Gadgetory

oh ho ho you guys are in for a treat today oh this right here is a relic a PC cooling solution that I haven't used since the last time that AMD had a relevant high-end desktop processor and so what better way to celebrate AMD's revival as a bonafide high-end option thanks to the thread Ripper 1950 X then by resurrecting what I call the chiller a sub-zero liquid cooling device that might not look like much but like the thousand-year bird-of-prey I don't want to get in trouble with Disney hmmm has got it where it counts okay so step number the first and I have already done this before but it never hurts to do a sanity check when you're gonna do something inside is to make sure that what used to be a window mounted air-conditioning unit is still fully functional so here's your hot side this is called the condenser so this is where your phase change coolant comes to have the fans blow through it and change it from a gas to a liquid this is our compressor which compresses that fluid and then right over here this is our evaporator so this is where the compressed fluid goes to be exposed to something hot in our case it'll be our CPUs heat and evaporate then it gets moved back around to the condenser full load and i-264 about 73 degrees on the cpu okay cool now we know about let's see how much of a difference we can make there's that hand mark beautiful while that's running we're gonna need a few supplies first up is a care package from none other than the legendary they're Bauer funny story like two months before I decided to resurrect that thing so since the last time I went sub-zero for like a 24/7 system there have been some changes to the conventional wisdom so it used to be that we used dielectric grease in anywhere where there were pins around the socket and kneaded eraser was the most popular thing for filling in the bigger gaps around the socket not so anymore nowadays apparently we're just using Vaseline anywhere where there are contacts and then we're using this stuff paint it on to the board because it comes off really easily liquid the tape we're not as concerned about condensation as guys that are doing like crazy you know liquid nitrogen overclocking or anything like that because we are not going that low and it should be noted that we don't have to put this on too heavy because we're not trying to thermally insulating anything like that we're just trying to keep moisture out of everywhere that the brush touches oh you know what I can probably just use the big brush for this whoa here we go technically removing things like stickers would probably be a pretty good idea so again I'm just really not that concerned about it oh use hardware abuse yeah I don't think ACS is gonna want this board back the other important thing here is that we've gone with a metal top one so this is a nickel topped version of the block and the reason that's important is that if we were running oh shoot these these Barb's aren't gonna fit I'm gonna have to go get different ones whoops okay then so if we were running a different version of the block this plexi here could crack and over the long term it would be degraded by the kind of coolant we're using is that my Vaseline I hear yeah dog okay I'm just gonna jam that in there and Vaseline it up I mean the Vaseline is supposed to make it go in easier but so normally you would really you know cut around capacitors and you would do a super amazing job of getting it all nice and tight but the idea is that this is the actual thermal insulation now the key to any good insulation application is no air gaps this is literally the worst insulation of all time not every thermal compound is suitable for sub-zero cooling some of them actually perform worse if you go too low so this one is that was not what I meant to do stop it oh this is goopy thermal compound we also actually have to insulate our block and the reason for that is that if think about it metal is quite thermally conductive right so if we have below ambient coolant running through it this block is actually going to sweat and it's going to drip on to the other components of our system if we let it oh one thing we're going to need to do before we do that though is get our tubing attached so there are better tubing's you know what I'm just not even gonna say what I'm using because there are definitely better tubing's for subzero applications but one thing that we are doing that's a little bit unusual is I'm using 3/8 inch tubing over a half inch barb and this is kind of a classic aka old people water cooling technique I would actually expect this to do a reasonably good job like I'm gonna leave this running while I go down and do an show later and I do not expect there to be any condensation on here so that right there is the CPU area and then next up you really want some of this stuff so this is another arm of Flex product and it's just an insulation to thing that you can that you can throw on to the tubing oh okay this is legitimately kind of a problem maybe it was that yesterday you do a couple layers of this guy followed by another thing that will be different from this guy is he really putting that graphics card in there again you knowing what he knows from last time this is there's nothing about this project that I recommend trying at home okay literally literally dangerous yeah like how was there enough room for oh this has been moved like oh look at this that's been shifted why did I do this why am i showing other people this like where's this screw from there we go now you might be wondering if this is actually enough airflow and the answer is yes so the whole cooling system actually requires three plugs one for the compressor one for the pump and one for the cooling fins now what we're going to do is fire it up for real Kate why aren't those cooling fans spinning play on hey there they go okay dang it Jake this is what happens