WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.520 Maybe you missed it, but several months ago, ASUS released the best RTX 4090 ever, the ROG Matrix. 00:00:07.520 --> 00:00:11.280 This represents the pinnacle of ASUS's manufacturing capabilities, 00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:16.960 with higher clock speeds than any other 4090, liquid metal on the GPU die for maximum cooling 00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:24.160 performance, and a 360mm radiator all-in-one water cooler built right in. The only problem? 00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:32.000 It costs $3,200. That is twice the price of the Founders Edition card. 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:35.920 Republic of Gamers? More like Republic of Out of Touch? 00:00:36.560 --> 00:00:41.920 I bet you could take that $1,600 premium and put it towards building your own custom loop. 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:47.600 I mean, you could probably even pay yourself a fair wage for the research and building the darn thing. 00:00:47.920 --> 00:00:59.280 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. 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:03.520 Okay, but where will I get the money? Well, here. 00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:10.400 Hey, what? This is just a segway. To our sponsor, let's lay out some ground rules. 00:01:10.400 --> 00:01:16.080 Adam's budget has to go towards a 4090 of his choosing, planning and purchasing all 00:01:16.160 --> 00:01:20.560 components for a water cooling loop and paying himself to assemble it. 00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:23.840 He's going to be paid the median wage of a Geek Squad repair agent, 00:01:23.840 --> 00:01:27.920 which, according to Glassdoor, is $21.63 per hour. 00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:33.840 Ready? Go! I quickly got to researching using resources from Jays2Cents and Reddit, 00:01:33.840 --> 00:01:40.400 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, 00:01:40.400 --> 00:01:43.520 and get an ultra premium water block for both of them. 00:01:43.520 --> 00:01:48.000 And to deal with all that heat, I'm hoping a thick 480mm RAD will do the trick. 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:52.800 I spent 90 minutes and a lot of money during my shopping spree, and I think I did a pretty good job. 00:01:52.800 --> 00:01:57.120 But let's see what Linus thinks. All right, let me see. 00:01:57.120 --> 00:02:02.080 There's definitely some stuff that stands out immediately as not a great value. 00:02:02.080 --> 00:02:08.480 However, when you look at what we're comparing it to, I guess I can forgive it. 00:02:08.480 --> 00:02:14.400 Before we get into those details, though, I want to see if he outright missed anything that's going to cost him a penalty 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:18.640 once he's assembling the system. Cooling blocks for a CPU and GPU. 00:02:18.640 --> 00:02:24.160 Check check. A pump and reservoir to make it simpler to fill the loop and move fluid around. 00:02:24.160 --> 00:02:28.000 A big radiator with some fans to go on it. I don't know if these are the ones I would have chosen, 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:33.120 but hey, at least he's got them. Along with a high-performance phase-change thermal pad from LTT Store, 00:02:33.120 --> 00:02:39.120 and some tubing and some fittings, both of which raise a couple of questions about his research for me. 00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:45.120 For starters, this is his case. And while the Phanteks NV7 is both reasonably priced and attractive, 00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:54.080 what it isn't is small. And Adam has only purchased 9.8 feet of this XT soft line mesh-sleeved tubing from Corsair. 00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:57.440 It should cover the distance between all of his plumbed-up components, 00:02:57.440 --> 00:03:00.960 but when you go with a thin-walled tubing like this one, 00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:05.760 the loop layout matters a lot if you want to avoid kinks, 00:03:05.760 --> 00:03:08.640 and this length doesn't leave him a ton of room for error. 00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:13.360 As for his fittings, it's never a bad idea to buy ones that are explicitly compatible 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:16.640 with the tubing that you bought from the exact same vendor, 00:03:16.640 --> 00:03:20.960 and these XF series compressions look pretty nice with recessed o-rings 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:27.680 and a pretty pleasing overall finish. The only thing I'd critique here is that he could have saved probably 20 or 30 dollars 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:34.160 by going with fittings from someone like Bixki. He also paid a butt ton of money for this 4090 water block, 00:03:34.160 --> 00:03:38.000 probably about double what I would have spent. But who knows, maybe it's... oh. 00:03:39.200 --> 00:03:42.480 Okay, it's very, very pretty. 