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CPUs run hot. So hot that they would destroy themselves if it weren't for built-in protections

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that slow them down. But we don't want to slow down. We want to go fast and thus nerds are willing

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to spend hundreds of dollars to keep their CPUs cool. But what if there's a whole other side

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of cooling that no one's talking about? The back side, why not put a cooler there as well?

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So we did. Before you furiously comment saying, cooling a CPU from the back doesn't work, there's too many layers of stuff between the CPU and the

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cooler for it to be effective. Well take a look at this footage. That is heat on the back of the

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motherboard and there's enough that removing it might actually make a meaningful difference.

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So does it? And if it does, is it easy or cheap to do? Well that depends. Not until after this

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segue. To our sponsor. The simplest way to cool your CPU from both sides is to just

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point a fan at the back of it and that's been done before. My first PC case was the Antec 302,

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which had a mount for a fan right behind the motherboard tray. Did I spend 30 of my high

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school dollars on a Noctua fan to put it there? Yes. Did it do anything from what I remember?

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Kinda. So first things first, let's see if Antec was cooking or not. Noctua has this handy magnetic

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mount from their desk fan that we're just going to use just as a quick little preliminary test here.

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We're seeing about a degree or two difference going from like 51 point something to more

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closer to 50, 49.7 kind of area. And that lines up with the preliminary testing that we did

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taking measurements from the CPU and hardware info. But we all know that proper cooling requires

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contact. So let's see how easy or hard it is to mount a cooler on the back here. First things first,

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any mounting design that we make will need to make sure that the CPU cooler on the front

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isn't affected because spoiler alert, it's doing most of the work. And mounting hardware for CPUs

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is made with relatively tight tolerances to ensure that you can get even contact across the CPU's

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integrated heat spreader. And pretty much every part of the mounting hardware plays an important

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role, including the parts that go on the back of the motherboard, which are in our way. Let's get rid

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of it. And you know what else is in our way? The Intel socket backplate that holds the CPU

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retention ARM on the front. And that also prevents our second cooler from making direct contact with

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the back of the motherboard. So not only can we not get away with using out of the box CPU cooling

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parts for this, we're going to have to remove the backplate as well, which means that we're going

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to need to make a custom backplate. Yes. Originally, what I was thinking of doing is we could probably

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just modify the original backplate to add the cooler onto the back. However, as you can notice,

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there isn't really a whole lot of material on the ends to put the bolt holes through. I'd basically

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be drilling right along the edge here. So we're going to have to make a new one out of metal.

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Well, that's one thing I noticed. Oh, is that going to be a problem? They probably put this

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so there's a small thin layer insulation layer to probably make sure just in case

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that none of these traces or contacts. Oh yeah, because there's definitely open views there.

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So we plain just won't be able to get the same degree of contact on the back as we have on the

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front. First of all, we're on the wrong side. But second of all, this is not a flat surface like

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the cold plate on your cooler or the IHS on your CPU. There's a bunch of tiny electrical components

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that are going to prevent this cold plate from sitting flush with the back of the motherboard.

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What are we going to do about that? Well, we're going to need a cushioning layer that's a lot

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thicker than your typical thermal paste, like this one millimeter pad. Sadly, it has a worse

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thermal conductivity than any thermal paste. But hey, it's much better than air, which is what

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the fans are working with. So I'm just going to estimate it because like, is this got to be good

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enough? You know, that's what I always say is just got to be good enough. We decided to go with a

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mechanism that's just mounting into these corners that are already part of the Intel bracket because

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it just makes our lives easier. To mount in here, we had to make some custom length screws because

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I don't even actually know exactly what these holes are for on the Noxua coolers because I've

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never used them. I'm assuming it's compatibility with much older hardware, but I've never actually

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had to use them. So now I do. And it's what an exciting time for me. A new experience. Thankfully,

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there's Robertson screws in the precision screwdriver kit, which has an adapter that lets

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you lose any of those precision bits with the LTD screwdriver. Technically, the length of these

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screws should mean that nothing actually will screw into the motherboard, but there is a chance that

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like things can bow and bend a little bit. So I am going to be careful. I'm kind of trying to stop

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when I feel resistance out of just sheer terror because I am legitimately worried about this

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board existing. So let's, let's boot. If this seems simple, it's because Justin did all of the

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hard work, honestly. I mean, looking at it right now, we're still looking fine. It's not better.

