conducts heat better than oil.  So with an oil pool you've got like 1-2 square feet of surface area touching the air which is not moving over the oil so the temp difference is lower as the hot air rises slowly out of the way instead of blasting by with a fan, always feeding in new air.  It's a much worse system.

Did you not see my picture? You could even attach it to a refrigerator attach the coils that run thru the freezer.