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Maybe you missed it, but several months ago, ASUS released the best RTX 4090 ever, the ROG Matrix.

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This represents the pinnacle of ASUS's manufacturing capabilities,

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with higher clock speeds than any other 4090, liquid metal on the GPU die for maximum cooling

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performance, and a 360mm radiator all-in-one water cooler built right in. The only problem?

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It costs $3,200. That is twice the price of the Founders Edition card.

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Republic of Gamers? More like Republic of Out of Touch?

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I bet you could take that $1,600 premium and put it towards building your own custom loop.

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I mean, you could probably even pay yourself a fair wage for the research and building the darn thing.

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Oh, you're talking to me? Yeah, I bet you could buy a regular RTX 4090 and all of that stuff and still have cash to spare.

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Okay, but where will I get the money? Well, here.

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Hey, what? This is just a segway. To our sponsor, let's lay out some ground rules.

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Adam's budget has to go towards a 4090 of his choosing, planning and purchasing all

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components for a water cooling loop and paying himself to assemble it.

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He's going to be paid the median wage of a Geek Squad repair agent,

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which, according to Glassdoor, is $21.63 per hour.

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Ready? Go! I quickly got to researching using resources from Jays2Cents and Reddit,

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and I figured I have enough budget that I can splurge big time. So not only am I going to cool my GPU, I'm also going to cool my CPU,

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and get an ultra premium water block for both of them.

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And to deal with all that heat, I'm hoping a thick 480mm RAD will do the trick.

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I spent 90 minutes and a lot of money during my shopping spree, and I think I did a pretty good job.

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But let's see what Linus thinks. All right, let me see.

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There's definitely some stuff that stands out immediately as not a great value.

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However, when you look at what we're comparing it to, I guess I can forgive it.

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Before we get into those details, though, I want to see if he outright missed anything that's going to cost him a penalty

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once he's assembling the system. Cooling blocks for a CPU and GPU.

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Check check. A pump and reservoir to make it simpler to fill the loop and move fluid around.

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A big radiator with some fans to go on it. I don't know if these are the ones I would have chosen,

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but hey, at least he's got them. Along with a high-performance phase-change thermal pad from LTT Store,

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and some tubing and some fittings, both of which raise a couple of questions about his research for me.

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For starters, this is his case. And while the Phanteks NV7 is both reasonably priced and attractive,

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what it isn't is small. And Adam has only purchased 9.8 feet of this XT soft line mesh-sleeved tubing from Corsair.

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It should cover the distance between all of his plumbed-up components,

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but when you go with a thin-walled tubing like this one,

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the loop layout matters a lot if you want to avoid kinks,

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and this length doesn't leave him a ton of room for error.

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As for his fittings, it's never a bad idea to buy ones that are explicitly compatible

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with the tubing that you bought from the exact same vendor,

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and these XF series compressions look pretty nice with recessed o-rings

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and a pretty pleasing overall finish. The only thing I'd critique here is that he could have saved probably 20 or 30 dollars

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by going with fittings from someone like Bixki. He also paid a butt ton of money for this 4090 water block,

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probably about double what I would have spent. But who knows, maybe it's... oh.

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Okay, it's very, very pretty.

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And in fairness to Adam, even these excessive purchases,

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above and beyond buying an RTX 4090, have put him nowhere near the cost of the ROG Matrix Platinum.

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And he's still got seven hours of budget left to pay himself to build it.

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Maybe he shouldn't have sprung for a $200 CPU block.

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Overall though, not exactly how I would have done it.

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These quantum surface radiators from UK have a very dense fin arrangement,

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and I see nothing to indicate that these Thermaltake fans

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have particularly high static pressure to take advantage of that.

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But it should still offer good performance for both his GPU and his CPU,

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and I don't see any other things here that promise to be a major showstopper.

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And he passed one of the biggest stumbling blocks when he bought a block that was explicitly compatible with his exact model of GPU.

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Okay.

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So now we're going to mount our water block. I got this cool water block from EK.

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I bought it because it looked cool. It could have gotten something that was like literally half the price,

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and still would have been a great performance water block. But I was so confident about my budget that I felt that we could do this anyways.

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We got our PTM7950.

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You know, there is a video on lttstore.com

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of the best way to put this stuff on.

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And I have not watched it. A water block on.

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So here is our tough gaming 4090.

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While the ROG Matrix Platinum is based on the Strix platform by ASUS,

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I figure that if it only gets like an extra 6% performance,

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I might be able to squeeze an extra performance out of their tough series if I get lucky.

