Mod of the Month - March 2009

The Mineral Oil PC

by legoman666
Worklog: Here

Air cooled PCs can often look cool. Water cooled PCs definitely have the wow factor. By that reasoning, fully submerged PCs are just plain awesome! That’s certainly what we thought when we first saw legoman666’s custom built Mineral Oil PC. Clearly the main issue here is dealing with the weight of the coolant which, looking at early pictures, will be very heavy indeed.

However, legoman666 has come up with some great ways to get round the issue with braces and other supports, and also adds a bit of bling to his case along the way. He's designed some of the most awesome custom case feet we've seen and decided on using dual XSPC RX360 radiators for cooling. This will definitely be one to watch over coming weeks and we can't wait to see the finished system up and running.


He started the project with the wise move of computer generated design work to get an idea of how everything would fit together. This enabled him to decide upon the materials he’d use for his custom build, which included aluminium sheet, bar and angle supports, and Plexiglas. We were impressed from the outset with legoman666’s understanding and anticipation to need the extra support when holding such a large and heavy volume of coolant. He opted for angular aluminium to provide extra bracing in the corners of the main frame.


legoman666 also created his own feet for the case out of aluminium. Each one took over an hour to make and involved sandwiching two circular aluminium disks together with a Perspex filling. He then drilled a hole for an LED to be inserted, which shines out through the Perspex. The result is just plain awesome, as you can see.



For cooling, he opted for two of XSPC’s new RX360 radiators combined with Noctua NF-P12 120mm fans. The RX range use a very low fold per inch design which makes them ideal for low RPM fans and quiet systems. As we saw in earlier images from his project log, these will be mounted in the base. Combined with the fact the rest of the system will be cooled with mineral oil, it will be very quiet indeed.



Here we can see the frame really coming together. You can see the braces we mentioned earlier, mounted in the corners for extra support which will come into its own when the system is holding the coolant. In fact the frame is so strong that he can stand on it!

If you’d like to vote for legoman666’s Mineral Oil PC please head over to the forums.