A while back I saw a program called scrapheap challenge, where teams had to build a submarine, the sort you sit on, out of items found in a junk yard. One team had a propeller connected to an electric motor with a car battery for power. This was in originally a sealed, waterproof compartment, the seal failed and the compartment was flooded. However everything still worked because 12v and the current involved wasn't enough to short out in fresh water. This set me thinking...could you cool your PC/CPU etc. by immersing the whole motherboard in water? De-ionised water is a very poor conductor of electricity, and the voltages and currents involved are fairly low, it just might work. Having said that some of the contacts are very close together. My schoolboy physics lessons are long forgotten and I haven't got the nerve and an old PC I can afford to lose to try it out. Any physics whizzes out there or anyone brave enough, or stupid enough to try it, what do you reckon? Hairbrained?
I love that program, anyway there was a link round here somewhere for a guy who did that, cant remember what he immersed it in, but it wasnt cheap. I'm sure someone here will remember where it was.
3M have a special cooling solution, it's clear and very much like water, except it does not conduct ANY electricity, it was developped for the sole purpose of submerging electrical compnonents to cool them (such as computers). They might have it on their site, but I wouldn't recommend getting to hopeful. The stuf is disgustingly expensive. However certain oils have no conductivity, so you could use them, although they would be quite messy. Yeah I forget who did it, but someone had their PC submerged in something, Severedhead mentions, but I too forget what exactly (pretty sure it was an oil substance) it was, or even a link The submerging idea has gone around quite a bit, but most of the viable solutions are either too expensive, or to messy to be worth it.
I've come accross a few of the liquid nitrogen and exotic substances immersion articles before, good fun, but I wondered whether it would be possible with nothing more exotic or expensive than distilled water?
i wouldnt risk even distilled water. Analytical grade is something like 99.999% pure, but as the temp increases the dissociation in water by itself increases therefore the amount of ions increases. Not to mention the fact you are gonna put a heatsink (metal) on the cpu (i hope) and with the other metal components you are introducing ions into the system.
Yea, Bindibadgi has it right. DI water is an amazing solvent, and will pick up conductive things from just about anywhere. You'd need a vry high flow rate pump to change the volume of water in th emain enclosure mainy times a minute, and a reverse osmosis module to keep the water pure. Then you'd wanyt monitoring equipment.... Cheaper immersion cooling can be done with some oils out there. I don't have too much faith in mineral oil, I've been experimenting with the stuff in other, less expensive projects and it can act odd with some plastics. I dont want to risk a mobo breaking because the stuff eats the epoxy its made out of. A better alternative I've seen at least a little on is the use of transformer oils. This is oil used in the power company's transformers to cool them. That is its promary function, no kidding! If you can get a hold of some good synthetic stuff, it should have a very good thermal conductivity. Then a well though out pump and radiator system could really keep things cool.
