So the main difference between today's video
and some of the bizarro random cooling experiments
that Alex and I have done over the last several months
is that this time we're not in the boardroom,
we're in the kitchen
because today's video is gonna be completely nuts.
Now, I showed you guys sub-zero cooling
on Threadripper Gen 1 with my own DIY water chiller.
But believe it or not,
there's actually a commercially available
all-in-one nice tidy little package version of that.
So we're gonna be taking this water chiller from Active Aqua
and we're gonna be hooking it up to Threadripper 2.
32 cores of sub-zero.
Have they gone mad?
Have we?
No, it seems fine.
Seems perfectly fine.
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Okay, so first order of business
is make sure all of our hardware actually works.
Yeah.
Okay, so do I get to unbox the chiller?
Sure, yeah, go for it.
One-tenth of a horsepower.
I could get into that.
That seems like a good thing.
I guess so.
Whoa, what the ?
What?
You said I could unbox it.
And then you literally moved immediately to the scissors
and immediately started unboxing it without me.
Well, you're wasting a lot of time right here, so.
Would I get to unbox the tubing?
I guess so, yeah.
Fine, you know what?
I'm not gonna do that then.
You do it yourself.
There you go.
Here's Alex's first unboxing.
I'm not even helping him.
All right, so we've got some fittings here.
They look-
Boring.
Fine.
Boring.
Ow.
Damn it, that's heavy.
Well, that's more than you need to know.
So power cord, it's a heavy power cord.
And we've got the chiller here, which, normally,
you'd flip around, but you can't flip around chillers, so.
You've got your back to the audience.
You're failing right now.
You're failing.
Okay, so hold on.
This has a compressor in it, right?
So we don't wanna tip it over?
Yeah, that's what I was just saying.
Oh, well, it wasn't clear.
Do you want to grab an end?
Okay.
Wow, that is a lot more compact
than the one that I made out of a window-mounted AC unit.
Recommended water reservoir size, 13 to 50 gallons.
Okay.
What is this for?
It's for chilling aquariums.
Oh, okay.
So it's designed for a continuous load, so that's good.
We considered in advance that these are fittings
that we probably don't have already, right?
Right.
Oh, good work.
Or did that come in the box?
Yeah, this came in the box.
You thought of nothing.
No, I looked at the thing and-
Well, maybe the audience would know
about all the things that are on the box
if maybe you told them during the unboxing experience.
I did.
Terrible.
The first thing that I said was, there are fittings.
Yes, is that the right size for this?
Yes.
All right, fine.
Yeah, and I figured that this can go
between this and the pump,
and then we can put it into good stuff
between here and there.
Did we buy a pump?
Yes.
You know we have lots of pumps, right?
Yep.
But this one has more gallons per hour
or whatever the measurement is.
Really?
Then the little giants?
Well, I don't know what the little giants are, but-
You don't know what the little giants are.
Hold on, can we still return this?
Is this still in like new condition?
Yeah. I'm gonna go get a little giant.
Trust me, you'll like my little giant.
See?
That is a real man's pump.
It'll give you lots of head pressure.
Guessing zip ties aren't good enough?
Yeah, zip ties, fine.
Okay, here.
I can do that if you wanna get the next one going.
So for the reservoir, I was kind of thinking,
instead of bothering with doing a whole lot,
we could just stick the tubes right into here
and duct tape it on.
Okay.
I mean, the most important thing when you're going sub-zero
with some kind of
alcohol-based coolant is making sure that
any plastics that you're using
are not going to get destroyed by it,
any seals or gaskets.
This is that new MSI board, the Creation.
Do we wanna use this one or the Zenith
that already has all the residue and crap all over it?
Apparently the VRMs on that one
are better for Threadripper too.
Ah, well, this is just the first test,
so let's just kind of see what happens and go from there.
Cool.
Here goes nothing.
Can I have some fittings for the block here?
Thanks.
