# Baking my candle Gel PC.



## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

Thought I might add this project and ask for any input. 

I'm taking a CLE266 based motherboard with a 800mhz Samuel2 CPU and baking it into candle gel. 

First I took the original itty-bitty heatsink off. It was a pain, because it was stuck on with some form of adhesive that was hard as a rock at room temperature. So I booted the board with damn small linux off one of my usb flash drives while the fan was disconnected, and gently twisted the sink until it was showing signs of coming loose, then I unplugged the board and pried the sink off. 
I found a old celeron board with a heatsink around 10 times larger than the one on the CLE266, so I'm going to be using it. :up: The only problem with it, was that the edges of the sink had a bit of aluminum that came a bit to close to some smd components on the board, so I've had to file a bit of aluminum off the edges. I'll be attaching the new heatsink tomorrow with Artic thermal adhesive to make sure it stays firmly attached to the cpu.

I've got 10lbs of candle gel, some artic adhesive for the new sink, a switch, 512mb DDR2100, and a 5.6 inch gamecube LCD for a monitor. 

I'll be running a dualboot with a nlite stripped down XP using Xlobby frontend/shell with Crystal player for video as one OS, Cent OS for asterisk as the second, and geexbox as the third uncase the videos don't want to play on so slow a mobo with XP. 

I plan on placing the candle gel PC into a case made of K'nex toys and aluminum cut from coke and pepsi cans, because I want it to be very lightweight and plan to build a carrying handle. I'll be carrying it to appointments to demonstrate asterisk pbx booting off a USB drive, and to run antispyware/malware/virus tools using a 2.5/3.5 IDE & SATA to USB converter on other machines hard drives so I can quicky clean them without booting them. 

I've taken some cardboard, and I'll be making a mold for the motherboard and the gel to sit in, then I'll bake the board in the oven at low temp until the Gel melts. 

Any input?


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## kronus (Apr 15, 2004)

Um, be careful?


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## Who's Me (Aug 29, 2006)

I've heard of putting them in a vat of oil, but never candle wax do you know of any sites showing this? post again and let us know how that works out for you.


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

Since the gel is 95% mineral oil, and this oil is quite a good electrical insulator, how will you prevent the oil from gaining ingress to ebery connector?

Push fit connectors (memory and PCI cards edge connectors etc) may tend to become "insulated" by a microscopic film of the oil during the heating process?


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

> I've heard of putting them in a vat of oil, but never candle wax do you know of any sites showing this? post again and let us know how that works out for you.


http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?name=Sections&sop=viewarticle&artid=58

Note that the heatsink in the article looks bigger than it is since the board in the article is much samller than the one I'm using. For comparison sake, the northbridge heatsinks are the same size.

I'm using a very similar board. I little faster cpu (800mhz), but I've already replaced the dinky heatsink with a P4 one, and glued it on with Artic Silver adhesive. 
I noticed in the second article about it, the gel had melted around the caps on the morex itx PS. I've got a morex as well, but I'm not using it for this project. I'm just coating the motherboard. I've taken a atx power connector extender and plugged it into the board to keep the gel out of the connector, and a IDE cable plugged into the second IDE connector. I'm also trying to find a couple of slot USB headers to keep the extra USB headers on the board useable. I'll figure out what type of power supply to use later. Maybe I'll use my 60w morex kit, or maybe I'll just use a micro-atx PS.

I built the mold tonight, and masking taped up the rear connectors. I haven't stuck it in the over just yet, because I want to try loading geekbox onto a 64mb compactflash card on a IDE convertor. (have to test geexbox on it since I noticed a few issues with the board and damn small linux, unfortunately I don't have a spare optical drive laying around, so I'll have to load the CF from another machine) (and I'm trying to figure out where I put the IDE-Compactflash adaptor.) If it works, I'll bake that into the gel as well, and forget about loading xp.  I've also got a old bicycle rear light that flashes back and forth like a cylon raider which runs on 4.5v that I believe would run on the 5v line which would look well baked into the gel over the two PCI slots which could serve as a power LED. Also may add a modem to the CNR riser, just for the sake of it.

I'm also trying to find a camera that works well. then I'll post a few pics.



> Push fit connectors (memory and PCI cards edge connectors etc) may tend to become "insulated" by a microscopic film of the oil during the heating process?


Since I'm using the onboard video, nic, etc, and don't plan on adding anything afterwards, this isn't a big concern.

