Just about 20 years ago to the day, my wife, Yvonne, took me shopping for my birthday.
My present, a window-mounted air-conditioning unit
that I promptly disassembled on the lawn so that I could chill my gaming CPU
to sub-zero temperatures. She a keeper or what? Anyway, it's my birthday again,
and this time I decided to spend a little more
on my air-conditioner. How much? 30.
Oh, that's actually a thousand. What? We already have numerous exotic coolers,
including an industrial water chiller right there. Why did you spend $30,000 on this one?
Because seeing this unique item,
hand-built by overclocking legend, Charles Fuggerworth,
is what inspired me to learn about sub-zero cooling in the first place,
which is what led to my PC tuning obsession, which is what led to me standing here today.
And you know what the craziest part is? His price for this thing, like literally,
me one that inspired me. It's not even unfair.
While most chillers use a single compressor and refrigerant,
this is a cascade system and uses a total of three compressors,
not to mention unobtainium gases to reach ungodly low temperatures.
This very unit has been used to set countless performance records over the years,
including live on stage and until launch events.
And it comes with an extra special perk,
hand delivery from the man himself. Charles, who flew up here to help me unbox it,
verify that it works, and talk me through what makes his creation,
arguably, the greatest CPU cooler on the planet.
You got my money, right? Uh, no, but you know who does?
Our sponsor. I'm gonna pick some muscle.
They're pushed on a screwdriver to not strip them out.
Are you saying you don't think I have muscle? Yeah. What is it with everyone who's a guest on this channel?
And they just immediately open with the sick burns.
Next, are you gonna ask me if I can reach all the way up there? I should get you a little stool.
You're not even that much taller than me. I am so excited.
I haven't even seen a picture of this thing since back when I was like browsing extreme systems.
Now, I dreamed back then of commissioning you one day
to build something like this for me. And I remember you did a handful of commission builds,
if I recall correctly, but like really a handful.
How many of these have you actually built? 22 stages, one, this is the only three stages I built.
So you're saying this is a completely unique item then?
Correct. Only a very few of these have been attempted in the world.
And what is the difference just further uninitiated
between a two-stage and a three-stage? Well, most of the two stages
have never really achieved 100 below zero Celsius.
And as far as this one achieves 100 below zero, actually it exceeds 100 below zero.
I mean, architecturally, two stages versus three stages,
what's the difference in the level of complexity having two compressors, one kind of cooling the first,
versus having three, one cooling the next one,
cooling the next one? The guesstimates getting the third-stage gas,
the uptending of the third-stage gas, first of all. You can get like a poly-cold or the Revco units
and try to work with one of those three-stage gases, but you won't have the capacity.
You'll have to buy several of them or have to supplement the third-stage gas and you won't have the capacity.
So if I wanted to build like a sperm storage unit or something like that,
I could get like a nice low temperature or something. Or a freezer, yeah.
Right, but if I want to cool something that is actively kicking out 500, 600 watts of heat.
Correct, correct, correct. I need this. Correct, yes.
This is the only one. Right. I gotta tell you, I didn't realize how heavy it was.
Yeah. Before we started, I gave it the old, okay, it couldn't be that.
It's really freaking heavy. Literally, it's this or a vehicle.
Everything about this thing screams
hand-built in the best possible way.
When I originally built this, I didn't have very much refrigeration experience, so I built all of my lines as the crow flies.
I've been many, many, many years. I perfected everything as I went. Now, you said that others have attempted three phases.
Yes. Has anyone succeeded that you know of?
No, not with the balance.
I've seen some other attempts, but I've never actually seen it in use.
I'll get ready to catch it.
Don't drop it on me, hey? All right, I'll hold it.
Thanks. You can hold 350 pounds, right?
Oh, yeah. This is light work.
Now, I couldn't help noticing, Charles, that my brand new purchase has some dust and rust on it.
No, it doesn't. What did this thing was? 25 years, 26 years.
So she's been around the block. Been around the world, twice, three times now.
How would you rate this packing foam, Linus? Zero out of 10?
Oh, well, let's hope I got here in one shape.
That's fine when you made it here. When it's crate-chipped like this, realistically,
that's not doing anything, it's just sitting on top of it. I'm just having fun at work.
I know, I'm sorry, sorry, sir.
That's better.
I'm waiting for the camera to stop rolling. Keep it rolling. Stop it.
You can't hit me while it's rolling. I guess.
Sorry, how many power cords? Three.
How much power does this thing draw? 45 amps, at max.
