Exclusive: Oil Immersion Cooling Goes Mainstream with Hardcore PC's Reactor
Posted 12/25/08 at 03:12:35 PM by Gordon Mah Ung
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Stop. You had us at oil submersed motherboard, CPU and GPUs. You didn’t even have to dunk the SSDs, PSU or create a custom motherboard and bullet resistant tank too to convince us that you’re really hard core, umm, Hardcore.
Of course, if you stare too hard at the tank, you’ll miss all the heavenly glory that the Hardcore PC truly is. From its beautiful aluminum case, to its top port routing and the easy to access hard drives, every centimeter of the machine oozes custom computing. And we can honestly say that after tinkering with the most exotic PCs available on Earth for a decade now. What Hardcore is trying to do is so over the top that no one has ever tried it before on a production machine.
But before Hardcore can ascend to take its place among the top performance PC makers, there are an awful lot of questions to answer. Like can they really make and sell these babies for how much the company claims it can? Does it really work? To find the answer to that read on.
The future today! Switched on, the Reactor looks like a PC snatched from the future and placed on your desktop. Production machines promise to be quiet and as ominous as it looks here.
Fighting the heat
Since the PC was born, we’ve been fighting heat. Conventional PC’s use combination of fan/heat sink, chassis fans and ducts to try to keep the machine from turning into the oven. But as the heat continued to climb, enthusiasts turned to liquid cooling the CPU and GPUs. Others have used a combination of liquid cooling and thermal electric coolers to help move temperatures lower.
Both of these methods face one problem though. Conventional fan/heat sinks can’t move the thermals fast enough and create too much noise and liquid cooling key hot components doesn’t do enough to help the surrounding components. So what if you took all of the hot components, dunked them in a non-conductive oil and sold it?
Slimlines only: Hardcore decided to adopt mobile drives to save space in the machine.
It’s also clearly no window: Up close you can see an occasional shimmer as a thermal layer of oil swirls in the tank but that can be changed by removing a plug that adds more gurgle to people know its full of oil and not just a fancy window.
That’s the concept that started Hardcore a few years ago. In fact, the company has U.S. Patent No. 7,403,392 for “Liquid submersion cooling system.” Submersing the components is far more effective than even the highest volume fans because liquid is a far better conductor of heat than air. With the oil that Hardcore uses, the company figures it’s about 10 times more effective than simple air cooling. Since the liquid envelops the entire videocard and motherboard, it also cools the voltage regulators, chipset, and RAM. A pump circulates the liquid through a custom radiator to keep the temps down. Simple circulation isn’t enough to keep the CPU and GPU cool, so custom blocks are fitted to the CPU and GPU to increase surface area and increase the flow of liquid over the hottest components. The result is a relatively quiet PC for the amount of hardware it packs. Hardcore estimates that the components in the machine should never really run higher than ambient room temperature if all is well. If it works in the real world the way it should in the scientific calculator, the liquid cooling should allow the machine to run at greater clock speeds for longer periods of time than more traditional cooling methods.
Of course, all this is meaningless if the company isn’t real. Which is the hard to believe part of Hardcore. With a custom, aluminum-cast case, aerospace transparent tank, mil-spec RAM and redundant power supplies, you’d expect such a rig to fetch into the low $10K range. Hardcore is spec’ing its lowest configured machine in the $4K. So we’re supposed to believe that a custom PC company just comes out of nowhere with an insane design at a surprisingly moderate prices?
Gobble, gobble: To remove the core of the Reactor, you have to literally pull it out like you would yank a turkey out of a deep fryer.
Yes, sir says Darren Klum, president of Hardcore. The company is real, already has 30 employees and is about to be approved for its second round of financing from investors. When the company turns the switch on the web site, www.hardcorecomputer.com, (please don’t type just www.hardcore.com, it’s not work safe and probably not ActiveX safe either) it expects to start spitting out machines in Rochester, Minn. like Terminator T1000s coming off a Skynet assembly line.
Klum said it’s been more than two years in the making but it’s real. To make sure that Klum wasn’t about to rip off his mask to reveal that he was Ashton Kutcher and that Maximum PC and its readers had just been Punk’d, we did some legwork to verify the background on the company. The U.S. Patent Office does indeed show Klum, CTO Chad Attlesey and CEO Al Berning with a patent for liquid submersion. The Minnesota Secretary of State shows the company was incorporated in January of 2006 and credit checks with both Experian and Dun and Bradstreet check out too. If this is a rouse to create Internet hype for computers that will never be sold (gee have we heard that one before?), it would certainly have to be the most elaborate scam to date.
