Roman “der8auer” Hartung is always good for a surprise. Currently working for German distributor, online shop and system integrator Caseking, Roman has come up with an eye-catching build for this year’s Gamescom. Using 3M’s Novec 7100 fluid he was able to come up with a build a two-phase immersion cooling project regarding a high-end desktop PC.
So far 3M’s Novec 7100 fluid has only been used in a data center that’s been built by BitFury and Allied Control. In that particular case 40+ MW of ASIC clusters are being cooled using the two-phase liquid that starts boiling at 61°C/142°F. Since the hardware is fully immersed in the liquid the latter starts to boil. During the phase changing process - liquid to gas - heat energy is being absorbed and carried away from, for instance the processor or the graphics card. The vapor rises to the top of the case where it condenses on a water-cooled condenser - a radiator - and drops back into the tank.
According to Roman “der8auer” the big challenge was to get the whole case sealed, since the interior is under 1.5Bar/21.8PSI pressure. For that purpose the cables had to be sealed off and a pressure valve had to be installed in the case that too much pressure builds up.
Furthermore the CPU as well as the open EKWB water cooler had to be laser treated. This helps improving surface area and it brings the advantage that there are no stationary gas bubbles building up inhibiting the cooling effect.
The way it’s presented - open and with lighting - Roman “der8auer” Hartung’s project Aqua Exhalare definitely looks absolutely impressive. Apart from that CaseKing is actually selling this system for 9.999,90 Euro, which is based on an Intel Core i7-7800X CPU, a MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X+ graphics card 32 Gigabyte of memory and a 250GB SSD.