00:03:43.120 --> 00:03:46.960 And in fairness to Adam, even these excessive purchases, 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:53.360 above and beyond buying an RTX 4090, have put him nowhere near the cost of the ROG Matrix Platinum. 00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:58.000 And he's still got seven hours of budget left to pay himself to build it. 00:03:58.720 --> 00:04:03.120 Maybe he shouldn't have sprung for a $200 CPU block. 00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:06.080 Overall though, not exactly how I would have done it. 00:04:06.160 --> 00:04:10.080 These quantum surface radiators from UK have a very dense fin arrangement, 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:13.200 and I see nothing to indicate that these Thermaltake fans 00:04:13.200 --> 00:04:16.720 have particularly high static pressure to take advantage of that. 00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:21.760 But it should still offer good performance for both his GPU and his CPU, 00:04:21.760 --> 00:04:26.560 and I don't see any other things here that promise to be a major showstopper. 00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:33.840 And he passed one of the biggest stumbling blocks when he bought a block that was explicitly compatible with his exact model of GPU. 00:04:36.880 --> 00:04:37.920 Okay. 00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:46.640 So now we're going to mount our water block. I got this cool water block from EK. 00:04:47.440 --> 00:04:51.200 I bought it because it looked cool. It could have gotten something that was like literally half the price, 00:04:51.200 --> 00:04:57.200 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. 00:04:57.760 --> 00:05:00.960 We got our PTM7950. 00:05:00.960 --> 00:05:03.760 You know, there is a video on lttstore.com 00:05:04.480 --> 00:05:07.840 of the best way to put this stuff on. 00:05:08.640 --> 00:05:11.520 And I have not watched it. A water block on. 00:05:12.160 --> 00:05:16.160 So here is our tough gaming 4090. 00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:21.440 While the ROG Matrix Platinum is based on the Strix platform by ASUS, 00:05:21.440 --> 00:05:25.760 I figure that if it only gets like an extra 6% performance, 00:05:25.760 --> 00:05:31.040 I might be able to squeeze an extra performance out of their tough series if I get lucky. 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:35.360 But now I have to take off all of this cooler to put it into this. 00:05:35.360 --> 00:05:40.880 The Optimus water cooling. I don't know what the exact model is, but holy cow. 00:05:40.880 --> 00:05:44.000 It's heavy. These guys are from like Chicago or something. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:48.480 They're a pretty small company. And apparently this is one of the best water blocks on the market. 00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:54.000 Do you know how I know that? I googled best 4090 water block and everyone said it was this. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:06:01.280 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 00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:04.560 that are going to be coming soon to LTTstore.com 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:09.200 that are the perfect thing for what I am doing. This is not going to worsen my budget, okay? 00:06:09.200 --> 00:06:13.760 I know I might look like the kind of guy you could take home to your mama, but I'm a bad boy. 00:06:13.760 --> 00:06:16.880 I void the warranty. Fun fact about these stickers. 00:06:16.880 --> 00:06:22.480 Manufacturers put them on devices to intimidate you and make you feel like you're not allowed to tinker with devices you own. 00:06:22.480 --> 00:06:28.160 But these warranty void stickers are not enforceable by law anywhere in America. 00:06:28.160 --> 00:06:34.640 So if a company is refusing to give you service, you can always, you know, complain to the FTC about it. 00:06:34.640 --> 00:06:38.640 Because it's complete BS. You bought the thing. You should be allowed to service it. 00:06:40.480 --> 00:06:44.240 For the case, we got this big old Phanteks NV7. 00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:48.880 It's massive. It's chonkin. It's got support for a 480 millimeter rad 00:06:48.880 --> 00:06:51.360 because that's what I went with because it seemed like it was the best way to get 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:56.320 a lot of radiator for a little bit of budget, as well as it lowered the amount of fittings I needed, 00:06:56.320 --> 00:07:00.160 which eight fittings, my God, they eat into your budget. 