All in all, it's slowly taking shape.

It's going alot quicker than a clear acrylic PC I've been working on.. I thought I would finish that beast today (been working on it for around a month), yet when I hooked it all up, I found the case headers are mis-labled, so now I've got to figure out what each connector is. It's looking sweet though. It's lit with a modded Sunbeam Chameleon kit, and two liquid neons on a 12v remote switch and relay switch(available from xoxide.com except for the relay) , has a LIS 2 pro VFD, a Coolermaster musketeer 2 (SVC.com), power supply wires are chrome loomed, molex replaced with blue moleys, and matching slot protectors (directron.com) also the heatsink is the cheap $6 socket 939 model from directon (on clearance) w/the ugly load blue fan removed and the air flow directed with a small piece of PVC glued to the underside of the 120mm fan on the PS (luckily the sink is large enough to where it doesn't need the fan if airflow is routed right . The fans are all aluminum, with added aluminum mesh filters, and Bio-hazard fan grills. Everything except the lighting and acrylic is black, because black looks good on anything.

Here's a pic of the gel mold and the board.. You can see I've had to turn the heatsink cadycorner to make it fit on the board without hitting anything important since it's around 10 times bigger than the stock heatsink which was about the same size as the one on the northbridge. (sorry about the fuzzy pic, the ugly work table, and the bra on the floor.) (please ignore the DS with the micro-SD slot, I swear it's just for homebrew) The gel is in the second pic. I got ten pounds, think I overbought a bit.

The board measures 6in by 9in.

I suggested to my wife to take the leftover gel, print some pictures on rice paper (clear in mineral oil) with the laser printer (the toner is water-proof mostly plastic, may run in the oil) and try wrapping it inside a glass and pouring the gel into it with a wick. Might work to make a kinda 3-D panaramic picture candle.


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

Hey, I got a pic on the front page of Techwarelabs.com


Lucky me.


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## erick295 (Mar 27, 2005)

gotrootdude said:


> I suggested to my wife to take the leftover gel, print some pictures on rice paper (clear in mineral oil) with the laser printer (the toner is water-proof mostly plastic, may run in the oil) and try wrapping it inside a glass and pouring the gel into it with a wick. Might work to make a kinda 3-D panaramic picture candle.


It's also an excellent way to set your house on fire


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## Who's Me (Aug 29, 2006)

I found this in an article on oil cooling,
"initial attempts had shown that the poured oil sporadically led to crashes. The cause was also quickly found: The processor base together with the CPU and the heat sink had to be made impermeable to the liquid. Quite a bit of labor and time are necessary for this, since just like for the case, we first had to use special glue and then silicone. After successful sealing, the system works without a hitch.
We have the following explanation for this phenomenon: On the motherboard in the area of the CPU base, the oil is responsible for increasing the capacitive resistance between the individual wiring. In short, the oil acts as a dielectric material. Since very high frequencies occur on the motherboard, the capacitive resistance goes down. Accordingly, this then influences (or tampers with) the digital signals, particularly in the area of the CPU base. After all, 939 pins are located there in a very tight space."
I dont know if you may have similar issues, might be a good idea to seal that up.


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

Valid point, but the term is best expressed as "capacitive reactance", rather than "capacitive resistance".

I know that silicon sealer, although an effective insulator, totally ruins the operation of UHF radio impedance matching devices due to its properties at 500 MHz.

Oil at 2 GHz could well be a similar problem.


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

The heatsink is glued on with Artic Adhesive, there's no way I'd be able to get silicone around the cpu and it. The CPU is in a sealed package though, without the core exposed. 

Almost got the power supply figured out. I drew the quick freehand below, thinking I was going to do it that way.

Then I cut the CD-rom case,and removed the guts from the PS and slid it in (fits just right great). I believe I'll need to cut one more piece of plastic and slide it in to keep the cold cathode well separated from the capacitors.

Problems: The 120mm fan only fits on one side of the case, the other side is a bit too big, so I'll have to super glue it to something else (maybe a thin sheet of paneling since I have it on hand).

I'll also have to move the power plug somehow, and isolate it. 


I still haven't baked the board. I ran into a few other pre-baking conditions: 

1. I was planning on attaching a CNR modem, yet some idiot at the factory rivited the modem to the slot blank instead of the normal attachment screws, so I have to dremel them out. 

