what you're looking at right now is my chiller i got it for myself 15 years ago
as a birthday present and with a little bit of teenage engineering i was able to
achieve sub-zero CPU cooling with an
overclocked e6600 at 4 gigahertz 24 7. i
took it with me everywhere even to lan parties and it remains the most potent
cooler here at Linus tech tips but to say it's sketchy would be an
understatement we've got sharp edges
we've got no grounding we've got an extremely dangerous exposed capacitor
and it also doesn't look too great but today that changes no longer will we
have to cart around the ugly carcass of an air conditioner to cool our computers
because now we can cart around the ugly carcass of an old air conditioner
in a fancy enclosure this
is the chillinator v2 let's get to building it
you can tell it's already better than a mac pro because it has wheels that lock
check out the ecovax debot osmo robot vacuum on alibaba.com they've also got
their march expo 2020 happening which features more than 35 000 global
suppliers online of course check them out now at the link below so i'd like to
say that we have a really legit complete plan but we really don't so basically
the idea is you know hot side here cold
side here some steel that you have in your hands we cut it weld it and
hopefully it all fits together how does welding work
the easiest way to describe it is you're just pushing electricity in well with
aluminum we're pushing it both in and out of the material so
we're just throwing lightning at things really i
know i know some of you might be confused did he really just say that
welding is throwing lightning at things
well let's look at how welding actually works so you can go from a regular bruce
to a zappy zap and zeus see mastering
welding much like mastering the kama sutra is more about careful balance and
making sure everything is clean than pure power
when exposed to the air the molten metal in a weld can react with the oxygen
nitrogen and hydrogen contained in the atmosphere become very porous and
splatter all over the place the same goes for potential contaminants on the
surface of your metal if there is grease or rust on there your welds will be more
splattery than dad's sunday bacon but not nearly as tasty to get a good
arc weld you need enough current to melt the metal but not so much that you blow
clean through you need proper shielding gas coverage to prevent air getting in
and also loads of practice if you want
to know a bit more maybe watch this video by this old tony he might not be a
professional but in my opinion that whole accredited schooling thing is
a bit of a racket anyway when you're welding you need to cover
all your exposed skin uh anything that's not covered will get sunburned and
it's not fun particularly in january so this guy when it senses
an arc will darken automatically to whatever shade i decide i think you
should go away now i don't want to embarrass myself well colin's back at the shop getting started
on welding i'm heading to the metal mart and getting some aluminum it's all going
to be cut to size so we should just be put it on either riveted or screw it
depending on which one it is and her job shouldn't be all that hard
at least as far as that's concerned so we just got some tig rod that's the
right size for the welts that we need to do in the steel
and they didn't have any general purpose stuff there
so we now have the premium grade stuff that's normally used for offshore piping
and nuclear power plants so what we're doing before
we actually push the whole thing together and weld is we're just tacking
everything so this means we're putting little tiny dab
welds on all the joints and we're going to tack it all together
loosely and if something goes wrong or we screw up an angle we can just tap it
out or we'll cut it then once we're happy with everything we'll go back and
actually finish weld everything now to do that we're using welding rod and a
trick my old buddy dave taught me back when i
was young is to put a little bend like this in all your welding rods so that
way when it goes down on a table no matter which way it lands you always
have something to pick up when you have welding gloves on
i'm lacking in clamps we have a box
it's nothing too incredible like it's not the straightest
box in the world but it's actually not moving around right now so it's really
not that bad we need some better clamps to get everything at perfect 90 degrees
but uh whatever next time the router's
about to make us the holes for all the fans to go in i want to cut some LTT
logos in it so it looks you know pretty cool this tape that we're using is
actually supposed to hold carpets in place so i just did the math we're going
to get about 4 000 pounds of force to
lift this i don't think it's coming off i think
this looks awesome now i just have to be careful not to you know bend the whole
thing while i try and get it off i'm just wiring things no one's interested
in wiring things there's a hot side there's a neutral side they they go
together that's it i pulled a bit of an engineer on you in the sense that i drew
something in solidworks right clicked it hit weld and just didn't think about it
again this has been rough uh i went through
probably half a pack of tungsten's
experimentation throwing things across the shop getting angry storming out
coming back in trying again storming out and
i figured out my issue i had a little bit of a gas coverage issue i had choked
out too far on the uh tungsten and now i'm actually making semi-decent welds
but are we leaking i don't think so nope oh i did it so heavy
the biggest problem with the current you know this is the chances of getting
electrocuted if you get anywhere close to it you touch that you touch this you
know water spills out onto the table and you touch like the table
you're done to take care of all of that i got these wonderful terminal blocks
they're really overkill but these are going to handle like live and
neutral and then ground we only have one ground
lead so i'm just gonna put that right to the chassis here
