I was thinking about submerging one of my old pc in some kind of liquid. I wanted to know if its ok to use water if I painted all the parts with an epoxy clearcoat or something. I want my pc to double as an aquarium.
I don't think that most PCs will work with its parts covered in paint... though these guys seem to have done something similar to what you want. Do not expect fish to survive in something that a PC will survive in. EDIT: After actually reading the article I linked to, it seems to be exactly what you want, sans fish (if you wanted any). You can have it look exactly like an aquarium, and the PC should work fine without much prep. Imagine liquid cooling a PC dipped in mineral oil... Would you even need a radiator? The oil should wick the heat away from the tubes fairly well, and it can look damn cool.
I was just thinking about submerging the mobo. I thought a good coat of clear would make it waterproof. Are you 100% sure it wont work?
I read an article where they did something similar with like cooking oil I think ... where was that ... hummm
You could always make a clear perspex outer case for the mobo and put that at the bottom of the tank. You'd have to be careful about heat and what sort of fish you used if you put it in there and use the liquid as a medium for heat transfer. RwD
Yeah, I seen alot of pc's submerged in mineral oil, but that shits expensive. I have old useless computers laying around and a gallon of clearcoat so I might aswell try.
wooah, STOP! First DON'T paint/clear coat or other wise do ANYTHING to your mobo. It's as simple as "you can't use water!" Water can conduct electricity!! Basically the only thing you can do is use vegetable oil, and give up on the fish idea. Beside the fact that you can't put a PC in water the fish would most likely get pwned by the EMF's coming from your hardware. EDIT: fully read both the links people posted above, you can't submerge some things in oil.
Actually you can use water. Most people are unaware that water is actually an exceptionally poor conductor of electricity. Its actually a very good insulator. What conducts the electricity is not the H2O molecules but the chemicals dissolved in it - eg Salt. Pure Water can be used to cool electronic equipment, but its difficult to achieve this as its extremely difficult to get a pure solution. Even dust particles on objects in the water can change its conductive state.
True but for safety reasons you'd want to use oil. Water may have a low SC but thing of how many tiny things have large amounts of power running through them in a PC.
the reason that you can use pure water is because its rather hard to get and how do you prove that it is in fact pure HOH. and yes I know that they did it with mineral water at this site: http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php but what if the water you buy just happens to have something in it? or some component that you have inside has something in it that absorbs into the water? All of a sudden you could potentially lose your system.
I'm using pure water now.... in my water cooling system. De-ionized water. I purchased from the local supermarket. Theres no way you can check if its 100% pure though & I would no way fill a PC up with it. However, check the link above (toms hardware) & you will see they in fact tried it & it worked for 5 minutes. With a contamination free environment that would have worked indefinitely. More info here: clicky
Actually, IIRC water self-ionises to a small degree, so even "pure" water will have a few OH- and H+ ions floating around in it - enough to conduct electricity. And de-ionised water is usually slightly acidic too, because the metal ions are replaced with H+ (IIRC)
You guys are pretty much right. Let's assume that one can obtain 99.99999% pure water. It will be contaminated by the PC components and won't be pure for long. It will strip ions and molecules off of the components and it won't be long until the water becomes conductive. So there are two issues with using water. 1) As the guys I quoted mentioned, it is hard to get decent purity distilled water, and 2) distilled water won't stay pure and deionized for long. Submerging a PC in water is not a bad idea, but if you have to ask, then it's not for you.
Using water directly is basically impossible. Yes, 100% pure water doesn't conduct electricity. However, as soon as you submerge the computer in it the dirt on the board will contaminate the water. (especially soldering joins). Another thing is dielectric conduction. This will be a serious problem, since about everything in a computer work on clock cycles. If you somehow managed to put a coating on the boards, you'll have to make sure to use a thick, and very flexible paint, since the components will expand under heat, and shrink when they get cold again. This will make normal paint crack. (even the tiniest cracks will cause problems) You will also have to paint all the components AFTER all of them are put together. As soon as you unplug anything you'll have to repaint. If you choose to try this, make sure to make a good video and take lots of pictures!
i did say that it was difficult to use water as it wouldn't stay pure because of contaminates. Pure Water does conduct electricity, but only at very high voltages.
Wonder if you could use the heat from the CPU and some kind of specially made 'CPU block' to continually re-distil the water and collect the impurities into a 'sump' for weekly disposal
