You can cool a computer with hot air. And heat from a computer in a small
confined space equals well, a whole lot
of swath. Fortunately, I have a solution. By encasing my computer in
this here grow tent, I want to be cool as a cucumber.
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subscription with code zesk50 at the link down below. To start, I'd like to
thank the mining community for the glut of cheap GPUs that they just flooded the
market with and also the idea to enase your computer in a wood grow tent. Now,
with gaming computers just drawing so many watts these days, it might make
sense to do this with a single gaming computer instead of a whole mining rack.
Before we get to it, though, I want to just describe why this idea actually
isn't all that dumb. There are a number of ways to try and cool down in the
summer. You could just point a fan at your face, but that doesn't fix the fact
that your room is still super hot. Cracking a window can also work when
it's cool outside, but on the days when you need it the most, the air from the
outside's probably hotter than the air inside your house. Another option would
be to install an air conditioner, but that comes with its own whole set of
problems. If you only have a single circuit in your room, there's a good
chance that running an air conditioner and a gaming PC at the same time will
result in tripping a breaker. Second cost. Our grow tent cost us only $65,
while an okayish air conditioner starts at 10 times that. Also, I'm sure your
friends on Discord won't be super stoked when you're running a compressor right
next to your mic, and it doesn't get to the root problem that we have. You're
creating a bunch of heat in a small little room. I have air conditioning
that's in my apartment, but that does not help me when I'm sealed in this room
just poaching in my own sweat. Which brings us to the final option. Just open
the door, maybe. Well, if you live alone, then sure. But yelling at your
useless teammate in Rocket League can be rather disturbing for the others in your
house. And unfortunately, the doors here have to stay closed. So, all right then.
Grow tent it is. Let's go and build it. All right. Let's see what we're working
with here. I got this grow tent from Amazon for $65. The reviews for it were
fine, but at the same time, no one was using it to cool a PC. So, I also saw
this one's 2 ft x 2 ft. But some reviews of grow tents, not this one
specifically, they were like, "Oh, it says it was 2 ft x 2 ft, but it was
actually more like 1 and 1/2." If that's the case, we're screwed. Oh my god,
that's a that's green right there. I can already tell this is not going to be a
girlfriend approved setup. But
there it is. Look at the instructions. Step one,
frame. Step two, put the thing on. They're not wrong, but that's not the
most helpful.
In fairness to Vio Sun, this seems pretty self-explanatory. I don't think
we're going to have any trouble putting this together. One slightly unfortunate thing about
doing it this way is that this is a lot bigger than my computer. In one
direction, 2T is about perfect to fit a normal desktop. Problem is, uh, my
desktop's definitely not 2 ft wide, and it's [music] definitely definitely not
36 in tall. This is going to be way bigger than it needs to be, but at the
same time, it's the smallest one I could get. Wait, David.
Yep. What do you think these are for? Horizontal reinforcement.
Did not improve the structural rigidity at all. We can worry about those later.
Yeah. Why is this what's holding it together? [laughter] It's
Okay, feels not too bad now. I can dig this. I am slightly confused about all
the other stuff we have. I wonder if we'd get better performance with or
without the intakes [music] covered. We'll find that out later. Oh dear. It's
one of those things where they said that it was adjustable, but never mentioned
how adjustable it was or like what the sizes were or anything like that. I
don't know if our tubing's going to fit in there.
Okay. Okay. Well, this is pretty unfortunate. I asked for insulated
tubing specifically because it was black on the outside. Um, we did not get the
right one. This is so weird. Okay. Is it going to
work though? Can we just chuck it in like that? Duct tape it up and call it a
day. It'll need some work, but that's going to be just fine. Here's the basic
plan. I have terrible, terrible, awful casement Windows. need to make a big old
adapter for it. That's what this is going to be. So, we have this right
here, hose adapter. Also, a big acrylic pane. So, hopefully I don't block too
much light. My favorite thing about this design, though, is that I had Sarah go
ahead and [music] draw me an elephant. This right here, when the hose comes
out, it should look like the elephant's trunk. I'm very stoked. Okay, let's do
it. Before we try cutting the big elephant, which is going to take about
half an hour, I want to just try etching a couple small ones, get the settings
dialed in, and then we can do the full thing and know that it's going to turn
out great. I'm super glad we tested out the etching of the elephant first, cuz
we had a little bit of a problem. The laser, you know, it travels fast, but
when it has to do a tight corner, it slows down and then accelerates back up.