2. I was planning to use a bicycle light that strobes as a power LED, and baking it into the mold over the unused pci slots. It normally uses 2 AA batteries, so it's around 3V. Does anyone know what the voltage is coming off the power LED header so I don't have to search for my multimeter?

3. I found a old hitachi 44780 blue LCD I had laying around, and since geekbox includes support for LCD's, I thought I'd use it. Yet, I know baking it would kill it, so I'm wondering how to add it in. Maybe carve out a space for it afterwards using a sharp knife. 

4. Time for watching it while it bakes.

Total cost of the project so far: 
motherboard: $54 bought last year and never used, so not losing anything
memory: 256mb DDR2100, bought years back FAR, no longer useful for modern builds.
bicycle light: left over from kids, and halloween where it was used as one of the pumpkin's eyes.
power supply: 230w generic piece of junk, leftover from another project.
other various leftover and scavaged parts. 
10lbs candle gel: bought for $20, just so I could do this.


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

The issue would be if the Gel can ingress to any of the connections external to the core (the pins or socket, or where the socket is soldered to the motherboard, or any parts of the high speed bus on the motherboard) regarding the issue of capacitive reactance.

But good luck!


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

> The issue would be if the Gel can ingress to any of the connections external to the core (the pins or socket, or where the socket is soldered to the motherboard


Great! This shouldn't be an issue then because there is no socket, the cpu is integrated (soldered) straight onto the board.


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

As long as the Gel cannot get to the soldered CPU terminations?


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

I am kinda missing the whole point of this project?


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

Just to be on the safe side, I taped a square of aluminum foil over the underside of the board.

Found a old WinTV-Go tuner card to bake in as well. Since Geexbox supports TV viewing now, it should work fine as long as I don't hit the record button on the remote to record the stream.

The bicycle light is out. I decided it'd be better to press some loops of EL wire into the gel while it's cooling as a power indicator.



> originally by Rockn,
> I am kinda missing the whole point of this project?


No point really, just playing with hardware I had laying around. Didn't want to buy anything. My wife wanted the candle gel to make candles with, and I had the other stuff laying around.

I generated the geexbox iso with support for wireless, tv tuners, mce remote, etc. So, if this works out, I'll have a neat little media center. I can stream to it using UPnP, and according to reports, it'll even play divx and xvid.
If I mod the PS as well to bring down the fan noise, It'll be virtually silent as well.

I also have a morex PS and regulator, so I can take it on the road and show movies on the car's headrest monitors for trips.


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## Who's Me (Aug 29, 2006)

Taped foil to underside of board?????? aluminum is quite conductive
with the soldered connections i don't think you should have any problems, i thought it was a plug in socket.


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

The aluminum comes off before turning the board on.

Wrapping electronics in aluminum foil (without turing them on) is a great way to prevent damage to them. Voltage doesn't kill electronics, current does. The aluminum makes the voltage potential even across the board, so there's no current to damage it.  Electrostatic bags do the same thing.


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## Who's Me (Aug 29, 2006)

I apologize I thought you were going to leave it that way.


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

Before going in. And after about an hour at around 130-150 degrees. Not to sure about the exact temp of the oven.

Just implanted EL wire into the gel, and lowered the temp a bit. It's very cool looking.

According to the specs sheet, the max operating temp is 167F or 75C, and I expect a little leeway, so maybe it'll work.


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

It's alive and working! Camera died, and I found I had no CD's with which to burn the geexbox iso, so I'll post pics tomarrow of it plugged in and running with the remote control. 

No fans, has a tv tuner, streams internet radio, plays divx, works perfectly! 

Since all the parts except the gel were unused scrap, the total project cost is next to nothing. I've taken some odd pieces of junk, and made it into a cool looking useful appliance. (Power supply is only 1/2 finished modding)

For what it's worth, the tape did nothing to keep the get out of the rear sockets. I had to spend several minutes digging get out the USB ports with a toothpick.  

Next thing is to bake is a gel packed hard drive in a external case to see if it still works, provides enough cooling, and quiets the drive.

If I had a larger oven, I'd buy 30-40lbs of the gel, and make a micro-atx sized block of pure gel with components baked in. It'd look like a PC in a block of ice!

I highly recommend other people to try this. It was a amazing experience.


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

The gel got a little warm above the CPU while watching Heros last night on it. Still have to finish the PS, and clean up the wiring.

It's real hard to get a good picture of the clear gel.


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