00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:06.720 But I'm a little worried because it looks like my motherboard might not fit. 00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:14.080 Yeah, so the ATX motherboard is a problem. 00:07:14.080 --> 00:07:18.400 Let's see if we can take this little thing out and maybe we will be saved. 00:07:19.360 --> 00:07:22.800 So while this computer has this really cool set of LEDs 00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:26.720 that are actually totally cable-less, that line the motherboard tray, 00:07:27.520 --> 00:07:30.720 we might not be able to use at least one of them. 00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:36.000 But the good news is that I think that means our motherboard fits in. 00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:43.680 Hey, look at that. However, we do need to consider that our radiator is going here, I think. 00:07:46.400 --> 00:07:52.560 Or does this go along the top? Nope, one of these things is not like the other. 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:54.560 One of these things is a lot bigger. 00:08:02.080 --> 00:08:06.480 It's so close. If we mounted it here, it fits. 00:08:07.120 --> 00:08:12.320 We docked an hour and change to compensate for the 15 extra dollars for the two radiators 00:08:12.960 --> 00:08:16.240 and for the trip to the store. 00:08:16.240 --> 00:08:20.080 And now it went from being like, yeah, we got enough time to being like, okay, this is going to be kind of tight. 00:08:20.080 --> 00:08:25.040 Let's figure out a pump mount. We got the Xd5 RGB Elite LCD from Corsair. 00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:28.000 It's a pump res combo. 00:08:29.200 --> 00:08:33.520 And that was just to simplify the number of components. 00:08:33.520 --> 00:08:36.000 It's also got a cool screen, but right now it kind of looks like it's screaming. 00:08:37.520 --> 00:08:42.000 I probably won't be spending a ton of time doing any cable management because boy, howdy, 00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:44.080 I don't have a ton of time. 00:08:46.960 --> 00:08:52.480 Yeah, it's tubing time. We've got both of our radiators mounted, one at the top, one at the bottom. 00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:58.960 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 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:02.720 this to be possible. Also, the ROG matrix, it doesn't use hard tubing. 00:09:02.720 --> 00:09:06.320 It uses soft tubing. So yeah, I'm pretty sure you're just going to like shove it on there. 00:09:06.320 --> 00:09:10.640 And then these are compression fittings. So what they do is that when you screw them on, 00:09:11.520 --> 00:09:14.160 they tighten the edges, they have these little prongs. 00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:19.440 And then they tighten around that and then that gets your tube nice and tight and sealed. 00:09:19.440 --> 00:09:22.400 And then it don't leak, hopefully. 00:09:22.960 --> 00:09:26.000 So I can be too tight of a bend for this tubing. 00:09:26.880 --> 00:09:29.520 I guess I can go to the top one and then that can go up. 00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:33.200 And that prevents the fear of kinky. 00:09:33.200 --> 00:09:34.560 Though I have no fears of kinks. 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:41.360 My phone number is 6-0. This isn't exactly a precise way of measuring things, 00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:44.400 but I figure it's good enough, right? 00:09:45.760 --> 00:09:54.960 It's got to go a little bit longer than that. So I'm going to go here and that goes on right there. 00:09:58.400 --> 00:10:00.320 Maybe it won't matter when I fill it with water. 00:10:01.840 --> 00:10:06.160 I don't know, man. Damn, look at this beauty. 00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:11.920 What the heck is this tube? Did he decide to buy this? 00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:17.280 Oh, I thought this was like sleeving. Oh God, this is terrible. 00:10:17.280 --> 00:10:21.440 Dude, look, feel this. Oh yeah, it's actually awful. But like, put your hand right here. 00:10:22.160 --> 00:10:28.480 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. 00:10:28.480 --> 00:10:32.480 Got some EK. We got some Corsair. We got some Optimus. These blocks are super nice. 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:38.080 That's a really expensive pump. That's the fanciest pump I've ever seen. 00:10:38.080 --> 00:10:42.080 But then why this tubing? Is this Corsair? These are Corsair fittings too. 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:43.360 These are f***ing ugly. 00:10:46.480 --> 00:10:50.480 Everything about this build looks great except these fittings and tubes. 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:56.560 Does he have any 90 degrees? Oh, there's not a chance that this fitting right here 00:10:58.320 --> 00:11:04.720 is going to work out in any way. Yeah, like he could make this CPU to GPU line work. 00:11:04.720 --> 00:11:11.840 It's just too long right now. But you know, you go like that and you're done. 00:11:11.840 --> 00:11:14.080 This box cost $40. 