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But now I have to take off all of this cooler to put it into this.

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The Optimus water cooling. I don't know what the exact model is, but holy cow.

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It's heavy. These guys are from like Chicago or something.

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They're a pretty small company. And apparently this is one of the best water blocks on the market.

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Do you know how I know that? I googled best 4090 water block and everyone said it was this.

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I was just thinking, wow, I wish I had a way to organize my screws. But then I remembered that we have these handy dandy mod mats

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that are going to be coming soon to LTTstore.com

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that are the perfect thing for what I am doing. This is not going to worsen my budget, okay?

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I know I might look like the kind of guy you could take home to your mama, but I'm a bad boy.

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I void the warranty. Fun fact about these stickers.

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Manufacturers put them on devices to intimidate you and make you feel like you're not allowed to tinker with devices you own.

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But these warranty void stickers are not enforceable by law anywhere in America.

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So if a company is refusing to give you service, you can always, you know, complain to the FTC about it.

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Because it's complete BS. You bought the thing. You should be allowed to service it.

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For the case, we got this big old Phanteks NV7.

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It's massive. It's chonkin. It's got support for a 480 millimeter rad

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because that's what I went with because it seemed like it was the best way to get

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a lot of radiator for a little bit of budget, as well as it lowered the amount of fittings I needed,

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which eight fittings, my God, they eat into your budget.

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But I'm a little worried because it looks like my motherboard might not fit.

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Yeah, so the ATX motherboard is a problem.

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Let's see if we can take this little thing out and maybe we will be saved.

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So while this computer has this really cool set of LEDs

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that are actually totally cable-less, that line the motherboard tray,

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we might not be able to use at least one of them.

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But the good news is that I think that means our motherboard fits in.

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Hey, look at that. However, we do need to consider that our radiator is going here, I think.

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Or does this go along the top? Nope, one of these things is not like the other.

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One of these things is a lot bigger.

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It's so close. If we mounted it here, it fits.

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We docked an hour and change to compensate for the 15 extra dollars for the two radiators

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and for the trip to the store.

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And now it went from being like, yeah, we got enough time to being like, okay, this is going to be kind of tight.

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Let's figure out a pump mount. We got the Xd5 RGB Elite LCD from Corsair.

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It's a pump res combo.

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And that was just to simplify the number of components.

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It's also got a cool screen, but right now it kind of looks like it's screaming.

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I probably won't be spending a ton of time doing any cable management because boy, howdy,

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I don't have a ton of time.

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Yeah, it's tubing time. We've got both of our radiators mounted, one at the top, one at the bottom.

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And I think we are going to be just peachy. I use soft tubing because I don't hate myself and I didn't want to do hard tubing and I needed

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this to be possible. Also, the ROG matrix, it doesn't use hard tubing.

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It uses soft tubing. So yeah, I'm pretty sure you're just going to like shove it on there.

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And then these are compression fittings. So what they do is that when you screw them on,

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they tighten the edges, they have these little prongs.

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And then they tighten around that and then that gets your tube nice and tight and sealed.

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And then it don't leak, hopefully.

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So I can be too tight of a bend for this tubing.

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I guess I can go to the top one and then that can go up.

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And that prevents the fear of kinky.

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Though I have no fears of kinks.

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My phone number is 6-0. This isn't exactly a precise way of measuring things,

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but I figure it's good enough, right?

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It's got to go a little bit longer than that. So I'm going to go here and that goes on right there.

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Maybe it won't matter when I fill it with water.

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I don't know, man. Damn, look at this beauty.

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What the heck is this tube? Did he decide to buy this?

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Oh, I thought this was like sleeving. Oh God, this is terrible.

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Dude, look, feel this. Oh yeah, it's actually awful. But like, put your hand right here.

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Like she's done, bud. Yeah, that's just not going to work. Yeah, that's a sort of interesting mix and match of brands here.

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Got some EK. We got some Corsair. We got some Optimus. These blocks are super nice.

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That's a really expensive pump. That's the fanciest pump I've ever seen.

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But then why this tubing? Is this Corsair? These are Corsair fittings too.

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These are f***ing ugly.

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Everything about this build looks great except these fittings and tubes.

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Does he have any 90 degrees? Oh, there's not a chance that this fitting right here

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is going to work out in any way. Yeah, like he could make this CPU to GPU line work.

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It's just too long right now. But you know, you go like that and you're done.

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This box cost $40.

