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mac mini 4,1 mineral oil emersion liquid cooling
- Thread starter serithg
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Why on earth would you want do to this to a Mac Mini? Liquid cooling of this kind is very problematic and not at all suited for any Macs.
The Superdrive might not work to spec... or is this the OD-less Mini? Would also make plugging in thumbdrives a challenge. 
I'm just going to ask the obvious question..... Why?
The only computers that would be worth doing this to, are high end gaming machines that you are overclocking. Even if you overclock a mac mini (which I have never done, but assume you could with an various application), you are never going to turn a mac mini into a gaming rig.
Besides, I've never seen a oil coolant rig that looks anywhere near as asthetically pleasing as a mac mini....
The only computers that would be worth doing this to, are high end gaming machines that you are overclocking. Even if you overclock a mac mini (which I have never done, but assume you could with an various application), you are never going to turn a mac mini into a gaming rig.
Besides, I've never seen a oil coolant rig that looks anywhere near as asthetically pleasing as a mac mini....
The whole "mineral oil submersion" thing shouldn't be done with an important computer. It really offers no benefit cooling wise according to sites who have done it and I've only seen it done to make a "pc-quarium" where the computer sits inside an aquarium.
I do not know what to say about this thread, totally at a loss for words?
Is this still a Mac forum, or did it go the way of the PC yet?
Is this still a Mac forum, or did it go the way of the PC yet?
I wouldn't say silly, its a popular mod and has worked well for some people but I wouldn't do it with such an expensive computer because it will die. There was one blog about this where someone had a mineral oil submerged computer that was still running after a year and a half.
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A number of multi million dollar server farms would disagree with you, but your right that it's not a practical home brewed solution.
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/for-greener-data-centers-give-servers-an-oil-bath/
When your monthly cost to run your AC system starts to exceed the budget of your average small town extreme cooling measures start to make pretty good sense
chrono1081 said:
A number of multi million dollar server farms would disagree with you, but your right that it's not a practical home brewed solution.
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/for-greener-data-centers-give-servers-an-oil-bath/
When your monthly cost to run your AC system starts to exceed the budget of your average small town extreme cooling measures start to make pretty good sense
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The idea of using some form of oil to cool electrical equipment has a lot of merit in certain situations. Mineral oil however would be a poor choice. Minerals have a bad habit of being conductive.
The idea of using some form of oil to cool electrical equipment has a lot of merit in certain situations. Mineral oil however would be a poor choice. Minerals have a bad habit of being conductive.
Thats pretty neat. I was going off of information for standard machines. Blogs where people make PC-quariums often report no noticeable improvement in temps which is all I had to base my information off of. Its pretty neat that its working well for server farms.
They often report a slower "Time Until Maximum Temperature", which could be useful in some circumstances.
To the OP: It's possible, but one hell of a lot of work. Essentially, you'd have to entirely remove the mini from its case, rejigger a bunch of it so that the moving parts pieces (the HD) are above the oil, etc.
If its a project you're interested in, you're likely better off trying to do it with a Hackintosh. But honestly, its a novelty project - no Mac essentially in existence needs mineral oil cooling.
Mineral oil isn't made from minerals, though. From Wikipedia:
People actually do this? Fans? Well, you would remove the fans, I presume. You might need bigger heatsinks, though.
I've never heard of this before. The only liquid cooling I'd heard of works by circulating a fluid through tubing and heat-exchanger blocks. That sounds more sensible. Until you have a leak.
Biggest problem I see with this is contamination. Eventually, the stuff is going to become conductive.
From what I've gathered, the fans are fine in mineral oil. They don't do much except move the oil around a little, but they don't seem to burn out and they still spin (tho a bit more slowly).
It's only really the hard drive that can't take the oil. The read/write heads can't move fast enough through the viscus fluid, and they'll crap out pretty quickly.
More info here: http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php
None of this is appealing to me, but YMMV
I laughed when I saw the thread title, I thought it was an awesome joke ...
But then I clicked the thread and saw he was serious
But then I clicked the thread and saw he was serious
Not worth doing to any Mac, hackintosh however...
IMO it is not worth doing to any Mac because you cannot overclock any of them. A Hackintosh however, now that would be tempting! I have read about mid and full towers filled with oil and, IMO, is not needed until you have surpassed the cooling capability of air cooling. They must weigh quite a lot!
When you hit 4.5+ GHz with oil cooling please post back in this thread with your screenshots.
Wow, that would be a wicked fast machine and would future proof you for quite some time.
IMO it is not worth doing to any Mac because you cannot overclock any of them. A Hackintosh however, now that would be tempting! I have read about mid and full towers filled with oil and, IMO, is not needed until you have surpassed the cooling capability of air cooling. They must weigh quite a lot!
When you hit 4.5+ GHz with oil cooling please post back in this thread with your screenshots.
Wow, that would be a wicked fast machine and would future proof you for quite some time.
True but unless your buying from a chemical supplier your going to be faced with conductivity problems.
Don't listen to these people. They are just parroting the propaganda promoted by huge computer companies to sell you more computers because theirs catch on fire and blow up, in your lap!!
I have been using special "Total Emersion" oil derived from plants grown organically in Nigeria. Compare this to regular oil that comes from dead animals who in many cases ate meat.
I have been using special "Total Emersion" oil derived from plants grown organically in Nigeria. Compare this to regular oil that comes from dead animals who in many cases ate meat.
I laughed when I saw the thread title, I thought it was an awesome joke ...
But then I clicked the thread and saw he was serious
That would be two of us. But I read through the whole Puget Systems site, and it actually sounds pretty cool.... (no pun intended).
And easy to do. I think they went a little overboard when they added the radiator with 9 cooling fans. Personally I would have pumped the hot oil through an auto oil cooler, set sideways to create an air flow (hot air rising) similar to the principle of the Mac Cube cooling.