On my trip to the US I spoke with engineer friends at the Tennesse Valley Authority and The University of Tennesse in Chattanooga. After speaking with them and doing some online research myself I decided to go with Oil in my cooling system instead of water. It took alot of looking around and searching to find the right parts, but I believe I have done it. I will be cooling the Mainboard, CPU and GPU. The HD will be air cooled. The oil cooling solves all problems of mixed metals and any issue with conductivity in contaminated DI water.
The hard part was finding and picking the right oil. You don't want to start a fire right? Believe it or not there was alot of differant oils out there that would work just fine if you can deal with them having strange colors and smells. Well I did not like the Idea of stinking up my house or an ugly brown or yellowish color in my clear tubes. So I decided to go with food grade mineral oil unscented. It is non-toxic to humans and animals. I also found out you can add your own scent to the oil, why would you need to? I asked the same thing lol so I went with unscented. This oil is so thin it can be absorbed through the skin. So your system has to be sealed up tight.
Now I was worried about price. Not a problem unless you need several gallons and I don't so no problem there. The next thing was getting it to cool as good as water. Well that was a problem kind of. That is where the parts come into play. I had to go big on a budget. What I did was go to my friend who owns an auto parts store. I picked up a heater core unit for a 1995 Chevy cavalier. It was perfect and only cost $30 USD. It is huge compared to the coolers you can get from PC cooling system makers. It is also all aluminum with thousands of fins to shed heat. Next I went to Ebay. I found a Zolman Reservator 1 for 40 bucks and won it! WOOT. Its blue as well. Came with everything not that I need it all I just wanted the big Reservator tube. As for water blocks well I just used the Koolance parts I had already.
Well anyways I have always wanted a fridge close to my PC to keep beer in. So I found a used half fridge about the size of freezer on a full size. It was FREE!!! The guy gave it to me. So the Reservator will go in the fridge with a hole I am cutting in the top. Sealing it with calk and I still have room for 12 beers and snacks. The heater core will be mounted on the outside. So it will look like a tower setting next to a white fridge with a blue cap sticking out of the top. All extra parts not including all the stuff you would normally need for a water cooling system was around $85 USD. When I am completely finished with the set up I will post some pics. When I spoke with the engineers they said the fridge was over kill, but hey I might overclock a bit plus it was free so who cares.
I will be updating this post.
The hard part was finding and picking the right oil. You don't want to start a fire right? Believe it or not there was alot of differant oils out there that would work just fine if you can deal with them having strange colors and smells. Well I did not like the Idea of stinking up my house or an ugly brown or yellowish color in my clear tubes. So I decided to go with food grade mineral oil unscented. It is non-toxic to humans and animals. I also found out you can add your own scent to the oil, why would you need to? I asked the same thing lol so I went with unscented. This oil is so thin it can be absorbed through the skin. So your system has to be sealed up tight.
Now I was worried about price. Not a problem unless you need several gallons and I don't so no problem there. The next thing was getting it to cool as good as water. Well that was a problem kind of. That is where the parts come into play. I had to go big on a budget. What I did was go to my friend who owns an auto parts store. I picked up a heater core unit for a 1995 Chevy cavalier. It was perfect and only cost $30 USD. It is huge compared to the coolers you can get from PC cooling system makers. It is also all aluminum with thousands of fins to shed heat. Next I went to Ebay. I found a Zolman Reservator 1 for 40 bucks and won it! WOOT. Its blue as well. Came with everything not that I need it all I just wanted the big Reservator tube. As for water blocks well I just used the Koolance parts I had already.
Well anyways I have always wanted a fridge close to my PC to keep beer in. So I found a used half fridge about the size of freezer on a full size. It was FREE!!! The guy gave it to me. So the Reservator will go in the fridge with a hole I am cutting in the top. Sealing it with calk and I still have room for 12 beers and snacks. The heater core will be mounted on the outside. So it will look like a tower setting next to a white fridge with a blue cap sticking out of the top. All extra parts not including all the stuff you would normally need for a water cooling system was around $85 USD. When I am completely finished with the set up I will post some pics. When I spoke with the engineers they said the fridge was over kill, but hey I might overclock a bit plus it was free so who cares.
I will be updating this post.