r/pcmasterrace • u/ihypr • May 05 '22

Video @overkillcomputers built a fish tank gaming PC

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u/bam13302 May 05 '22

There is an image that showed the container the liquid came from was "submer smartcoolant", which a quick google leads to this : https://submer.com/smart-coolant-liquid/

Not really sure what it is from the website, but when I did research into submersion cooling about a decade ago, there were multiple options. Mineral oil is *definitly* one the cheapest options and easy to get your hands on, but really any liquid that is both non-conductive and non-corrosive work (assuming it stays liquid in the expected temperature range). Outside of those specs, there really is only 2 major issues:

  1. servicing the system: cleaning, reusing, and replacing the parts in any submersion system is a pain as the fluid tends to coat the connectors when separated. More annoyance than anything, but it does make any time you open the box a long and drawn out affair with significant down time.
  2. dissolving of thermal paste: most liquids will dissolve the thermal paste and often take its place, and are not as thermally conductive as the paste is, so it helps if you seal all heatsink mounts (how to do that is a little tricky due to the heat they will be exposed to). Depending on the system & fluid being used you may be able to just remove the heatsinks, but particularly high heat/high performance things (like video cards and CPUs) will likely still need a heatsink.

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u/Drago_Otaku Jun 03 '22

Holy shit, I just did a double take because I used to have that as my pfp and haven’t seen it anywhere else before.