VIRTUAL AQUARIUM PC PC

Was this fun? Did we learn something? Was it worth it? Yes to all. We all panicked-some of us ran for cover and others improvised a cover to contain the mess. The chaotic part happened when the CPU fan hit the surface of the oil, and sprayed us all. This would be even more hilarious if they were in old-school diver suits, hovering around a sunken treasure chest. One small but significant oversight led to some very funny and chaotic results…we forgot to cover the tank! As a result, two large flies are now permanent residents at the bottom.

Submerged, it peaked at 40 C and remains stable. The system temperature before submersion was about 70 C under load.

IO ports at the bottom of the tank support the motherboard, and create space for the LAN cable. CAUTION: Don’t try this without the aid of computer and oil experts. 🙂Īt 220 volts, the power supply is on the side of the tank, supported by two L-shaped parts we 3-D printed. We bought 15 litres of shell tellus s2 mx 46 mineral oil from a farmer friend for a good price. While not needed to run the PC, we used an older GPU during setup. We took old computer parts, including a motherboard, CPU, RAM modules, a hard drive, power supply modules, and hard disks from older notebooks.

VIRTUAL AQUARIUM PC PC

You might be wondering why would we submerge a PC in liquid (in our case, mineral oil)? To that, we reply, “Why does anyone climb Mount Everest? Because they can.” So, we did! We created a Linux PC from upcycled computer parts, submerged it in mineral oil, lit it with LED light strips, and added a LEGO ship, because no aquarium is complete without a sunken ship. Carl Jung once said, “The creative mind plays with the object it loves.” Like Jung, we believe play can fuel innovation, and sometimes, the wilder the idea, the better. 🙂

Virtual aquarium pc