Over 5,000 watts? Could be. What do you mean could be?
So why does it need to draw 5,000 watts when it's only cooling 500 watts?
Yeah, professor. Overkill.
I didn't want to undershoot, that's okay.
Okay, but in all seriousness, there are efficiency losses,
especially as we make our way through multiple stages.
So our main stage, our biggest one that cools the second,
that in turn cools the third, has to be absolutely enormous, monstrous overkill
from my understanding then. Well, here, let's get it up on the table,
and then maybe you can walk us through where all the gases flow,
in order to make it work its magic. Here, I just want to get this under it,
so maybe we can get some fingers under it so we can maybe lift it. Oh God, I don't want to get fingers under that.
Oh wow, you really don't, because Charles, in his infinite wisdom,
built it with sharp corners. It's designed that way, so you get a nice clean cut.
Right, if it's a poor cut, it's hard to attach again.
You want to take it off right at the segment. No, it's just for the stitches go clean.
Are we doing okay? We're doing great. Let's get Linus's end on first,
because he's by himself. I'm good.
You're good? Yeah, I'm good. Okay, put your corner down. Okay.
My fingers are now being squished, but that is okay. Do you need help?
My fingers were stuck. It's good.
No. Okay, there's stuff in here. You just,
I'm glad you're here to tell me how it works. I found the three compressors,
and I found the cold end that goes on the CPU.
I found what looks like a K-Probe or something like that.
That's a K-Probe? Perfect, so that's going to tell us what the temperature is at our VAP head.
I'm going to need you to kind of walk me through it. So where's our first stage?
This is our first stage compressor. This is a Danfoss SC-12 MLX, low temp compressor.
It's basically a half horse compressor. So basically this is for sub zero temperatures.
And it has R507, it's a common gassage you can use for refrigeration.
So this gets about 40 below zero. And it runs into our heat exchanger back here,
which is an electron brace plate heat exchanger, 40 plate. Okay, so then normally, right,
you would have your condenser side,
which is where you have your fans and your aluminum fins or whatever, right?
And then you would have your evaporator side, which would, in the case of like an air conditioner,
more aluminum fins and a fan that blows the cold air into the room for you to enjoy.
Or in the case of our refrigerant based CPU cooler,
it would go to the evaporator head, which would go to your CPU, but we're not doing that.
Because this is a multi-stage, we're taking our cold side, our evaporator side,
and we're going to a heat exchanger. So then that means this inside here
is the cold side of stage one, and the hot side of stage two.
So that refrigerant, which for stage two starts
at negative 40C on the hot side.
Okay, where does that go? Well, the hot side goes into the, it's called a desuper heater first,
before it even goes into the heat exchanger. So I'm actually stripping off the heat
before it goes into the heat exchanger. Oh, to make it easier for our first stage to cool it.
To condense, correct. Oh, God. I'm bringing it down to ambient. So we pre-cool it.
Correct. Brilliant. So where does it go from there?
It actually goes into the expansion valve. Okay.
And it goes into the second stage compressor. There's an expansion valve on this side. This is a pressure expansion valve.
Yeah. And it has a little knob on the side over here
that you can adjust. And... I won't. No, you don't have to.
It's already preset. Oh, good. And then I don't see another heat exchanger.
Oh, it's all built. It's all inside of here. Oh, so you're telling me then
that we actually have two heat exchangers in here. Correct.
One that is using the first stage to chill the hot side of the second stage to minus 40.
Correct. And then one that's using the cold side of the second stage, minus 80, you said?
Yes. To cool the hot side of the third stage?
Yes. Which is at minus 80 Celsius.
Now this, my understanding goes, is where kind of the black magic and the tuning
and the unobtainium gases really come into play.
Correct. Condensing the third stage gas. Okay. So I did notice that our third stage compressor,
which is this guy over here, looks a little gruntier.
No, it's exactly the same. They're all the same compressor. Wait, it looks bigger.
No, it's all the exact same. Okay. I need to use whatever trick it's using with my wife.
Ha ha ha ha. I did notice there are a few components
that we haven't talked about much. Okay. We didn't mention the oil separators.
Correct. What's their role in this system? To keep the oil separated from the system
because we're working at temperatures that are sub zero and when you get the oil inside the lines,
it can cause flogging and that'll cause the system to fail
and you don't want the system to fail. No, I don't. One of the major problems that I had with my cascade
was system volume. And one of the early things I did with the create system volume was I pig-tailed my line
trying to think that I was adding volume to my system by adding- Oh, just making them a helix.
