Windows 7: Home-made Liquid Cooling

I don't know just how practical that it is, but that is definitely an unusual and interesting approach to cooling. I couldn't pay their price, but it seems that this is something that someone might be able to do on their own...if they had a mind to.

Well I seriously considered it and to be honest I am still pondering. But I think I would rather use an old pc in the cupboard to test it out. (Maybe the dell, the p4 was a bit toasty at times. lol).

Lucky

If "toasty" means that it ran hot, then that sounds like a good test subject to me.

Too right, and being a dell, I don't really care if it go boom.

I have never been one to care about decorating a PC like some do, as though it were a Christmas tree, but this aquarium concept decorates a room instead, which I like. Too bad that live fish couldn't live in it along with the components, that would be nice, but I wonder if it would be possible to build some kind of mechanical fish? I guess that since mineral oil is non-conductive, they wouldn't be able to get their power from the components, so I guess that they would either need their own batteries, or a wind-up mechanism.

The only aquarium that I now have, is one that the PC stands on. I have the inside blacked out, so it isn't anything more than just a stand, and I don't believe that it is deep enough to hold the components, so I would have to start from scratch. Oh well...it's nice to think about anyway.

Trouble is, computers very rarely go boom, which reduces the entertainment value of a system failure tremendously.

Closest I've seen was a Socket A board where one of the heatsink mounting tabs suddenly failed. The tension of the mounting spring launched the heatsink halfway across the board. The processor burned a hole through the board and the system suddenly quit working.

Only heard a medium-loud POP, probably the mounting tab breaking. No bright flash, no copious amounts of magic smoke, no tripping circuit breakers...boring.

I want that for Christmas

Well one of my projects in electronics engineering I chose to create an oil cooled PC, much like that I just bought a clear acrylic case, and sealed the seams with silicone gasket maker. The only issue was the PSU, which had to be mounted on the exterior, and the CD/DVD drive bays were compartmentalized for the same reason. I am thinking of picking up a heatsink, removing the fan, fiberglassing the structure and adding some nozzles for tubing. Then I will run that to a pump and see if I can get a reduced temperature, and then try the same with a graphics card heatsink.

If you remove the fan from the power supply, you can put it inside the case.

~Lordbob

I have seen a Socket A Athlon XP literally explode.
The same scenario, me and my friend were stress testing an Athlon XP machine he got for free off of Craigslist, the heatsink wasn't mounted properly and it launched itself out of the open case. Then the computer got very slow, smoke came out of the case then a pop that sounded like a gunshot, then the screen went blank.
We regain our composure after diving for our lives and survey the damage, we found a burned and in-pieces processor, the motherboard had a hole to the back of the board, and the heatsink was a bit scorched on the back.
Fun times!