PC parts, especially chips, give off a lot of heat while they're running, and companies have come up with dozens of ways to cool systems over the years, from using fans, heat sinks, liquid coolants and more. Yet heat continues to have the upper hand. At server farms, for example, companies often spend more money on electricity for air conditioning and other cooling systems than on the servers themselves.

Hardcore Computer developed the new cooling liquid, which it calls Core Coolant, out of a waste product from petroleum. Core Coolant is non-combustible, non-conductive and is safe enough to drink, according to Chad Attlesey, chief technology officer of the company, in an interview at the Storage Visions conference in Las Vegas.

He said he's actually had to drink it in demonstrations before and agreed to for IDG, but said it's like drinking castor oil. It doesn't taste good.

Looking at the gaming PC it's designed to cool, the , it's clear why the company needed something radical to control heat in the system.

The Reactor Extreme comes with an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 microprocessor, which runs at 3GHz and has four processing cores, three Nvidia GeForce GTX 280s graphics cards, 4GB of RAM and requires two 650-watt power supplies. It's the hottest and most expensive computer in the Reactor family, at US$6,462, and a nightmare for heat.