[mythtv-users] Those tasty Zotac boards

Robert Johnston anaerin at gmail.com
Wed Jun 17 05:19:03 UTC 2009


On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 23:03, <f-myth-users at media.mit.edu> wrote:
>    > Seal the entire unit watertight and fill the gap with mineral oil.
>
>    > The oil acts as heat conductor to the case, which then dissipates the
>    > heat via convection.
>
> Oh, excellent!  That should also allow you to submerge the entire unit
> to great depths without implosion; then you could show high-definition
> movies to the fishies.
>
> (Of course, most display devices would be problematic at such depths
> due to their construction technologies; it would be difficult to make
> them implosion-proof without unreasonably strong enclosures.  Maybe
> you could wire into a cuttlefish's nervous system and use its
> chromatophores as your output device; they certainly seem to have
> the bandwidth and response time required!)

Ah, sarcasm. I am indeed fully trained in it's use, being as I'm from
the UK originally.

I suggested oil-submersion cooling (Which, in this case, would be on a
VERY small scale given the size of the enclosure proposed) as it
provides a very simple and efficient way to transfer heat, and has the
added advantage of being absolutely silent. And as Mineral Oil does
not conduct electricity, there is no danger of shorting. You could go
the more expensive route and use something like 3M's Flourinert, but
that is hideously expensive, and overkill.

Of course, if a mechanical hard-drive, or a CD/DVD/BD-ROM drive is
also to be included within this enclosure, using submersion cooling is
not recommended. Optical drives (obviously) are difficult to seal. And
hard-drives have air intakes hidden within them (usually a pin-sized
hole) to equalise pressure as the platters spin.

However, for something like an in-car system, a rugged all-aluminium
case, with a SSD (Or CF card) for booting, secured firmly within an
oil-filled and sealed case would be a perfect system. Rugged,
convection cooled, and virtually bombproof.

As no more detail was given than "How do I cool this board in a tiny
space", I believed that having a small, efficient and maintenance free
option would work well.
-- 
Robert "Anaerin" Johnston


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