Me: My gaming rig is now cooled by oil. American government: FBI! OPEN UP!

Transformer Oil? Is this the kind of fuel Optimus Prime is running on? XD

I used to work for a company that made radar transmitter power supplies (17.5 to 24KVDC). these units were filled with transformer oil. That oil did a wonderful job of insulating and heat transfer. Oil insulated equipment is usually self healing as well. With high voltage you have to be careful about keeping a edges smooth and rounded or you can develop very high field strengths that can lead to arcing. On one of these supplies I saw arcing in the oil when I got up to about 12KV, that arc was pretty eventful because it discharged a 0.5UF oil filled cap. I emptied the oil and examined the unit to see what was going on. There was a 7X10 inch PCB that held the bridge rectifier diodes and was held in place by that oil filled caps studs. Close examination revealed a very pointed solder tail that ended at the edge of the PCB. The field strength was such that the voltage arded through the 1/2" of oil. Once I removed that tail the arcing was stopped and the power supply passed all tests and was shipped out to the Suez canal where it may still be doing it's job.

This video reminded me of a German TV show I watched several years ago, in which they tested the isolation capabilities of distilled water by submerging an entire PC in the stuff, and kept it running during the whole program; at the end of the show, it just sat there, chugging away happily. :)

Scott: hi can I buy transformer oil to cool computer down Oil company: to cool computer down? Scott:yees Scott:actually cools down the transformer like a boss *AC VOLTAGE REDUCTION TIME*

"Did someone say OIL?" - US army

If we do not consider dirt, it is one of the most efficient solutions :)

The way he pronounced Transformatorenöl made me happy.

I miss the hack series

Quick fix: When you measured that t.oil resistance with mains AC. Measured current was not through oil, but "parasitic capacitance" at tip of the leads. -> reason why it's always measured with hv dc (next project? maybe not for viewer sake :D) *Edit note*: next line was my mishap. I mixed insulator and electrolyte in my head. Going to keep it there... btw, electrolytic caps use this oil to increase capacity and if they had that low resistance, they were pretty useless.

Absolutely love your videos man. Keep up the good work!

I learn so much from your videos please never stop uploading!!!!

I never wanted your video to be end.. It must just keep going .. And we can just keep watching and keep learning..😊☺

In the power station where I worked as an electrical fitter the 17/275kv generator transformers were cooled in two stages of coolers. The oil was cooled by towns water in one set of coolers which in turn was cooled by sea water in an adjacent cooler. There was a pressure gradient across the cooling towers with the oil at the highest pressure and the sea water at the lowest to prevent any contamination if leakage occurred. This video brings it all back!

Thanks a ton from the bottom of my heart for these experiments :) We all can learn a lot.

This is awesome!! Thanks for the informative content, mate!

Awesome ! thanks for sharing . I didn't realize oil has such a low conductivity .

Thank you for this knowledge and for everything you do for us

Sometimes I just wonder how many arduino do you own?

Es ist lustig wenn du das Video als deutscher schaust und dann die Beschriftungen liest Translation: It's funny if you watch the video as a German and then read the stuff on the labels Edit: thx for the likes Even if that sentence is overused

more power man, you're a big help to electronics engineering students like me 😉

Never expected oil to cool electronics! Great video once again!

A rubber band might hold the temperature probe on and in contact, as it applies pressure and does not use adhesive. Great videos, as always. Thank you.

Came to learn electronic related things, and learned german words as a bonus. Awesome!

Fantastic test👍 Thanks for sharing👍😀

You should do a follow up on Flourient. It is a cooling fluid used by the Cray vector supercomputers from the 80s. The stuff is still available, a dielectric compound that boils at 50-60°C at 1bar. Phase change is a one-two orders of magnitude more efficient heat transfer process. Would definitely make a interesting video!

I have used Canola or an equivalent for a good many years for high voltage transformers and capacitors (up to 25kV). To avoid problems the oil needs to be new, and de-gassed (I use a small vacuum pump and gentle heating at the same time) in addition I pre-heat the oil to 150 deg C and allow it to cool before using it. I have also used liquid paraffin.

That's the kind of video that i like. Keep it up !

I always hit the like button first then i stared watching your video. Cos i know the video is gonna be awesome.

Bella riflessione sul futuro del raffreddamento, sicuro prolunghera la vita dei componenti

Awesome video. I learn a lot watching this channel.

2:20 i love how you say transformatoren öl 😂

Sechspulsbrückenschaltung, Transformatoren Öl !! Is this a new Running gag?

My dad once told me that people during his childhood used to collect old transformer oil from power grid transformers and used to apply it on their knees and joints for pain relief.

