Gadgetory

all right we're locked out of our own video but this video is going to be great we are going to be building a computer inside a mini-fridge we are going to answer the question once and for all is it a good idea to build a computer inside a mini-fridge like the video if you think that's a good question to answer I didn't have any other teasers ready ok I need a key Corsair delivers real mcaro here I have one huh real nectar nothing with their new strafe mechanical keyboard featuring genuine German made Cherry MX key switches click on munch in to learn more I'm going to move much in now it's the three for loop this may not look like a computer case to you nor does it look like a computer case to me because it's not a computer case this is a fully functional that is to say working but not plugged in mini-fridge and if you're like me and you've truly a forum you've either witnessed or come up with the idea on your own of building a computer inside a mini-fridge where well hey it's cold in there must be great for overclocking right let's put it to the test do you even lift bro yeah I lift all right urgh okay now before you go full-bore on any kind of project you want to at least validate the concept so we'll be taking the zotac ZBOX pico pi3 20 and we will be experimenting to find out if this compact and power efficient passively cooled PC can actually experience an improvement in thermals and/or performance inside the mini-fridge right but of course first we have to establish a baseline reading in our ambient temperature test here so we're booting up the Z box and then we're going to run a stress test to find out just how she runs before putting her inside the fridge alright so we've got our baseline numbers we're looking at anywhere from about 46 to 49 degrees Celsius on our course which puts us at about 22 to 25 degrees above our ambient temperature which is about 27 degrees now let's go ahead and fire up a stress test what is that that's Pig it's my backpack here oh shut up you got louder ah maybe that's the low battery alert that is a pretty aggressive low battery alert and yet apparently that's what it was okay so with that crummy experience out of the way it looks like our CPU temperatures have settled into 59 to 63 degrees and our ambient temperatures actually touch higher at 27.5 okay so what we'll find out now is whether our fridge is even ready for us to put our system inside it I'm supposed to be like four degrees that's a touch hot oh well then it is going down very fast okay so let's go ahead and put this puppy on the shelf and let's start it boom okay so no real surprises here our idle temperature test gives us anywhere from 25 to 27 degrees our ambient temperature around the Pico is around five degrees and that stands to reason because we're looking at about a 20 degree Delta between ambient and CPU temperature so that means that at idle the mini-fridge works it cools the Pico so this is the part where the video gets really interesting our fridges compressor is running all the time but it is maintaining a frosty internal temperature as low as two to two and a half degrees Celsius and our CPU has settled in at around 38 to 40 degrees Celsius under load the mini-fridge concept is a massive success achieving a C Wow greater than 20 degree improvement in load CPU temperatures now we're going to take things up a notch I'm going to steal Luke's test bed and find out if the type of rig that you would actually benefit from cooling down for better overclock ability will actually work in our mini-fridge setup so this is a Titan X this is a 59 30 K or 59 60 X not sure which 16 gigs of DDR 4 memory let's go you'll never miss it actually he'll come looking for me so now it's baseline time with Luke's rig here in the garage so our ambient temperatures are a little cooler than yesterday but that's ok we can correct for that the most important thing is the difference between ambient temperature and CPU temperature when you're measuring this sort of thing and our CPU temperature we're going to simplify things a little bit instead of looking at all the cores we're just going to take the CPU reading and we're looking at it's fluctuating between 29 and 30 degrees so now let's start the stress test and see where we end up outside of the cooling box we have our numbers so the room cooled down a little bit thanks to some breeziness at about 22 and a half degrees and our CPU settled in just under 45 degrees on the hottest of it's 6 cores it is a 59 30 K I have now confirmed that so now it's time let's do it go ahead and start by removing some shelves I do not recommend cooling down hard drives especially while they are operating so we're not going to be putting our hard drive in there and another thing this Pico now that it's cold and it's below ambient temperature should not be powered on until it reaches ambient temperature on its own because otherwise condensation can be a factor and any moisture with powered on electronics is a terrible idea okay I think we've actually got enough clearance on our fans here that they should be able to cool the CPU just fine that's a bit of a problem here I have a solution yeah there we go problem solved so we're getting ambient temperature readings the compressor is running and we can see our idle CPU temperatures here so let's find out where she settles in at idle bear in mind guys that we are talking a very different level of heat load here I think the Pico has a power supply that's something like 10 watts total whereas even at idle this computer is going to consume somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 