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This is probably a stupid question, but one that has been nagging at my mind for a while.
I have seen a number of references online to using an oil-bath as effective server cooling. In general, the idea is to submerge the motherboard and associated hardware in a bath of light oil (sunflower, olive, etc) and the oil will effectively absorb heat from the equipment and dissipate it quickly. The sites typically include video/images of this process in action but the skeptic in me questions the validity of these claims.
I know that light cooking oils are supposed to have an extremely low electrical conductivity, but it still seems to me that, with component pins and etched pathways running fractions of millimeters apart on the board, any fluid still runs a high chance of creating short circuits.
So my question is: Is this actually a viable cooling option in computing, or is this an elaborate e-ploy to dupe the unsuspecting into frying (no pun intended) their equipment in a warranty-voiding manner?
Check out episode 93 of SYSTM here
– straussie – 2009-11-09T21:01:06.98010This isn't sysadmin related. No serious sysadmin is going to "bathe a server in oil". In terms of product development, liquid cooling of computers is nothing new. Old Cray "Supercomputers" used liquid cooling, as have IBM mainframe computers. You're not going to plunge a modern-day rackmount server into a bath of oil and have positive outcomes with respect to warranty and maintainability. – Evan Anderson – 2009-11-09T16:57:25.187
7If you bread it first, it might be tasty. – chris – 2009-11-09T17:07:32.653
3dude, at some state fairs they'll deep fry anything – quack quixote – 2009-11-09T17:31:30.397
1Thanks for all the great responses. Much more than the 'yes or no' I was expecting so thanks for the really good details! – Mike Clark – 2009-11-09T18:18:25.670