Drip, dry: You’ll have to wait a few seconds for the oil to drain off of the hardware before you want to touch anything.
i think although the
Submitted by dazza145 on Fri, 12/26/2008 - 10:25pm
i think although the performance would be great how long is it going to last before all the parts go soggy and no longer work
has anyone here bought one because i think you would be foolish
how long? 18 month and
Submitted by nekollx on Sat, 12/27/2008 - 12:11pm
how long?
18 month and counting so far going by previous menieral cooled pcs
Submitted by dtischerd on Thu, 12/25/2008 - 8:45pm
i just jumped on over to their site and priced the baddest of the bad machines...
Reactor ExtremeTotal configuration$12803.00Subtotal.
Submitted by nekollx on Fri, 12/26/2008 - 9:18am
which is still less then a tricked out Mac Pro
This is way, way beyond my
Submitted by I Jedi on Thu, 12/25/2008 - 6:27pm
This is way, way beyond my budget for certain. However, this looks very nice indeed.
Submitted by Digital-Storm on Thu, 12/25/2008 - 5:26pm
Why is old news being ressurected? This was up a long time ago. Same with the 25 Windows tips one.
WIll Already Said Why
Submitted by mitpatterson on Thu, 12/25/2008 - 9:35pm
If you would kindly refernce a post Will made Yesteday:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/happy_holidays_team_maximum_pc_you
Read the 2nd Paragpah and it tells his planns. But to sum it up for you, He is going to repost some of his favorites from the past year. Since there will be no new news today(holiday, everyone off)
That being Said, you would have known this if you were a real fan. and vistied the site often.
mitpatterson
life just keeps getting better
Submitted by jihnn on Thu, 12/25/2008 - 5:09pm
this puter looks well made the connectors and finish look sweet. i think i'm in love course i'll have to sell my car or truck to own one,, hey anyone need a wife or child.... nope can't have the dog
gimmy a service manual and let me change the oil
i have an unreasonable need to own one of these
Submitted by sampleaccurate on Fri, 12/12/2008 - 10:00am
Very cool looking but totally impractical. The reason noboby has patented this before is that there is no appreciable market for it. In a year from now a standard air or water cooled computer will outperform this and be easily upgradable, while this thing will be a nightmare to upgrade or even maintain. And as others have said, been done before hundreds if not thousands of times. Only thing new is that someone is now trying to sell them as pre-made systems.
Submitted by corefan on Thu, 12/04/2008 - 10:45pm
I'm drooling all over myself looking at the Reactor. What an amazing feat of total liquid submersed glory. I saw the G4TV review of this beast and it appears it's benchmarks even beat out i7. It's the fastest they have reviewed hands down. Benchmarks are looking like 26,400+ that is outstanding. WOW!! I'll bet with some overclock tweakage it can do even better. Wanna bet anyone? I'll be teh 26,400 was the factor set benchmark. If so - wow. My question is who are these guys? Where did they come from? This is too cool.
I have read some of the posts here and wonder if some of you have ever worked on a computer. This thing kicks a$$. Let me check off the innovation lists on this rig: Total liquid submersion (check), 3 SSDs in RAID 0 with direct connects on the mobo (check), two power supplies (check), Intel Quad at 4.2Ghz - I'm sure it can go faster (check), hot swap hard drives (check), 3 vid cards in SLI put on liquid submerged ice (check), custom mobo with X-fi integration (check), and an amazing case design with network I/O easy to reach (check). Tell me, how can you even compare this to anything in the market with so many firsts checked off? It's clearly in a class by itself. Both Alienware and Voodoo must be nervous as hell when they see a start-up company completely out design, out perform and out class their computers. No marketing hype from the two gaming PC sell-outs will make them compete against Reactor. HA HA.
With all my excitement I still have some reservations. Is this for real or some kind of cruel joke. Also, how can the base price on this be $3700? Well, I'm going to find out soon, I'm buying one. I'll let you know how it goes. CAN'T FREAKING WAIT!!!!
typo
Submitted by Stephenh1984 on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 6:54pm
i see a typo, well in the mag not here instead of the first word being "stop" like it is here it is "top"
anyways, i cant wait to get me one of these
edit: nevermind i see the "s"
Submitted by Aengus on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 11:28am
The photos are amazing to look at.. question is what are the specs going to come back as. I am interested in if they are the best cooling system on the market would they work well as a server on 24/7? Just have to wait and see the reviews when they come out.
