I was thinking about this the first time around 20 years ago. It seems not to be the most famous way of cooling, but I did want to give it a reconsideration.I want my PC to be silent and figured to dump it into a canister full of oil would be the easiest and ongoing way to do so.Usualy I never upgrade or change parts. When I have a system running it stays like this. I may consider upgrading the GPU befor.Neither do I need fancy LEDs or a see through case. I want this build to be as sturdy, simple and cheap as possible. No fancy shit, just a silent machine.I've read about mineral oil, since basic plant oil can break.There were some mentions of involving a radiator, but that would also need to involve an oil pump (noise?) and more work plus sources of failure.Any thoughts or experiences on this topic are appreciated.This is the PC I want to dunk: https://www.msi.com/Desktop/Aegis-3-8th/SpecificationI bought it used from a friend, but since upgrading to win11 the fan-control is all fucked up.
>>2957522I forgot to mention I plan to get rid of the case entirely.
>>2957522There are other ways to achieve silence besides dunking the whole thing in fluorinert, or transformer oil.- You can buy enormous aluminum heatsinks (google fanless PC heat sink) designed for just that, but you may have to reorient your case and/or add additional support to handle the extra weight.- Idk what you need for your GPU, something somiliar- You can buy or build fanless power supplies that have more heat pipes and heatsinks than the normal fan power supplies- Build an enclosure for your PC that introduces the chimney effect so that it draws air in the bottom and exhausts it out the chimneyOrPut the whole PC in a completely different room and use an ethernet KVM extender. And/or a very long 50-100ft hdmi/dp fiber optic cable.Or do normal liquid cooling (not dunking) with a larger radiator and natural convection to move the fluid instead of a pump.
Also:If you can tolerate a small amount of noise, noctua fans really are worth the money. The big 140 or 200mm noctua fans are even quieter than the standard size 120mm noctua fans. I have a water cooling setup for my PC and disposed of the cheap noisy chinese fans and replaced them a few noctua fans. I'm the kind of person who gets irritated by noisy fans and now I'm happy with my setup
>>2957545The Heat sinks as the silent fans are Out of the question, unfortunately. This built is somewhat of a special kind of retard, since it uses a Laptop mainboard. So everything is super tight and even just accessing the RAM needs some, more or less, serious screwing. I like the idea of the other room though. I've got an empty room right next to where the PC stands. I even have a long HDMI cable. I'd need a rather long USB cable too, since I plug into my mixer, but that shouldn't be an issue. And some cordless mouse and keyboard too, which I am not too fond of, but I could go with an USB hub! Which would also solve the webcam issue. I got some strange feeling that I forgot something though.
>>2957522Think about where the heat is actually going. The oil has better thermal resistance than air but the heat can't actually go anywhere. It's stuck in the box and the only way it's gett9ng away is thw walls of the case which isn't very much surface area.It will be cooler for a few hours but it will continue to heat up. It's a meme for youtubers
>>2957522When IBM tried this for their mainframes, I'm pretty certain they were circulating it through radiators, but I'm not certain. This was maybe 15 years ago but I can't remember where i read the article.
>>2957609supercomputers like the Cray were also submerged in dielectric liquid, IIRC they used some special toxic chemical
>>2957545>natural convection to move the fluid instead of a pumpThat won't work, the water block channels are way too fine. The second you put any actual load on the components, they'll overheat.>>2957578Get a MORA radiator, water blocks, and a D5 pump, lock the fans at 700RPM and the pump at 60%, you won't hear a thing once the loop is properly bled of air. I've got 3 rads and like 25 fans in my PC with a 4090 and a 12700k. Full heat load is like 20db.
>>2957585You are right. Even if I mount a huge silent Fan on top of that PC-Aquarium it probably wont be satisfying. Also the fans from GPU and CPU likely are going to die sooner and certainly that piece of shit from the PSU.I'm gonna put that idea to the grave, once and for all.>>2957630I wont be able to fit a water cooling system into that built. As mentioned it is very compact. Also I don't have the money for a water cooling system and it doesn't quite stand for the hardware either. I will further explore the idea of leaving the room with it.Thank you for your inputs, gentlemen.
>>2957522You would need a kiddie pool full of oil to passively dissipate enough heat without some sort of radiator and even then you would still need a bunch of aquarium pumps constantly running because the oil will trap heat locally around the components. I've been down this rabbit hole and went so far as to build a soundproof sarcophagus with baffled vents and it's all been a huge waste of time. Just buy longer cables and put it in another room.
>>2957522>mineral oilthis was a meme back in the day, it's been done.>have fun anyway
>>2957609>>29576243M™ Fluorinert™ Electronic Liquid FC-40>its not very environmentally good stuff>not for noobs either>it'll kill you slow
>>2957772I mean, Linus has a multi-year series of videos about the issues he's had with doing an exotic cooling setup for his multiple home PCs by both having them all remote operated to a single rack, and having them all on a single watercooling loop that goes out to his pool. I have to wonder what people are doing though that having a few fans spin up is going to be audible at all over whatever audio you have going at any time.
>>2957964>a content creator for spergsA true mysterie why he doesnt opt for the easiest, cheapest option.op, you need to wire the power button too
>>2957964>>2957964Into the pool seems unnecessary and overcomplicated. >>2957965>op, you need to wire the power button tooThat settles it then. I am not doing it!