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It's the worst tubing I've ever seen. All I got to say is good luck, man.

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Because I don't have a lot of extra tubing, I need to make sure that every time I make a cut,

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I can only go, this cut only needs to be shortened. So I always want to have a little bit extra because

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if I screw up a cut and it's too short, I lose like this whole length as opposed to like maybe losing like a centimeter

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or half an inch or something, you know? Oh, I need to change this.

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So this top thing, this needs to go here. This is the outlet port.

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This needs to go to the inlet. One tiny little cut.

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Holy crap. I think we're done.

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Okay, now we just got to turn on and make sure everything's working.

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And then we're going to start filling with water. This is amazing. An hour and 15 minutes to go.

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Little did Adam know his journey was far from over.

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I think we're screwed, boys. Turns out that this pump doesn't just use the USB power.

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It also requires to be connected to a Corsair IQ Link box

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that of course they don't include, which means I have to make a trip to the store

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if I want this pump to work. It doesn't matter if you don't care about any of the smart features.

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You can't just run the pump off of the USB header. You have to connect it to a Corsair IQ Link.

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I should have expected Corsair to pull this kind of bullshit.

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In my defense, Corsair does a great job of not telling you anywhere on the main page on their website.

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You actually have to go into the tech specs, I believe,

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and then go, no, nothing here that says it's required.

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If I go to guides, maybe. So I'd have to look at that. I'd have to review the manual.

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They also do a great job of not showing it to you on the box, except for this tiny little thing that says the IQ Link is required.

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It costs $60? Are you kidding me?

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And it's not even like we can return something like we did with the radiators.

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I just have to spend $60 more.

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This is how much time I got left.

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It's now counting upwards to demonstrate how much time I'm wasting

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and how much in debt I will be at the end of this. Okay, we have our funnel and our distilled water,

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and this is going to be a pain in the a** to pour, isn't it?

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This is kind of terrifying. Do you see any drips anywhere?

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So what's wrong here? Like, why isn't...

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Basically, what's happening is that there's air in the tubes already,

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and that would be preventing the water from going. So maybe if I give it a little bit of a tip...

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It's flowing in a circle. You can see it coming down the inlet. Yeah, you see that?

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No drips, no drips.

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Let's do this. We're finally up and running, and I'm running combustor and Cinebench at the same time,

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and I am actually blown away. I was expecting temperatures to not be as good as they are,

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but we're running Cinebench 2024. We're at like 70 degrees on the CPU,

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80 degrees on the hottest core, and then on the GPU, we're running combustor at 4K.

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50 degrees Celsius. We have so much room to crank this thing up another notch.

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I am really excited. I didn't think it would go this well. We also haven't even done our heating and cooling cycles,

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which benefits PTM7950, so it could get even better.

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We could get even cooler than what we have right now. You know what?

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I kind of get it. I kind of get why people water cool.

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This is so cool, seeing people get it.

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It's so not worth the money. So not worth the money.

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And this look on his face right now, it goes the other way when it leaks.

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You might look at the timer back there, and you'll notice that it's counting up.

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We went over budget. Oh no. But we were really, really close,

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and I'm mostly blaming Corsair. Tell me about that.

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So you buy their pump. Right? You do. And I still do.

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Yeah. I mean, I bought their pump. Pretty expensive pump. It's very fancy.

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It doesn't run at all without also buying

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a sold separately IQ link hub. I also, I saw the braided exterior tubing that you bought,

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and I was like, that seems like it'd be a really cool look, but I have concerns about cutting it cleanly,

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and then it's still looking good where you tighten the collars on the compression.

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Yeah, it looks like ****. When you go here, it looks great,

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but when you get right up to the compression fittings, you can see this one I had to do a few times.

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I can see that. And it's already worn.

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The reason why these aren't on, all these fans connect through these pogo pins,

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and this fitting right here interferes with this getting a proper contact

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to actually send the signal. They should all run. I just have to flip.

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I just have to turn them all the way over here. Yeah, why did you choose thermal take fans?

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Um, because I wanted RGB. Okay.

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And I didn't want to spend too much money on RGB.

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I see. I got six of these for half the price of three-course air fans.

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Yep, that's fair enough. Yeah, if you had both of these rads actually running,

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you'd have plenty of radiator right now, and you would be getting better temperatures.

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You can really tell whether your bottleneck is the thermal transfer between the CPU and the block,

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or whether your bottleneck is the dissipation of the heat to the surrounding air

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by just touching the side of your radiator,

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or just here, touch the fins. Oh yeah, that's warm. You've got to throw some more heat into the air here.

