First Fully Submerged Aquarium PC

[Copernilleo]

So what are the temps on the board? I imagine it runs extremely cool!

[SnipeYa25]

Very Very cool.

[ElvenMishap]

Where can I get that fish (the one blowing bubbles)?

[UKTV2UTUBE]

In order to never remove the computer from the tank you would need connector extentions for your USB, VGA, AUDIO, NETWORK ect Although oil would slowly seep into connectors and because its not conductive it would break the connections.

This is the best yet :)

[SVKmellow]

is it silent? could you post a video just with the sound of the server?

[Camster3]

only thing Ive wondered about these computers, what if u want to start up again after turning it off?

[TheEOGeek]

@Camster3 Its completely fine, everything will work like normal in fact!

[Camster3]

@TheEOGeek but how do u turn it back on?

[TheEOGeek]

@Camster3 Your power switch is most likely longer than you think so you just run it to the top of the tank and turn it on from there, you can see it in my video if you look closely, in the middle of my tank and taped to the top.

[Camster3]

@TheEOGeek oh ok. kool i might try this. on an old computer first though

[TheEOGeek]

@Camster3 Great idea, as what I did. But i will recomend that you use a decent computer (nothing special but enough to run movies and what not at a good speed) update everything you can! EVERYTHING! its terrible how i have my computer WITHOUT updated audio drivers..... and connect everything once and make sure you have everything in it that you want.. people in my class wanted to keep adding tihngs to my comp which made oil get everywhere, so plan out everything.. think twice do once! have fun!

[Camster3]

@TheEOGeek ok kl. thx for ur help

[computerhelpman97]

cool psu where did u buy it?

[computerhelpman97]

cool psu where did u buy it?

[TheVlogie]

It's me Matt

[TheVlogie]

I mean great job

[TheVlogie]

Well done

[Daputti]

So uhh... USB?

[Schutzstaffel23]

i always wondered ppl put there power supplies right there on rocks. has any ever got pulled into the fan?

[Robergine]

Totally awesome

[c0rk007hck]

Can fish live in oil?

[ironfrost312]

@c0rk007hck no

no oxigen

[YTBYlover]

You can run fans?

[TheVlogie]

HE'S AWSOME

[Sekcja0serowa]

5,nice fish ;)

[Hidanclub]

where is the disk drive?

[Boeserwolf93]

submerged screen doesnt seem to be very practical to me, and i would also at least plug out all fans, if not disassemble them, but i totally like that bubble nemo^^

[crouchingtiger1000]

im hoping to make my own aqwa pc soon

[JOININGARMY]

how?

[yohon215]

that is still pretty crazy but totally cool man lol

[tomeff2]

very nice :)

[Lundt93]

Can u please plug in my mouse ?

No i dont want my hand to get soaked by mineral oil !!

[lgu8802007]

5\5 stars

[caterhamvc]

Thanks

[GibsonSGKing]

What did you fill it with? I really wanna do this with my pc =D

[mikelike1234]

its like a special oil i think mineral i forgot

[GibsonSGKing]

It's mineral oil, yeah. I'm not entirely sure where I can get it at though =/

[denek620]

Mineral Oil :)

[Pezdetz666]

Mineral oil is available in any drug store as a mild laxative.

[myles889]

mineral oil, i think the fish behind are in a separate fishtank behind the actual pc place

[caterhamvc]

The fish were on a screen saver on the screen that was submerged in the tank.

[iwork925]

@myles889

idiot

[MrPacMan36]

so clear O_O

[chew1500]

have you had this running long enough to know how/if corrosion will affect the longevity of your parts?

[TheChubbyKid]

Best cable management iv seen on a submerged pc. Rocks - what a neat idea.

[craig1360]

hdd, cd drive? could you just make the hdd air tight?

[caterhamvc]

We did not try with an air tight hdd. Hard drives are meant to be able to 'breath' but may still work sealed. We opted for solid state.

[craig1360]

ahh ok, still a great vid though

[ps3bots]

can you not use a ssd

[metalchocobo410]

this isnt the first submerged PC, ppl been doing this since 07

[ratgreen]

wtf how come this works? im utterly confused...

[Deke101]

It works because mineral oil does not conduct electricity and will not short out electronic components. The components will also be protected from dust, as well.

