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I'd have to check, but I don't *think* veggie oil is conductive.. Though I'd think mineral or petroleum oils might be a bit better in terms of not gunking up so badly.

Oooh.. Use mineral oil, and have a plexiglass case, with the same refractive index, making it look like the computer parts are suspended inside what looks like a solid block of plastic... Get some heat ripples, but otherwise..

You would have to have the CDRom drives outside the mess. HDs are sealed nicely, though

On the first picture, it shows the computer is running something. But the oil is flat and undisturbed. With all the fans, electric charges, and what not, wouldn't you expect the oil to be swirling around a bit? He could probably hoax this by putting it in an empty fishtank and Photoshopping in some transparent yellow.

This was on Photofiction.
It is real, apparently.
Of course, there's no real way to tell over the internet, but yeah.

-The King

Various different types of veg oil might give better or worse "gunking up" problems. Corn oil is pretty extreme for gunk -- it accumulates on pots and pans if you're not obsessive about getting it off. Not so canola or olive oil.

However, heated oil does have a stronger scent, even before it starts getting "off" (semi-rancid/oxidized.) You'd have to be sure you liked the smell before you did this.

Immerersing a motherboard and components in a non-conductive liquid as a means of cooling is not unheard of nor new; it is, in fact, a very effecient means of cooling a system, albieit a rather messy one. There was a story on slashdot not too long ago about a user sealing his machine case with caulk, swapping the disks out with solid-state, and filling the case with mineral oil.

FYI, search on "overclocking". There is a whole subculture of people who try to make their PC's go faster than their stated speed. Various cooling techniques is one thing they do. Cooling electronics with some type of oil is a stardard technique in general. Power transmission tranformers are cooled with oil. PCB's (those nasty environmental poisons) were used to make those oils fire retardant.

As long as he was using something like canola or peanut oil, I don't think he'd have any problems. (Other than a peanut butter smell from the peanut oil)
Olive oil is a bit too delicate, it would tend to oxidize and clump up after awhile. (Similar problem with corn oil.)
Amd from the pictures, he has the hard drive and CD taped to the outside of the aquarium, out of the oil.
One interesting problem I read about on Slashdot (they discussed this yesterday) was from one reader who had done something similar: If the aquarium is higher than than the mouse, keyboard, or other periphials, the cables tend to siphon oil out of the tank.
Of course this is an old idea in computers. Some old IBM mainframes used oil cooling to keep their magnetic core memory cool, the cases actually had a dipstick! (I can just picture some IT guy in coveralls saying "Well here's why yer server is slow, she's a quart low on oil!")

I don't care whether it works or not; it's disgusting.
There's no way I want to sit all day in an office that smells like a Fry Baby.

Never fear... an overclocker is here (ok well maybe you should fear us sometimes).

What causes conductivity in fluids is disolved metal ions like Iron, Copper, aluminum & disolved salts like NaCl (table salt), KCl, & various others. Pure H20 will not conduct electricity. This is why overclockers with water cooling systems use distilled water which has no disolved ions in it (or at least not enough to be an issue). If the oil used has enough metal ions or salts in solution there is the chance that you can get a short. Its important to know what cooking oil he is using as that will hint at the possibility of it not having any of these disolved ions.

Usually computer parts are placed in a chemical called Saphire (with one p; it's not spelled like the gem stone) by Tyco or in Mineral Spirits which is a mineral oil. It would be possible to use Distilled Water for this if you could keep ions from disolving into it but its much easier for ions to disolve into water than the two chemicals mentioned above (water is the universal solvant as they say) so its not practical.

On a side note PCBs as mentioned above are polychlorinated biphenyls which are poisons & not Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) which are used in computers. I think its a good idea to clarify this early on just in case .

So what happens when the oil goes rancid? Which would take only a few days, if that? Do you have to go out and buy six more gallons of cooking oil twice a week? Wouldn't shit be growing on the computer parts after awhile, unless you took everything out periodically and meticulously scraped the oil off of it? (Using, I don't know, miniscule amount of Dawn on a q-tip to cut the stinking oil off the plastic and metal bits?)

I'd love to see someone shove a P100 and go to work overclocking now THAT would be interesting.

The gunk factor and the place smelling like vegetable oil makes me think that a petrochemical or mineral oil would be the best bet.. I suppose any reasonably non-conductive fluid medium would work. Heh.. Thinned-down petroleum jelly for a porn server? I wonder how conductive gasoline is..

As far as the fans go, they should work pretty well, and most newer systems let you control fan speed. Set it low so it's not overtaxing itself.

I imagine it'd work best with those 'copper fan' fanless heat sinks, along with a small 'case' fan stirring the mix..

Speaking of Case Fans, I'd like to do a mod someday where I take one of those huge square room fans and bolt it to the side.. I've seen a jury-rigged version, but I'm thinking the real deal..

This dates me - a lot - but it looks like Orac from 'Blakes Seven'. Albeit that it is yellow, like pee. I suppose the next step is to fill a tank with distilled water, and fish, and see how they like swimming around inside a computer. It wouldn't be at all practical, and there is a danger that the fish might fry themselves, but think of the kudos! A real fish-tank cooling system with real fish.

And it's probably somewhere in German on the site, but does this vegetable oil set-up actually cool the computer more than fans? I don't mean in a general sense; specifically, in this case, does the vegetable oil give a lower core temperature (I assume the CPU thermometer still works). How about running the vegetable oil through a car radiator, so that he has air-cooled vegetable oil circulating in the tank? Freon? Whatever it was they put in Crays?

Fish! There's an idea. Think of the possibilites... you could have them swimming around, feed them and such... and when they venture too close to a CPU fan... you'd have a quick and easy snack and food processor.

Seriously though I don't think the fish would enjoy it too much.

If he puts his computer in vegetable oil, I think this would give a whole new meaning to the phrase "His computer got fried."

- OR -

Elvis can finally relate to computing.

"I suppose the next step is to fill a tank with distilled water, and fish, and see how they like swimming around inside a computer."

They wouldn't swim around for long. Distilled water would cause just about any fish to die rapidly of osmotic shock (in non-aquaristic terms, its body would be absorbing water much faster than it could get rid of it). I don't know how much dissolved solids you could have in the water before it would start shorting out the electronics, but I would guess not very much. Also, the fishes that come from the softest native waters also tend to come from the most acid waters, which would probably make everything corrode pretty fast. Finally, I don't know what the average temperature of the water in such a system would be, but if were above about 85 degrees F, it would kill all but a very few species of fish.

I know that this Popeye El Marinero would put his in Olive Oyl... Ha ha ha, I am killing myself. I am on the roll now. I love to Boogie. Rrrraoul

I was thinking of adapting this by using liquid helium. Should definately keep the computer cool.

If you put the whole pc in a deepfreeze (say minus 24 degrees Celcius) and let it cool rellay down. Start your pc. Would it be running slower?
Would your hard drive freeze?