# Advice for a mineral oil PC?



## Renton577

So I have decided that I want to try and take my current build and make it a mineral oil PC since my components generate so much heat, I have never done this before and am doing as much research as I can but is there anything I should know or suggestions on parts and how I should set everything up? Mainly I'm doing this because it would be nice not to have the blowdryer 290xs going every time I play a game and the idea of mineral oil cooling seems awesome


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## Tomiger

http://www.overclock.net/t/1579776/build-yet-another-mineral-oil-rig

I finished mine up not too long ago. There's some info in that log. I'll try to come back here and post anything I can think of as far as advice and what not, but feel free to just ask me any questions.

As you'll see, I didn't make it with the intention to have a 24/7 highly optimal system, so my requirement may be different from yours.


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## Shrak

I'm not sure I'd do a mineral oil system with parts that generate a lot of heat. They're fun projects for relatively low powered / heat systems, but the mineral oil really sucks for dissipating heat effectively, and to keep hot spots from happening you need some beefy fans in it that don't completely bog down in the oil. Not to mention the oil soaked parts are pretty much useless if you ever decide to swap things around ( in the event you upgrade your GPU's, and you want to move them to a different build or sell them ).

Personally, I'd just go with water cooling. Or grab aftermarket coolers for your cards ( or make your own by removing the shrouds / fans and using your own fans on the provided heat sinks ).


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## Tomiger

On a related note, I did salvage the Corsair PSU from my build log. I took it out the night I was filling up the rig, once I realized it wasn't going to work properly in the oil, and let it sit for a few weeks before I realized that it might be worth trying to clean it up and use it in the future. Since I didn't care one way or the other if it worked, I literally dumped the sucker into a sink of dish soap and water lol. I took it all apart and made sure everything was cleaned and then let it dry. I even did the old "rice in a zip-loc bag" trick for fun. In hindsight, it was a bad idea to let all the rice into the internals of the PSU hahaha, it was not fun picking them out (I'm sure there's still a couple left...). I waited several days until I was sure everything was dry and then powered it up, testing it on some fans. Surprisingly, it works great! I let it run for an hour or so and nothing bad seemed to happen. I even used it to test a motherboard I got (without RAM/CPU, just wanted to make sure the motherboard lights came on since it was an open-box purchase) and that worked fine as well.

So the parts aren't completely useless after they've been in oil. With a lot of time and patience, you can clean them off.

As far as achieving efficient cooling and circulation in the oil, I think you're better off looking into a pump/radiator set up. Have the pump in the oil, sucking it in and feeding it out to a radiator with some fans on it (just like you do in a water cool rig) and then the oil comes outta the radiator and back into the rig. Fans within the oil really don't do much and I'm not sure what kind of fan you'd need in order for it to actually be effective. I opted out of the radiator route because I wanted a silent computer and I don't necessarily need the extra cooling (as far as I know). From my limited use of the rig so far, it stays below 40C under normal usage (a couple hours of browsing the web and watching videos). But it takes a while for the oil's temperature to drop back down to ambient. So if your rig makes the oil pretty hot, then it'll be an issue in the long run.


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## Duality92

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Tomiger*
> 
> On a related note, I did salvage the Corsair PSU from my build log. I took it out the night I was filling up the rig, once I realized it wasn't going to work properly in the oil, and let it sit for a few weeks before I realized that it might be worth trying to clean it up and use it in the future. Since I didn't care one way or the other if it worked, I literally dumped the sucker into a sink of dish soap and water lol. I took it all apart and made sure everything was cleaned and then let it dry. I even did the old "rice in a zip-loc bag" trick for fun. In hindsight, it was a bad idea to let all the rice into the internals of the PSU hahaha, it was not fun picking them out (I'm sure there's still a couple left...). I waited several days until I was sure everything was dry and then powered it up, testing it on some fans. Surprisingly, it works great! I let it run for an hour or so and nothing bad seemed to happen. I even used it to test a motherboard I got (without RAM/CPU, just wanted to make sure the motherboard lights came on since it was an open-box purchase) and that worked fine as well.
> 
> So the parts aren't completely useless after they've been in oil. With a lot of time and patience, you can clean them off.
> 
> As far as achieving efficient cooling and circulation in the oil, I think you're better off looking into a pump/radiator set up. Have the pump in the oil, sucking it in and feeding it out to a radiator with some fans on it (just like you do in a water cool rig) and then the oil comes outta the radiator and back into the rig. Fans within the oil really don't do much and I'm not sure what kind of fan you'd need in order for it to actually be effective. I opted out of the radiator route because I wanted a silent computer and I don't necessarily need the extra cooling (as far as I know). From my limited use of the rig so far, it stays below 40C under normal usage (a couple hours of browsing the web and watching videos). But it takes a while for the oil's temperature to drop back down to ambient. So if your rig makes the oil pretty hot, then it'll be an issue in the long run.


I've been wanting to do this for ages. How much did the oil cost? Mine would be in a much smaller aquarium with an ITX system


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## Shrak

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Duality92*
> 
> I've been wanting to do this for ages. How much did the oil cost? Mine would be in a much smaller aquarium with an ITX system


When I did it years ago, about $15/gallon.


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## Tomiger

I got mine from http://store.steoil.com/mineral-oil-pc-kit/?sort=featured

I wasn't sure about what kind of oil will work or anything particular about it. The dudes who did the Puget Systems builds used this stuff, so I figured it'd be safe to go with it. 10 gallons cost me about $260...kinda sucks but hey, I was too lazy to find it locally in that quantity. The shipping alone was $65.