Submitted by mnpctech.com on Sat, 11/01/2008 - 7:21am
I'll get to see it up close next week during my meeting with the CTO.
wtf?!?
Submitted by pcwizmtl on Wed, 10/29/2008 - 11:45am
all of this and no benchmarks and\or temp readings????
Submitted by nekollx on Thu, 10/30/2008 - 8:15am
well it wont be in production for another couple weeks, this was a "preview" not a "review" after all
Submitted by guiri on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 8:18pm
If nothing else, it's pretty :)
I saw something similar on youtube. Some polish guys dipped a puter in a fish tank but it did work.
Hey, found the link.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9dU10goanM&NR=1
:)
George
I vouche for that haha :D
Submitted by s3th on Mon, 10/27/2008 - 3:37pm
I vouche for that haha :D
Submitted by Windbreaker on Mon, 10/27/2008 - 9:51am
The patents will hold up. One can patent an improvement to a current design. Consider that all Hardcore Computers has done is take a basic computer design and improved its cooling--therefore improving on a current design.
Besides, Cray was immersion-cooling computers back in 1985, before most of you youngsters were born ;)
That being said--there is some very clever and well thought-out design in this box and it is waaay cool. I sincerely hope this box is not the latest BeBox.
Submitted by s3th on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 11:35pm
Im an amateur you could say on custom builds but ever sense Ive wanted to build my own Ive seen many, and this is one hell of beast. The oily messes though switching out pieces will be a tough one and other obvious watch-outs. What I like is surely enough with all this power you wouldn't need a new machine for atleast 5 or 6 years, probably longer, as long as you take care of it.
- Be carefull of knocking it over
- I suggest keeping it on the floor and not elevated if elevated, keep it very low to the ground.
- Have a desk set up thats over a hardwood floor for easier cleaning if a mess does occur for some reason.
- Powerstrips to protect from thunder-storms, etc, or just keep it unplugged during a storm for gauranteed safety.
Just the normal safety measures to ensure the life of this PC through every year.
But overall this is one badass machine and it would take your gaming and video/picture editing fantasies to a place not of this world. It satisfies me in every possible way.
Submitted by nekollx on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 12:01pm
so i take it in response to the question "was it good for you" that would be a "yes, oh god yes!!!!!!!!"
Submitted by -it- on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 3:13pm
well this is their first oil emmersion build, maybe within a year or so they will be able to do with out proprietary parts.
Bus to Cynicsville
Submitted by BroadSide on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 10:49am
I'm on the bus to Cynicsville with this one. Absolutely beautiful rig that deserves to win 'Rig of the Month" and then some but is going to have a hard time finding a lucrative market as a mass produced computer. No enthusiast in their right mind is going to buy this even at the bargain price of $4000. Propriatory parts, a mess like a bomb in a chippy everytime you pop the case and perhaps no significant gain in performance over other high end cooling systems???....Who is this rig aimed at? Lottery winners and other assorted rich and shameless who don't really care about what's inside but really dig the cool lava lamp effect. Congrats on getting all those investors to part with their cash so you could build your dream rig. Shmoozing ability worthy of a presidential candidate.
Submitted by AlaskaDrew on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 1:55am
Its a neat idea and conversation piece but a big part of my passion for PCs is being able to build it myself and upgrade parts on a regular basis. I want to see if this thing really performs so much better that its worth dunking your computer parts in oil. To me this looks like a beautiful pain in the ass. I feel like an artist looking at someone else's painting. It's beautiful, but I want to paint my own paintings. Its the after without the before and during man!
Submitted by billysundays on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 7:08pm
I gotta admit this must be the most beautiful rig I've ever seen. I keep visiting this article just to look at the pics (who's the photographer Gordon). The level of proprietar-ity(?) might be alarming, but its use here is also inspiring. I mean when I'm thinking up of ingenius PC modding fantasies schemes, I never consider "Well what if I could make a redesigned, custom motherboard, and commission Creative Labs to help me". Actually I do, but i never take myself seriously. I also like to imagine what we might see in the future if the company miraculously succeeds.