Kind of like you do on the traces of a PCB to make sure that all the traces to the memory slots
are at the same length, for instance. Right, but I'm trying to add volume to the system
by adding more length to the thing, but I wasn't very knowledgeable at the time.
But in time, I realized I could get suction accumulators
and add more volume to the system. And so what these do is these are like right before
the line set and they add more volume to the system.
Okay, so these are just a giant reservoir, essentially.
Reservoir, exactly. Of refrigerant gas. Correct.
Wrap my brain around this one. And this time I don't actually know the answer before I'm asking you.
How does having a large volume of the gas
that isn't actively participating
and being cooled as far as I can tell, it's not insulated.
How does that help us? Boy, oh boy, oh boy. I don't know how to explain this
that you guys can understand it. Oh.
Damn! Damn!
I always had capacity issues.
And I always had to add more gas to the system.
And I had a problem with adding more gas and then having the pressures on the system too high.
So in order for me to add more gas and not have the pressures too high,
I had to increase the volume.
And so by adding the suction accumulator, solve that problem.
So it's almost like buffering you against pressure volatility, in a sense.
Like what role is it playing in there? More gas.
I need more gas to go to the block. Okay, but if the gas isn't actively being...
More liquid. I need more liquid to go to the block. So it gives you just more fluid overall
because liquid is so much denser than gas.
But then when you weren't running it,
the pressure would be astronomical because it's all in its gashes form.
Right. Well, I had to put more gas in the system and the pressure would go up higher.
And then I went into like a... Understood.
This just gives us enough. So realistically, when we're running,
this is not like high density gas storage at that time
because so much of it is in liquid form. But this gives it somewhere to go
when it all becomes gas. Right. Okay, I think we got it.
Yes. See, I could understand that. Yeah, great explanation.
There is one thing we missed. Yes.
Do I need to pay attention to these? Like if these go to the red line,
do I freak out and pull all the plugs I like? No, no, no.
These just let me know, like if the second stage and the first stage are running, so if my pressures go up, I can pull the plugs.
Basically, when we shipped it, I could, you know, like when you took the picture,
I can know if the gases leaked or not.
In the future, like we can mark the pressures right now
and like a year from now, we can see if we lose the pressure and we can charge the system.
Right, but not the third stage. I mean, do you have a bottle of the third stage?
No. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No. It's kind of making it sound like there's a bit of a,
like fire up procedure for this. Correct, there is a procedure for firing up.
Can we do it? You want to fire it up? I mean, yeah.
Okay, do we pull some cords and we can fire it up? All right, so this is going to take about 10 minutes
to come down. Well, are these labeled? No, I just know, but we'll label them before we go.
What should I be monitoring here? I mean, obviously I can see some of my fluid
flowing through here, am I looking at pressures? How do I know when it's down to temperature?
Okay, so right now we just got to wait a few minutes and we're going to watch for some ice build up
on the first stage. The ice will build up right here on the backside of the suction line.
Okay. And so once we get a little bit of ice built up on there, we can fire up the second stage compressor
and we watch for the same thing on the second stage compressor, we watch for a little bit of ice building up on the back of the second stage compressor.
Now riddle me this, if someone were to irresponsibly
fire the second stage compressor when we are not cooling
the first stage, what happens? I don't know, never done that.
Neat. Now let's say I don't like learning things the hard way.
Right? Where are the do not touch no touchy places?
This would be one of them. Oh, there's a thing that was burned on there.
Yes, this would also be one of them. Yes. And this would also be one of them.
Okay. That's the only three spots that are danger zones.
Oh, look at that, hey, we're frosting. Now, should I care about that at all?
Like a little drip and rust? No, no, no, once I fire up the second stage,
that'll evaporate. And I assume the second stage is the middle one? Yep.
Good assumption. All right. Go for it. Okay, it's a little bit not quite straight, but hey,
aren't we all? Okay. So when I plug in this third stage, this spot, this one, actually this one's gonna drop.
Yeah. And then about 15 or 20 seconds later,
this is gonna start to drop. Oh, the temperature at the evap head for the third stage.
And this is where we cool our CPU. Okay.
There we go. Big moment. Here we go. It's not that flat, Charles.
What do you mean? I just mean, you know, the quality of the workmanship.
It's perfectly flat. The quality of the workmanship is just, you know, it's a.
