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 okay I need a key
Corsair delivers real Mech or oh here I have one H real Mech or nothing with
their new strafe mechanical keyboard featuring genuine german-made Cherry MX
key switches click on my chin to learn
more I'm going to move my chin now just to throw you for a
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 trolled many 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 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 Pi
320 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 ZBOX and then we're going
to run a stress test to find out just how she runs before putting her inside
the fridge all right so we've got our Baseline numbers we're looking at
anywhere from about 46 to 49° C on our
course which puts us at about 22 to 25°
above our ambient temperature which is about 27° now let's go ahead and fire up a
stress test what is
that that's
weird what is that noise is my backpack
here it's more on shut up it got louder
maybe that's the maybe it's the low battery alert that is a pretty
aggressive low battery alert and yet apparently that's what it is 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°
and our ambient temperatures are actually a 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 thought
it's supposed to be like 4° maybe 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 then
let's start it boom okay so no real surprises here
our idle temperature test gives us anywhere from 25 to
27° our ambient temperature around the
Pico is around 5° and that stands to reason because
we're looking at about a 20° 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 fridge is compressor is
running all the time but it is maintaining a frosty internal
temperature as low as 2 to 2 1/ 12° C
and our CPU has settled in at around 38
to 40° C under load the mini fridge
concept is a massive success achieving a
let's see wow greater than
20° Improvement in load CPU temperatures
now we're going to take things up a notch I'm going to steal Luke's test
bench and find out if the type of rig that you would actually benefit from
cooling down for better overclock Lo ability uh will actually work in our
mini fridge setup so this is a Titan X
this is a 5930k or 5960x not sure which 16 gigs of
ddr4 memory let's go he'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 okay we can correct
for that the most important thing is the difference between amb 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° 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 1/2 de
and our CPU settled in just under 45° on
the hottest of its six cores it is a 5930k 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 um especially while they are
operating so we're not going to be putting our hard drive in there and uh
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 there's a bit of a problem here I
have a solution
ah 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 subambient
temperatures but in fact it has settled
in around 23.3 de 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's
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 at 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 to completely reach unreasonable temperatures and here
we are 12 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 and2 now it's
peaking at 27 depending on how I jiggle the probe um so all that's really left
is the explanation for or why this
doesn't work well there's no airflow 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 is n going to work so we can't
just introduce airf Flow 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 lus 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
7day 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 I 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 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 cuz it's
all about how how you think about it if you think about your computer in terms of that it runs at 30 or 40° 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 online as 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 this system out of
its misery now thank you for watching if you disliked this video bam you know
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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 Hama 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