Normally, what you do in that situation is lower the amount of power that it's
putting out. Problem is, we're already pretty much as low as our laser will go.
It's too powerful for what we're doing today. Instead, what I've done is
defocused it. So, you know, we have a nice large beam. It disperses way more
heat and hopefully we won't just have an [music] elephant fall out of our piece
at the end. As a bonus with these settings, it's only going to take like 10 minutes to attach a big sheet of
acrylic to the window. I'm going to make a bunch of little clamps out of HDPE.
The material is a little bit overkill, but it also is the absolute perfect
piece of material for the job. And I had a big piece of it laying around. It
actually made this right here. The little extractor thingy. What the is
this called, David? I don't know. Dust collector. There we go. Got it.
I love this. We have such high utilization of the shop right now. We're
going to be doing this at the same time the laser's cutting our stuff out. And
if you come over here, our 3D prints have just started. This is going to take
us 14 hours. I really wish we had the Pantheon at this point in time, but uh
we don't. So, we're running two of them because if one of them fails, we are
completely screwed when we arrive here tomorrow to cut our HDP. We're using
this absolutely beautiful single flute. We can send it through this stuff at
like 160 in per minute. Freaking crazy.
Actually, it's going to take half a while cuz I need to swap out the tools
for every single one. I'm trying some new scoloping stuff. Should have just
set it up on the Tormach, but whatever. It looks like our elephant's done. I am
excited. Let's see here. Oops. Look at
that. We need to take the backing off, but heck yeah. All right, first clamp.
Hope this goes well.
We need to get a tool changer for this thing. Avid CNC, make one. I would love
it. Everyone would love it.
Okay, I do need to slow it down a little bit. Got kind of wavy there on the side,
but overall parts good. Just need to make seven more of them. and I'll see
you tomorrow when that's done. Instead of yesterday taking the time to make all
of them, I took the time to optimize the G-code for it. So, no more tool change.
Look at that, David. That's looking pretty good. And it was all done with this flat
endmill. One of these only takes 1 minute and 30 seconds now. It's
wonderful. We'll have a bunch of them just [music] in case something goes wrong. Anyway, let's go over here. I
don't know why I was ever concerned that these might fail. Both of them turned
out perfectly. Only problem is that uh it's blue. It's very blue. So, while the
router makes us a couple more of those parts, I'm going to paint this black.
Unfortunately, Nicholas, who actually knows how to paint things, is way too
busy today. So, I had to do it. Just don't look too closely at it. David, pretty please. A wonderful thing though,
this shop jacket. We're finally releasing it. Holy frig. Come on over
here. So, as you've probably seen in a bunch of our videos, I have absolutely
tortured this poor prototype and uh it's held up very well. We took a lot of
inspiration from Savage Apron. If you're doing things like grinding, welding,
that sort of crap, this will keep you nice and safe. Go and grab it. You can
put uh pens here. I was slightly
concerned about the acrylic. It's just kind of a brittle material. So, if we're
getting halfway through the day and it explodes, we're just completely screwed.
So, I made this one right here out of wood as well. It is going to block the light coming through the window, but at
the same time, I know it's not going to explode. Now, we do have a little bit of
a problem. It got a little bit burned and I'm having trouble cleaning it off.
Instead of screwing around getting all the charcoal off for a while, I think
I'm [snorts] just going to give it a little bit of a burn and then it'll look consistent hopefully. All right, I think
it's about time to pack her up and take it all to my house and we can see if
this actually works. What you want to do first, David? In case the computer or
figure out the window? Figure out the window. Figure out the window. Yeah, I was thinking that, too. All right, let's do
I think the easiest way to go about this is to just remove this whole desk. It's
going to be a pain. Thank you.
Nice. You could also just go kind of over.
Yeah. Over. Now, I did do the math. It
should take only about 2 and 1/2 minutes to heat that room up by 5° using my
computer. IRL, there's so many more factors like how warm your walls are.
They're going to suck in a bunch of heat. How much heat's coming in or
leaving through your Windows. like how where the sun is is going to make a huge
difference depending on if it's coming in through the window. So calculating is a bit difficult. We did run a test
though in 45 minutes that room increased in temperature by 3° which is a lot when
you think about it. Difference between 25 and 28° is the difference between me
personally being comfortable and not. Not to mention that typically we'll have
a gaming session that lasts for longer than 45 minutes. And you can see why it
ends up pretty unpleasant after a little while.
