Oil cooling on the computer: advantages and disadvantages at a glance

You can operate a computer not only with air or water cooling, but also with oil cooling. We'll tell you how the system works and what advantages and disadvantages it has.

Oil Cooled Computers: How Does It Work?

Oil can absorb heat like water. Since water absorbs a little more heat in comparison, water cooling usually works more effectively than oil cooling.

• The situation is different when the entire computer is immersed in oil. As a result, the components are not only cooled at the most important points, but at all points. Since oil does not conduct electricity, the components can be immersed without any problems.
• Hard drives and optical drives, however, must not be bathed in oil. However, these components do not need their own cooling anyway.
• In the best case, silicone oils or paraffin are used for oil cooling. If necessary, hobbyists can also get cheap vegetable oil.

Overview of the advantages of oil cooling

Oil cooling offers good cooling performance, which, in contrast to water cooling, requires less effort.

• In contrast to water cooling, a defect in the hardware can be excluded. Damage to the electrical system is not possible.
• The biggest advantage of oil cooling, however, is by far the look. Hardly anyone uses such a fancy method to cool their own PC.

Disadvantages of oil cooling

If you buy a finished system for oil cooling, you pay significantly more money than for water cooling. In-house assembly is still quite cheap.

• However, cooling with oil is not really practical. It is difficult to quickly replace components and to transport the PC.
• If you want to sell individual components once, it will also be difficult. You can still get rid of the RAM quite well from the oil, but you won't get a graphics card completely clean.
• If something goes wrong, the mess is inevitable. Landing around 30 liters of oil on the floor can cost a lot of work and money.

Conclusion: is oil cooling worthwhile for your computer?

Operating a PC with oil cooling is definitely an interesting project. If you still have old hardware lying around at home, you can build your own oil-cooled PC with a few hours and a few euros.

• It is rather questionable whether it really pays to put a lot of money into an oil cooling system.
• Apart from the appearance, the disadvantages outweigh the oil cooling.