Full Immersion Cooling Comes To Desktop PCs 192
mr_sifter writes "After three years of research and around £100,000 of R&D costs, UK-based Armari has unveiled its XCP prototype. It's a full immersion liquid cooled PC which supports standard ATX components. Unlike conventional liquid cooled PCs, the components are all easy to swap in and out as they're swimming in liquid, rather than under waterblocks. It also looks amazing, pumping around 70KG of electrically inert cooling fluid (salvaged from an old Cray) around its military grade perspex shell."
Been done before... what's original here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, but this is just step 1. In step 2 they add a trained octopus to each tank that will do your PC repairs for you. Then you'll really see the value! Just don't forget to feed your octupus, or it will come looking for food on it's own.
Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:4, Funny)
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mmm, that's good bass.
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That's a really cool piece of information. I wish the wikipedia article had more information. How was the lung trauma caused? What is "an extended period"?
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Oh, is that what they used in The Abyss?
Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:4, Interesting)
It can be a superior mode of building. A waterfall is not what is called for. Rather a radiator like device is sufficient. That puts the cooling fans outside the case for easy maintenance.Dust inside a PC as well as corrosion are warded off completely in such devices. If done right it is a superior build. If done wrong it can make a mess.
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I know, actually read the summary, must be new here, etc.
Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:4, Funny)
Step 1: Read about crays
Step 2: Pay Billco £100,000
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit
It's immersion cooling. Pour liquid, add pump and radiator/bong, submit to slashdot.
We were doing this in the 90's! [archive.org]
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yawn (Score:3, Funny)
Wake me up when they put a pc in a high vacuum. You could even put the turbo pump in a different room.
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If a man laughs all by himself, is the joke still funny?
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True, since for $400, you can phase change (Score:2)
Re:True, since for $400, you can phase change (Score:4, Interesting)
$400 ? I'd love to see a link.
True phase-change cooling usually costs a grand for the kit, then you still have to gut your chassis to fit the ginormous cooling colon^H^Humn. Plus it's noisy as hell. It would require substantial improvements in both areas before ever being considered for general use in PCs.
This fluorinert jobby is probably whisper quiet, but I don't see anyone racing to order one. In a Cray, the liquid made sense because they were huge machines and it wasn't realistic to even try to cool them with air. Today's computers are reduced to a single board, with a few very localized heat sources.
Having a big body of liquid will actually hinder the heat dissipation, because the liquid moves far slower than air, and your CPU is putting out 100+ watts of heat in a tiny area, or in my case 350 watts, turning the area near the CPU into a mini deep fryer - definitely not cool!
Given how today's air coolers can run whisper quiet (at stock speeds and voltages), I just don't see where immersion cooling could possibly fit in the PC market. It doesn't work any better than a high-end air cooler (Ninja or TRUE120), doesn't overclock anywhere near as well as TEC+water setups or phase change, and costs 50 times more.
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This fluorinert jobby is probably whisper quiet, but I don't see anyone racing to order one.
A. They're not selling it yet
B. This is the type of computer you sell to a company so they can put it in their lobby, or to a millionaire as an expensive toy.
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*The aiming computers on US battleships are a good example. They're analog, old, expensive, an
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turning the area near the CPU into a mini deep fryer - definitely not cool!
Hmm. Vegetable oil's a dielectric, you know.
I'm thinking of an 8-core 5Ghz quad-crossfire 5-litre fryer. Should do the job. You'd just need to make sure you had a way to throttle back your overclocking before you reached the flashpoint.
It seems like somebody's already on the right track [youtube.com]...
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Besides, the hundred thousand pounds is not the retail cost of a product... it is the research and development cost the manufacturer has paid to date.
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Plus never mind that for that much money you could have a seriously kick arse PC with the most memory, cpu cores, and video cards one could cram into a computer and have money left over for another 10 years of bleeding edge upgrades.
Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, come on. They were just really smart and spent it all on strippers, now they have to come up with a justification of where all the dough went. Look! Blinkenleuchtz...
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I'm merely suggesting that wasting ~10k USD on coolant and then building a giant gaudy waterfall enclosure isn't exactly how I'd go about doing a project like this.
I'm struggling to get a good grasp on the scale of that thing to estimate how much flourinert would be required, but I don't think it's as expensive as you think it is. 5kg of the stuff can be had for significantly under $1000 US, and I doubt they're using 50kg of the stuff in there.
You've probably seen small order prices (250ml or thereabouts)
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...right. OSHA totally rates mineral oil mist [osha.gov] as a 1 (slightly flammable). Mineral oil is even used commonly in HV transformers, which reach MUCH higher temperatures than will be experienced by even malfunctioning computer parts.
Re:Been done before... what's original here? (Score:4, Informative)
They don't, Mineral Oil is used in cooling large transformers though. And yes it is flammable and they do make a HUGE fireball when they blow up. Fortunately it takes some pretty extreme conditions to light it up like say a lightning bolt.
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I was gonna say. Don't you have to get it to aerosol first, before it'll ignite - kind of like gasoline?
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I believe that flourinert actually can hold quite a bit of dissolved gas, compared to water. The waterfall design should help re-aerate it.