We can probably just like goatsy stretch
a three-eighths inch over there.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Yep.
You got it?
Oh, it doesn't have to go on up.
We're never gonna get that off.
Well, I guess do we just turn the pump on now
and make sure or hope that nothing leaks?
That's kind of what I was planning to do.
All right.
To those watching at home,
the worst part of all of this
is that this loop will perform
significantly better than yours.
Okay.
I'll try not to drink windshield de-icer here.
Okay.
The pump is now primed.
Cool.
Is this thing broken?
Your little giant's really impressing me.
Fortunately, I have another.
You could have had this running by now.
This one's even bigger.
Oh, great.
Yeah, this is the big giant.
Now I wish we'd left a little more slack on the lines.
Let's do a quick tubing swap here.
Okay.
Perfect.
Dang it, Alex.
How do I avoid drinking windshield de-icer now?
Ooh, man.
Yeah, that's...
That's what I told you.
Yay.
There we go.
All right.
So hold on.
So right, this.
Okay, perfect.
Should be fine.
And we're not gonna put that on so tight this time.
Okay.
Good to go?
Hopefully.
Let's hope.
Power it on.
Success, TM.
Seems to be working.
Okay, so now what?
I guess we should just fire up the bench.
Boom.
Let's do it.
Oh, and it turned off.
That's okay.
It's probably just the classic double post.
So our system's already not posting.
That's a good sign.
You know what?
We're trapping the Zenith.
All right.
I don't actually know that that's the problem.
It's probably not, but...
Oh, I'm gonna go get some water,
cause I'm thirsty.
Go ahead and cut.
Hey, it booted up on like the fourth attempt.
Oh, and it...
Good job.
All right, I'm trying the other board.
Oh, wow.
That is a lot of...
I might have overdone the thermal compound
a little bit there.
It's just like Vaseline caked around the RAM.
Very poor quality Vaseline, by the way.
If you've never installed a thread,
I'd rip her CPU before.
It's like nerve wracking actually,
the way you gotta go at it.
Like if it didn't have a little torque stop,
I don't think I'd put it that tight.
See that flicker on the RGB lighting?
I don't think it is the GPU.
If we just lost a 2990 WX, I'm gonna be pretty choked.
Yeah, that would suck.
Like, is that how it's supposed to go?
Let's just, let's just go for it again.
Maybe it's the RAM.
Some days I feel really bad for the viewers at home.
It's like they're watching a horror movie.
No, don't go into that closet.
Why would you do that?
Everyone else who went in there died.
Ooh.
Okay, so it's just a bad mount.
All good.
Let's see if we get a post here.
How is that even possible?
Oh, there's a code right here.
Detect memory.
All right, do you want me to grab some other stuff?
Yeah.
I figured out the problem.
What was it?
Old BIOS.
Oh.
We need a Threadripper one.
USB drive.
Can we just use the other board?
At this point, I think it's faster to flash the BIOS.
Uh, okay.
I'm sorry.
All right, well, there's a bunch of RAM.
Yeah, thanks.
So we're an hour in,
and we have not yet booted Threadripper 2
to verify that our system does in fact work.
But we have the latest BIOS on our board now.
Theoretically, this is it.
Wait for it.
They don't put post codes in the manual anymore.
I have confidence that this time we will post.
Uh-huh!
I mean, we've achieved nothing because we still can't boot.
Okay, do you wanna run and grab the drive off my bench?
All right.
Okay, that's a good sign actually.
Okay.
And that noise is driving me knocking faults right now.
All right.
So.
Change graph to logical processors.
LOL!
So many CSS's!
GPUs.
So I've just got to put some GPU drivers on here still.
We've got Ryzen master software
and Alex has pulled out the thermal camera.
So right now our CPU is sitting at about 45 degrees
because it's had a considerable amount of time to warm up.
Like these tubes are warm to the touch.
So I think now is the time for us to turn this thing on.
Yeah, I guess so.
Okay.