[ratgreen]

man thats kl as hell.

[J0A0123]

No GPU ?!?

[Deke101]

GPU integrated on MB.

[Svadilfare]

I like this video, it really helped when i made my own mineral oil project. You can check out my video if you want to. Thanks Caterhamvc.

[caterhamvc]

Thanks for the feedback. We have checked out your video too - which is v good.

[Bonznumber1]

did you use a SSHD or a stranded platter drive?

[Bonznumber1]

wow i commented b4 the part where it says you used a SSHD but just an fyi NO MATTER WHAT OTHERS TELL YOU platter drives do work and you don't have to cover the hole they just run really slow i have a video with one installed

[caterhamvc]

We did try and submerge a hard drive but the heads hit the disk surface and scratched it all up. If you say you have done it though then I do believe you - it just didn't work for us.

[caterhamvc]

We actually used a CompactFlash card and tricked the motherboard into thinking it was an IDE hard drive. We installed Windows XP on the CompactFlash card and was able to boot from that.

[Bonznumber1]

you did it a very smart way i think the only reason mine still works is i have it disabled most of the time cause it slows down the whole computer if ya look at my vid my system boots to desktop in like 30 sec but with the drive enabled it is like min but i activate it every once and a while just to show it works )

[subsonictonic]

Isn't the evaporating mineral oil a bit of a health hazard? You probably have to top it up quite often i imagine. Great job though, great idea!

[caterhamvc]

Not enough of the (food grade) mineral oil evaporates to cause any health issue (apart from condensing on materials making them combustible). We had to top up one litre in eight months.

[subsonictonic]

excellent

[RamoneTalarico]

Im sure that oil gets very warm , an LCD submerged? and the power supply? thats some serious extra heat, even the wirless networking USB device gets warm (i have a few, i know) It is cool however that its all contained into the tank, i think its nifty. I kept only the bare essentials submerged on my system (videos on my profile)

Great work, very sleek, and CLEAN looking!

[caterhamvc]

Thanks for your comment. In actual fact the item that produced the most heat was the main PSU followed by the CPU.

[urbanrivals]

Can you give me a hint please.

Im building my pc and i don´t know if i can submerge my hard drive or not and dont wanna buy a new one trying xD

Please respond.

thanks a lot

[rtatts]

You cant put a normal HDD in there due to the disks needing to spin so fast and could not do that in oil. hence why we used a solid state drive (memory Card as it)

[Javier142007]

dont u need to take off the fans..? o kud submerge them too.?

[caterhamvc]

Fans work great in the mineral oil (albeit at a slower speed!). They keep the oil moving reducing the tendancy for it to cloud. From our experience and our prior researcg, fans do not seem to fail despite the resistance of the oil.

[goldenWillmen]

do you have ne or you juste looked that for think about have one oil colled pc ?

[goldenWillmen]

what about hard drive and cd dvd driver ? =P

[bamiball1]

lol than nemo fish in the begin:P

[OzniWellman]

So can you turn the computer off and on as you want or will that will cause it to fry?

[grand4theft4auto]

so cute :)

[evilamish]

you did a really good job with the pc

[caterhamvc]

Thanks for your comment. FYI: we have already started planning our next and totally different project....

[caterhamvc]

IT IS NOW THE END OF OUR EXPERIMENT. We have today decommissioned our Aquarium PC. Our most significant observation was that over eight months, one litre of mineral oil had somehow condensed on furniture and carpet up to 1.5 metres from the aquarium. Mineral oil does not burn on its own but fabric soaked in mineral oil will burn long and hot. Therefore our next experiment will be air-tight!!! Let this be a warning to anyone else planning to build a similar system!!!

[Furrowbrow]

You'd also avoid the risk of contamination from water vapour in the air if you did that.

If you had a high volume pump pumping oil from some point at the bottom, and transporting it to around the edges at the top, you'd get a really cool whirlpool effect.. I think that'd look awesome.

[speedsk8r010]

Oh wow, im looking to make my first PC and i think im going to do this :D

1. Does the mineral oil affect the picture quality of the lcd screen, could this set up be perm. used over the course of 2 years?

