About cleaning the mess: the liquid from OP is chosen as it boils at ~34C. You just need to warm up the gear above this temperature, and it all evaporates.
And how do you clean oil off your hardware?
Simply put it in a dishwasher (believe me it works)
As I explained the other day in
another thread: and yes I have tried it.
As for cleaning oil off the components then here is my advice:
1. hang the card up by a piece of wire or leaning upright so most of the oil drips out / off
2. rinse off most of the oil with huge quantities of cheap dish washing liquid + hot water. this should remove the majority of the oil. And no, washing many kinds of computer components in water while they are off does not usually damage them so long as you are 100% sure it is completely dry before you power it up. Again the problem of unsealed electrolytic caps remains the only exception and problem here...
3. get yourself a few liters of your typical hardware-store-grade mineral turpentine (usually just $3/L...) and then immerse the card in a bath of it. It will dissolve the remaining traces of oil. It will also help remove any water, because they are completely immiscible liquids and you will see they will separate nicely from one another in the bath. If the oil you chose to use was not effectively removed with the mineral turpentine, try methylated spirits / denatured alcohol which is also very cheap.
4. Remove the card, hang it up near a powerful fan to dry for a long time.
5. your card is now back to normal, ready for new thermal interface material and heatsink / fan assembly re-installation.
I highly recommend low viscosity oils.
Submerging your gear in oil actually works pretty well. But there's one downside. Forget about ever salvaging or reselling that gear. Once you dip that stuff in mineral oil, you will never get it all off.
Thanks, I never knew that. Do you guys think mineral water could cool a card as powerful as a 7970? Or will it overheat?
it wouldn't work, mineral water has minerals in it that would conduct elec. and fry the card...just like if you tryed regular water...even distilled water doesn't stay "clean" long enough...read that somewhere
You could use distilled water, provided the water is well, pure.
The only problem you would have with normal water is the fact that the water would leech ion salts off the board. Mainly the flux nasties that didn't vape off during reflow and then other unwanted gunk on the board such as fingerprint oils and what not.
I do suppose one interaction that may be chemically significant is the water and Pb (lead) in the solder itself - the local electric current on the board
might cause the two to interact in the presence of other solutions, forming some weak f***'d up version of a lead acid battery.
Seal up the solder joints themselves (hot glue!), clean the board so that it's holier than Jesus, and you should be fine - not that most of that work is worth it when you can pick up mineral oil for $2.50 a quart haha
Deionized water is quite corrosive. It will impress you with its ability to drag ions out of whatever it is contact with! For example if you put DI water into a stainless steel vessel, leave it a week and you'll come back to a unsighly mess! As for if it could do this with lead, I am not sure. It will do it with copper before it has a chance, just ask anyone who's put DI water into a watercooling rig with copper or brass components in the system. Even if you have it in contact with the atmosphere, it will attain an equilibrium with CO2 from the air, and hey presto, it's now no longer deionised
and its conductive again. The only way to get a system to function with DI water @ 18.2 MOhm is to buy ion exchange/absorber packs that chemistry analytical labs use to get 18.2 MOhm DI from RO water. These are also used in some industrial settings. The downside? They cost a fortune. The ones I've seen in a few labs cost about $400 per canister which will last a few months in their indented mode of operation. Do yourself a favor and use something other than DI water, it will just drain your money and kill your equipment if you stuff it up the slightest bit.
As for the Novec 7000 and boiling liquid video, that is a good idea, I had considered doing that with diethyl ether or perhaps butane in a lightly pressurized container made of polycarbonate. I concluded the butane would be safer because for the same volume of ether it has much lower overall energy stored in the event of a fire. Their temps of 60+ deg C without a heatsink and under light / short term loads shows that a small heatsink would've been a good idea, there is still just too much heat to be removed from a small area (~1 inch square).
As for scaling it up, well they are going to have interesting times. The entire system in their prototype relies on extremely inefficient peltier cooling to remove most of the heat from the system. The other thing to consider is that assuming it was air tight (which would be a good idea given the cost of the liquid, you don't want it flying away...) then you would have an increase in pressure if a lot boiled in a short time, eg going from low to high load on the CPU. Increasing pressure in a sealed vessel increases the boiling point of vapourisable liquids. So if the peltier / heat pump was overwhelmed then you could find yourself in a situation where the liquid can no longer boil, and depending on the thermal conductivity of the bulk liquid itself you may find your components suddenly at catastrophic temps. Maintaining a pressurisable vessel with lots of cables going in an out and a heat exchanger as well is also non-trivial! And by pressurisable I don't mean 'held together with duct tape'!
In any case a look at the Novec products MSDS shows they are fluoro-ethers which are $$$ I would be willing to bet a few liters would set you back a couple of hundred dollars. And as for their 'non-toxic' statement in the video well I don't agree that means they are safe, since most organofluorine substances will overcome you just as well as their organic hydrocarbon precursor will (if inhaled). I would personally stick to oil for now because its simple, cheap, and works.