90 watts now I was really hoping I was rooting for it I was hoping that the idle scenario would give us sub ambient temperatures but in fact it has settled in around twenty three point three degrees almost exactly the ambient temperature of the room which means we are basically achieving nothing other than consuming electricity by putting the computer inside the fridge but I promised you guys a load scenario and that is what I am going to deliver it should be noted that I observed that to the touch the side of the fridge which is where this particular unit seems to dissipate heat from the hot side of the HVAC unit is hotter than I have experienced before you can see we actually just crept up another fraction of a degree so our 23.4 right now let's go ahead and kick it into high gear kids okay so you can see they've already jumped to about what we observed in our outside control test but what this doesn't account for is that the ambient temperature in here is going to increase now that the compressor and refrigeration system inside here is overwhelmed so let's watch it happen shall we all right so this is taking longer than I thought - completely reach unreasonable temperatures and here we are twelve minutes later the system is still running but we know enough to know that it doesn't work this is not even an overclocked rig and our ambient temperatures inside the fridge are steadily climbing i took a reading about 30 seconds ago it was 26 and a half now it's peaking at 27 depending on how i diggle the probe so all that's really left is the explanation for why this doesn't work well there's no air flow this is a closed system so this system relies on itself to move any heat that's generated inside out so that's going to be done through the sides of the unit or in many cases on fridges a coil at the back a heat sink effectively so unless you're using a unit with enough capacity to handle not only keeping the insides cold but also removing a constant heat load it isn't going to work so we can't just introduce airflow by like you know punching fans in the side so a closed system depends on the capacity of the system for cooling now with that said you guys might go okay well hold on a second Linus you showed off that the low powered PC could work and even the idle PC was not failing at the rate that the load PC is well that's only sort of true because fridges are designed for occasional use some heat from the outside will transfer inside through the insulated barrier and it'll have to you know maintain that also the user will open it up from time to time to remove a drink so the compressor fires up and it gets things back down to a nice cool temperature they're not designed with components that are rated for 24-hour seven-day-a-week operation that type of workload rating is only going to be found in a more industrial unit something like an air conditioner and I guess that's where we get into the practical sort of side of phase change cooling for computers if you have a large high capacity air conditioner say for example designed for a room that can handle that kind of a heat load or something where an entire building is air-conditioned then you will get the benefit of the lower ambient temperature not only for yourself but also for your computer also if you checked out our phase change BC build guide which you can check out in the little eye in the corner well if you apply the phase change cooling directly to the heat load and you're controlling the scope of what you're cooling we haven't even fired up the graphics card in here and we're overwhelming it then it can be useful as well but again we're talking high-end components not a you know couple hundred dollar mini-fridge and we're talking custom-designed stuff in that case from LD cooling so yeah I mean most of you probably knew how this was going to turn out some of you might not have because it's all about how you think about it if you think about your computer in terms of that it runs at 30 or 40 degrees and so you know it should be able to be kept cool then I get where you're coming from but it's more to do with the total thermal energy not the actual temperature which are two completely different things and if you think about it this way a computer that consumes you know 300 400 watts at load is going to be kicking off basically equivalent amounts of heat that's about the same as a as a modest space heater and you wouldn't think putting a space heater inside a fridge would keep that cool either would you so there you go guys the answer has finally been provided on Linus tech tips not that anyone else hasn't ever proved this before you can see in the time I've even been talking here we've gone up almost an entire additional degree so I'm going to go ahead and put the system out of its misery now thank you for watching if you disliked this video BAM you know what to do but if you liked it then go ahead click that like button get subscribed to our videos even consider supporting us by buying a cool t-shirt like this one shopping on Amazon using our affiliate code we've actually got a video guiding you guys through how to do that or even by supporting us directly through the Linus tech tips community if you guys are looking for something else to watch now that you've done all that stuff I'm going to pull up my calendar and find out what I've done recently ah yes Luke should have just uploaded the doom Baba machine where we built the ultimate possible machine out of all the components in our office and ran it through the gauntlet for you so check that out I'll see you guys again next time