I was just wondering about cooling a computer case with Liquid Nitrogen. Would i be able to run it through a water cooling system only without the radiator part? or would i need to do something else. Thanks.

PeacE
-BoB

Else ......

A lot of else.

LN2 cooling is not something that is easy to initiate and it is even more difficult to sustain. The LN2 will be so cold that it would immediately destroy the average pump used in water cooling set-ups, it would probably destroy any type of flexible tubing, (you would need special metals), and unless you can recirculate it through the right gear, it will phase change to a gaseous state and evaporate.

Except for a few extreme commercial applications, like the old Cray super-computers, LN2 cooling is a very short-lived experiment that generally can only be sustained long enough to benchmark a system for about 20 - 30 minutes, and usually destroys more equipment then it is successfully used with.

Trust me, you would have a much better chance of being able to design and implement a cooling system based on HFE,(HydroFlouroEther), then on LN2. But HFE doesn't get colder, but it does transfer heat better then most water cooling fluids.

If you want to go truely extreme, (-0C), then you need to look into a Phase-Change system. Luck

I would imsgine using LN2 would cause alot of condensation. and that would be a big problem though i could and most likely am wrong.

Thanks for the info. It was just a curiosity type thing.

PeacE
-BoB

Devylyn, you are correct about condensation being a major problem with nitrogen.

I forms cold white stuff that some call frost.

Bad news all around.

As lcpiper already indicated.....not even close to practical for the daily driver.

Save it for the test bench!

Yeah seems like a good idea.

PeacE
-BoB

isnt there some kind of fluid that wont conduct electricity that you can pump so that you can fully submerge the motherboard and all? i guess if you could do that than you could freez it without the water threath.

The most commen one that i know about is called fluorinert, it is a non condutive fluid. In fact the crazy folks over at OCtools actullay submerged a mobo in it and used a radator system in liquid nitrogen to cool the florniert. It was also the coolent used in the cray supercomputers

Drawback: fluorinert is about 500$ a gallon

Another is the above mentioned HFE, hydroflouroether, which is also non-conductive at about $200 a gallon.

But these fluids arn't for daily use, not that you can't do it, but you would want to be experienced first and really know what your doing, and have all your gear right, before you start dumping these fluids into your reservoir. At $200 + a gallon, mistakes get expensive fast.

Really careful planning...
Dose that stuff evaporate quickly (meaning youÂ’d have to have a sealed tub)
Dose it take on condensation from the air or will it repel it like silicone?
another option would be to use a pure gas. no water vapor. sealed case and use something like pure nitrogen, CO2, helium, neon, argon, whatever. fill your case with that and use an a air to air exchanger (airconditioner condenser) or use the super coold water cooling thing.
you could get a bunch of risers for each card and just submerge the mobo. you could get a right angle riser for the video card and submerge that too. that should only take 2 gallons or less.

ha how would you purchase those chemicals? and what were they origionaly made to do? are they like super toxic or really dangerous?

Can't talk for flourinert, but HFE is pretty mild. I have read the Material Handleing Sheet for it and it seams relatively safe as long as you don't force it into a vapor for, (like through boiling), and suck in the fumes like a Huffer Junkie.

As far as submersion cooling, since the fluids are non-conductive, all you have to do is keep mechanically driven, (read motors on drives), devices out of it. But think of what you have to do to make changes to your system, swap RAM, video, etc... Could get very very expensive.

And remember, the point is that they are relativly safe to use inside a water cooling rig, but damn expensive, and you still need an efficient cooling setup to begin with.

They do evaporate, some more then others, and that means you need a sealed system.

Thats about as far as a care to take this, would I want to play with it, Hell Yes, but am I ready to pay big bucks for it, Not yet.

maybe if you could find a pump and tubing combo that would work with LN2 and hooked it all up,a few seconds after it was running the whole thing would explode....remember, LN2 evaporates super-quick and they have to keep it in bottles with open tops otherwise they're turned into huge bombs, the wayto go is what my friend is doing:
take a 50 gal fish tank, fill it with water, fish, and fish-happy stuff, coat mobo, PCI/AGP cards, harddrive, IDE cables, optical drives, and everything else in silicon, and submerge them in the fish tank, the submerged comp would keep the water about 70*F which is what tropical fish need to live in, and you could overclock the shizat out of it (just remember to keep a hefty heatsink on the processor otherwise the heat isn't dissipated fast enough.

I'll do a little Fortune Telling here. In my crystal ball I see your friend destroying his gear. Even the guys that are submersion cooling, arn't submerging their drives or anything else that is mechanical, only the mobo itself.

Then, they do not even try and use water, they use a non-conductive chemical. Really guy, what he is doing isn't even insane, it is just stupid. I really don't want to sound so harsh and negative, but this is so absolutly impractical that I can't say it any other way.

But hey, if he does do this, get pictures, I mean it, be sure to get pictures so that we can show others that this is NOT something that they want to try.

Piece out,

That isnt the greatest idea ive ever heard either. dont thing it would be good.

PeacE
-BoB

so dose ANYONE KNOW what those chems were origionaly for i keep getting yelled at over the phone no we cant sell that.