Submerged Oil Cooling Cost Analysis, The Oil Side
Yesterday we covered the cost of building a water cooling system that cools all components of a PC, the one referenced being a NAS. Now we'll look at the cost of an oil cooling rig.
The first thing you need to consider is the tank you'll be putting your components into. Last week when I began discussing this topic I mentioned that 20 gallon fish tank. Why so big/small? The first thing to consider of course is can what you want to put in there fit in there.
On average a 20-gallon tank is about as small as you can go. This is primarily because of the room needed to get the components inside. Consider your average PC tower case. This would be a Mid-Tower case. Generally speaking a mid-tower case only just holds an ATX motherboard, power supply, with only a few internal or external 5.25" and 3.5" slots. On average such cases measure 8"x16"x18", once you remove the bezel. A 20-gallon fish tank measures roughly 15"x18"20". As you can see, that's relatively close in size.
You may be able to go a little smaller than 20-gallons by not submerging the PSU, but you may not gain enough space to go for any pre-built tanks that are both smaller than 20 but still large enough to use. Without getting into the science of it, you also don't want to be barely squeezing your stuff in the tank. You want some spare volume that will ultimately fill with oil. It's the same reason you want some breathing room around your components in an air-cooling setup.
So, for this example we'll go with a 20-gallon tank. The price of fish tanks will vary depending on if you buy one online, from a national retailer like PetSmart or Petco, or if you go to a pet shop in your area. You can spend as little as $30, or go over the top and spend something like $250 or more. Really all you need is something that won't leak, and tanks don't really have many "features" to add aside from perhaps adding a seamless look or something along those lines. Counting on some frugality, and in part to negate the equivalent factors, I'll allot the same $50 I more or less assumed for the water cooling build yesterday.
Now, you need a pump. The pump will not be seated inside the tank with the oil. It will be seated outside the tank. This gives you any number of options for a pump. It doesn't need to be supremely fast and move a whole lot of oil, but it does have to be powerful enough to overcome the fact that oil is a considerably thicker fluid than water. You'll definitely want to go with something a little stronger than a basic pump. The $50 allotted for the pump/reservoir combo from yesterday's water cooling build might be good enough, but to be safe you might want to go with a dedicated pump only for around $80.
Next, you'll need about five or six feet of tubing. Again, considering the thickness of oil you'll want a relatively large diameter tubing. Nothing huge, but you don't really want 1/4" inner diameter tubing. 1/2" is probably best, but try not to go below 3/8". It will cost a little more, around $1.75 a foot, but when you're only buying about 6 feet, that's not a lot. We had a little under $5 for the water cooling build, this will bring it to about $11 here.
Now, the oil. As I noted in the first post on this matter last week, you need to use baby oil or mineral oil. Baby oil is easier to find, you can get it at any store that sells cosmetic goods or toiletries. From Wal-mart all the way down to the local convenience store likely has it. But the individual bottles are small, measuring in ounces. A 20-gallon tank needs 20-gallons of oil. So, unless you want to get weird stares at the register for carting out the entire store's supply of baby oil, you'll likely wan to try for mineral oil. Harder to find in a local setting, but comes in gallons, not ounces, you'll likely have to check a farm supply store, or some specialty stores that might cater to this somewhat odd need. It should run around $20 a gallon regardless if you're buying up a bunch of bottles of baby oil or a gallon bottle of the mineral oil. That's the biggest price tag here at $400.
Next, you need a radiator. It doesn't need to be anything fancy. It mainly needs to have a spacious inner chamber so the oil isn't constricted too much. That should net roughly the same as the water cooling build, $60.
Now there are a few incidentals. You'll have to invent a means of mounting the motherboard. You want the rear I/O panel facing the top for access, so that will mean hanging the motherboard from the top of the case. Then, you'll need to devise some manner of turning the system on and off. Some places like FrozenCPU.com sell aftermarket parts that fill that role. Worst case scenario you can buy any old cheap case and rip out its front I/O panel and find some way of mounting that on the tank. I'll set aside $50 for these incidentals. You probably don't need that much, but it's a safe contingency.
That brings the total cost for establishing this rig to about $650. If you recall yesterday, the water cooling build had two price options. The cheaper one had a $700 dollar price tag for a system with no dedicated GPU. If you added a dedicated GPU you needed to add a water block, additional radiators, and additional fittings, that cost grew to $900. The beauty of the submerged oil cooling setup is that even with a change to a dedicated GPU, much like if you were doing the same in a standard air cooled PC case, you don't necessarily need to eat any more cost to make the cooling solution work. As long as the component itself fits in the case/tank, you're good to go.
Thus, as you can see, there is a relatively marginal but present difference as cost savings with oil cooling. Tomorrow, I'll go about wrapping up this discussion with a look at what other tidbits you need to keep in mind if you're thinking about doing this, particularly what cost overruns you may want to account for and avoid.
