Immersing motherboards in oil has been done for years (probably even mentioned on this list). There's countless hacker versions using various and sundry off the shelf mobos and power supplies etc in various and sundry containers (ice chests, aquariums, purpose built acrylic boxes) using a variety of coolants.
The vast majority of these have no "thermal engineering".. They're more "we tried it and it seemed to work". There's not a lot of content at the hardcore computer website. It could be ok or it might not. They're not real clear on how they actually get the heat out of the enclosures. The MSDS for their coolant says that it's basically synthetic mineral oil with a antioxidant (you can look up the CAS number to get more info). I'd be a bit nervous about the fire hazard aspects of a machine room full of the stuff. So here's my experience using oil as an insulator/coolant. 1) it wicks up insulated wire, particularly stranded. Put the mobo in oil and the power supply outside, and pretty soon your power supply will be full of oil. 2) oil leaks. There is *nothing* that is oil insulated that doesn't have a fine film of oil on its surface eventually, unless it is in a hermetically sealed can with welded/crimped seals. 3) oil is a mess when you need to fix something The Cray-2 used Fluorinert(tm) FC-74 as the coolant, which is very nice to work with, although expensive. It doesn't wet things very well, so when you pull something out of the bath, it doesn't bring much fluid with it. The Cray used it as a heat transfer medium to water coolant. I think they had a way to drain it into a tank quickly for servicing. It can be used for ebullient (boiling) cooling by picking the right vapor pressure/BP grade (the Cray didn't use this). Ebullient cooling is quite efficient at moving the heat away because it's a phase change, and the bubbling causes good circulation, but it does require careful design so you don't get film boiling/Leidenfrost effect (the phenomenon that protects your feet when walking across burning coals barefoot) On 3/14/12 3:02 PM, "Mark Hahn" <[email protected]> wrote: >> Server blades in oil > >sounds like some brutalist take on molecular gastronomy! > >> Hardcore Computer LSS 200 > >http://www.hardcorecomputer.com/Resources/assets/Documents/LSS-specs.pdf > >seems kind of uninspiring, in hardware specs. 1366 socket, not 2011, >optional fast network, gpu, etc, builtin ipmi. 8x in 5U, so not really >a density play. > >I guess I'm a bit skeptical about the utility of this approach - >would be nice if they had some technical literature. something about >thermal resistance. define how the oil bath dumps the heat (water >hookups in the back?) comparison to modern heatpipe-based solutions, etc. >_______________________________________________ >Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing >To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit >http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