Well, this is somewhat anticlimactic.
Where's it even taking the temperature from?
Oh, I did something.
39, that's the limit.
Four Celsius, I guess.
Four Celsius.
So how do we wanna use this?
Do we wanna use it in a way that's practical
to just chill water down to a little above the dew point
and say, okay, this is the best case scenario
for normal water cooling performance?
Or do we want it like chilled?
I think we should do chilled.
Okay.
Like we've already screwed up that motherboard.
So what do we have to lose besides time?
The CPU.
We have another one.
The RAM.
We have more.
We'd never recommend that anyone run below ambient
or below the dew point on an ongoing basis without protection.
But I mean, we're just doing a Threadripper
two overclocking experiments.
So where's that shop towel stuff you had?
We'll just put some of this around the socket.
This is a really bad idea.
Seemed like a...
Pro insulation job.
Oh boy.
Even with all this airflow over the CPU socket area
and the VRMs, our block is still...
That's pretty wet.
Sweating.
But on the plus side, our CPU is idling at what?
Five degrees?
Seven?
Yeah, seven.
Why does this just say overload watts?
Oh, it's like the max.
Yeah, here we go.
Okay.
Go ahead and hit it.
Oh, I just did.
Oh, you did.
Is it done?
Yeah.
What the hell?
Yeah, it was a pretty low score too, 4864.
So we're at about a hundred watts at idle.
Can you hit it again?
I wanna see what we peak at.
Sure.
Whoa, 335 watts while CineBenching.
Okay, so we got just over 5,000 CineBench,
which is about what we expect.
So that means our CPU is doing 250 watts already.
We haven't even overclocked it.
It hit a maximum of 24 degrees.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So what, you want 40?
Yeah, let's just go for 40.
All right.
All right, it's changing a lot of variables at once.
So we're at, whoa, we're idling at 140 watts now.
All right, I'm gonna hit it now.
40, 580.
Ooh, did we crash?
No, 6,229 CineBench.
That was too easy.
This CPU is sucking over 500 watts.
Oh, who does AMD think they are, Intel?
Maximum of 39 degrees.
Well, should we try and go faster?
I guess so.
So I tried to launch Adobe Premiere and it just turned off.
Yeah, I don't know if we're stable.
There is a lot of water on there.
Should we cut the power to this?
Let's do that.
It's possible that there's water on the underside.
Hard to say.
Yeah, we could pull that up and have a look at it.
Actually,
no, it's bone dry.
It's really wet in there.
So we might've killed our chip.
If we don't manage to revive it,
then this is the end of the video.
And we're back to life.
How long, how many hours did we leave it for?
It was fine after like three or so.
Yeah, okay, fantastic.
So we're not gonna go quite so low again.
We're at 59 freedom units, whatever that is.
And there's good news though.
What do we got?
So it's currently at 4.1, didn't change the voltage.
I guess it's just fine, maybe.
We're at 19 degrees idle now,
which is a lot more reasonable at this room temperature.
And have we done a stress test yet?
No.
Okay, start with Cinebench.
Sure.
Over 6,000.
Should we try for 4.2?
Update and restart.
Oh, there are updates.
Okay, well, why don't we do that first?
Oh, this might be a while.
Oh.
It seems like a lot of the issue was just that you're
a crappy SSD died.
It might've not even been the condensation.
Oh.
I mean, honestly, I don't think we really need
to run any more benchmarks to determine
that this works really well.
Yeah.
So the main takeaways here are that this is really compact,
cools really well, and I'm gonna turn off the stupid pump.
Without the noise from the pump and that industrial fan.
Well, it's not on right now, but.
We can get it to kick on though.
Here, you wanna just? Yeah.
Set it at least four degrees lower,
and then it should kick in.
That's actually not too bad.
Yeah, it's really not loud.
So let us know in the comments,
would you like to see this cannibalized
and integrated into a system?
That's a really loaded question.
I sure would.
Are you on my team?
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