Unfreezable coolant

[Rankenphile]

One thing to consider is that most rubbing alcohol has a very large percentage of water in it. This may cause separation when put to very low temperatures, causing the water to freeze out of the alcohol, similar to what you see when you freeze a beer (blech - voice of experience talking here). You can buy higher grades from some chemical supply companies.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder how extremely high proof drinking alcohol, such as Everclear, which is 95% pure alcohol, would work. I know it's not great to drink, but if you could find a practical use for it, you might be on to something.

[crazybillybob]

Alot of the Alcohals that you you can pick up at the hardware and drug store or what not have other "Additives" in them....Like WATER, or a Buffering agent,or a light oil.

Dupont (sp?) makes a liquid refrigerant that looks like water that I belive is non-toxic but is very expensive. But I have seen an articel on an over clocking site where the submerged the pc in this the used dry ice to cool the liquid really cold....there may heve even been liquid Nitrogen used as well.....I can't remeber the site...Try googling Submerged PC....


Good Luck,
Crazybillybob

[Rankenphile]

I've seen that stuff too, Billybob. I forget the name, but they also use it in fire suppressing sprinkler systems in corporate offices. It has all of the physical characteristics of water, is completely non-toxic, but the wierd thing is that it is completely non-conductive and will not get things wet! I saw a demonstration on some tech television show or something about a year ago where they actually submerged a PC in it and ran it, then soaked a book for over a minute, then pulled it out and the pages were still dry.

It is used in office buildings, that can afford it, because most of the damage from fires in buildings like that don't come from the fire itself, but from the water ruining the papers and electronics. I believe it was originally code-named "Sapphire".

I did some google searches for it, and didn't come up with anything immediately, except for a article link to an ABC affiliate linked from an Xbox forum that is broken. I did find the following links that I thought were pretty interesting, though.

PC Submerged in Oil

Another oil-submerged PC

Very exciting liquid-metal cooling systems.

[legoman786]

Very exciting liquid-metal cooling systems.

I want one

Basically, there is something that matches my criteria, but is uber expensive?

[Bum]

Yes....the really super low freezing point, non-conductive, liquids are generally VERY pricey. Like $100 per quart. They are so specialized that you very nearly need to be in the industry to get them.

BTW the ingredient in antifreeze that lowers the freezing point is an alcohol (ethylene glycol).

[Rankenphile]

Lol... leave it to a guy named Bum to know exactly what kind of alcohol you can find in antifreeze.

[Bum]

Whad are you...hic...implorin', applyin', impeach....sayin'?

[Zeus]

Whad are you...hic...implorin', applyin', impeach....sayin'?

ROFL

[GregoryJ]

It would also go without saying that alcohol is also very flammable. The key to alcohol cooling is that it heats up and cools down faster than water. With any cooling solution there are always trade offs. A staight (treated) watercooling setup is less likely to be effected by the case's ambient temps (effecting the water travelling through the tubing) then with alcohol. The trade off is that water takes more energy to heat BUT that means that it also can carry more heat off of the processor/chipset/gpu. Water at room temp is still water. Alcohol is in phase change turning from liquid to gas (hence the smell) at average room temps. The real key would be the radiator. The bigger the Rad the more water it holds and the slower the water would move. This means it would have longer to cool and be more effective. Example: you cant put a radiator from a Civic into a Dodge hemi Pickup and expect it to perform as well as if it were in the smaller car.