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All good things must come to an end...
15 years ago
So for well over a year my computer, the one I built in a fish tank full of oil, ran perfectly. No stalls in loading, no slow start ups....nothing that would indicate that anything what so ever was wrong. The PC had become a point of interest in my somewhat cluttered work area I call my den. And all the way to current I would have to explain that it was not in water, fish would not look cool in there nor would they live, and that they were not looking at some weird illusion with mirrors and prisms.
The PC had become my primary link to the land of the internet as it was a much more current system than my old tower. I used the Oil PC as it came to be called for gaming too.
Any way, while I was working my way through Echo Ops on Modern Warfare 2 (getting my head stomped in by a juggernaut repeatedly actually), the oil transfer pump decided it wanted to take a break. Here is where the entire system breaks down...the internal temperature of the tank shot up through the roof as the video card was cranked by the game, the board RAM and CPU were overclocked, and the oil was no longer being pumped through the fan blown radiator. In short, the Mobo and CPU took the damage...I think. I won't be able to see if the video card cooked too until a replacement board comes in.
Now under normal use, I could leave it turned on for extremely long periods of time without worry. The issue comes in when you start running more through the board and CPU. It gets hotter faster than normal, very fast actually and this is especially true when playing games with a large amount of detail. This can be easily managed with a cooling system for the oil. The easiest way is to pump out the hot oil into a fan blown radiator. The triple 120mm style radiator for water cooling rigs is quite sufficient for this. A decent pump is a bit hard though. Water cooling pumps do not like the viscosity of mineral oil and will over time die as I have recently found out. And most dedicated oil transfer pumps are huge, loud, messy, expensive, etc...
So now we get to the part where I tell you the worst part of "Oil Cooling" a PC...changing any part in the tank. I had built the PC in place, so to get into it, I had to take it apart in place. That included draining all the oil out which took forever and made a huge mess no matter how careful I was. Thank God I kept all the gallon jugs the oil came in or I would have been screwed on that part. As I type this, the mobo tray that holds everything that is suspended in the tank is sitting in an old beer cooler I don't use much anymore. I will rebuild the PC once I get the parts in, but it will be in a regular tower. I haven't abandoned the idea, but I am going to take what I have learned, and apply it to a bigger and better one. Maybe this year, maybe next.
The PC had become my primary link to the land of the internet as it was a much more current system than my old tower. I used the Oil PC as it came to be called for gaming too.
Any way, while I was working my way through Echo Ops on Modern Warfare 2 (getting my head stomped in by a juggernaut repeatedly actually), the oil transfer pump decided it wanted to take a break. Here is where the entire system breaks down...the internal temperature of the tank shot up through the roof as the video card was cranked by the game, the board RAM and CPU were overclocked, and the oil was no longer being pumped through the fan blown radiator. In short, the Mobo and CPU took the damage...I think. I won't be able to see if the video card cooked too until a replacement board comes in.
Now under normal use, I could leave it turned on for extremely long periods of time without worry. The issue comes in when you start running more through the board and CPU. It gets hotter faster than normal, very fast actually and this is especially true when playing games with a large amount of detail. This can be easily managed with a cooling system for the oil. The easiest way is to pump out the hot oil into a fan blown radiator. The triple 120mm style radiator for water cooling rigs is quite sufficient for this. A decent pump is a bit hard though. Water cooling pumps do not like the viscosity of mineral oil and will over time die as I have recently found out. And most dedicated oil transfer pumps are huge, loud, messy, expensive, etc...
So now we get to the part where I tell you the worst part of "Oil Cooling" a PC...changing any part in the tank. I had built the PC in place, so to get into it, I had to take it apart in place. That included draining all the oil out which took forever and made a huge mess no matter how careful I was. Thank God I kept all the gallon jugs the oil came in or I would have been screwed on that part. As I type this, the mobo tray that holds everything that is suspended in the tank is sitting in an old beer cooler I don't use much anymore. I will rebuild the PC once I get the parts in, but it will be in a regular tower. I haven't abandoned the idea, but I am going to take what I have learned, and apply it to a bigger and better one. Maybe this year, maybe next.
