The Mineral Oil PC by Andrew Mollman

Coolant, hardware and leaks...

I used a random orbit sander with 220 grit paper in order to achieve the pictured finish. Scratches don’t show up easily, finger prints don’t show up easily and it looks nicely industrial.


Ideally, I wanted to submerge everything in the oil, but one of the first things I learned during my research was that one cannot just simply dunk hard drives in oil. Platter drives contain several breathing holes to equalize the internal and external pressure.

Although these small holes have a filter to remove small dust particles, oil leaks in and gets on the platters which causes the drive to fail.

Short of several complicated, failure-prone schemes, the next best thing was to mount the drives in the upper compartment, completely out of the oil. They end up blocking the top half of the PCI expansion slot and I/O panel connectors and I had to move the tray handle, but it was the only spot they fitted.

I also mounted two electrical sockets; one for the pump and one for the power supply. I wired two switches in as well, so I don’t have to reach into the oil or open the lid to turn the pump or PSU off.

With everything in place, I was ready for my first attempt at submersion. Unfortunately, the initial filling of the tank revealed a leak in one of the radiators. I lost about half a gallon of oil.

The downside of using the Diala AX is that it smells vaguely of bug spray. I used the first thing I was able to get my hands on to prevent the spill from making a mess on my floor; wash rags from the bathroom.

As a result, all of the laundry in my house smelled like oil for weeks. Before buying a completely new radiator, I used the dishwasher to clean the oil off it first. The result of which was a dishwasher which also smelled like oil. Fabulous. I tried plugging the leak with silicone but failed. There was an anxious week of downtime while I waited for my new radiator to arrive. Attempt two went much more smoothly.


Everything worked great for about a month. I learned the hard way that mineral oil is so corrosive to many types of plastic that some people’s attempts at mineral oil cooling ended in disaster after a matter of days. My case lasted about a month before springing 6 leaks. PVC swells and softens after prolonged exposure to mineral oil.