[snorts]
Ended up getting great. Yes.
Oh yeah. The best parts Trey.
In hindsight, this is a bit overkill. eight quarter20 bolts like these,
especially high strength ones. Probably good for most deep sea pressure vessels.
Uh, definitely going to hold this together, though. I don't know if this
is going to work. The curve of the laser was a little bit too much, and it means
that some of our holes aren't quite large enough. Now, I did try drilling it
out, but it's it's just going to blow it right up. Like,
also tried the deburring tool. It's not working. I think we need to swap for the
wood. We're going to want to protect it a little bit. Just got some simple
mineral oil here. It's not perfect for this situation, but it's way better than
nothing. Okay, this is working. I do think I will
swap to the acrylic later because uh this side plus a grow tent neighbors
might not be too happy. Oh, pretty
please. Oh, we did it. [laughter] Ha. Where did my
hammer go? You got [music] fist, bro.
Oh, he's taking me out of 105 for just a little bit. It's suddenly William Osman
vibes all over the place. I haven't I fix the kit and multiple sets of hex
keys. Guess which size I don't have.
Oh yeah, this is really solid. I'll put the CAD files down below. So, if you
guys want to, you know, do something like this with your casement Windows, you can. To move the air from our grow
tent out the window, we are going to be using this Rock 6-in fan.
[laughter] Does that show it off at all, David? Okay, perfect. The good news is also it
has a low setting if you don't want to have it be quite that loud.
Oops. Where do you think we want this fan, David? Maybe just down here on the
floor. That seems like [music] a not too bad spot. Okay, cool.
Fiberglass [music] desk. Don't breathe this.
One thing that's very unfortunate about this is that the uh tent is pretty
freaking big. So, this monitor, I feel like it's just going to have to go.
Funny story, by the way. I got this as an upgrade for my uh main monitor. It is
in every single way a better monitor, except the OSD is so bad that I don't
use it. Okay, what's the best way to do this? I guess if we go like that, all
the cords can come up in over there, and this goes out this way. Oh, I really
wish they had a smaller one. Yeah, I guess it's going to have to be how it
goes. Yeah, there's all the cords. I was
excited for like a little bit there when I was like, "Oh, this is probably
actually going to work." No, I'm not. What do you think? Out the side or out
the top? He goes out the top, right? Yeah, out the top.
This is one of those rare times that duct tape is actually getting used for
its intended purpose.
I washed a bunch of Red Green last night. Can you tell?
Should we dry run it? See how she goes? Heck yeah.
That was kind of underwhelming if I'm honest. Like, it is working really well.
It's sucking lots of air. This isn't the best zipper in the world. Might have to
crack this. Seems to work though. Way quieter than I expected.
There's so much air flow coming in under this door. All right, let's put a PC in
there. Plugging in peripherals is not the easiest. Um,
have to remember to turn on the PC before we uh close her up. There we go.
All of our air is going to be int right beside where our computer is bringing in
air and then hopefully all of it just gets yeetated out.
Oh, this isn't great.
It's a bit intrusive. It's a You mean I can't even see it? Uh, maybe up on the desk. That's good.
I'm sure the MS will really like that this is her uh office space. Now, in
fairness, the MS does way more work here
than I ever do at mine. So, this will probably get way more use now. I think
we've done it. Let's turn it on. Barely can hear it. Bar. Okay, I can I can hear
it. [laughter] The temperature of this room has started dropping. It's just
pulling in air from the rest of the apartment that is a little bit cooler right now. Moment of truth. Oh, Prime 95
Vermark. It's currently 26.6 degrees in
here. So if it's what 30.6 when we come back, we failed. In the last 45 minutes,
we have dropped 4° in this room. 3 right
now, actually. So it does look like our CPU got 3° hotter than original run. But
that said, if we just simply played games for another 45 minutes with it
before, the ambient air would be hotter, the CPU would be hotter. You know, the
speeds are exactly the same. It got a tiny bit hotter in here, but this room
is absolute night and day. And what's extra impressive, by this time,
normally, even without a computer on, this room is getting pretty hot. And now
it it's so cold. This was a huge win, David. Yeah, I I love it. Grow tent.
Stick your PC in one in the summer. Works great. Just like this sponsor.
Like this video. Maybe check out uh my Intel Extreme upgrade. bit more of an
overhaul than we had today, but I'm still impressed with our results