My plan is for 2 SSDs in Raid0 for uber maximum awesomeness. I forgot to mention that, and also didn't show the other side of the tank which is where the 2 SSDs are submerged near the bottom/back. And because my budget is limited, I might just get enough hardware to assemble a working computer and add stuff to it at a later point.
As for the rads, I believe they (at least 1) are necessary, but the fans should be optional. The oil bath is a closed environment so the heat would just keep building up thus cooling the hardware less effectively. That's what I've read anyhow... The
Puget Systems rig (which has no oil cooling system) runs over 80Celsius under load, which is not what I want for my computer. I'm not expecting lower than normal temps, but I expect the temps to stay pretty stable even when OC'd a bit and under load. And we DO like overkill...so it's win, win!
I do like the way the fans look spinning slowly in the oil, so they will stay. I've read that they will be fine and there is no danger of them burning up, but I will be under-volting them anyway--the CPU fan via the bios, and I'll probably use RivaTuner to keep the graphics card fans chugging at about 10-20%.
I guess I can't embed video from ImageShack? So
here (dial up users beware!) is a link to a video I just rendered out. It shows the components a bit, although it doesn't represent specific hardware at this point. It also shows a bit of wave action, but the movement of the camera sort of ruins that experience.
I also rendered out the following:
The front:
This shows the regular, old aftermarket air cooler that I'll have mounted to the CPU on the left and a shiny, modular PSU on the right. I've heard that not having a heatsink on the CPU in the oil will just cause an extreme hot spot in the oil and won't effectively cool it. So I'm thinking the copper heat-pipes will draw the heat away to the aluminum fins which should cool just like in the air, but better. There's also some "illustrated wave action" at the bottom.
The back:
The back shows the pump in the upper left, SSDs in the lower left, cold-oil return on the right side (barely visible actually, forget about this
), and above the tank is a hole in the back that serves as both an air intake if the fans are running and an exit for a nice, neat bundle of cables.
The left side:
Looks like a normal PC...floating in mid-air! At least I hope. I'm not sure what the refractory properties of mineral oil are and I intend for the acrylic plate everything is mounted to to be barely visible.
The right side:
Looks like the other side but with different pieces floating.
(I swear ImageShack is making my vids darker...it's the exact same scene as the stills were rendered from...maybe it's just me though.)