I got an ad from JLCPCB and then greatscott makes the ad Longer lol

Oil sticks and penetrates in the boards from what i read. So even washing the parts with alcohol it can still be oilly. Usually in pcbs such as gpus. Also it ruins rubber and wire insulation, so people have to be carefull there

Al always very interesting and informative :-)

Excellent video mate, was gona do this myself by yay, now I don't have to! Are you gona build a PC with it? How is this oil for its wicking properties? Does it react with any of the plastics in the components and or the rubber like materials used as soft mounts or seals etc?

Hello GreatScott! I am not sure but I think what also influences the heat dissipation is not alone the specific heat capacity but the product of specific heat capacity times specific mass. If that is correct, for the (not so realistic but simplified) case where there would be no flow ( = no convection), you can add a scaling factor of ca. 1000 for the product c*rho between air and the other two liquids. But of course, there is flow and convection. Thanks for the great videos!

Great video again, just one small detail : the dielectric constant is not directly linked with resistivity.

Are those the silent wing 3's I see, and the dark tower pro? Very nice build!

2:21 Transformatoren Öl ? Nice,I love it!

3:12 *_Me : Hey, what are for the starters ?_* *_Waiter : 15 Volts DC Voltage :p_*

This was really enlightening! Can you please test synthetic motor oil?

This guy has grabbed my attention yet again.

When you showed the cables touching and coming apart at 0:42, a glitch that very rarely happens with Windows 10/My keyboard happened, which turned the volume down gradually to 0 in sync with as you moved the cables further apart. For a moment I thought you had intentionally set it up so your mic went through those cables, and somehow got it so the audio signal faded as you moved them away from one another to demonstrate the resistance of oil. I realised soon enough that it would stop as soon as you separated them, but it got me for a moment. Seemed like it was a very cool effect in that moment though.

Your videos are soo good. Keep your work like that and are you going to make something special for 1m subs. 😀😀

The Transformatorenoel has high oxidation resistance. Been using it in the deep fryer for over six months now.

Yes I seen some mineral oil builds that worked perfectly and never overheated.

I think the only word you got wrong here was that when you said "professional" in the intro it should have been "professionally". I can hardly imagine how hard it must be to speak in a language that isn't your native one, so all being considered I'm very impressed!

Could the AC current in the oil just be capacitance?

You really should add some 'Great Scott!' shouts from Back To The Future in your videos xD

I recently overclocked my i7 on a stock fan thankfully no processor was damaged. But this video sounded satisfying.

Put your hands up if you know the satisfying ka-chunk of operating an ABB oil filled ring main unit :) Cool video GreatScott, you cover some really interesting topics.

Love the videos can you test of this would work well for battery cooling? I wanna build packs for my van project and undermount them cool with oil and just run a small pump and oil cooler. I have over 10kwh..

sooner 1 million subscribers 👏👏👏👏👏

Oil has been used as a coolant and arc suppressor since the early days of electric power generation. My grandfather designed high voltage oil switches for a Dutch power equipment company while he was interned in Holland during WW1. Not sure what the oil was, though my guess would be mineral oil as that was easily obtained and it won't ignite when under high arc conditions.

Geat video again! Grüße, Sebastian

If you add a fan or some sort of stirrer to the oil, it works much better. The viscosity of the oil slows down the thermal currents keeping the warm oil near the resistor. Stirring the oil moves the warm oil away and cool oil moves in to better cool the electronics.

Last question... if you provide flow to the oil, by how much does it improve its cooling capabilities?

Got this video right at the moment. I want to liquid cool a medium size double resonant solid state Tesla coil but i fear the plastics on ICs or rubber seals on the pump may get attacked by oils. I can only found that castor oil does not deteriorate rubber(flourinert from 3M is too expensive to count)

Gutes Video 😊👍

Grwat video. Would thus be suitable for usage in a closed loop water cooling solution? Would be a interesting test.

Kannst du vielleicht mal ein Video auf deutsch machen? Also es macht mir nicht's aus wenn nicht ich kann denglisch ziemlich gut :D aber es würde mich doch mal interessieren ;-)

Can you do variable frequency drive video please?

Cool to see when you try the arc lighter under the oil it diffracts the light around the anode and cathode

Can u do a video on audio amplifier classes and how to build one? (Class a, ab, d, g, etc)

Hey @GreatScott! will you ever be doing a video about home automation?

Hey, I think the AC mains conducts a little current through the oil by parasitic capacitance between the two wires than by the oil resistance alone.

Hey Greatscott you are my favourite youtuber because you realy make interesting videos :) Can you maybe make a 3d scanner (for 3d printing) that is relatively low cost but still does the job? I have seen some videos about it already but those were so cheap that they realy didnt do their job probably and im interested if there is a cheap diy alternative that still scans the objects goodly thank you

Awesome video!

what you do is get a air conditioner and submerge the cold condenser in the oil along with the board, Linus did a similar build and actually reworked the cold condenser with a CPU heatsink right in the line of the AC problem was water condensation on the board but if the board was submerged in transformer oil that would no longer be an issue

Sir you are really great

Full Bridge Rectifier Squad

you should watch linus tech tips series on this. in the end it worked but there are a lot of side effects that can be major problems

Useful video 👍

It would be awesome if you could compare the transformer oil to silicone oil. The reason is because transformer oils are typically made from mineral oil and they contain solvents making them highly flammable given the right conditions. Silicone oil, while more expensive, is much less flammable.