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Yeah. Even your reservoir feels hot. Uh-oh.

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What's the coolant temperature? We can see it. 43. Oh, that's getting up there. Yeah.

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So eventually we're going to be getting saturated, right, and then it just keeps freezing or...

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What happens is the bigger the delta, the bigger the difference in temperature

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between the surrounding air and the coolant, the more efficient the thermal transfer.

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So you reach a point of equilibrium where as the liquid heats up,

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the difference from the ambient air gets greater, and the heat transfer gets greater,

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so it flattens out. The GPU's still so far below its thermal limits.

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Okay, I can explain that. The regular form factor for GPUs

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is really not conducive to carrying heat away from them.

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Having a fan blowing down onto a heat sink this thick

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with these super skinny low-static pressure fans

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sucks. We've done experiments in the past where we put a tower cooler onto a GPU

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and they run flipping cool, even though the cooler itself

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weighs less than the gigantic coolers that we put on GPUs these days.

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GPUs are actually much easier to cool,

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even though they're 400 watts compared to, you know, 200 to 300 for a CPU,

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because the dies are so big. You have so much surface area to carry that heat away

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compared to a CPU, like especially on Intel, where the die is this big

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and it's 250 to 300 watts. GPU, you know, 400 watts of that big, no big deal.

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Oh, you spent so much money on your block.

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I had so much money to spend. Well, you could have made up for the budget overrun

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on that IQ controller and your time overrun if you had just gotten a reasonably priced block.

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That's true. But I think that's pretty realistic. Like when you did your first water cooling,

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did you get every single part correct? Well, maybe you did. No, I think that assumption is why people

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can feel afraid to try new things. And no, I absolutely screwed up.

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My first water cooling setup was a thermal take,

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big water SE. It was a piece of shit, complete waste of money.

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I thought that what I was buying was an all-in-one setup

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that could be expanded in the future to, you know, go full custom.

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I didn't realize that everything about it was complete garbage.

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And I will say that the information that's out there to help people start water cooling is so much better.

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It's a lot better. Really great. Like I was referring to a lot of Jay's two cents guides

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because his water cooling guides were awesome. It helps.

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They were great for somebody like me, but also had depth that I wasn't even bothering to go into.

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Like he's like, here's how to hard line. And I was like, I'm not, not today.

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Clearly not. So what you want is one of these.

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So this is a 3 eighths inch ID, 5 eighths inch OD.

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What you have is a 3 eighths inch ID, half inch OD.

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So you can see how much skinnier that wall is.

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So you want thick wall tubing. This is the optimal size.

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But now we need to answer the question. Does this beat the ROG matrix?

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I don't think we can answer that question until we answer, did you have fun?

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You know, since it wasn't any of my own money,

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I had a grand old time. But how does my system compare to the incredible power of the ROG matrix?

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It comes close, but not as close as I thought. Across the games I tested,

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I found the tough gaming GPU lagged behind about 5 to 10%.

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Not being satisfied, I decided to put on a quick and dirty overclock.

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I found that I was able to pretty much match the ROG matrix.

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Not bad. Back to spending the money though. I think it doesn't really matter whose money it was,

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because that wasn't the point. The point was, we're going to spend this money,

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do we spend it on a matrix ROG 4090,

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or do we spend it on ourselves? Do we spend it on learning something

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and water cooling components that we can carry forward to future builds

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and the experience of DIYing something? So with that in mind, who do you think won?

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You know, I think it was a lot more fun to water cool.

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And the idea that the ROG matrix could just crap out,

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and then I'm in the same spot I am now with a GPU that I would have to take apart and water cool anyways.

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I feel like I'm better. Yes, there's going to be maintenance that I have to do. I'm going to have to make sure that my loop doesn't get clogged.

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And there's a whole, maybe in the long run, if I keep paying myself at $21 an hour,

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the ROG matrix might come out on top. But this is way more fun, way cooler.

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And I can also sell these. If I go, oh, I don't want to water cool anymore.

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I can, anything but the radiator pump and reservoir is not worth much.

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Okay. You can't sell tubing blocks whole like a quarter of their value

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if you're lucky on a CPU and basically nothing for GPU.

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With all that in mind, then would you do it again?

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Yeah, that sounds about right. But would you tell the people about our sponsor?

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If you guys enjoyed this video, you might enjoy the time that Elijah tried his first hard line tubing experience.

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Yeah, I'm not that brave.