Gadgetory

we already detailed how am these CPU coolers are made following the same process as most air cooler manufacturing so today it's time to show the steps of liquid cooler manufacturing we visited both Coolermaster and deep cool in hue Jo and Shenzhen China to document the start-to-finish manufacturing steps for closed-loop liquid coolers including intensive oven burn ins cold plate skiving liquid filling and more before that this video is brought to you by mass drop in the PC 37 X gaming headset with professional-grade Sennheiser noise cancelling microphone the PC 37 X headsets are what we use in the office for phone interviews where audio and mic quality are critical making it very convenient high performance solution for gaming or professional work the headphones come with a detachable ten-foot cable for safe storage during travel a standard 3.5 millimeter plug and soft foam 4 firm but comfortable fit over the ears the PC 37 X headphone stand apart with high mic quality mixed with high quality audio output learn more at the link in the description below for this tour we're looking at two factories to get the full picture on how CL C or a i/o manufacturing progresses Coolermaster and deep cool both showed us different parts of the process and each has slightly different approaches to manufacturing depending on how the coolers are made at each company deep cool for example has a much more manual process for its pump block assembly whereas cooler master uses a completely different pump block design so that part of assembly is totally different we'll start with the cold plates cold plates are arguably the most important part of liquid cooling considering the fin pitch and density is what really drives performance it's also what directly contacts the products being cooled micro fins have to be designed to avoid flow impedance but they also need to provide enough surface area to sink heat quickly into the liquid glue in solution to make cold plates both companies work with skiving machines skiving is the process of slicing thin pieces of material with precision deep cool only just got its new CNCs and skiving machines in and although the machines were set up and even had an initial feet of copper they were not yet operating deep Cola hopes to begin making its own cold plates by mid-year 20:19 to reduce reliance on third-party suppliers Coolermaster is already making its own cold plates and also makes cold plates for other partners in the industry the skiving machine is precise and relatively slow only capable of making 30 cold plates with micro fins per hour coolermaster is able to add up to 2 to 3 sets of skiving tools per cnc depending on how large the product is meaning that maximum production per machine is 60 to 90 cold plates per hour considering the production speed of other cooling products like heat pipes at 50,000 units per day the making of cold plates is expensive and slow by comparison multiple high end costly skiving machines are needed to keep up with demand the process uses a wedge that cuts thin slices of copper and then stands them up as it moves back and prepares for the next cut this moves through the cold plate fin by fin takes a long time to do looking at one of these cold plates under a microscope it's clear just how dense and accurate the end result is and this is something that you can see on basically every liquid cooling product today whether it's made by cooler master or someone else this is one of the slowest and most expensive parts of the process aside from the multi our burn ins that happen at end of assembly deep cool has a workshop filled with its own CNCs and just got CNC skiving machines but presently focuses its workshop on making other products like drilling holes for industrial heat sinks that customers buy radiators are typically made by a third party supplier and sold to the CLC companies even ASA tech one of the largest CLC makers and the most prevalent in the US market for closed loop or AIO products buys most of its radiators from third-party suppliers coolermaster does some custom work on radiators we have shots of one of their CNC machines cutting out custom hole spacing and brackets for a large radiator product in a non computer application that we can't talk about but Coolermaster does some custom work on them and deep cool is also capable doing custom work on radiators a lot of the supply does come from a third party though once the radiator is purchased or made and the rubber tubes are purchased all the materials come to an assembly line for installation this might ruin the mad for some of you but like most products these companies don't make literally every single part that goes into the final product they might design them but if the supply chain is more mature elsewhere like rubber glass and cardboard where they supply the entire world and other industries not just computer hardware that it's often better to buy those materials it's cheaper and more cost-effective that way and the quality might even be better because it's a developed Factory for an industry that might be larger than the PC hardware industry at deep coolest Factory the first step of assembly starts with making the tubes or at least combining them this step involves at socketing the fitting into the tube the fitting is placed in a machine with a socket to secure the piece while the tube is clamped down to hold it still an operator activates the press so that the fitting is automatically inserted into the tube at which point the tube is passed down the line for use in a vertical standing press the next press pushes down on the assembled tube to securely fit the pieces together this is done by activating another foot pedal which brings down the force of the vertical standing press after this the completed hose is loaded into a tool that deep cool custom made using a radiator bracket to secure the radiator for another press fit the operator installs Barb's on to the radiator seats the tube into another clamp and then uses a lever to move the radiator toward the tube firmly securing the two together this process is shockingly manual the assembly line requires human oversight or action at almost every single step for this product and for the captain Pro products as an example and just like the previous steps this completed radiator assembly is then