Gadgetopia

Mineral Oil Submerged Computer: A neat little project with an accompanying YouTube video. I like the last step in the process.

The mineral oil has considerable specific heat capacity, which means it can absorb lots of heat without having to vent it out to the surrounding air. Because of this, it takes the system quite a while to work up to its equilibrium temperature. Starting at an ambient 29C on the CPU, we found it took about an hour to hit a stable idle temperature of 37C. Not bad!

[…] The system under load was a different story. We started 3DMark06 looping, and watched the temperatures climb. It took a really long time. After an amazing 12 hours, the system topped out with a CPU temperature of 88C.