the thing that really is going to save our butts though this is a ground fault
circuit interrupter or gfci this is kind of like what you'd find in like your
bathroom you know the one that's annoying that always does the pop thing that's so you don't get electrocuted
basically how this works is that it's constantly monitoring the current
going into the live and out of the neutral so
if it sees that there's a difference between those two it means that maybe
current's going like between this chassis and my body in
which case it's like pop and instead of me getting electrocuted i
just need to go over and hit reset electric boom has a really good video on
this if you want to figure out how it works a bit better but
this should save our bacon in the case that something in here leaks
we're gonna have to bend these a fair bit to get this in the middle but worst
case scenario we vent a bunch of you know dangerous gases into the atmosphere
and i was thinking that we would just reuse
these rubbers but the problem is that they're they're kind of they're kind of
used yeah you don't want to reuse rubbers no that'd be bad
might just be the easiest way to do this yeah that's kind of what i was looking
to a little bit too much wobble rubber is just a little big
i think uh we're gonna no you know what we should just get some
bigger studs studs for your rubbers yeah
yeah so the plan was to use some power switches that we had just laying around
but while i was out to get this big old terminal
i also got two of these guys functionally it's no different but man
i don't know if you can hear that but like it just feels so good
it's pretty funny seeing Linus's angle grinding skills from when he was
just a youngin kind of could have really used some deburring i
think that'll cut ya
to mark out the holes here i've just gone and measured everything from these
two edges because i know that they're although maybe not perfect they're
better than the ones that i did with the angle grinder we'll just do the last one
here just use some layout die and the
the cheap calipers to scribe everything and then we'll just center punch and
drill it i've made a plate that holds the
compressor and we're going to make sure that the stud
pattern fits before i take weld this all together and we start actually
making mounts for everything that's going to go in the box that we made
so i'm just going to measure confirm mark out then we'll tack it through weld
it and uh we'll put the plate on it done pump mound yup fan cut out almost done
panel no weld is done tubing can
yes yes RGB definitely it's 5 30. okay we're
supposed to go home now this is kind of like the speak now or forever hold your
peace moment i know you and i had discussed the inlet and outlet and there
were two key items so does the is the pump oriented this way more like this
way so yeah we need
a port here for the inlet of the pump is that the
plan yep perfect okay then the coolant needs to come in
here that way we have the coolant flowing across the
evap um because what i've observed is that if i
have it configured the other way which i have actually done in the past just to experiment with it it really does cause
problems like there's a significant difference in temperature across the two
sides of the tank and we're gonna have two switches one for the pump one for
everything else yep okay are we gonna have a temp probe
separate from the one for the thermostat
that's just into the water and just has a readout i wasn't planning on it but it's pretty
easy to do uh this is gonna be insulated
yes yep cool i would probably have actually a lot of my airflow coming in
uh right here and then the pump also needs cooling so
i would probably have it coming in here but then not
over here where all the cold things are all right is that all you guys needed me
for yeah sweet what are you doing
did you get putty no i don't know where the putty is
how did this happen why did it start i don't know oh god it's a tactile failure
i know well
i made a boo-boo by pulling this thing in and out of the chassis like 15 times
we fatigue failed the tube and now it's
leaking all the refrigerant atmosphere sorry mother earth all of that
refrigerant is now gone so we need to get it recharged or remade or i don't
know buy another one things are bad
about two weeks ago i thought this project was totally done we spewed r22
all over this place which is bad for the environment and it turns out r22 isn't
exactly easy to get because it's really bad for the environment i thought we
were done but it turns out that brian here just has 22 pounds of it just
sitting around uh 24. surprise i do refrigeration now
yeah so now we have to tap these valves onto here pressurize it
find out where the leak is fix the leak with acetylene then fill it with r22 and
we'll be good this here's the point of the build where
we know what we have to do you know what we have to do so it's just about getting
her done i actually haven't seen this in quite some time you guys have uh
made some real progress here casters aren't mounted yet nope do they lock
yes hey and it's ahead of the mac pro already got him yeah we still have a bit of time
to you know change things around so that's why we have the Linus review yeah nicholas
really killed it on the little knobby chum there i like it it's beautiful
fundamentally here's how it works our old air conditioning unit has its
compressor it's got a hot side and it's got a cold side so these fans cool the
hot side and the cold side sits immersed in this toilet plumbing
reservoir that we've got right here then we've got a typical water loop
except that it's going to be as cool as nearly minus 30 degrees celsius so this
pump right here which is validated for use with the obviously not water coolant
that we're going to be using probably windshield de-icer it's going to pull
that fluid in here then it's a simple matter of plumbing it up to whatever
computer it is that we're trying to chill these switches turn on the ac and
