Housing with oil cooled components

It has long dreamed of collecting something similar, but there was no reason.
Recently I started experimenting with mining on different video cards in different cases. He came to the conclusion that the least high-level cards are heated without a case. But when installing several 7950/7970 cards, you have to fence down the fans - the design is shaky, noisy and takes up a lot of space.
I tried server chassis - 1U and 4U. They make a noise so that you stumble and cool not very effectively - a couple of FirePro V9800 and S10000 cards overheated at regular frequencies after 10 minutes. When it reached 100 degrees, the station hung. Yes, and work at these temperatures is not safe. To achieve stability in such conditions, it was necessary to reduce the load by a quarter, which did not diminish the noise and heat, and efficiency, on the contrary. I did not think about the noise - the equipment stood in the server room, but the thermal mode sagged, despite the operating air conditioners and the cooler at full capacity.

The idea was to assemble a system unit on the basis of the aquarium and to ensure uniform heat exchange of all internal components by filling the aquarium with oil.
He started with the aquarium - he brought a 30-liter aquarium to work, with the expectation that the small one was complete. The case took the simplest Midi-tower, drilled all the rivets from it and dismantled the frame - leaving only space for the motherboard and the entire back panel.
The rest of the kit was collected from the world on a string - all the same in DEPO Computers work. Although my colleagues were skeptical about my idea, they donated iron “for slaughter”, apparently for the sake of interest.



So I collected a complete set of accessories - I installed the motherboard with the processor without problems. I had to tinker with the power supply - I didn’t fit into the aquarium with the standard fixings, I had to disassemble and screw the screws closer to the matplate. After half an hour of work with a pair of scissors, the platform was placed in an aquarium. The cooler on the processor took a prettier one - with illumination, although it was possible to do without it, since the processor was the weakest and physically could not heat up above 30 degrees. The FirePro V9800 graphics card had to be disassembled, but not completely - only the casing was removed, and the radiator and fan were left.
')


As the drive I chose SATA DOM for 8GB (for which I paid later). Well, everything seems to be possible - it can be poured (OS) and poured (with oil). There are problems with the operating system, because all Win 7 and Win 8 distributions did not want to be installed on the DOM module. They demanded at least 8 GB of disk space and on my disk there were only 7.5 Gig of usable space. Stopped at XP. It was Friday night, so I decided to leave the system setting for later. He took everything home, on the way buying 25 liters of refined sunflower oil - the most budget option turned out.
At home I put everything together, finished the aquarium cover - added reset, power buttons, disk indication and USB ports. It was necessary to check the mining for dry ....., but my hands itched to fill in as soon as possible all the oil.




And flooded.



Then it only turned out that the miner does not see the video card under XP. I had to remove the structure from the oil and trim the HDD (thanks to my son - it helped). Despite the fact that all the connectors were in oil (and power and SATA) the drive was determined without problems and Win 8 was in 10 minutes.
I decided to test in overclocked mode - set the video processor frequency to the maximum working limit - 1000 MHz (with the standard 850). Mining performance increased by 20%, the temperature from 66 degrees crawled up. I spotted the time.



After an hour of work at the limit of capabilities, the video card warmed up to 79 degrees (with air cooling, the temperature would have disappeared in a hundred after 10 minutes of work). And it is in complete silence! The oil in the aquarium warms up to an average of 53-58 degrees.



I considered this to be a bad sign, and concluded that with passive cooling the system is imperfect. We must try to somehow cool the oil. But that's another story, when I get it, I don't know, I need to get a pump with a radiator.

The only conclusion I made is the most efficient, noiseless and, along with this, budget solution for cooling systems with a heat release in excess of 500 watts. Aquarium cost me two thousand rubles, oil in a thousand. On the pump and the radiator with a quiet fan will go, perhaps as much again. But, in addition to all the efficiency, I got an unusual exhibit that can decorate the desktop.

For giving me a set, I want to thank my colleagues: Anton L., Andrey G., Volodya B., and also Alyosha G.

Addition after reading comments:
I tried to build a budget test bench to test the operation of the technology. Oil chose sunflower based on the budget. Now that everything is working, you can use a more suitable oil.