Cooling Non-Submersion Mineral Oil Coolant

We all know about submersion mineral oil cooling. One of my favorites is legoman666's beautiful case. but it has its drawbacks:

its messy
it can damage certain rubbers used on certain boards
it dissolves TIM
its not very efficient

but it does have a few big advantages:

its non conductive
its naturally anti-microbial and anti-corrosive

so i have been wondering: how bad would it do when used in a standard closed-loop cooling system. this would eliminate most of the disadvantages while retaining all of the advantages. googling any combination of "mineral oil" and "pc" only brings up submersed systems, so i decided to try it myself.

my guinea pig is an old pentium 4 524 3.06ghz with HT, 1.5gb DDR2 RAM, ATI X1650 512mb GPU. the cooling kit used is a knock-off larkooler "extreme g1/4" which uses a solid copper block, 240 rad, and a pump rated for 1.98gpm or 7.5lpm.



i tested using the usual protocol when testing CPU coolers. power system on and let idle temp stabilize for 15 minutes or so. then run 2 workers of prime95 large FFTs until temps reach equilibrium. i tested first with the stock intel cooler, then mineral oil, then water (after flushing the loop).



recorded temps are as follows:

-stock cooler (auto fan control)-
idle: 53c
load: 69c

-closed loop with mineral oil coolant-
idle: 46c
load: 65c

closed loop with water coolant:
idle: 37c
load: 45c

as you can see, the mineral oil barely beat the stock intel cooler on this non-overclocked chip. i knew it would perform worse than the water, but i had higher hopes for it than this. this unfortunately busts mineral oil as a possible option for a non-conductive, non-corrosive coolant in any performance PC.

all in all, a productive and educational saturday night!

 

Radical!

 

Dear Grandpa,

Whilst it is nice to see you are keeping your mind busy during your retirement, I must say you need to keep up with the times a bit more. You don't need to waste time with mineral oil when you can buy Thermochill EC6. It is made from vegetables (you know like sprouts, beans, cabbage etc) and is electrically inert. The great thing about it is the cooling is slightly better than water and far more effective than your cooking oil.

Chuck.

 

closed minds such as yours are what lead to the degradation of society. i havnt harmed anyone in my experimenting, and ive learned something i didnt know before (and hope to pass that knowledge on). there may or may not be better alternatives on the market, but thats completely beside the point.

also, if your cooking with mineral oil, ill bet your toilet loves you

also, also, i am 25 years old.

thanks for the input chuck, now kindly piss off

 

Have to agree with sludge here, these forums are generally comstructive and I think most would like to keep it so.

Anyway, back on topic.
Goods experiment, always nice to see people try out stuff like this and makes for good reading

Sent from my GT-S5830 using Tapatalk

 

I'm sorry I have harmed society but I simply dint need to put mineral oil in my loop to know it would be less efficient than water or Thermochill EC6.

You're not an on-the-edge scientist... merely a monkey who didn't research the plethora of data readily available. I didn't need to put mineral oil in my loop to find out it would cool poorly, nor urine, goats milk, vodka or many other liquids. What made you think you could do it better than a big company producing inert coolant on a large scale? Oh wait a minute... you didn't think.

"and hope to pass that knowledge on" - one giant LOL. Your research will be invaluable i'm sure. Albeit a bit late in the day since the tests have been done and dusted long since. Perhaps your next research can be to find out if a man could be launched into space and survive re-entry?

 

Interesting results. I'm surprised at the difference between the water and the oil. The water load temps were lower than the idle oil temps. Is that due to the heat capacity of the oil, meaning the rad can't dissipate the heat quick enough, or the viscosity of the oil meaning the pump can't move it fast enough (never handled the stuff, so no idea what it's consistency is, could be just like water for all I know), or some third factor?

 

Someone is having a bad morning.

 

Scientific knowledge is built on the replicability of experiments under a variety of conditions. Therefore it is never a waste of time to do something that has been done before. In fact most science classes are all about demonstrating experiments of which we already know the outcome, to illustrate how that knowledge was obtained and how, in general, experiment leads to knowledge. I thought that a straightforward comparison between water and oil in the same loop was a nice illustration of the principle that will be sure to inform many future members who have a similar idea.

What is less helpful is your condescending and denigrating tone. I wish you to amend this forthwith, lest I do an experiment of my own, testing whether a three-day ban will improve your behaviour and have a cautionary effect on the membership as a whole. I know that experiment would also be a replication of something done many times in the past, but I think it is worth repeating. One learns best by experience.

 

I've been running my own experiment, to determine whether or not I am more of a grumpy cnut on sundays. At this stage it is looking like the answer is yes.

I dunt know what it is about Sunday but it just rubs me up the wrong way.

 

Shouldn't that be a tit?

 

Never conduct dangerous experiments without proper containment measures.

 

Thing is I am not really happy with the current arrangement of 7 days in a week. It gets monotonous. Would be nice to see some new days inserted and the dropping of sundays.

Might start a ban sundays campaign.

 

The last time containment was broken, the Flood was set loose...
.
.
.
Ill grab me coat...

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Just looking at this pic...



I am wondering where those water bits would fit in that case.

That is one compact case!

I once built a cube case PC for someone with XSPC kit though.



This case.

 

A nice experiment, we now know one more material not to put in a watercooling loop.
Next, let's get raw sewage off the list...

 

knowledge is nothing without experience.
op have you thought of trying machining coolant/oil,I use it for lathe/milling work it's white when mixed , comes in a can you mix with water.

 

As far as I know, nothing (practical) works better than water. Additives are just for anti-corrosion.

If you're up for something impractical, exceedingly dangerous and very expensive, mercury is a hell of a lot more conductive than water is.... might need a better pump though. And a sealed working environment. Hmm.

 

Kinda predictable result to be honest but I'm suprised no one's tried it before

 

Nice little experiment

I wonder with a higher flow set up whether results would be better?