the pump independently that's really good because if you want to just like make sure the
ac is working and everything get the coolant chilled that's nice and then if
you want to run your pump later that's pretty cool turning off your pump
it's good stuff this dial is actually part of the original mechanism so it's
just a good old classic super analog
thermostat doodad so we chuck that down there and that'll automatically turn our
compressor on and off depending on how cool we want our coolant to be and
that's where my questions start have you guys given much thought to condensation
in this thing everything here is going to be insulated and it's all along the
bottom and then there's a drain port down on the bottom here this is all
going to be insulated so hopefully it doesn't get too bad but if it does at
least you'll be able to see you know water coming out of the drain port instead of water getting to the
electronics on the other side how are you insulating this spray foam oh yeah
the RGB was such a pain like look at all
of the cabling that has to be there jammed in there sophisticated jank i'm
not a fan what were you guys thinking here uh what do you mean this like gooey
crap why did you why did you put a hole in the reservoir why didn't you just
bring it in from the top well because it's the thermal probe it
needs to be able to get the coolant temperature like in the middle it's also
a tapped hole it's like a thermal probe that's threaded that's like put through
okay are we ready to test yeah oh boy
i don't see it going into the tubes which is making me a little uneasy
because this is a lot of water that i'm pouring and i don't know where it is
oh this is a really big tank yeah you guys should have done a smaller
tank why should we do a smaller tank uh more thermal mass no no no that's bad
because it takes way longer to cool it down oh
well it's smaller than the other one
so the good news is it definitely
primed the prompt oh it's also leaking yeah it's also leaking the point was to
leak test it well you know leak test it a bit well yeah we leak tested it it
failed we'll just you know let's make sure all this electronic stuff is not
too close to it yeah it should be fine yeah okay so wait so the fans go on
immediately there's no switch for them i figure that you just always want RGB
that's fair okay so uh we should hook something out
up to this yeah okay
well that seems to be working all right i'm gonna go grab some
fittings for the brb we don't gush too
much water while we put them on yeah i guess that if you wanted well i
get those you could always try and you know stop the pump from leaking oh i put
a cloth there good job after brian did the repair you guys checked and made
sure the hot side gets hot and the cold side gets cold right yeah like i sent
you that picture of the cold side getting all condensation right
we tipped it
oh yes do we need to wait you shouldn't tip a
compressor and then run it again immediately i think it has more to do
with the lubricants and oils or something i'm not an expert i just know
that you're not supposed to do that brb all right well i guess while we wait for
the compressor to do its thing should we drain it
all right here it goes
you can probably just put it on the ground yep
it's quite the flow we have yep it's training so we left it for a
few hours let's see if the ac works
it works way better if you plug it in
i redid all of the electrical in here it's way less sketchy look at this it's held in with zip ties now
cool i think it's getting cold i could be
imagining it i am fairly certain it's getting cold it's also grounded now
remember last time i was just like dangly mcdangling i see that capacitor
is still just hanging yeah the capacitor so but it's like you know it's mostly
hidden i love that we spent all this time and money on this thing and it's
still jank maybe that was just its destiny it's way less jang it's
less scary oh good god
okay that was a bit of a miscalculation the point was to leak test it we can't
leak test it when it's soaked oh is that fitting dripping i don't know it's
covered in water so i guess we could also test the pump
right yeah ready and one two three
well that did its job pretty fast yep
for better or for worse this is the new and improved chiller
yeah do you want to describe the final
product right now i would love to everything i'm saying right now is a
guess but i imagine a gorgeously painted
monolithic cube of cooling prowess
with a massive four gallon reservoir
industrial switches for independent control the ac and pump a thermistor
port so that we can measure the internal temperatures of the reservoir and of
course a gorgeous pink temperature control dial all held in place with a
pristine combination of zip ties electrical tape
and hook and loop straps lttstore.com fundamentally what we're
looking at is exactly the same thing that i built in my in-laws backyard 15
years ago but with a degree of refinement so now
instead of carrying it around in pieces and risking slicing your hand open you
can carry it around as one big piece and
risk slicing your hand open but at least less risk of slicing your
hand open and no exposed capacitors so hopefully we're going to be bringing you
guys some great sub-zero
cooled projects over the next little bit here with this thing and if not well it
can always sit in the indiana jones warehouse until we finally do need it
because we actually use it like quite a bit sometimes yeah
i'd say quarterly the deebot osmo features carpet detection technology
which allows it to avoid your carpets while it's mopping and increase suction
for a deeper clean when it's in the vacuuming phase it's programmable to
schedule cleaning custom modes you can even set it to use extra water for the
mopping process it's got up to a 200 minute run time and will return to its
base to charge at the end of its battery life
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products we got to give this a crack with the 64
core threadripper oh yeah yeah that's the kind of thing that can
justify a 1200 watt cooling system