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"You can't use water, of course" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"You can't use water, of course" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"You can't use water, of course" (Score:4, Insightful)
...which is why this prototype will never see production. They got their flourinert from an old supercomputer, and that's not a viable supply for fullscale production.
That makes me wonder about their motivations for this PR stunt. Venture capital, anyone?
More seriously, I wonder if transformer oil could be used for this sort of thing. Flourinert may be overkill... or maybe transformer oil has enough capacitance to cause problems for the extremely high frequencies used on PC motherboards. Anyone know?
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Why couldn't you just fill a tank with Ethanol and dunk your PC in there? It's a non-electrolyte, it has a relatively high specific heat (twice that of air, half that of water), it's non-conductive, it absorbs water, what's the problem?
Besides the fact that it burns pretty well. That's obvious.
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It boils too easily. I don't mean 'rolling boil' I just mean that it will evaporate very easily at room temperature even, let alone at 40degC. Once evaporated into a normal oxygen atmosphere, it is highly flammable (not that it isn't already).
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Wouldn't that only help things? You'd need to top up your alcohol reservoirs, but the change to vapour would remove heat from the liquid, right?
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There's also hydrofluorinert (generally available from 3M) which has some slightly different properties (higher vapor pressure, for one, so it evaporates easier). However, before anyone goes out to play with HFE, they should know that it likes to dissolve [into] silicone seals a bit more aggressively than the other fluorinerts. This is a good thing sometimes, but in the case of a computer cooling system, it might cause big problems.
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HFE ? What kind of amplification factor does it have ?
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11, maaaan.
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We don't know; it's still in beta.
Misread the subject line... (Score:2, Funny)
Was I the only one who read it as " Full Immersion Coding Comes To Desktop PCs" ?
I had a picture in my head of a waterproof system. Perhaps it's a metaphor for coding while drinking a microbrew....
All I can say is.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All I can say is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah but at least it would be in a few pieces after the explosion when the coolant was topped up with tap water.
Fluorinert (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Fluorinert (Score:5, Informative)
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California would add grilled cheese to its list of potentially cancer-causing chemicals if it could. Probably already has, in fact.
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I'm sorry, that's 'grilled processed cheese food' due to FDA restrictions.
Re:Fluorinert -- heat capacity vs water (Score:2, Informative)
For example, one BTU of energy raises one pound of water one degree F. In metric units, the specific heat of water is about 4185 J/kg/K (15C). Whereas the specific heat of Flourinert is about 1049 J/kg/K, or 24% of water. OTOH, Flourinert is about twice as
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I'm not sure density would be a good trait. The problem is, the denser your fluid, the more difficult it will be for convection currents to carry the heated fluid away.
I was thinking of ethanol. It's got about half the heat capacity of water, but it's a non-electrolyte and non-conductive.
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What were they thinking? (Score:2)
After the Sony rootkit fiasco [wikipedia.org] why in the HELL would anyone name a computer product "XCP"???!!! [uncyclopedia.org]
I'm not sure I'd want one. I don't care how quiet it is or how far I can overclock it. If they're dumb enough to screw up with its name, well...
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After the Sony rootkit fiasco [wikipedia.org] why in the HELL would anyone name a computer product "XCP"???!!! [uncyclopedia.org]
Because most people have never heard of the rootkit fiasco (let alone "XCP"). Additionally I don't think most people who have heard of the rootkit would be dumb enough to confuse a bad copy protection system with a liquid cooled PC. Besides, a lot of acronyms double up for different things, there's only so many TLAs available in this world.
Unrealistic (Score:5, Insightful)
Is never happening ever for the average person and thus makes it just a novelty item. Their design is excessive and cumbersome, not to mention has excessive weaknesses such as cost to maintain, cost to purchase, time to maintain, etc.
It was tough to decipher their speech as well. Word use and pronunciation were a bit distracting. It's tough when your target audience are distracted by your speech instead of focused on your product.
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Once again, an article that sparks my interest, then someone comes along and destroys it with reality...
Re:Unrealistic (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come on - they're asked to show a dream PC and they've come up with a mini and modern Cray-2 - fits the bill perfectly. It's a concept PC - having some interesting ideas, not making people think yeah that's practical. I don't want a BMW with a flexible rubber 'skin' but I think it's a good concept.
And the speech is just a English accent - a real one! (many British actors on American TV have to learn the English accent generally used on TV). I have similar difficulty understanding a Texas drawl.
Re:Unrealistic (Score:4, Funny)
You think most Americans can? We can't either.
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It's tough when your target audience are distracted by your speech instead of focused on your product.
That's true, but given that it was an English team showcasing their stuff on an English website, I'd say they targetted their audience appropriately. (Quite apart from the fact that the guy does not have an particular regional accent - if you think that's hard to understand, you should try a strong Glaswegian accent)
Besides which, you don't hear us Brits whining about all the US accents we have to put up wi
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Same to you anonymous coward.