Linus Tech tips uses mineral oil when they submerged their computer!!!

Nice, can you make diy or electronic basics video on smps supply,i searched many videos but none of them were explain how oscillations created and how it maintain constant output voltage

So close to 1mill subs :O

about 15 years ago, i made an oil-PC after i saw an article about an oil-PC at toms hardware. Back then it was just a Duran 1,3GHz, 384MB SD-Ram (100MHz) with a MSI Geforce 4 TI 4200 64MB. I had nearly no money, so i couldnt afford expensive mineral oil. I used the cheapest vegetable oil. It really worked and looked cool. Also the temperature didnt get too hot. But overall it was pretty messy. After months i "drained " it, because it needed too much space and replacing anything on the mainboard was a nightmare.

You should try VW505.01pd oil. It shouldn't conduct anything since the fuel injector leads are submerged in it. Great video, by the way

3:50 you measured the capacitive reactance of the setup, not the resistance. The current would have been zero if you used DC at any voltage below its breakdown. Oil is not good sometimes because its high dielectric constant actually increases the capacitance among nearby conductors for some reason. Being a better barrier than air, that doesn't make sense to me, but there it is. So, oil is not good for high speed, sensitive, oscillating circuits. It will detune resonators/filters and leak some signal current around. If you dunk a motherboard, cellphone or radio in it, likely it will stop working, or malfunction non-destructively. A slow circuit will be fine. Edit: (10 months later lol) -a more sensitive and/or high speed circuit can function properly if it's designed with larger spacing or to be specifically used in oil, in which case, a few of them may not function optimally without the dielectric or cooling properties of the specific oil it's designed for.

Some other thing(s) immersion in oil does: 1) it *can* keep water and other contaminates *out* of your circuit. 2) it *can* keep the effects of pressure out of your equipment.

Sounds great

You can have a look at Novec, from 3M, an immersion cooling fluid used for data centers.

Hey GreatScott, please make a video on nfc tag circuit and how to make them.

please can you do a ni-mh to li-ion conversion for power tools like drills? (in my case is for a vacuum robot) Too many youtubers made a direct connection from the ni-mh charger to the bms of the li-ion cells and I still don’t know if that is safe or not

We have almost the same multimeter. Mine is a UT61E. What do you think of the voltage protection? According to Dave on EEVBLOG they shouldn't even be Cat III rated. From what I've heard elsewhere, the reason is that the ones meant for the Chinese market don't include metal oxide varistors but ones for America and EU do include them. Mine came from China in a Chinese box, but I haven't looked inside it yet. I think it's a great meter for the price. But I hate the battery connector and compartment.

Wouldn't adding some thermal paste on the temperature probe while attaching it on the surface give better measurements?

canola/rape seed cooking has a high water content when fresh, it can be dried by heating to +200c, then once dry and cool will still turn rancid, but will run a non hdi diesel engine.... My fav board coating, adhesives, 2 part dollar store epoxy or UHU

Hello Scott. Did you try ultra pure water (reverse osmosis water) for a test like this?

Question, would you be able to use a computer in oil without a problem? (Except for the oil fats decomposing and oxidizing of course

I used to work with high voltage power supplies that would put out more than 200 thousand volts. We used this type of oil to insulate and cool the supply. The high voltage would generate electrostatic waves that would circulate the oil around the components. On some models there was also a pump and a radiator. Many large X-ray machines use this type of system. Even the X-ray tube, which gets very hot, was submerged to remove waste heat. So I don't think you will have any problem keeping your Arduino cool with this method.

Very curiuos about HEMP OIL HEMP SEED oil Older videos mention different Conductivity/ farads How would graphene, foil react to these different mediums?

I wonder if the oil with its low viscosity is able to be pumped with some of these cheap pumps you can get off ebay, I got a 5VD USB one to play with and a mains on as well as a 12 V one and all the same form factor and footprint but all very different in their ability, the 12V one actually performed the worst, then the 5V one then the mains one.

Super Video I like it

Just one thing: IC chips are designed to be used in air, in the sense that, in the event of a voltage spike, a spark is created in a specially designed component that is exposed to the air. The current goes through the arc instead of going through the circuit. So if you operate them under oil, they will be more sensitive to voltage spikes.

I don't know how hard it is to get, but when I work for the US Army Pulse Power Laboratory we use Shell Diala Oil. We were working with some very high voltages and never had a problem...at least not one that was related to the oil :-)

i would have liked to know one or 2 other things like wifi/bluethooth ,floating pins, radiator capacity to run it, you did not end the video with the complete pc in an aquatrium ?