00:11:18.160 --> 00:11:22.880 It's the worst tubing I've ever seen. All I got to say is good luck, man. 00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:28.000 Because I don't have a lot of extra tubing, I need to make sure that every time I make a cut, 00:11:28.720 --> 00:11:32.640 I can only go, this cut only needs to be shortened. So I always want to have a little bit extra because 00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:39.440 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 00:11:39.440 --> 00:11:42.480 or half an inch or something, you know? Oh, I need to change this. 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:46.880 So this top thing, this needs to go here. This is the outlet port. 00:11:46.880 --> 00:11:50.480 This needs to go to the inlet. One tiny little cut. 00:11:53.760 --> 00:11:56.400 Holy crap. I think we're done. 00:11:57.120 --> 00:11:59.760 Okay, now we just got to turn on and make sure everything's working. 00:12:00.880 --> 00:12:05.280 And then we're going to start filling with water. This is amazing. An hour and 15 minutes to go. 00:12:06.080 --> 00:12:10.480 Little did Adam know his journey was far from over. 00:12:10.480 --> 00:12:16.080 I think we're screwed, boys. Turns out that this pump doesn't just use the USB power. 00:12:16.080 --> 00:12:21.120 It also requires to be connected to a Corsair IQ Link box 00:12:21.120 --> 00:12:25.440 that of course they don't include, which means I have to make a trip to the store 00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:28.960 if I want this pump to work. It doesn't matter if you don't care about any of the smart features. 00:12:28.960 --> 00:12:34.000 You can't just run the pump off of the USB header. You have to connect it to a Corsair IQ Link. 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:38.560 I should have expected Corsair to pull this kind of bullshit. 00:12:38.560 --> 00:12:43.440 In my defense, Corsair does a great job of not telling you anywhere on the main page on their website. 00:12:43.440 --> 00:12:46.880 You actually have to go into the tech specs, I believe, 00:12:46.880 --> 00:12:50.960 and then go, no, nothing here that says it's required. 00:12:52.400 --> 00:12:56.320 If I go to guides, maybe. So I'd have to look at that. I'd have to review the manual. 00:12:56.320 --> 00:13:02.320 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. 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:06.640 It costs $60? Are you kidding me? 00:13:11.840 --> 00:13:15.520 And it's not even like we can return something like we did with the radiators. 00:13:15.520 --> 00:13:17.040 I just have to spend $60 more. 00:13:18.560 --> 00:13:27.040 This is how much time I got left. 00:13:27.440 --> 00:13:34.000 It's now counting upwards to demonstrate how much time I'm wasting 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:38.720 and how much in debt I will be at the end of this. Okay, we have our funnel and our distilled water, 00:13:38.720 --> 00:13:42.400 and this is going to be a pain in the a** to pour, isn't it? 00:13:43.040 --> 00:13:46.320 This is kind of terrifying. Do you see any drips anywhere? 00:13:47.280 --> 00:13:48.800 So what's wrong here? Like, why isn't... 00:13:51.360 --> 00:13:54.000 Basically, what's happening is that there's air in the tubes already, 00:13:54.720 --> 00:13:59.120 and that would be preventing the water from going. So maybe if I give it a little bit of a tip... 00:14:04.640 --> 00:14:08.400 It's flowing in a circle. You can see it coming down the inlet. Yeah, you see that? 00:14:08.400 --> 00:14:09.360 No drips, no drips. 00:14:11.520 --> 00:14:17.920 Let's do this. We're finally up and running, and I'm running combustor and Cinebench at the same time, 00:14:17.920 --> 00:14:24.400 and I am actually blown away. I was expecting temperatures to not be as good as they are, 00:14:24.400 --> 00:14:29.200 but we're running Cinebench 2024. We're at like 70 degrees on the CPU, 00:14:29.200 --> 00:14:34.080 80 degrees on the hottest core, and then on the GPU, we're running combustor at 4K. 00:14:36.240 --> 00:14:42.640 50 degrees Celsius. We have so much room to crank this thing up another notch. 00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:47.600 I am really excited. I didn't think it would go this well. We also haven't even done our heating and cooling cycles, 00:14:47.600 --> 00:14:51.840 which benefits PTM7950, so it could get even better. 00:14:51.840 --> 00:14:54.480 We could get even cooler than what we have right now. You know what? 00:14:55.280 --> 00:14:58.400 I kind of get it. I kind of get why people water cool. 00:14:58.400 --> 00:15:00.800 This is so cool, seeing people get it. 00:15:01.840 --> 00:15:05.760 It's so not worth the money. So not worth the money. 00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:10.480 And this look on his face right now, it goes the other way when it leaks. 