By Evan Ackerman
We’ve all got an old fish tank lying around in the garage from our childhood, and Puget Systems has a pretty good idea of what can be with it. They’re selling a complete DIY kit to submerge your entire computer (except for the drives, of course) in a fish tank full of mineral oil. Since mineral oil is non-conductive to electricity but a good conductor of heat, it makes for a much better cooling solution than air, allowing you to overlock your hardware to the maxxx… A backpack of sorts pumps the oil past a bunch of fans to transfer heat out of the tank.
You can get other liquid cooling systems that are a little bit more integrated into a case, but then you have to worry about leakage and stuff, and anyway, it’s far less dramatic. The tank with the external cooling system will run you about $290; you provide your own fish tank, aquarium rocks, and bubbler. You can also get the system with a tank for about $500.
[ Puget Systems ] VIA [ Tom’s Hardware ]
wow seriously guys? this is way old news, i seen the video puget has of them making there first one and loved it so i ended up doing one myself. with my experience the oil hardens the wires in the system to a point where the plastic coating dosnt bend anymore it breaks. without any kind of radiator the oil gets hot pretty quickly. within id say 1-2 hrs. the comp i used was just a regular old desktop compaq to. after about 3 months my computer stopped working alltogether, never found out why. im not saying it was the oil that messed it up but i wont do this again.
i did all this in 2008
It would be cooler if, at the bottom of the tank, there was a little treasure chest that popped open every now and then the blow out bubbles…
the link to pugetsystems gives us the information that this particular aquarium is for 'low end systems', and still needs 4 BIG radiators.
so where is the need to oil-'cool' a low end system?
i bet one of the 4 fans alone would do better..
I can't decide whether the fire hazard or the mess hazard terrifies me more…
I'd say that it looks cool, but i would not want one to myself. I am having precious little space on my table as it is 🙂
I love custom cases and mods.
Set up looks really cool, nice custom case and lights.
Set up looks really cool, nice custom case and lights.