I’ve been a big advocate of the post satellite era in this country.  Call me a rouge, call me a pirate, call me whatever you want, but I want my content when I want it.

I got rid of DStv a few years back and I haven’t missed it at all!  I replaced my satellite and decoder with a Raspberry Pi and a large hard drive running XBMC.  Now that was a great experience up until a point because formats were getting a bit larger.  I then replaced that with a R990 MXQ TV Box from takealot and that thing failed me miserably because the sound kept dying and refused to passthrough the digital sound (Nothing against takealot, they’re awesome!).

I decided “SCREW THIS!” and I’ve embarked on making a proper media computer for my TV.  I’ve been doing a lot of planning and finally decided on combining two projects that I’ve always wanted to do.  The first being an oil cooled machine which is very impractical but very cool looking.  The second being a fish tank with some proper fish in it.  You can already see the gears ticking away.  So the basic plan is to have the computer in a perspex case, filled with oil, then submerged (Not the top though) into the fish tank, with fish swimming around it.  I found inspiration in this video.

So I ended up getting the fish tank first and a bunch of fish.  The fish are now chilling in the tank, very happy, and they’ve lasted for about two weeks now without issues.  This first photo is before I put the fish in waiting for the water to cycle:

And then here is the placement of the fish tank:

The next things I got were the components of the computer.  Nothing special:

Chip:  i5 4460 (With stock cooler)
Board:  ga-b85m-hd3-a
RAM:  2×4 Gig  1600MHz (Very low profile)
PSU:  RX-450
Main HDD:  Samsung 850 EVO 120 Gig

I put all the bits together on a desk to test it all out and install my operating system.

Everything turned out fine so I moved it downstairs to the living room to test it live.  If you’re wondering where the keyboard is, there isn’t one, technically.  I’m using a Rii 25 remote control.  Worked right off the bat, even let me use it in the bios!  So the parts are now sitting loose under my TV running just fine.  The hottest I’ve seen the chip get is about 42 degrees.  I also tested out the passthrough of digital audio and that works fine as well!

For the actual computer case I designed a perspex box to fit the motherboard and hold a few stones at the bottom for the HDD and PSU to sit on.  If anyone wants the designs, just mail me:

The last thing I need now is mineral oil and some screws.  I’m going to take a drive to Builders Warehouse this evening to see if what I hear about them having mineral oil is true.

I must say that I’m very satisfied with the performance of the machine running Kodi (Used to be called XBMC) on Windows 10.  Once I’ve got it all submerged with everything plugged in and running I’m going to post a video.  Until then I’m going to take some of the fish’s stones and dry them out to put into the bottom of the perspex case.  Email me with ANY questions and I’ll be glad to help.