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all right we're locked out of our own video

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but this video is going to be great we are going to be building a computer

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inside a mini fridge we are going to answer the question once and for all is

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it a good idea to build a computer inside a mini

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fridge like the video if you think that's a good question to answer I

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didn't have any other teasers ready okay I need a key

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Corsair delivers real Mech or oh here I have one H real Mech or nothing with

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their new strafe mechanical keyboard featuring genuine german-made Cherry MX

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key switches click on my chin to learn

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more I'm going to move my chin now just to throw you for a

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loop this may not look like a computer

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case to you nor does it look like a

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computer case to me because it's not a computer case this is a fully functional

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that is to say working but not plugged in mini fridge and if you're like me and

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you've trolled many a forum you've either witnessed or come up with the

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idea on your own of building a computer inside a mini fridge where well hey it's

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cold in there must be great for overclocking right let's put it to the

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test do you even lift bro yeah I lift all

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right okay now before you go full bore

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on any kind of project you want to at least validate the concept so we'll be

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taking the Zotac ZBOX Pico Pi

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320 and we will be experimenting to find

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out if this Compact and power efficient

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passively cooled PC can actually

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experience an improvement in thermals and or performance inside the mini

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fridge right but of course first we have to establish a baseline reading in our

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ambient temperature test here so we're booting up the ZBOX and then we're going

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to run a stress test to find out just how she runs before putting her inside

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the fridge all right so we've got our Baseline numbers we're looking at

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anywhere from about 46 to 49° C on our

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course which puts us at about 22 to 25°

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above our ambient temperature which is about 27° now let's go ahead and fire up a

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stress test what is

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that that's

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weird what is that noise is my backpack

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here it's more on shut up it got louder

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maybe that's the maybe it's the low battery alert that is a pretty

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aggressive low battery alert and yet apparently that's what it is apparently

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that's what it was okay so with that crummy experience

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out of the way it looks like our CPU temperatures have settled into 59 to 63°

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and our ambient temperatures are actually a touch higher at

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27.5 okay so what we'll find out now is

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whether our fridge is even ready for us to put our system inside it I thought

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it's supposed to be like 4° maybe that's a touch hot oh well then it is going

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down very fast okay so let's go ahead and put this puppy on the Shelf then

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let's start it boom okay so no real surprises here

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our idle temperature test gives us anywhere from 25 to

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27° our ambient temperature around the

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Pico is around 5° and that stands to reason because

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we're looking at about a 20° Delta between ambient and CPU temperature so

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that means that at idle the mini fridge

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works it cools the Pico so this is the

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part where the video gets really interesting our fridge is compressor is

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running all the time but it is maintaining a frosty internal

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temperature as low as 2 to 2 1/ 12° C

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and our CPU has settled in at around 38

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to 40° C under load the mini fridge

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concept is a massive success achieving a

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let's see wow greater than

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20° Improvement in load CPU temperatures

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now we're going to take things up a notch I'm going to steal Luke's test

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bench and find out if the type of rig that you would actually benefit from

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cooling down for better overclock Lo ability uh will actually work in our

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mini fridge setup so this is a Titan X

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this is a 5930k or 5960x not sure which 16 gigs of

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ddr4 memory let's go he'll never miss it

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actually he'll come looking for me so now it's Baseline time with Luke's rig

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here in the garage so our ambient temperatures are a little cooler than yesterday but that's okay we can correct

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for that the most important thing is the difference between amb temperature and

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CPU temperature when you're measuring this sort of thing and our CPU

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temperature we're going to simplify things a little bit instead of looking at all the cores we're just going to

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take the CPU reading and we're looking at it's fluctuating between 29 and

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30° so now let's start the stress test

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and see where we end up outside of the

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cooling box we have our numbers so the

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room cooled down a little bit thanks to some breeziness at about 22 and 1/2 de

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and our CPU settled in just under 45° on

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the hottest of its six cores it is a 5930k I have now confirmed that so now

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it's time let's do it go ahead and start by

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removing some shelves I do not recommend cooling down

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hard drives um especially while they are

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operating so we're not going to be putting our hard drive in there and uh

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another thing this Pico now that it's cold and it's below ambient temperature

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should not be powered on until it reaches ambient temperature on its own

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because otherwise condensation can be a factor and any moisture with powered on

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electronics is a terrible idea okay I

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think we've actually got enough clearance on our fans here that they

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should be able to cool the CPU just

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fine there's a bit of a problem here I

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have a solution

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ah there we go problem

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solved so we're getting ambient temperature readings the compressor is

