Oil submerged PC for science fair (lol)

[NoCorsair]

So it is my final year at highschool, and I feel like jumping into the Science Fair. Since me being a PC building kinda guy, I've always wanted to build myself a oil submerged PC in a fish tank.

My main idea is to have a Mini-ITX / Micro-ATX form factor PC, perceptually with some sort of dual-core CPU(or APU), 8GBs of Ram, a small HDD (SDD depending on price/budget), and of course a power supply. At the moment I'm not considering a GPU due to keeping price at a minimal.

So lets talk some parts.

CPU: Intel Celeron G530 2.4GHz LGA1155
Decent CPU, more than enough power to run your everyday stuff, and even some games. Did I mention cheap too? (Downside, can't overclock, no biggie)

Motherboard: MSI H61M-P31
An affordable mobo that has all the features I'll need. Small, and will look cool in oil.

Ram: G.SKILL Value Series 8GB
Low profile ram clocked at 1333, which is what the mobo above is designed for. Cheap too.

HardDrive: SAMSUNG Spinpoint 7200RPM 320GB
Enough storage, 7200RPM, relatively inexpensive. (This won't be submerged in the oil, if I get a SSD, I'll submerge that.)

PSU: Corsair CX430
Reliable Corsair PSU, 80Plus certified. It'll be easy to take off the outter shell.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Subtotal under $200 for the PC parts. But I also gotta consider the price of a fish tank, and the oil. Together I am guessing around $40 for the mineral oil, and about $30 for a 2.5 gallon rectangular prism fish tank.

In the meantime, I'm gonna throw together some blueprints of how I will lay out the PC. Chances are I'll post them to this thread later. Other that that, if you AMD guys can put together something small with the AMD FM1 socket APU, please share. I'm considering going AMD aswell, no issues.

I'm open to conversation, any suggestions/questions are greatly appreciated. Cheers

 

[chrisk]

Do a search on here and the web for "thinktank" by Braineater. He is a pioneer in this area, and has some detailed build logs in a few forums. You could also fire a PM his way as he is a great fellow.

 

[NoCorsair]

Do a search on here and the web for "thinktank" by Braineater. He is a pioneer in this area, and has some detailed build logs in a few forums. You could also fire a PM his way as he is a great fellow.

That would be good, I wanna learn a little bit more about what kind of mineral oil I should use, and also how much I should fill to, etc.

 

[BeaverBender]

These guys have also done some good work in that area:

Mineral Oil Submerged Computer; Our Most Popular Custom PC

 

[NoCorsair]

These guys have also done some good work in that area:

Mineral Oil Submerged Computer; Our Most Popular Custom PC

Yeah, I was looking at their stuff, and my layout for my build is going to be very similar, yet on a Mini-ITX motherboard. I took some valuable notes from them.

 

[Shadowmeph]

I would love to make one of these for my 2p folder to see what temps and if cool enough I could fold yr round

 

[jibz]

I would love to make one of these for my 2p folder to see what temps and if cool enough I could fold yr round

How much heat does your 2p folder put out? Oil is hard to cool and the heat has to be exchanged through some pretty big radiators.

Oil submersion is better with low power rigs and a single 240 rad

 

[greenroost14]

btw go with an ssd then you can just submerge anything and not have to worry about slowing down the hdd platters

 

[JJThomp]

I would love to make one of these for my 2p folder to see what temps and if cool enough I could fold yr round

You can't fold on a 2p all year round unless you put it in like a bath tub... Hmmm I think I might try that after i graduate and make some money. Fully submerged oil will run much hotter than water cooled, it is pretty cool however just not very effective.

 

[NoCorsair]

btw go with an ssd then you can just submerge anything and not have to worry about slowing down the hdd platters

Yeah, I'm going to pick up a small 120GB SSD, so I can submerge everything, it'll be worth the extra money.