Sub-zero. In all seriousness, when you have this level of cold
up against the CPU, the macro flatness of the surface
does still matter. You don't want like a big bump coming out of it
that's giving you bad contact, but little pock marks like that,
they don't actually matter. You might want to resurface it. Oh, whoa.
She's really going now. So it'll stop around negative nine until we put a load on it.
Negative 90. So you're saying it goes lower when we put a load on it?
Yeah. This is a thermal expansion valve on this side here. The more load we put on it, the more it'll open the valve.
You're at negative 69, baby. Whoa, buddy. It started sublimating.
So you're saying if I licked it, that would be bad. Your tongue would stick to it instantly.
Oh, that's so tempting. Yeah, we have to give you one to the hospital.
What are we at? Negative 90? Negative 83. Oh, we still got boys to go.
Oh, okay. Oh, okay. So we would wait until she's completely down to negative 90
before we put a load on her. We don't have to. It doesn't matter. It will just expansion valve and then.
Yeah. Wow. Eh, eh, eh.
Woo. It's snowing, boys.
So when this is bolted to the CPU and the CPU is put under full load, this will drop about one or two degrees,
maybe even three degrees. And another critical thing
that is so cool about this system is that it won't go up.
So our temperature stability compared to basically any other solution is unheard of.
Like even when you're dealing with liquid nitrogen, for instance,
one of the big hassles of overclocking with LN2 is that you are constantly micromanaging
the liquid nitrogen in your pots because you don't actually want your CPU
necessarily at negative 150 degrees.
That can be problematic. You can run into cold bugs. So you got to like, you got to bring it up
in order to boot. You got to put it back down when it's time to do your run.
With this system, we're just
Exact. At minus 90 all the time.
Idle, load, doesn't matter. No bulls***, no micromanagement.
One thing I don't have to deal with is crashing a lot.
So once we're stable, we're good to go for the full bench session.
We can bench for 16 hours straight and like crash once or twice.
Okay. Now it's going to be a separate video, but can we tease them a little bit?
Can you show us one of these golden chips, which had been rumored for many years to exist.
It's been rumored that reviewers get golden samples,
hand selected by Intel. That's bulls***. We don't.
He does. Can I see one? Sure, sure.
Well, it looks like any other 1400KS.
How do you know it's special? It's probably been like one of...
Some number. Now, when you have a chip of this quality,
I don't think it's a big secret that Intel has had some degradation challenges
with their 13th and 14th gen silicon. Do you kind of do the early testing
with your sacrificial lambs and then save your best chip
for like when it's time to break the record? Yes. Okay.
I guess my only last question then is why on earth are you selling this?
I'm going to build another. I already started. Oh.
So actually, I'm kind of funding V2 then in a way.
Are you using the proceeds to fund the next one?
Yes. All right. It's the second one going to be so much better
that I'm going to feel like I need a new one. You're going to have to tell me
because it's going to be yours.
Wait, what? Yeah, I'm building you a second one. I know I haven't told you yet,
but I had to break it to you somehow. You are?
Do you know about this? No. Does anybody know about this?
Really? Oh, we're building you a second one.
When was this decided? I thought we were building you a second one.
Yeah. Oh, not a three stage though. Oh, okay.
What? We're building a single stage, I guess.
What? It just needs another $30,000. Oh, yeah.
Okay, no, no, but what? No, no, I'm sorry. Hold on.
What's the plan? We're building a single stage. Oh, we're talking about that.
Right. Yes. A custom single stage. Yes.
Exotic single stage. We actually have a couple more things coming.
So this is setting up a whole series with Charles.
We're doing the unboxing here. Part two, we're gonna set some world records.
Part three, I'm gonna do an everyday
sub-zero CPU and GPU build for home.
That's what you're talking about. Yeah, and plus, I'm gonna build another three stage
myself. For yourself, okay. Most likely, I'm gonna build a two stage.
I'm happy to be part of the journey no matter what you build next
because I just love seeing enthusiasts
go out of their comfort zone and just do cool shit like this.
And it's been such a pleasure to have you here and it's gonna be such a pleasure to continue
to have you here as we work our way through all of the incredible sub-zero adventures
we have planned. Well, thank you for helping me on my journey and your proceeds will definitely go towards
another build and I'll make sure it's better than this one. And you know what else is gonna be better than this one?
Some future segue to our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video,
why not check out the first time that I got to play around with refrigerant cooling
with the LDPC V10, I think it was from little devil.
It was a PC case that had a single stage CPU cooler
built into the basement of it. It was woefully impractical, but very cool.