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It's not worse. This is kind of interesting. So when we're looking through the thermal camera,

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we can see that our front CPU cooler is just much, much warmer overall than our back CPU cooler,

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which implies that it's moving away a lot more heat to be expected. But honestly, it feels like

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we haven't done much because the base of our CPU cooler is 20 degrees. So I don't think it's,

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it's doing much at all. So why doesn't the cooler perform better? Well, the motherboard is acting as

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an insulator, which slows the rate of heat transfer. And it doesn't matter how thermally

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conductive our CPU cooler or our thermal pad is, it can only remove the heat that reaches the other

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side of the motherboard. Think about it like this. It doesn't matter how many lanes your highway is

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if everyone has to file through the same single lane bottleneck. Support public transit. This cooler

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can only pull away as much heat as it's being given. But once you pull all of the heat away,

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you're going to be rate limited by the motherboard. So it doesn't matter how much extra cooling power

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you put in here unless you decide to go sub zero. And if you're going to go sub zero,

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just put it on the front. Don't put it on the back. I'm just going to take the fan out. I wonder

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if it will even like, the cooler will even saturate. Like that would be a good indicator

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if, if this thing is actually doing anything. 21.3. It's going up very slowly. So it is actually,

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we're transmitting some heat away, but you know, it's going to make this heat up faster

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as if I just touch it with my hand. Let's compare that to running the front without the fan. So

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we're looking at it right now. It's sitting at 27 degrees. Now Reese is going to hit

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Cinebench. And we're going to see how quickly this thing heats up. 28, 26, 29, 30. It's like,

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it took us like literally minutes to go up a degree before. And this is climbing

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a degrees per second. And eventually it will start getting to the point where it's probably

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thermal throttling. This just illustrates how much more important this is than whatever we're

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doing on the back. Keep watching, please. We decided to use our environmental chamber to

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have a perfectly controlled temperature for the most precise of results. But when we tested in

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there, every permutation of our system performed the exact same. Back panel, back fan, back cooler,

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stock cooler, it did not matter. Was all of our preliminary testing wrong? No, it's the environmental

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chamber who was wrong. To maintain temperatures within a tenth of a degree, the chamber needs to

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constantly blow conditioned air. And that conditioned air blowing was enough to cool the

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motherboard on our control system, which means that we saw no improvements on our cooled system.

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And that blows. We needed a more realistic airflow scenario. So we found a spot in our

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office that was roughly equidistant from a bunch of ventilation. We set the room temp to a tight

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22-ish degrees and tried again. And would you look at that? With the custom back plate and a fan,

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we see CPU temps drop one to two degrees. Heck yeah. And with our cooler mounted to the back,

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we see a further improvement of one or less degrees. It's not nothing, but it is almost nothing.

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Oh, and we've kind of been neglecting to tell you about the results that make this whole endeavor

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look even more foolish. When we compare CPU temps with our front mounted cooler on its

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stock mounting hardware, instead of our custom back plate, it performs better than our back

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mounted cooler setup. So all the haters at the start of the video who said this won't work,

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shut up. It does work. It just works poorly. Maybe you could get better performance out of

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a more precise custom mounting mechanism. But why bother when you can just do this?

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Or maybe you could just segue to our sponsor. Thanks for watching. What do you think? Was

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there something that we missed, something that you could have done differently? Let us know in

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the comments. And if you liked this video, why don't you watch a cooling solution that did work

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like our AC cooler?