$100,000 invested? lolwhat? (Score:2)
Re:100,000 invested? lolwhat? (Score:2)
And besides - Given the cost of living in London (consistently one of the two highest in the world), and the rest of England it is not unreasonable to expect that 100,000 pounds would be only barely enough to employ a team of two-three entry/mid-level engineers for a year. Weird that they bothered to point that out at all.
Not cool . . . (Score:2)
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Thanks Timothy!
Practical use? (Score:2)
Re:Practical use? (Score:4, Informative)
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They still get twice as fast but Mhz myth is kinda gone. In fact, there are some same speed Xeons performs almost 30% faster than the same Mhz model because of low nanometer, bigger cache etc. The "Quad Xeon" Apple pro one is a good example. 2 versions, same or similar Mhz, the later one beats first generation by 30%.
BTW as everyone stares to memory bandwidth issues etc. now, people investing to "dead" SGI and rescuing it from chapter 11 are damn clever. Same goes for Cray too.
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Do you mean the entire computer or just the CPU? For many applications, the hard drive has been the limiting bottleneck for some time now. And of course, liquid cooling will do fuck all to improve response times or throughput.
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If you really need the FLOPS - you'd do it too. I'm working on a project now that requires 9k of custom hardware acceleration. I'm already spec'ing the next gen product to run on a $100 video card in the next year or two.
I really doubt I would spec this product... though... it looks like a great addition to some evil genius collection though! Would look nice next to the sharks-n-lasers tank!!
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Hell - you could put the sharks IN the computer!! How fun!
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Not another... (Score:3, Insightful)
You desktop jockeys have no idea.
Datacenter workers are far more aware of the demands and complexity of cooling.
1. It's a commercial pursuit, which is meaningfully different than one-off's from the lab. They must have some customer in mind. If they don't, well, their investors will get burned.
2. I can easily imagine a commercial application where, perhaps cooling needs overwhelm a building, this may come in as a cheap alternative.
Get back to us when you've figured out how to cool a rack full of blade servers working near capacity. This may do it more elegantly than air.
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Yes, that may be so, but it's so fucking *messy* that I'd hate to use it. Also do not underestimate the complexities of a housing a column of fluid that's 7' (2.10 meters) tall...
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Seal the rack and fill it with mineral oil. Done.
Midel 7131 (Score:2, Interesting)
Back to the future TCM! (Score:2)
I can see this for extremely dense packed server blades in a rack. Where today our problems are electrical and heat and not compute power. This would solve one of those problems at any rate.
It's like the good old days of TCM mainframes with massive 400psi chiller pumps.
Big deal... (Score:3, Informative)
This has been done before with fluorinert and mineral oil. In fact, there was a posting here on Slashdot [slashdot.org] back in 2000 where the guys did liquid nitrogen-cooled fluorinert. Definitely more cool-points (pun intended) for that.
Fluorinert is definitely a better choice over mineral oil if you ever intend on being able to upgrade or fix the PC, since fluorinert evaporates without a residue, but it's a bit pricey.
Surely the Kingdom of Heaven is near (Score:3, Funny)
.. when we have fully baptized and oil-annointed CPU's.
What's the big deal? (Score:2)
Aside from it looking cool when new and polished, this will be an overpriced piece of junk in 3 years. Given the rate, my Wristwatch will have a stronger and faster CPU by then.
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Of course, the really pricey part - the liquid cooling system can easily be recycled into a new computer.
Looks like... (Score:2)
I wonder if it has his voice and attitude too?
Big problem.... (Score:2)
http://www.parallax-tech.com/fluorine.htm [parallax-tech.com]
only $2450 for 3 gallons..... it wouldn't be exotic if the liquid was cheap.
overdone (Score:2)
Although I never found out the heat dissipation efficiency of the oil, It did work.
How novel... (Score:3, Funny)
What's the point? (Score:2)
With improved power efficiency in chips lowering the heat generated, and better fans and case designs, we're already at the ideal place of a serious desktop computer being silent and cool-running.
Recently I've built two computers following Ars Technica's guide for the Hot Rod. There's no noise at all in a quiet room, and when I periodically check on the temperature, it's lower than older computers--typically 30-35 degrees on the CPU, when older computers are in the 40-50 range. That's with four fans, thre
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Ugh. Warm beer?
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GP is obviously British.
Ugh. Warm beer.
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a nice setup with this liquid means that your hardware will stay cool, no overheating in normal wear and tear at all, that translate into a much longer hardware life.
Fantastic! Now, instead of old hardware continuing to function ten years after Moore's Law makes it obsolete, it will still be usable A HUNDRED years after it becomes pointless to use!
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I remember reading on Slashdot, an ancient story. Guys used combination of that liquid and nitrogen to hit some insane Mhz. It was done in Australia.
You would tell me "so find the story". The "search" part of Slashdot... :)
But Flourinert was considered (Score:2)
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Actually yes, you just need to find the right babes.
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Worse than that. They're outside. In the wild.
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"Though, I want to see the look on the Best Buy Employee's face when you go to return a video card that has been sitting in this goop."
Just tell him it got that way when you were watching Golden Girls videos...
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Maybe they got it backwards and they're talking about GigaKelvin?
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Kilogallon?