2. Could this be used for long-term computing? (2 years..? turning it off at night ofcourse :])

3. How do you find power cords long enough to extend to a power bar? O-o

4. Have you had any problems?

Thanks for your time in making the video and answering my questions

-Josh

[reap62]

first of all colony wars. oil will kill a fish second i thought the monitor in the water with the motherboard was kinda cool

[caterhamvc]

Answers to your questions:

1. The pressure darkens the monitor so I would not recommend it for general use.

2. I am about to post an update regarding general use for long-term computing...

3. It is easy to get PC power extension leads.

4. As per my response to your question 2 - I will post an update shortly.

[reap62]

ya. i see what you mean the first 40 seconds of the video shows the monitor getting darker

[impulse858]

what temperatures are you getting?

[colonywars6000]

hey you forgot a real fish

[hawaiidabest]

a fish cant live in minerial oil! lol

[colonywars6000]

he should try and put a real fish may be it could u never know but if it does it would be cool

[Cr1ms0nBL4d3]

Flourinert or HFE might work better :) (might be a bit more expensive)

[gamerzipo]

the motherboard is waterproof or waht cause he didnt cover it nor the PSU

[jacobscoming]

Whats the dimensions of this tank??

[ogicabp4u]

hey ...I got an excellent idea for you guys...let me know what you think..

Get some motorized life like fish from Japan. Yes , they sell robotic fish in Japan! Because they dont need feeding/cleaning. Also put some realistic life like plastic plants and algae "foam" in there as well.

Totally awesome...guys.

Please, please do it! I wanna see fish actually in the tank!

[caterhamvc]

Thanks for your feedback. We will look into the motorized fish!

[TheShadow721]

The wont short circuit because miniral oil doesnt conduct electricity it wont hurt anything, like water would.

[InfiniteD3ath]

how is it that ur computer is short circuicted

oil r now its still liquid

[csmcdem]

sweet, nice job. where do you get the mineral oil? I have no clue where to look for it... any help would be appreciated.

[caterhamvc]

I have tried to post my email address on here so that I can help you with this but I think that youtube is blocking it.

[RamoneTalarico]

First off, great idea with th esolid state Drive,...top notch idea!

secondly, great job on the aesthetics!

and third...I like the fact that you removed the LCD form its shroud and then submerged that too.

for showcasing the technicians skills to a potential customer who walks in...this surely must help business.

btw..how long has this system been up and running now?

[caterhamvc]

Thanks for your comments. It does help business - more than we had expected too. The system has been up and running for nearly four months now!

[bemml]

what did you fill in there?

[Daniel55556]

i soooooooooo totaly wana do that

[FlytandeBurkMat]

Thats Awsome :D

[darkwiz58]

thats is insane how does all that not shorty out in there?

[surefirefan]

he probably used mineral oil which is non-conductive so the comp parts aren't afraid of it :).

[caterhamvc]

We used pure mineral oil. Our first attempt failed because there were microscopic impurities in the first batch of mineral oil which did short out some of the components.

[Daniel55556]

... ok then but im worried about that presure of the oil on lcd soooooo lcds can break if presure is aplied

[dihydrogenmonoxide]

very nice, much more aesthetically pleasing than many of the other oil cooled pc projects I've seen :) as others have said, would be nice to see a higher spec version!

[caterhamvc]

Thanks for your comments. I wasn't prepared to donate any of the parts from my gaming PC so we just used basic kit for this project!

[terrybrooks29]

so what is the coolant you are using

[caterhamvc]

Pure mineral oil.

[mayavania]

if you want to change vga, can you just put them right in to the tank, or you need to take out and clean the oil first

[greendevil98]

no

you can plug it right in I did it with my 1950 xt and my 3870

[caterhamvc]

No jobs going at the moment but if you leave your details with Kate then she will keep them on file. Oh, and the reason for the fans are: 1. They look good and 2. we read reports that the mineral oil can thicken over extended periods of time if not agitated.

[caterhamvc]

Thanks for checking out our aquarium project. You should come into the shop and see it running. Your mate Rob works Sat, Mon and Wednesday.

We do stock components but tend not to sell parts for self build.

Brad

[WorksopGimp]

Can it run Crysis?

[caterhamvc]

I'm afraid not. We were only planning to run the aquarium screen saver so did not spec it up too high.

[WorksopGimp]

It would be nice to see a high spec PC just to see if its plausible,if it is we could see some nice modded case's