00:15:10.480 --> 00:15:13.440 You might look at the timer back there, and you'll notice that it's counting up. 00:15:14.640 --> 00:15:18.640 We went over budget. Oh no. But we were really, really close, 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:23.280 and I'm mostly blaming Corsair. Tell me about that. 00:15:23.280 --> 00:15:26.960 So you buy their pump. Right? You do. And I still do. 00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:30.800 Yeah. I mean, I bought their pump. Pretty expensive pump. It's very fancy. 00:15:31.440 --> 00:15:34.640 It doesn't run at all without also buying 00:15:34.640 --> 00:15:41.120 a sold separately IQ link hub. I also, I saw the braided exterior tubing that you bought, 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:47.200 and I was like, that seems like it'd be a really cool look, but I have concerns about cutting it cleanly, 00:15:47.200 --> 00:15:50.480 and then it's still looking good where you tighten the collars on the compression. 00:15:50.480 --> 00:15:54.640 Yeah, it looks like ****. When you go here, it looks great, 00:15:54.640 --> 00:15:59.040 but when you get right up to the compression fittings, you can see this one I had to do a few times. 00:15:59.040 --> 00:16:01.520 I can see that. And it's already worn. 00:16:02.160 --> 00:16:06.720 The reason why these aren't on, all these fans connect through these pogo pins, 00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:10.480 and this fitting right here interferes with this getting a proper contact 00:16:11.520 --> 00:16:14.480 to actually send the signal. They should all run. I just have to flip. 00:16:15.040 --> 00:16:18.480 I just have to turn them all the way over here. Yeah, why did you choose thermal take fans? 00:16:18.880 --> 00:16:22.000 Um, because I wanted RGB. Okay. 00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:25.520 And I didn't want to spend too much money on RGB. 00:16:25.520 --> 00:16:30.480 I see. I got six of these for half the price of three-course air fans. 00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:33.840 Yep, that's fair enough. Yeah, if you had both of these rads actually running, 00:16:33.840 --> 00:16:37.120 you'd have plenty of radiator right now, and you would be getting better temperatures. 00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:42.800 You can really tell whether your bottleneck is the thermal transfer between the CPU and the block, 00:16:42.800 --> 00:16:46.960 or whether your bottleneck is the dissipation of the heat to the surrounding air 00:16:46.960 --> 00:16:49.360 by just touching the side of your radiator, 00:16:50.640 --> 00:16:55.200 or just here, touch the fins. Oh yeah, that's warm. You've got to throw some more heat into the air here. 00:16:55.200 --> 00:16:58.240 Yeah. Even your reservoir feels hot. Uh-oh. 00:16:58.240 --> 00:17:01.600 What's the coolant temperature? We can see it. 43. Oh, that's getting up there. Yeah. 00:17:01.600 --> 00:17:05.360 So eventually we're going to be getting saturated, right, and then it just keeps freezing or... 00:17:05.360 --> 00:17:10.000 What happens is the bigger the delta, the bigger the difference in temperature 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:14.880 between the surrounding air and the coolant, the more efficient the thermal transfer. 00:17:15.520 --> 00:17:19.840 So you reach a point of equilibrium where as the liquid heats up, 00:17:19.840 --> 00:17:24.800 the difference from the ambient air gets greater, and the heat transfer gets greater, 00:17:24.800 --> 00:17:30.320 so it flattens out. The GPU's still so far below its thermal limits. 00:17:30.320 --> 00:17:35.280 Okay, I can explain that. The regular form factor for GPUs 00:17:35.280 --> 00:17:38.720 is really not conducive to carrying heat away from them. 00:17:38.720 --> 00:17:42.640 Having a fan blowing down onto a heat sink this thick 00:17:42.640 --> 00:17:45.200 with these super skinny low-static pressure fans 00:17:46.160 --> 00:17:51.040 sucks. We've done experiments in the past where we put a tower cooler onto a GPU 00:17:51.040 --> 00:17:55.120 and they run flipping cool, even though the cooler itself 00:17:55.120 --> 00:17:59.280 weighs less than the gigantic coolers that we put on GPUs these days. 00:17:59.280 --> 00:18:02.560 GPUs are actually much easier to cool, 00:18:02.560 --> 00:18:08.160 even though they're 400 watts compared to, you know, 200 to 300 for a CPU, 00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:14.400 because the dies are so big. You have so much surface area to carry that heat away 00:18:14.400 --> 00:18:18.800 compared to a CPU, like especially on Intel, where the die is this big 00:18:18.800 --> 00:18:25.360 and it's 250 to 300 watts. GPU, you know, 400 watts of that big, no big deal. 00:18:25.360 --> 00:18:28.400 Oh, you spent so much money on your block. 