Stay with me, this is gonna be a wild one.
I am seriously considering going in and attempting this build. I want to create a novel, wicked overkill Extreme OC build that is actually usable for gaming, etc. Usable, as in being able to be turned on with a few switches rather than needing liquid gas, but not a daily driver by any stretch.
The overall concept is to build a submerged PC in which the oil is cooled sub zero. The point being to have a sub zero PC with no chance of condensation on the components.
The case would be custom built. I did the thermal conductivity calculation and 1.5”-2” acrylic will allow the internal side of the wall to be -40C and the outside wall to at room temp ~60C. It will be a tub style were the lid is pressure set down below the high oil line. The only exposed area will be a small grommet hole for IO. That way condensation will not get into the oil itself. An oil circulator pump may be needed if convection/viscosity causes uneven heat dissipation in the oil.
The oil will be a thin rated silicon oil since it has a much lower pour temperature compared to mineral oil. Its dielectric, non-corrosive, polar to water and easily circulated at the temps I am targeting. It is about $110 a gallon which is a lot.
The cooling is the next wild thing. Instead of circulating a cooled liquid through a loop I want to directly cool the oil the PC is submerged in. 10,000 BTUs is about a cooling factor of 3000 watts. But that is at standard room temps, no loss, etc. I want to target 20,000 BTUs, overkill. To do this I want to install a 2 ton outdoor AC compressor. Instead of routing the cooled refrigerant to a blower, I will create a custom copper heat sink that allows the cooled refrigerant enough time and surface area to remove that thermal energy from the oil. The standard r401a refrigerant should drop down to a min of around -45C so I would hope to hover at -20C under load.
Ironically the hardest component to obtain here seems to be the GPU. I would want a KP 3090. For cpu I think a Silicon Lottery binned 10900k should do fine since I don't think rocket lake should be much different. Throw that in a 490z Dark. Grab a stupid high clock crucial like their 5100MHz kit for giggles.
The end product, I hope, would be to switch on the AC condenser, cool the oil, then fire up the rig and play games for a few hours.
I know this is dumb. I have a physics degree and love the nerd level this project could bring. Definitely would take 6 months plus. I would have to learn a bunch of skills which I enjoy doing. I also think it’s likely to fail, but I am cool with that.
Let me know what you think! Or if I am missing something huge, etc!