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running and we can see our idle CPU temperatures here so let's find out

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where she settles in at idle bear in mind guys that we are talking a very

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different level of heat load here I think the Pico has a power supply that's

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something like 10 watts total whereas

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even at idle this computer is going to consume somewhere in the neighborhood of

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80 to 90 Watts now I was really hoping I

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was rooting for it I was hoping that the

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idle scenario would give us subambient

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temperatures but in fact it has settled

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in around 23.3 de almost exactly the

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ambient temperature of the room which means we are

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basically achieving nothing other than consuming electricity by putting the

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computer inside the fridge but I promised you guys a load scenario and

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that is what I am going to deliver it's

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should be noted that I observed that to the touch the side of the fridge which

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is where this particular unit seems to dissipate heat from the hot side of the

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HVAC unit is hotter than I have

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experienced before you can see we actually just crept up another fraction

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of a degree so at 23.4 right now let's

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go ahead and kick it into high gear kids okay so you can see they've already

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jumped to about what we observed in our

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outside control test but what this

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doesn't account for is that the ambient temperature in here is going to increase

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now that the compressor and refrigeration system inside here is

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overwhelmed so let's watch it happen shall we all right so this is taking

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longer than I thought to completely reach unreasonable temperatures and here

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we are 12 minutes later the system is still running but we know enough to know

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that it doesn't work this is not even an overclocked rig and our ambient

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temperatures inside the fridge are steadily climbing I took a reading about

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30 seconds ago it was 26 and2 now it's

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peaking at 27 depending on how I jiggle the probe um so all that's really left

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is the explanation for or why this

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doesn't work well there's no airflow this is a closed system so this system

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relies on itself to move any heat that's

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generated inside out so that's going to be done through the sides of the unit or

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in many cases on fridges a coil at the

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back a heat sink effectively so unless you're using a unit with enough capacity

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to handle not only keeping the insides cold but also removing a constant heat

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load it is n going to work so we can't

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just introduce airf Flow by like you know punching fans in the side so a

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closed system depends on the capacity of

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the system for cooling now with that

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said you guys might go okay well hold on a second lus you showed off that the low

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powered PC could work and even the idle PC was not failing at the rate that the

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load PC is well that's only sort of true

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because fridges are designed for occasional use some heat from the

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outside will transfer inside through the insulated barrier and it'll have to you

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know maintain that also the user will open it up from time to time to remove a

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drink so the compressor fires up and it gets things back down to a nice cool

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temperature they're not designed with components that are rated for 24-Hour

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7day a week operation that type of

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workload rating is only going to be found in a more industrial unit

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something like an air conditioner and I guess that's where we get into the

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Practical sort of side of phase change cooling for computers if you have a

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large high capacity air conditioner say for example designed for a room that can

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handle that kind of a heat load or something where an entire building is

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air conditioned then you will get the benefit of the lower ambient temperature

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not only for yourself but also for your computer also if you checked out our

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phase change BC build guide which you

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can check out in the little I in the corner well if you apply the phase

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change cooling directly to the heat load and you're controlling the scope of what

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you're cooling we haven't even fired up the graphics card in here and we're

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overwhelming it then it can be useful as well but again we're talking high-end

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components not a you know couple hundred mini fridge and we're talking custom

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designed stuff in that case from LD cooling so yeah I mean most of you

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probably knew how this was going to turn out some of you might not have cuz it's

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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

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know it should be able to be kept cool then I get where you're coming from but

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it's more to do with the total thermal energy not the actual temperature which

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are two completely different things and if you think about it this way a

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computer that consumes you know 300 400 watts at load is going to be kicking off

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basically equivalent amounts of heat that's about the same as a as a modest

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space heater and you wouldn't think putting a space heater inside a fridge

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would keep that cool either would you so

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there you go guys the answer has finally

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been provided online as Tech tips not that anyone else hasn't ever proved this

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before you can see in the time I've even been talking here we've gone up almost

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an entire additional degree so I'm going to go ahead and put this system out of

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its misery now thank you for watching if you disliked this video bam you know

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what to do but if you liked it then go ahead click that like button get

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subscribed to our videos even consider supporting us by buying a cool t-shirt

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like this one shopping on Amazon using our affiliate code we've actually got a

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video guiding you guys through how to do that or even by supporting us directly

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through the Linus Tech tips Community if you guys are looking for something else

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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

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yes Luke should have just uploaded the

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Doom Hama machine where we built the ultimate possible machine out of all the

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components in our office and ran it through the gauntlet for you so check

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that out I'll see you guys again next time