00:18:28.400 --> 00:18:32.080 I had so much money to spend. Well, you could have made up for the budget overrun 00:18:32.080 --> 00:18:36.720 on that IQ controller and your time overrun if you had just gotten a reasonably priced block. 00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:40.480 That's true. But I think that's pretty realistic. Like when you did your first water cooling, 00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:45.120 did you get every single part correct? Well, maybe you did. No, I think that assumption is why people 00:18:45.120 --> 00:18:48.800 can feel afraid to try new things. And no, I absolutely screwed up. 00:18:48.800 --> 00:18:51.200 My first water cooling setup was a thermal take, 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:56.960 big water SE. It was a piece of shit, complete waste of money. 00:18:56.960 --> 00:19:00.320 I thought that what I was buying was an all-in-one setup 00:19:00.320 --> 00:19:04.480 that could be expanded in the future to, you know, go full custom. 00:19:04.480 --> 00:19:08.560 I didn't realize that everything about it was complete garbage. 00:19:08.560 --> 00:19:14.160 And I will say that the information that's out there to help people start water cooling is so much better. 00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:19.600 It's a lot better. Really great. Like I was referring to a lot of Jay's two cents guides 00:19:19.600 --> 00:19:22.880 because his water cooling guides were awesome. It helps. 00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:26.240 They were great for somebody like me, but also had depth that I wasn't even bothering to go into. 00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:29.680 Like he's like, here's how to hard line. And I was like, I'm not, not today. 00:19:29.680 --> 00:19:32.880 Clearly not. So what you want is one of these. 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:37.680 So this is a 3 eighths inch ID, 5 eighths inch OD. 00:19:37.760 --> 00:19:42.320 What you have is a 3 eighths inch ID, half inch OD. 00:19:42.320 --> 00:19:45.920 So you can see how much skinnier that wall is. 00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:49.440 So you want thick wall tubing. This is the optimal size. 00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:53.680 But now we need to answer the question. Does this beat the ROG matrix? 00:19:54.800 --> 00:19:58.560 I don't think we can answer that question until we answer, did you have fun? 00:19:59.520 --> 00:20:03.120 You know, since it wasn't any of my own money, 00:20:03.120 --> 00:20:10.560 I had a grand old time. But how does my system compare to the incredible power of the ROG matrix? 00:20:10.560 --> 00:20:14.640 It comes close, but not as close as I thought. Across the games I tested, 00:20:14.640 --> 00:20:17.760 I found the tough gaming GPU lagged behind about 5 to 10%. 00:20:18.560 --> 00:20:22.320 Not being satisfied, I decided to put on a quick and dirty overclock. 00:20:22.320 --> 00:20:25.840 I found that I was able to pretty much match the ROG matrix. 00:20:25.840 --> 00:20:29.840 Not bad. Back to spending the money though. I think it doesn't really matter whose money it was, 00:20:29.840 --> 00:20:33.600 because that wasn't the point. The point was, we're going to spend this money, 00:20:33.600 --> 00:20:38.000 do we spend it on a matrix ROG 4090, 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:43.040 or do we spend it on ourselves? Do we spend it on learning something 00:20:43.040 --> 00:20:47.040 and water cooling components that we can carry forward to future builds 00:20:47.040 --> 00:20:51.920 and the experience of DIYing something? So with that in mind, who do you think won? 00:20:52.640 --> 00:20:56.240 You know, I think it was a lot more fun to water cool. 00:20:56.240 --> 00:20:59.760 And the idea that the ROG matrix could just crap out, 00:20:59.760 --> 00:21:05.360 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. 00:21:05.360 --> 00:21:10.800 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. 00:21:10.800 --> 00:21:16.880 And there's a whole, maybe in the long run, if I keep paying myself at $21 an hour, 00:21:16.880 --> 00:21:21.200 the ROG matrix might come out on top. But this is way more fun, way cooler. 00:21:21.200 --> 00:21:24.800 And I can also sell these. If I go, oh, I don't want to water cool anymore. 00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:30.880 I can, anything but the radiator pump and reservoir is not worth much. 00:21:30.880 --> 00:21:36.800 Okay. You can't sell tubing blocks whole like a quarter of their value 00:21:36.800 --> 00:21:39.600 if you're lucky on a CPU and basically nothing for GPU. 00:21:40.160 --> 00:21:41.840 With all that in mind, then would you do it again? 00:21:45.520 --> 00:21:50.720 Yeah, that sounds about right. But would you tell the people about our sponsor? 00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:56.240 If you guys enjoyed this video, you might enjoy the time that Elijah tried his first hard line tubing experience. 00:21:56.240 --> 00:21:58.400 Yeah, I'm not that brave.