ChipVat
Custom immersion cooling — built around your hardware
We don't sell you a tank. We build one to your machine.
Send us the hardware you already own. We power it up and validate it, measure your actual board, card stack, and power supplies, then design and fabricate a sealed dielectric vat with the mounting, sealing, drain, and circulation engineered around that specific build. Nothing is due up front.
Start a build Read the terms
ChipVat — sealed immersion vessel
The deal
No deposit. Pay when it's finished.
Custom fabrication normally means half down before a single cut is made. We carry materials and labor through the entire build instead.
$0
Due to start
Not a deposit, not a materials fee, not a design retainer. Nothing to put a build in the queue.
30 days
After delivery
The invoice comes due thirty days after your build ships. A complex build can run six months before that clock starts.
100%
Bench-tested first
Every component is powered and validated before we accept the order. Hardware that doesn't pass goes home, with no order written and nothing owed.
Architecture
Closed-loop direct-die immersion
Two approaches are usually a choice between. We do both.
Direct die contact
Cards are stripped to bare PCB and fitted with passive copper spreaders mounted at the die. Cooled fluid is driven across them first.
Whole-board immersion
The same fluid then bathes everything else — VRMs, memory, storage, power supplies. No component is left on air.
Sealed circulation
A pump and external heat exchanger run a closed loop. No water anywhere near your hardware, and no rack plumbing to burst.
Sequence
How a build runs
Five stages. Two are gates — the build stops there until something specific is true.
Intake
Ship the hardware or drop it off in San Francisco. Board, cards, power supplies, storage — whatever is going into the fluid. We photograph and log the condition of every piece on arrival.
Bench test Gate
Full power-on validation and a thermal baseline on air, so we know what your hardware does before it touches dielectric. If something is already failing, you hear it from us rather than from a vat you've paid for. Anything that doesn't pass goes back and no order is written.
Design Gate
Vat geometry comes off your actual hardware — board footprint, stripped card thickness and stack height, power supply envelope, connector clearances. Bulkhead, drain, and fill line are fixed to that build. You get drawings and a delivery estimate, and nothing is cut until you approve them.
Fabrication
Welded aluminum vat, machined bulkhead penetrations, bolt-on drain valve with reinforcing backer plate, Viton and PTFE sealing, circulation and filtration, immersion-rated cabling through a single gasketed lid penetration.
Delivery
Your build ships filled and commissioned, or dry with fluid supplied separately — your call. The invoice is dated to delivery. You have thirty days.
Terms
What happens if the invoice isn't paid
We'd rather say this plainly on a public page than bury it in a contract you sign at intake.
Your hardware secures the balance you owe. Under California Civil Code §3051,
anyone who makes or alters personal property at the owner's request holds a lien on that
property for the reasonable value of the work performed and materials supplied. It's the
same lien any machine shop or garage in this state operates under, and it covers what's
owed — not the value of your hardware.
If the balance goes unpaid, enforcing that lien means a sale under §3052,
and that section sets the rules: you get between ten and twenty days' notice before
anything is sold, you can redeem your hardware any time within twenty days by paying the
balance plus costs and 12% annual interest, and if the sale brings more than you owed,
the surplus is paid back to you.
We have no interest in running that process. It's slow, it's public, and it ends with us selling a vat cut to someone else's geometry. Paying the invoice is better for everyone, which is exactly why the terms give you months of runway before the clock starts.
Start a build
Tell us what you're cooling
Send the board, the cards, the power supplies, and what you're trying to run. We'll tell you whether immersion is worth it for your build — including when it isn't.
ChipVat
San Francisco, California