I think in general, as long as you get tech grade, pure/white oil, you'll be fine.

Interesting fact: the lab I am correctly working in has some industry quality mineral oil systems! They're pretty insane. They get their oil directly from ConocoPhillips in big 55 gallon drums, so you can imagine how big the rig is and the kinda hardware they got submerged!


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## Renton577

Shrak I don't plan on ever selling this rig and will probably make a completely new water cooled rig here soon, also like Tomiger suggested I was going to use a fairly large radiator with quite a few fans to keep the mineral oil that's being pumped cool, there is no way I could just do a mineral oil only rig with no radiator. My overall plan was since I am a Overclocker at heart and want to get the most out of every piece of my hardware I wanted a good way to cool everything and I thought what better way then mineral oil. Also Thankyou Tomiger for offering advice when I need it, I will take you up on that offer if needed







Also would there be any way I would need to prepare the hardware? how to clean the dust off and does thermal compound need to be removed?
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Tomiger*
> 
> Interesting fact: the lab I am correctly working in has some industry quality mineral oil systems! They're pretty insane. They get their oil directly from ConocoPhillips in big 55 gallon drums, so you can imagine how big the rig is and the kinda hardware they got submerged!


Also that's awesome haha


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## Tomiger

I did remove any thermal compound that was present. The oil will just eat at it and dissolve it into your rig, which I'm sure isn't desirable. I originally secured the LEDs to the underside of the top with pieces of duct tape and after a while, the oil residue got underneath the tape and completely destroyed any adhesive that was there. So the oil will not play well with things like that. But the rubber that's been submerged seems to be doing fine (heatshrink on the sleeving, etc),

As for cleaning the parts, I just did a thorough wipe/compressed air of the components before putting everything in and adding the oil. My components were mostly new, so I didn't have to deal with cleaning old parts.

And for future reference, the easiest way I found to clean up oil messes is with dish soap/water. As I mentioned before, that will clean off any components but also works well on things like floors and table tops (as you can guess, I made a few messes).


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## Zero4549

The key to effective cooling, in general, is keeping the coolant moving quickly and turbulently as possible throughout the whole system.

In air cooling, the coolant is the air itself. Very easy to move around, gets everywhere and cools everything in the system, but is not particularly good at absorbing heat.

With traditional liquid cooling, you are usually using a water based coolant. Not as easy to move as air, but much more effective at absorbing heat. Keeping the coolant moving is still pretty easy though because you are running in a closed loop which significantly cuts down on how much coolant actually has to be pushed around, and also preserves much of its momentum. There is of course a downside - only the components in contact with the loop actually get cooled.

With full liquid submersion, you now have a lot more liquid that you have to move, making it significantly harder to keep it all flowing effectively compared to air or traditional liquid. When that liquid coolant is also a very viscous mineral oil, it just gets that much harder. As for the it itself, it absorbs more heat than air, but less than water.

If you can manage to keep the mineral moving quickly enough, great. You will essentially have a much more effective (albeit messier) version of an air cooled system (assuming you are also running enough radiators to dissipate the heat put out by your components of course). Unfortunately, doing so is not so easy, and if you fail to keep your flow rates high enough, you will just end up creating pockets of extremely hot mineral oil to boil your components in.

So, to that end, I'd suggest either A) avoiding mineral oil submergence, B) using oil just for kicks on a low power build and not on anything with much heat output, or C) investing in several seriously heavy duty pumps and anything else you can think of to keep your oil flowing quickly... which is likely going to cost a whole lot more than a high end liquid loop or even a cheap phase change system.


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## Renton577

I say option C with a radiator about the size of what would be in a small car if that's an option with lots of high airflow low decibel fans pushing air over the radiator.


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## Zero4549

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Renton577*
> 
> I say option C with a radiator about the size of what would be in a small car if that's an option with lots of high airflow low decibel fans pushing air over the radiator.


Make sure you have enough pumps / strong enough pumps to keep the oil really flowing rapidly through the whole tank. Ideally, I'd have several intakes and exhausts in parallel to help eliminate any dead zones.

Something even more complicated you could do is use a small amount of a lower density non-conductive secondary coolant which you pull in from the top of the tank and pump into the bottom, creating a constant upward "bubbling" of the second coolant which would help keep the main coolant turbulent and efficient. Of course, this makes things even messier and more expensive.


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## Renton577

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Zero4549*
> 
> Make sure you have enough pumps / strong enough pumps to keep the oil really flowing rapidly through the whole tank. Ideally, I'd have several intakes and exhausts in parallel to help eliminate any dead zones.
> 
> Something even more complicated you could do is use a small amount of a lower density non-conductive secondary coolant which you pull in from the top of the tank and pump into the bottom, creating a constant upward "bubbling" of the second coolant which would help keep the main coolant turbulent and efficient. Of course, this makes things even messier and more expensive.


Expense really isn't an issue at this point I'd like to go with the best cooling option even if it takes me a little while to get everything, also what secondary coolant would be a good option if I were to do something like that? And instead of that would it just be better to make 3 or 4 intakes and 3 or 4 exhausts going up each side of the tank each having a pump of its own? Also would a custom loop water cooler or even a phase change cooler be a better idea or a good secondary project?


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## Iwamotto Tetsuz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V06LLTNxc4 If you watch this linix tech tips building mineral oil pc then you should have a better idea of how far its going to take you


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