brought to another press this time asserting force onto the barbs and tubes to bind the two together and prevent leaks or weak points the next part of assembly is specific to deep cools design as it uses a multi chamber approach on the CPU block first screws are dispensed out of a machine for the operator to grab with the electric screwdriver the operator then secures the bottom chamber to the internal components with the screws provided the next step is to fit the PCB and light diffuser together along with the RGB LEDs on the PCB so the externally routed tube tubas screwed into the middle of the chambers baseplate then set aside for future steps while this is happening a separate operator simultaneously uses a bench mounted air compressor to blow any dust off of the impellers and the lower chambers the impeller is then fitted into the lower chamber and the assembly is set aside the next worker applies glue and sealant to hold the PCB in place then routes the cables and starts the Assembly of the top two-thirds of the pump block the pump next gets connected directly to a bench top power supply which is used to check that the pump is operating within voltage spec and pump speeds back there are a few things here that I mean you really shouldn't be looking at the number to get an idea of rpm one of them is that it doesn't have any impedance right now there's no liquid in the loop so it's not running out the spec you'll see in the final product the other one is that manufacturers have an RPM response tolerance of about plus or minus 10% on pumps and fans and note also that the output is in the tens of thousands here because of the pole count on the motor so one there's no liquid impedance and two the operator needs to take into account whether it's a four pole eighth Pole or similar design then divided by the appropriate value to get the true rpm ultimately they're just looking for a number within an acceptable range to show that the pump works after this the next step is to mount the external hose into the bottom chamber of the pump the final step is to mount the gasket and the cold plate to the pomp along with any jet flow plates and use a robotic arm to hold the cold plate firmly in place while all the screws get installed screws are dispensed again from a hopper and grabbed by the magnetic bit and the chamber is held upside down by a custom mount the screws are installed in a specific pattern to ensure force is distributed evenly during assembly and then the cooler is moved down the line workers after this will use a tool to ensure that this tubing is securely mounted in the lower chamber and ensure that there are no leaks this is done with another in-house made tool and is one part quality check one part assembly the next workers seat the pump block into another custom tool then install external clamps around the tubes this is another leak prevention measure and helps firmly secure the housing together finalizing the Assembly of the pump housing and block as each cooler exits the assembly line it's placed on a large rack of coolers and wheeled to the other side of the factory floor where leak checks and coolant filling will happen the next test uses a machine to determine if the reservoir and pump unit are airtight the air leak tester pumps a known pressure into the cooler and holds it for a period of time if the machine doesn't measure the same amount of pressure in return the unit is not airtight and a red diode will light up this tells the technician that the unit needs to go back to quality control and be resubmitted prior to filling it with liquid deep cool demonstrated how this works by intentionally giving us an incomplete cooler that hadn't been fully assembled yet for testing the cooler was pulled off the line prior to the fittings being secured and run through the leak tester which found that the cooler was not a closed loop and then rejected it so this happens before liquid is filled and prevents any accidents but also helps with RMA and not having them next the coolers are logged with serial numbers and the pre fill weight is logged for RMA purposes this helps track permeation or loss of liquid over time in the event of a customer return and can be tracked down to when the cooler was made and where it was made the coolers are all logged and weighed and if any cooler deviates from the average weight by more than an accepted tolerance the cooler is sent back for quality control and to ensure that all parts are present the cooler next moves to the infusion machine which vacuum seals the cooler for a couple of seconds to make sure it's airtight and then uses simple pressure to suck liquid into the cooler and the radiator from an external tank that's filled with the liquid rather than filling the cooler forcefully pressure is used to pull the liquid in it's pretty simple physics but it works surprisingly well for this type of application the coolant if you didn't already known is typically a propylene glycol and the common industry use is about 20 percent propylene glycol to distilled water in these types of products although that spec can change depending on what the product is being made for some go as high as 40% it just depends on what their cold tolerance is their heat tolerance is and sticking closer to a lower percentage propylene glycol will improve the cooling efficacy is just a trade off of what other performance or endurance elements you want in the cooler and we've talked about that and some of our reviews Coolermaster does all this in a similar way for the liquid filling part cooler masters factory has an assembly line that feeds liquid coolers to a technician who operates the coolant machines the technician secures the cooler and a custom-made brace then pushes a button to tell the machine to lower down and fill the radiator with coolant cooler master allowed us to try this alongside brian of BPS customs who failed miserably and made us look like we knew what we were doing if you want to see some of brian's content from his trip in his full case factory tour check his channel link in the description below we did encourage watching it anyway once they let us try we mounted the cooler press the button and waited as it filled the loop this process takes some time as it checks pressure multiple times to ensure the right volume has been filled