- I would like to see a version, based on their current design, that would be designed to be place with the side window facing the room, like an aquarium, to focus on its aesthetics. For example, the components that are usually placed on the front of a traditional PC case, like the front inputs and optical drives, would instead be located above and/or below the "side" window (which would in this case be considered the front window). Imagine one of those LCD readout displays completing the look.
Also, how about implementing an External PCI-E solution that would give users the ability to install add-in cards in a seperate section of the case that's not submersed. That seems like a no brainer.
- You know what, I take back what I said before about featuring this on the cover of MaxPC. It should totally be on the cover. Sure, its best to be wary of the company's future success, but this PC speaks directly to our passion for our hobby, not our consumerism, and the photographs do it justice, and its an exclusive! My head has been swelling with ideas inspired by this article. I'm surprised there aren't more posts.
(sorry for the bullet points, its the only way to make paragraphs since posts are acting funky)
Submitted by gordonung on Tue, 10/28/2008 - 2:08pm
Our chief photographer: Mark Madeo. I'll pass along the kind words.
Yes, I agree, I do think that a way to add additional cards or external I/O would be a good idea.
Submitted by billysundays on Tue, 10/28/2008 - 4:34pm
I meant specifically the "External PCI-E" specification, also known as "Cabled PCI Express". I don't understand why its never utilized, and an oil submersed PC seems like the perfect excuse for why PCI-SIG created the specs, to allow more flexibilty in PC designs.
Finally a system worth the high price tag.
Submitted by Smiling Cat on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 9:50pm
I really like how they went the extra mile in almost every regard to give you something that actually justifies the huge price tag. It's always annoyed me that high end builders charged you two or three times more for something you can put together yourself.
The whole package looks incedible, and the features packed in every nook and cranny is well done. The design is so well though out that it borders that laptop area. Difficult or impossible to change some things once you get it although with the hardware it should last a couple years.
Submitted by Russianblue on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 11:09am
i like the suggestion about the aquarium type display. they should also put a few little plastic fish, or round balls in it with a UV light....which would "swim" in the pumped oil!
Submitted by billysundays on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 4:01pm
Exactly, where's the faux kelp, the little diver man, or at least a bubble maker. They sure are gonna be embarressed with themselves when read our suggestions.
Submitted by guiri on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 8:26pm
Man, I would love to have this in a real aquarium with fish and stuff around it. That would be soo cool and yes, it absolutely deserves to be on the cover
Submitted by billysundays on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 6:47pm
-
mmmm....
Submitted by Electron_Star on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 2:39pm
Just don't keep it on too long, or else the RAM sticks will look more like french fries.
Horrible Idea!
Submitted by WindowsXP on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 5:09pm
We can use that oil to fuel our cars MPC! Come on now!
:p
Lovely article, keep up the good work.
Staff photographer!
Submitted by Number Six on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 5:47am
The photographs in this feature are stunning. Great work.
Submitted by billysundays on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 5:59pm
Hey, has anyone in the MaxPC staff noticed that the paragraphs in posted comments aren't breaking? Appreciate the new listing of allowed HTML tags though.
Submitted by OilPC on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 3:09pm
As Kaldor said, It has been done by Puget Systems and Toms Hardware.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/strip-fans,1203.html
However, as far as I know, There are probably more than 100 (or 1000) people who have tried this kind of cooling already around the world, and I am one of them. I also built my first mineral oil cooling system with radiator cooling in late 2006. You can check it out at the link below.
What I'm trying to say is that no matter how many people out there have built a system like this, this is the best looking and fully functional system out there. I have to say that this system made a mark as a first commercially available oil cooling system in the world.
Also, for the patent, it doesn't really matter who tried to build this kind of system first, but who filed a patent first.
Submitted by rriffenburg on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 12:37pm
Many years ago IBM had an oil cooled core memory in one of its' products. It was a bitch to maintain.
It fascinates me how
Submitted by jwalch.hawk on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 11:46am
It fascinates me how everyone seems to think that the since Hardcore was not the first to do this that the patent isn't legitimate...
Clearly you all underestimate just how broken the US patent system is.
That said, I'm glad that at least in this case everyone is fully aware that independent PC modders have been doing this for years... At least the right group is getting credited with the actual innovation that way. Arguing which modder did it first is mostly semantics, and it's the sort of thing that several people could develop in parallel (ie, person A could very well have done it at basically the same time as person B without necessarily having gotten the idea from magazine C).
