Project Amphitrite - A fully submerged, oil cooled enclousure

[1461748123]

Howdy!

I'm always wanting to build an oil cooled PC after know that Puget systems have made one and are selling them. But sadly they are no longer in stock due to legal reasons.. (Read more here)

So I'm thinking, why not make one myself? So I jump into sketchup and layout all the components, trying to make a sff oil cooled case that might work

Any ideas/suggestions? I'm not sure if this will even work. Just messing around and I might come up with something cool!

 

[jeshikat]

The tubing for the rad seems like it'd be in the way of the rear IO, but otherwise it looks feasible. Oil cooling a PC is relatively proven by now so it's just a matter of implementation.

 

[EdZ]

I've been mulling over SFF fluid-immersion cooling for a while. One thing you might want to look into (if you have access to the equipment) is creating your own conformal 'tank' using Vacuum Forming.
The process would go something like this:
- Assemble the components you want immersed, then use a vacuum former to form an extremely thin sheet of plastic over them using a relatively low pressure (to prevent damage to components, and to prevent the sheet 'undercutting' components with overhangs). Packing some foam under parts like the gap between the GPU and PCIe slot would also aid in preventing undercutting.
- Remove the components from this light shell, and fill the shell with expanding foam
- Using the vacuum former again, form a sturdier sheet of plastic over the form you just created to create the final shell of the tank.
- Install your components in the shell (face down), fill with the cooling fluid, and test.
- Once tested, bond a sheet to the rear of the shell (or go through the forming process again if you don't have a planar backside to the arrangement) with any cables that need to be router out sealed through a port

You now have a leak-tight tank using a minimal fluid volume, for minimal weight.
The downsides are the complexity in creating it, access to a vacuum former, and the need for a component layout with at least one shared plane to avoid doing multiple forms. The layout also has the limitation that you need to be able to slide the tank around the completed assembly without it needing to move 'around' protrusions like wiring.

And extension of this method would be to model all the parts and 3D print a form to cast around directly.

 

[ChainedHope]

If you want to keep that layout you could go for 12mm tubing and move the rad over slightly so that the tubing goes between the audio jacks and the (what appears to be) VGA connector. As you wont be using the VGA with that GPU installed and you should have the clearence between the audio jacks and the USB ports. You would probably have to move your 2.5'' drives as well tho it would look nice if they were submerged in front of the motherboard towards the bottom (so you can see them with the rest of the system). There shouldnt be an issue if you are using SSDs (not sure if mechanical drives will have any problems moving through the viscosity of the oil, you could try to find some helium based drives to solve that issue tho)

 

[1461748123]

If you want to keep that layout you could go for 12mm tubing and move the rad over slightly so that the tubing goes between the audio jacks and the (what appears to be) VGA connector. As you wont be using the VGA with that GPU installed and you should have the clearence between the audio jacks and the USB ports. You would probably have to move your 2.5'' drives as well tho it would look nice if they were submerged in front of the motherboard towards the bottom (so you can see them with the rest of the system). There shouldnt be an issue if you are using SSDs (not sure if mechanical drives will have any problems moving through the viscosity of the oil, you could try to find some helium based drives to solve that issue tho)

That is really true! This is a really old model, I believe it is the M7i or M6i so there is still a vga connector. On recent boards, they have been replaced by hdmi+dp ports. But still, no one uses them when they have a dedicated gpu so passing tubes through there is a good idea!

I'm pretty sure that putting a hard drive in oil will destroy it :/ but, ssd should work fine under oil Placing them infront of the motherboard will block the memories and I do wanna show that off as well so I think putting it on the side will be a good idea? I can also hide the cables on the back as well

 

[cmyk78]

Linus put a hard drive in oil and it was fine, but it was one of the fancy Seagate helium filled ones.

 

[jtd871]

If you read the Puget Systems articles, you'll notice that any wires coming out of the oil will provide a point of "leakage" for the oil due to surface tension overcoming gravity. This is why their kit, as I recall, had the backplane (I/O, power supply mount) actually out of the oil. Please also remember the the tank needs to be structural - and the unit weight of mineral oil is ~85% that of water @25C. If you intend on suspending the hardware from the top of the tank, you will need to add the weight of the PC hardware to the load on the side walls.

 

[1461748123]

If you read the Puget Systems articles, you'll notice that any wires coming out of the oil will provide a point of "leakage" for the oil due to surface tension overcoming gravity. This is why their kit, as I recall, had the backplane (I/O, power supply mount) actually out of the oil. Please also remember the the tank needs to be structural - and the unit weight of mineral oil is ~85% that of water @25C. If you intend on suspending the hardware from the top of the tank, you will need to add the weight of the PC hardware to the load on the side walls.

Do you mind giving me the link to the article? I'm curious to read that
Most of the project's idea came from Puget Systems, so yes, the backplane is out of the oil and the image is only showing the inner part of the design, not including the tank

 

[jtd871]

https://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php See the FAQs
See all the articles - search for 'oil' from the masthead on the Puget Systems site.

 

[1461748123]

I put everything together in spaceclaim:

Still using it like sketchup thou... gotta learn how to do things precisely now!

 

[jeshikat]

Still using it like sketchup thou... gotta learn how to do things precisely now!

That's part of why I picked it, I could use it like SketchUp at first until I learned how to use more of it's functionality.

 

[1461748123]

Starting to get the hang of it Still got a lot to learn and do..

 

[1461748123]

@Aibohphobia I got a quick question on a problem which bothers me a while using spaceclaim, is that it seems like it is lack of the 'snap' function. It is really hard to me to pull or move an object to align to others. Or maybe I just didn't know how to use it...
Like this in sketchup:

 

[jeshikat]

Here you go:

Let me know if that's what you were wanting to know

 

[1461748123]

Here you go:

Let me know if that's what you were wanting to know

Thanks a bunch!! That's exactly what I want!!
I do have something else to ask... So when I'm trying to sketch on a plane, I want my cursor snap to a line/vertex below the plane, like here, I want my cursor snap to the corner of that rectangle:

Is there any way to do that?
THANKS!!

 

[jeshikat]

Under the Sketch group, the second from the right on the bottom row is Project.

That tool will let you project geometry into the current sketch, allowing you to snap to stuff.

 

[1461748123]

Under the Sketch group, the second from the right on the bottom row is Project.

That tool will let you project geometry into the current sketch, allowing you to snap to stuff.

Thankkkkks!!! Now I can really use it like sketchup...

 

[1461748123]

Man it was hard... I really do appreciate people with cad skills now...

 

[jeshikat]

The initial learning curve is the tough part. There's always more to learn, but once you get past the basics and can make material progress on the design instead of having to look up how to do stuff every 3 minutes, it gets easier.

 

[jtd871]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11046...id-cooling-on-a-2u-gpu-g250s88-using-3m-novec