I have been using my new Aquarium Computer for a week now. It’s performance is great, but that is subjective, because I built it for my own needs and I feel that it meets them perfectly. The circuit I built for it is having problems, I will investigate further.
My trusty laptop is showing its age. 8 GB of RAM is not enough for the amount of 3D stuff I do now, and it can’t run the latest games at all any more. Since I got a full time job now (instead of a constantly travelling student), it’s time to get a desktop PC (first PC build, yay). But the process of building a PC is pretty boring, it’s just an exercise of picking out compatible parts for the right price. I decided to make it slightly more interesting by submerging the entire computer in a fish tank full of mineral oil.
UPDATE March 2015, I added a funny naked HDD activity indicator
Some pictures from the build process
Intel i7 4790S, Nvidia GTX 970, H97M chipset, Corsair CX600M. Built onto a polycarbonate tray that is then dipped into a fish tank full of mineral oil. Fancy features like bubbling treasure chest, NeoPixel LED strip, oil pump+radiator, temperature monitoring, removable SSD.
(part list? fine… here… these are not the prices I paid but here it is http://pcpartpicker.com/user/frank26080115/saved/HFDmP6)
Comments and questions are welcome, I would love to chat with you!
Reddit posts, please upvote: http://www.reddit.com/r/battlestations/comments/2pdd3q/aquarium_computer_mineral_oil_submerged_details/ and http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/2pdeak/build_complete_aquarium_computer_mineral_oil/
Hi Hack a Day visitors, small correction: there’s 32 GB of RAM, I just didn’t put the same item twice in the part list.