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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Liquid Cooled CPU
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| Phil23 Guru  Joined: 27/03/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1667 |
So I've always had a bit of a smirk at some of the gamers & their Water Cooled CPU's in their super turbo charged rigs.... But wholly sh*t, Geoff's article in November SC.... 80 Xeon server racks TOTALLY immersed in tanks of dielectric fluid for heat transfer! One thing for sure, there'd be no dust & lint accumulating on heat sinks. Cheers. |
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Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3292 |
They have an amazing installation. 56 tanks each holding servers totally submerged in an oily liquid - even the 240V power supplies are completely submerged. With a total of about 8,000 Intel Xeon Phi CPUs (72 cores in each) they have a lot of computing power. If you have not seen the article this photo of one tank will give you the idea:  The company that built this computer is called DownUnder GeoSolutions and they process seismic data for oil and gas exploration. Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Yes, that article is impressive. Do you think we could make an liquid-cooled Micromite super-computer?  Oil-cooled computers are quite a common thing. Have a look on YouTube for 'Oil cooled PC', and you will get quite a few hits. The idea of having to service a motherboard that has been submerged in cooking oil is enough to make me NEVER attempt to do it that way. Water-cooling would be a better approach if you ask me! Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| isochronic Guru Joined: 21/01/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 689 |
That was a key design feature of the Cray supercomputers when they started. So much so, that when some expansion option cards were not installed, null cards with heaters were used to fill in the slots so that the circulation would not be upset ! The Crays of the time would probably be outrun by a mobile phone now (sob). The liquid was a fluorocarbon IIRC, liquid at room temperature, nifty stuff. |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
IBM has been building water cooled mainframes since 1978. Beginning in 1982 Pan Am used a 3090-200 in our datacenter in Rockleigh NJ. (41.009, -73.932). Our old building is now used by Spectra Laboratories for medical blood testing. IBM is currently engaged in building the Aquasar massively parallel processor with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which uses a mix of IBM QS22 and HS22 and Intel Nehalem Xeon processors. It uses distilled water at 60°C for cooling which transfers heat about 6000 times more efficiently than forced air. The captured heat is easily sold for space heating and industrial processing applications. The Swiss are apparently very interested in not wasting heat. https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/IBM-builds-water-cooled-processor-for-Zurich-supercomputer Just something else that makes you go hmmmmmmmmmmm .... Paul in NY |
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| Phil23 Guru Joined: 27/03/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1667 |
Well Theoretically, IF it's distilled water you should be able to drop a complete E100 in..... Who's up to test one? Dry Cleaning fluid maybe? Carbon Tet etc? Phil. |
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| isochronic Guru Joined: 21/01/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 689 |
The Cray2 used "Fluorinert". There are videos of an unfortunate rat breathing similar stuff, enough oxygen dissolves to be life sustaining, I wouldn't try it though !!! Maybe go for the dry cleaning fluid, probably way expensive still. |
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CaptainBoing Guru Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2170 |
I think I remember reading somewhere that in the cooling towers, they put some blue lights under the tubes just coz it looked cool. Fair enough. |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5091 |
 Bitcoin mining in China (BitMain). Not liquid cooled.... PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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