when you put Jake in charge of zip tying the stupid fans before you start okay so now we need to figure out our tubing runs we're gonna go from the outlet of the block and we're gonna give ourselves a little bit of slack and then we're gonna come through this cable management hole here and then we're gonna go underneath the evaporator and we're gonna let that kind of pin it down so that the warm liquid is as far away from here we go the outlet of our reservoir as possible so that it has to travel across the evaporator before it can be sucked into the pump so right now it's at 80 degrees Fahrenheit whatever the hell that is I don't know Fahrenheit anyone's wondering no this is not to code and also no it will not be staying running for very long there's so many things that can go wrong here so many things to go wrong and what can go right now cold CPU is this really worth it that's dang it oh I think we're ready I hope I have enough I sincerely hope this is enough and here we go again and now we don't actually want to run a sub-zero cooling system without the system running because then it gets too cold you get condensation for sure we need some heat to offset it so let's see if the system fires up here CPU initialization is going this thing better fire up why is CPU initialization still going system's up cpu fan speed error that's fine like I had said before having some airflow around the socket is definitely a good idea some air flow around the RAM sticks is good as well boss let's have a look at our initial tent a we haven't even had the chiller running for very long but I'm expecting them to be pretty good what 52 degrees how doesn't make sense got water flow right 52 degrees I'm finding that very confusing the only thing I can think of is if it's grabbing the temperature off of an external sensor and then just using an offset because the CPU is probably not that cold like that coolant is still close to room temperature okay so for our next trick I'm dropping a thermal probe into the liquid and finding out how cold it is that we're running so far so but we're at about nine point two degrees Celsius and let's see what Ida has to say about our temps here ah ah that's more like it so yes that CPU temperature was reporting with some sort of offset near the socket which as you guys might remember we insulated so the CPU diode at somewhere between 10 and 20 degrees that actually makes sense because you should be a little bit over the temperature of the coolant while you're at idle okay man show's over and whoa it's working fantastic oh there we go minus 20 degrees on the coolant minus 17 degrees on the CPU freakin fantastic we're looking at CPU diode temps that are under the ambient temperature of this room by seven degrees seven degrees less than the ambient in this room freakin unreal so it's frosted over anywhere where the evaporator is expose to the air which makes perfect sense you guys can actually get a pretty good look at what our uninsulated tubing would look like check that out remember this tubing is black you guys remember that black tubing it's just completely snowy and then this stuff insulates better than that stuff for sure but you see the pump would also have to be insulated here check that out cool right okay so by this point you guys are probably wondering why why well believe it or not this was at one point in time anyway a fairly popular way to get sub-zero temperatures relatively speaking and the reason for that is that compared to direct dye cooling with an evaporator this doesn't have to be custom done so you don't need any HVAC certifications you just go buy a window AC unit strip it down and do this compared to that it's much cheaper and obviously compared to regular water cooling you are able to get much much better result so even now that it's been running for about five minutes we are still sitting at less than thirty degrees on the diode something that is going to get us significantly better temperatures which could lead to better overclocking now as for the disadvantages those I hope are fairly obvious disadvantage number one is that to do this properly is extremely time consuming and yeah very few people end up doing that everyone kind of does it pretty Genki disadvantage number two is it's extraordinarily difficult to relocate your PC because this thing is exactly as heavy as it looks disadvantage number three it's loud like check this out putting my mic into the thing here super loud and disadvantaged number four is it can in some cases result in dead hardware if you're not careful about your insulation now for my part I'm actually expecting like as quickly as I did that I'm expecting my insulation job to have held up just fine I'm gonna shut this baby down and we'll take look at it here though so yeah we're doing just fine here this is barely even cold to the touch out to the very edges of our insulation here the problem is just that it's easy to make a mistake and anything worth sub-zero cooling is probably expensive and high-end so unless you can afford to lose that stuff you might not want to take the risk and the last drawbacks a lot of drawbacks taken a long time is power consumption and heat so in addition to your system you have to run an air conditioner that not only doesn't cool down your room it actually spits massive amounts of heat into your room so you can air-conditioned your air conditioner so you can air-conditioned while you air-conditioned so thank you very much Asus for sponsoring this fun little video where I showed you guys a whole lot of what not to do thanks you guys for watching if you disliked it you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description zenith extreme we've been really happy with this board for our thread Ripper testing also link down there is our merch storage has cool shirts like this one as well as our community forum which you should totally join