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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edzieba - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
Just pick a different Novec formulation with the desired boiling point: https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1091997O/3m-no...PeachNCream - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
Those poor fish! Gigabyte has some sick people working there if they're willing to do that to them just to put up a shoddy, throw-together liquid cooling setup for hardware that ultimately can do fine keeping cool in any standard case filled with air.de3tr0yer - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
The fish are in no danger, they have been living in that tank for over 2 months. They take secial care to keep the water at a suitable temperature and keep the fish alive. If that setup was any harm they would be dead by nowPeachNCream - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
I'm not willing to spend 2 months living a few inches above a tank filled with Fluorinert so I certainly wouldn't put some fish through that just to have a wizbang thing to put on display that already works properly in a box full of air. It seems sadistic to do that for a marketing display at a trade show.GreenReaper - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
Sadism would require that they care about the fish, at least in the sense that they enjoy them suffering. Personally I'd probably live a few inches above a tank if they paid me enough!Achaios - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
Υοutuber Jayz, a watercooling expert, would be someone who would probably do something like this given the motivation.jrs77 - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
der8auer has used this 3M fluid in his recent submerged demo PC-build, it is however not available to endconsumers in the EU as it doesn't pass the regulations. Therefore this is a dead duck.boozed - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - link
I have one question. Is the coolant denser than fish droppings?Tilmitt - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
Don't the fish crap on the rig? How do they clean it?Sn3akr - Friday, June 15, 2018 - link
I bet there's 2 tanks.. 1 for fish and 1 for the cooling liquid, they just polished the edges on the bottom of the fish compartment bofore glueing it, but didnt polish edges on the rest to make it seem like the fluids are on top of eachother.. Just an illusion!