Behind GIGABYTE’s Fish Tank Oil System: A New Take on Liquid Cooling
by Ian Cutress on June 14, 2018 10:00 AM EST
One of the more interesting designs out of the computer industry recently has been GIGABYTE’s fish tank PC build. The concept is similar to a simple mineral oil or thermal cycling PC, however GIGABYTE doubled up on immiscible liquids by also adding a fish tank in the top half of a bifurcated system. The fish have lived in the top part for two months now, and the other liquid in the system is a 3M Novec/Fluorinert variant as we have seen about a hundred dozen times before.
What I wanted to point out about this system was not the fact it has fish, but the liquid cooling loop. Normal water cooling involves a pump and a radiator, with the radiator having lots of fins and fans to push the water through and remove the heat. For this system, GIGABYTE did it a little differently.
Instead of a radiator, GIGABYTE used thermal blocks connected to standard CPU heatsinks and fans. The result is three CPU coolers connected to thermal blocks and they take the heat away. It is an interesting idea, especially when dealing with non-traditional liquids.
For any system builders and modders out there, it would be interesting to see this done in a traditional PC.
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25 Comments
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boozed - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
Observe the ripples in the boundary between the two liquids...RealBeast - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
Ian, how about you get Gigabyte to do a giveaway through AT now that they are done showing this off?And they can keep the fish, I'll just put another rig in the upper tank. I've had poor luck with fish. :)
CalaverasGrande - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link
You people act as if you dont remember Cray Research computers. Such as the Cray II which had liquid cooling.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2
Gunbuster - Monday, June 18, 2018 - link
Surely they could have come up with a better solution than pushing air through those tower coolers in series? Like turn them 90 degrees and give it an inch of gap for air intake?Allen solly - Saturday, September 19, 2020 - link
I thought too much light causes damage to the environment in a tank because the cooling system was not introduced than . Since it has been , I am using this. But we have to be careful to allow for good thermosyphon action, At the same time I need a suggestion about /non-flammable liquid that has a low vapor pressure at 40-50 C