The first thing you need to consider is the tank you'll be putting your components into. Last week when I began discussing this topic I mentioned that 20 gallon fish tank. Why so big/small? The first thing to consider of course is can what you want to put in there fit in there.
On average a 20-gallon tank is about as small as you can go. This is primarily because of the room needed to get the components inside. Consider your average PC tower case. This would be a Mid-Tower case. Generally speaking a mid-tower case only just holds an ATX motherboard, power supply, with only a few internal or external 5.25" and 3.5" slots. On average such cases measure 8"x16"x18", once you remove the bezel. A 20-gallon fish tank measures roughly 15"x18"20". As you can see, that's relatively close in size.
You may be able to go a little smaller than 20-gallons by not submerging the PSU, but you may not gain enough space to go for any pre-built tanks that are both smaller than 20 but still large enough to use. Without getting into the science of it, you also don't want to be barely squeezing your stuff in the tank. You want some spare volume that will ultimately fill with oil. It's the same reason you want some breathing room around your components in an air-cooling setup.
So, for this example we'll go with a 20-gallon tank. The price of fish tanks will vary depending on if you buy one online, from a national retailer like PetSmart or Petco, or if you go to a pet shop in your area. You can spend as little as $30, or go over the top and spend something like $250 or more. Really all you need is something that won't leak, and tanks don't really have many "features" to add aside from perhaps adding a seamless look or something along those lines. Counting on some frugality, and in part to negate the equivalent factors, I'll allot the same $50 I more or less assumed for the water cooling build yesterday.
Now, you need a pump. The pump will not be seated inside the tank with the oil. It will be seated outside the tank. This gives you any number of options for a pump. It doesn't need to be supremely fast and move a whole lot of oil, but it does have to be powerful enough to overcome the fact that oil is a considerably thicker fluid than water. You'll definitely want to go with something a little stronger than a basic pump. The $50 allotted for the pump/reservoir combo from yesterday's water cooling build might be good enough, but to be safe you might want to go with a dedicated pump only for around $80.
Next, you'll need about five or six feet of tubing. Again, considering the thickness of oil you'll want a relatively large diameter tubing. Nothing huge, but you don't really want 1/4" inner diameter tubing. 1/2" is probably best, but try not to go below 3/8". It will cost a little more, around $1.75 a foot, but when you're only buying about 6 feet, that's not a lot. We had a little under $5 for the water cooling build, this will bring it to about $11 here.
Now, the oil. As I noted in the first post on this matter last week, you need to use baby oil or mineral oil. Baby oil is easier to find, you can get it at any store that sells cosmetic goods or toiletries. From Wal-mart all the way down to the local convenience store likely has it. But the individual bottles are small, measuring in ounces. A 20-gallon tank needs 20-gallons of oil. So, unless you want to get weird stares at the register for carting out the entire store's supply of baby oil, you'll likely wan to try for mineral oil. Harder to find in a local setting, but comes in gallons, not ounces, you'll likely have to check a farm supply store, or some specialty stores that might cater to this somewhat odd need. It should run around $20 a gallon regardless if you're buying up a bunch of bottles of baby oil or a gallon bottle of the mineral oil. That's the biggest price tag here at $400.
Next, you need a radiator. It doesn't need to be anything fancy. It mainly needs to have a spacious inner chamber so the oil isn't constricted too much. That should net roughly the same as the water cooling build, $60.
Now there are a few incidentals. You'll have to invent a means of mounting the motherboard. You want the rear I/O panel facing the top for access, so that will mean hanging the motherboard from the top of the case. Then, you'll need to devise some manner of turning the system on and off. Some places like FrozenCPU.com sell aftermarket parts that fill that role. Worst case scenario you can buy any old cheap case and rip out its front I/O panel and find some way of mounting that on the tank. I'll set aside $50 for these incidentals. You probably don't need that much, but it's a safe contingency.
That brings the total cost for establishing this rig to about $650. If you recall yesterday, the water cooling build had two price options. The cheaper one had a $700 dollar price tag for a system with no dedicated GPU. If you added a dedicated GPU you needed to add a water block, additional radiators, and additional fittings, that cost grew to $900. The beauty of the submerged oil cooling setup is that even with a change to a dedicated GPU, much like if you were doing the same in a standard air cooled PC case, you don't necessarily need to eat any more cost to make the cooling solution work. As long as the component itself fits in the case/tank, you're good to go.
Thus, as you can see, there is a relatively marginal but present difference as cost savings with oil cooling. Tomorrow, I'll go about wrapping up this discussion with a look at what other tidbits you need to keep in mind if you're thinking about doing this, particularly what cost overruns you may want to account for and avoid.
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