At 4k, this is really cool because it brings the machine to a lot of people that couldn't afford something more exhorbitant and aren't crazy enough modders to do it themselves on a cheaper machine. I know a little bit of the whole nerd mentality thing is that we like to keep some of our cool stuff as a sort of trade secret, but I have high hopes for this being a pretty popular item.
Submitted by pcwizmtl on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 7:28am
I agree with Talcum X, proprietary = bad, and also waiting like 4 hours for my oil to drain and dry to upgrade my system is not sexy at all.
Still very cool PC btw, but, you know...
Submitted by BrookV on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 6:48am
This is SICK! (In the good sense of the word)
I'd imagine changing components would be a messy task. And once you dip those components, I'd imagine your warranty would be null and void.
Think of the phone call to tech support:
ring ring...
Tech support: Hello, Nvidia tech support. How can I help you?
User: Hi, my video card is not working.
Tech support: ..hmm, could you take it out and reseat it?
User: ...well, I'd rather not. I dont want to get all the oil it is soaked in on my moms carpet. ...
'audible click'
User:...hello? ...um..hello?
But then again if you have $4 grand to throw away on a system like this, WHO CARES ABOUT WARRANTIES! Haha!
Submitted by BrainEater on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 6:38am
Sweet rig !
---------
I have some serious questions about that patent.
My Thinktank submersion computer was published on the [H]forums on 08/31/2004.....and a picture of it was published in the book "PC Modding for dummies" in feb of 2005..
/me investigates
=)
A new job
Submitted by TD-Linux on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 2:35pm
Whoa! I just realized that these computers are manufactured in my home town of Rochester, Minnesota!
I think I just found myself a new summer job.
Submitted by flameo993 on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 1:29pm
I would totally get this if I only had $4000 laying around somewhere. My only problem would be knowing what I can stick in there and what I can't, cuz I like to upgrade part by part
Proprietary = Bad
Submitted by Talcum X on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 7:44am
Even though the case is cool and the innovation to make it all work seems cool, the "customness" of the parts isn't. Should have designed the case to accepte industry standard parts Might have been cheeper to do that with small adapters to take those parts instead of having vendors make them spacifically for this rig. Then the upgradablility is there, open to anyone, as it should be. But, Ive asked this before, why not use this oil in your liquid cooling setup instead of conductive water. At least it would be liquid cooling without the conserns that come with it. The case is really cool and inovative though. Some sacrifices with the slim drives as they are not performance, but the SSDs are...so maybe a tradeoff.
***********
Every morning is the dawn of a new error.
"In Ireland, there are more drunks per capita than people." - Peter Griffin
Submitted by Kaldor on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 7:10am
Dont quite understand how they got a patent for this. Puget Systems and Toms Hardware did this years ago.
Heres the link to the Puget Systems machine, which has been running for over 18 months IIRC.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php
Quite possibly one of the coolest projects Ive seen to date.
Submitted by kottmgrr on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 10:33am
Sure people have done it before. However, Puget's tank was also built a year after these guys filed for thier patent in 2006.
Submitted by Spider-Mom on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 4:32pm
Other unconventional methods of cooling can alreadu cool a cpu and other parts past its fail point. Eventually when you over clock a CPU to a certine point heat is no longer the issue preventing it from going any further. And no amount of extra cooling past that point will help. Other methods of cooling can already do this. If this is easyer or cheaper than those options then it a good option. But I dont think your ever going to get a CPU as cold with oil as you are with phase change.
Also, ive heard that some times when people do this they find out that imperfections in radom parts can cause problems with the hardware. The bigger problem seems to be that adding more complicaation to the desine adds more chanse of failuire under submersion. The hi end 8 layer mother boards you want for over clocking fit that discription.
One problem ive seen more than once is that flaws in a PCB will allow and oil to saturate it under hier temps. Thats bad FYI.
What I cant say is that this isnt cool and that I dont want to try it. Also idiot friends who come over and maybe even gurls will think its coolto have a bubbly computer!!!!!!
Submitted by Ian Ashdown on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 2:52pm
What happened to the synjet coolers? Check out their Web site -- they are being used in next-generation solid-state lighting modules from Philips Lighting.
Submitted by Regun on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 1:51pm
I think it looks great! The concept looks solid and it looks insane.
I hope the general public pick up on it. The website is great looking also.
I'd like to have me one of those! :D
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