Soak It to Me: Inside Liquid-Suspended Gaming PC

echrada

Vista Guru
Looking for a beefy gaming rig, and don't mind getting your hands a little wet? Hardcore Computer's Reactor might just be the 100-pound computational monolith for you.

Crafted from 2.5mm-thick aircraft aluminum and packed with powerful hardware, the Reactor is already a fairly striking and competitive machine. But there's a secret weapon sloshing around in that unassuming tank: four and a half gallons of cooling oil.

PC enthusiasts looking to get the most power out of their machines have often turned to overclocking — pushing key components to perform faster than the manufacturer intended. This generates quite a bit of heat, which is traditionally fought using an array of fans or a maze of tubes pumping cooling fluid to select components.

The Reactor takes the liquid-cooled principle a bit further by submerging everything into a tank of coolant. Of course, this isn't your average fish tank filled with mineral oil — take a look at the innards of this (relatively) mini-supercomputer.

Left: Behold, Hardcore Computer's Reactor. Like most gaming PCs, it's crammed with overclocked, high-performance hardware. But there's an important difference here: Every single component is submerged in a custom-designed cooling oil, called Core Coolant. Less trouble with heat means a faster, highly stable system. Dunking everything in fluid works surprisingly well, and is more efficient compared with traditional air- or water-cooling methods.


Soak It to Me: Inside Liquid-Suspended Gaming PC
 

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My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Acer Aspire 5920gmi notebook
    CPU
    Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.00GHz
    Memory
    4GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS
    Sound Card
    Realtek
    Screen Resolution
    1280 x 800 x 4294967296 colors
    Internet Speed
    crawl
It's been done for a while now this sort of cooling, just this company are cashing in on the idea.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Custom Built
    CPU
    Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
    Motherboard
    XFX MB-750I-72P9 NF750i
    Memory
    4096MB Corsair XMS2 PC-5400
    Graphics Card(s)
    ASUS Nvidia Geforce GTX470
    Sound Card
    ASUS Xonar DX
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell 24" S2409W & Dell 20" E207WFP
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080 & 1680x1050
    Hard Drives
    750GB Western Digital Caviar Black & 500GB Samsung
    PSU
    750 watt Thermaltake Toughpower
    Case
    Coolermaster Dominator 690 Nvidia Edition
    Cooling
    Zalman CNPS9700-NT Cooler, 6x 120mm Chassis Fans
    Keyboard
    Logitech G11 Keyboard
    Mouse
    Logitech G5 Laser Mouse (2007 edition)
    Internet Speed
    100Mbps
    Other Info
    abit airpace 54mbps wireless PCI-E x1 card
That is so cool, but i would imagine changing hardware could be a real handsome frog....

~Lordbob
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Custom
    CPU
    Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS P5QC
    Memory
    2x2GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce 9500GT 1Gb
    Sound Card
    Mobo
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Samsung SyncMaster 206bw
    Screen Resolution
    1680x1050
    Hard Drives
    Samsung SP2514N ATA 250Gb 7200RPM
    Samsung [Model] 1Tb 7200RPM SATA2
    PSU
    Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750W
    Keyboard
    Razer Tarantula
    Mouse
    Razer Lachesis
    Internet Speed
    not fast enough
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