and it does quality checks along the way but once it's done it's done and everything has been quality checked and is known to be good and not leaking after this step we were given an electric screwdriver to install the fill port cap the cooler was boxed for us and we'll actually be getting it in our offices for testing back to deep cools factory line for the rest the cooler is next weighed again for quality control to ensure that the weight after filling is within an acceptable range of the average with the cooler now function complete it's hooked up to another bench top power supply and turned off this time the pump speed can be checked as it performs in reality given that there's finally liquid in the loop and performances check to ensure that it matches the spec the expected range for the captain Pro is about 2200 rpm plus or minus 10% which is industry standard for variants across multiple suppliers of CLC's there are fan headers also built into the table to power and test the pump and any failures can be salvaged after QC analysis although failures at this stage are uncommon the pump is also quality checked for wine where a technician places the cold plate in the pump against their ear to subjectively listen for any high-pitched noises any actual DB testing is done in a separate chamber but subjective testing is important to determine that no unsellable noises occur these might happen if dust or debris end up in the loop prior to completion for example and so human analysis is done on every single cooler off the line to ensure that no such noise has happened this is similar at some other lines where deep cool for example builds their fans and we have another video on that where similar subjective and objective noise tests happen for the entire process thus far about 85 of the more advanced coolers to be made per hour at deep cools factory the factory produces so many of these coolers that it has production times and nailed down to the second and told us that it takes about 21 66 seconds or about 36.1 minutes to assemble an entire captain Pro 240 cooler and in terms of assembly time 85 per hour on this one line and there are multiple lines of course is a pretty high time cost so this explains why you see some of these liquid cooling products costing more even than their competitive air cooling products when it's something as simple as a 120 millimeter radiator for example because the time cost is still large even if the performance is comparable to a lower end product so that has to be made up somewhere the coolers are next deposited onto another transport rack this time with pump headers and PCBs built into the torture rack the torture rack is rolled into a literal oven where thermal burnin testing tortures each cooler for two hours to ensure that it survives a worst-case environment Coolermaster does similar testing and most of the liquid quality manufacturers ASA tech also does similar testing for deep cools part this chamber tests every single cooler off the Y Andrew our stoic cameraman was brave enough to venture inside of the oven baking the coolers each cooler is run out of maximum pump speed for two hours in the room with its thermometer hanging from the ceiling indicates a constant room temperature of at least 60 degrees Celsius deep cool runs the burnin with that room temperature set although opening the door to let us in did reduce that temperature so it's a bit lower when we walked in there but still very hot the oven test is used to thermally torture all aspects of the cooler whereas the upcoming t resist test is used for specifically validating performance on a cpu stand and device and that's the last test it's a thermal resistance test where a hot plate is used to burn the cooler in one more time this time the test is more targeted on and Coldplay performance the cooler is mounted to a hot plate roughly the size of a CPU which is then configured to run at 150 watts for the captain Pro 240 it's reconfigured for other coolers as necessary depending on their target TDP or what amount of heat they're meant to tolerate it also uses a thermocouple internally to measure temperature of the hot plate and the cold plate this is done for a period of about 60 seconds and checks against a known good measurement of a golden sample cooler if the resistance goes above the known-good bar and software the cooler fails and is sent back to quality control we asked if there's any plus or minus tolerance over this bar and we're told that this part of QC being at the end of the line has no tolerance for failure any coolers that exceed the known good bar are instantly rejected for quality check and fixing the radiators are also hooked up to fans for this testing so this is a full cooler stress test at this point in the process pretty much every cooler will pass and move on to being boxed and sold via retail there are also some additional steps on deep pools new radiators the ones that are advertised as leak proof where they use basically just a balloon inside of the radiator to burp any air depending on the temperature of the liquid and we'll talk about this more in the future as we get into testing those products but the additional steps will involve inserting the balloon and then closing off that new chamber of the radiator and we may talk about that more in our upcoming reviews like Coolermaster deep cool also makes a lot of products for partners including some other brands that you know in the cooler industry and we can't name and they can use some of their machinery and lines to make equipment for power supplies for telecom companies for heatsink fans that are used in up lighting and studio lights and aluminum or copper heat sinks for medical products so these cooling companies they do a lot more than just the PC parts that we know and this is something we'll talk about more in the future as well so check back for more you can subscribe to catch additional content as always or find our total playlist of factory tours from this trip also if you want to support our tours you can go to store dye Karen's Nexus net to pick up one of our shirts or other merch like our educational video card Anatomy posters or go to patreon.com/scishow and axis to get access to some behind the scenes videos that we've just uploaded this week thanks for watching we'll see you all next time