>>2958011>Into the pool seems unnecessary and overcomplicated.Oh, it is, but it's also a large body of relatively stable, cool water to dump excess heat into from several computers.
>>2957578>fans are Out of the questionenjoy hearing the GPU inductors whinei much prefer a slow fan noise than the 10-15kHz screaming
>>2957578Just a heads up that USB only works out to around 5 meters before the signal gets a bit weak and drops in and out. At that distance it doesn't really affect usage but you'll hear the Windows disconnect reconnect sound often. Further out than that and you'll get more and more problems.Use an ethernet adapter, so it goes USB devices -> USB hub -> USB-Eth adaptor -> Ethernet cable -> Eth-USB adaptor -> USB port. That way, the signal can carry as far as an ethernet connection can. Probably introduce some small latency, but I haven't noticed it for gaming.
>>2958141Thanks for the reminder!Now it makes sense that the other anon suggested this "ethernet KVM extender"Also around 150€ though. Silence doesn't come cheap.But yes, sometimes there are no audio sources active at my place. Just nothing. I like that.
>>2958180I got one for a lot cheaper than that. Just the Ethernet-USB adaptors. Bit of a different use case though because I didn't need video extension.HDMI cables also have distance limitations that are probably shorter than you might think.How far away would your computer be from your intended screen and what resolution is your screen?I agree that the silence is worthwhile.By the way, will you be gaming? Once you reach a certain distance it might make more sense to have a small, quiet, low power thin client in the room with you, and network to your main PC using something like Moonlight/Sunshine or its newer fork, Apollo/Artemis. You could remote from other devices like your phone with that too.It adds a little bit of latency, but if you aren't gaming it won't matter, and even if you are gaming it's only a little bit, so it would depend on what you were playing.>>2958011>>op, you need to wire the power button too>>That settles it then. I am not doing it!It's not very complicated. PC power buttons are just momentary switches. There are also Y split extenders available so your power button on the case will still function.I think a set up where you have the power button right next to you would be cool.
>>2957522>full immersion fuck that shit>exotic parts>maintenance is an ass load of pain>more points of failurewhats the pointcustom water loops are easier than this shitGPU/CPU performances wont matter at this pointeven pro OCers just use liquid nitrofractal cases use to sell cases with sound dampening foam linings on thembut sure go ahead, if you got unlimited time and money, not to mention temperament, to deal with bullshit like this
>>2958247I've seen it in the wild once. It was at a tannery, and it was their accounting computer. They did it because it was the only way to prevent the corrosion that was regularly breaking equipment there.
>>2957522Heads up!3M announced it would discontinue Fluorinert and other specialty fluids by the end of 2025.Get it now, before it's gone.
>>2957522I got my computer in the garage instead. Drilled a 50mm hole in the wall between the house and the garage, and pulled all the cables in that. That way i cant hear it.
>>2957522By all means go for it I think it's hella cool. But as others have said you will still need some sort of pump and radiator situation in order for it not to heat up. Also once you submerge your parts basically you will never use them outside of an oil cooled system ever again, so take that into consideration as well. Also I think this mineral oil stuff eats anything rubber but I'm not sure on that. Since SSDs have become more popular you won't need to mount HDDs on the outside so that makes the build quite a lot easier.
>>2958507>Also I think this mineral oil stuff eats anything rubber but I'm not sure on that.It will turn the polymers of synthetic rubber into monomers. So traditional aluminum electrolytic capacitors which have a rubber cap on their underside will eventually pop themselves off of their leads. You will be limited to components that use tantalum and niobium caps instead (SMD ones or ones with square plastic bases).
>>2958509True but that's only for through-hole (THT) caps. I have not seen a traditional THT cap on a pc components for a long time. PSUs have them but by the time it hardens enough to pop those huge caps off the PCB you'd probably need to change those caps anyway.
>>2958507>Since SSDs have become more popular you won't need to mount HDDs on the outside so that makes the build quite a lot easier.Would helium-sealed HDDs work? They have no vent hole so the platters are gas tight. I guess that is the reason HDDs had to be kept separate right?I would never do this anyway, just curious.
>>2958547Yeah, if you look closely, in an oil cooled system, all the fans spin at reduced rpms. This is because of the viscosity of the oil. The same thing would happen to an HDD if it got submerged in oil. Idk about helium-sealed drives but seeing as how cheap high capacity SATA SSDs are, I don't think you should even bother with conventional hard drives.
If you're spending hundreds on oil submersion consider putting it in another room and using a kvm
>>2958614Depends on how much storage you want I think. You can get 8TB helium sealed HDDs for about £100. 8TB of SSD is £450 in the same market.I'm most of the way through building a 48TB system right now, so SSDs would cost me an extra £350 * 6 = £2100. I'd rather spend that elsewhere.
>>2958620I suppose a NAS can also be an option, those can run basically fanless if you buy low power hardware. I really don't understand why you'd want such a huge storage space for your personal system.
>>2958621Most people people don't want or need that much, but if you want even a pretty normal amount it's still better to get the HDD because the price is a quarter that of the SATA SSD.
