About 4 years ago I considered myself a hardcore case modder. I got a new case and took my Dremel to it and after 30 hours of work and many case fans later I had a computer case sporting no less than 9 LED 80mm fans complete with cold cathode lighting inside. It looked great when it was lit up but it sounded like a B-12 bomber was in the room with you.
Water cooling was always there, but out of my budget and to be honest I didn’t feel comfortable putting water that close to my precious gaming rig. Hardcore Computer (www.hardcorecomputer.com) has an unexpected alternative. They have created a dielectric mineral oil cooled PC they call The Reactor. The really interesting thing is that the coolant is not piped throughout plastic tubing and blocks attached to critical points in your PC case.
The whole computer is immersed in a case filled with the oil. This has been done with a 10 gallon aquarium and cooking oil, but after a few days it will get a nice stench to it. Standard platter hard drives are not used in their configurations. Instead they use SSD drives so they can be submersed as well. Hardcore Computer systems start out at $4000 and go up as much as $11,000. Not a bad way to blow through your kid’s inheritance.
