oh you guys are in for a treat today oh
this right here is a relic
a pc cooling solution
that i haven't used since the last time that AMD had a
relevant high-end desktop processor
and so what better way to celebrate AMD's revival as a bonafide high-end
option thanks to the threadripper 1950x
then by resurrecting what i call
the chiller a sub-zero liquid cooling device that
might not look like much but like the uh
thousand-year bird of prey i don't want to get in trouble with disney
has got it where it counts
okay so step number the first i have already done this before but it never
hurts to do a sanity check when you're gonna do something insane
is to make sure that what used to be a
window mounted air conditioning unit
is still fully functional so here's your hot side this is called the condenser so
this is where your phase change coolant comes to have the fans blow through it
and change it from a gas to a liquid this is our compressor which compresses
that fluid and then right over here this is our evaporator so this is where the
compressed fluid goes to be exposed to something hot in our
case it'll be our CPU's heat and evaporate then it gets moved back
around to the condenser
full load in ida 64. about 73 degrees on the CPU
okay cool now we know that
let's see how much of a difference we can make
there's that hand mark beautiful while that's running we're going to need
a few supplies first up is a care package from none other than
the legendary der bauer funny story like
two months before i decided to resurrect that thing i threw away so since the
last time i went sub-zero for like a 24
7 system there have been some changes to the
conventional wisdom so it used to be that we used dielectric grease in
anywhere where there were pins around the socket and
kneaded eraser was the most popular thing for filling in the bigger gaps
around the socket not so anymore nowadays apparently we're
just using vaseline anywhere where there are contacts
and then we're using this stuff paint it onto the board
because it comes off really easily
liquid tape we're not as concerned about
condensation as guys that are doing like crazy
you know liquid nitrogen overclocking or anything like that
because we are not going down that low and it should be noted that we don't
have to put this on too heavy because we're not trying to thermally
insulate or anything like that we're just trying to keep moisture out of
everywhere that the brush touches oh you know what i can probably just use
the big brush for this woo here we go
technically removing things like stickers would probably be a pretty good
idea um though again i'm just really not that
concerned about it oh look at that oh
abuse hardware abuse yeah i don't think ASUS is gonna want
this board back the other important thing here is that we've gone with a metal top one
so this is a nickel topped version of the block and the reason that's
important is that if we were running oh shoot these uh
these barbs aren't gonna fit i'm gonna have to go get different ones whoops
okay then so if we were running a different version of the block this
plexi here could crack and over the long
term it would be degraded by the kind of coolant we're using is that my vaseline here
yeah yeah dog okay
i'm just gonna jam that in there and
vaseline it up i mean the vaseline is supposed to make it go in easier but
so normally you would really you know cut around capacitors and you would do a
super amazing job of getting it all nice and tight
but the idea is that this is the actual thermal insulation
now the key to any good insulation application
is no air gaps this is literally the worst insulation of all time
not every thermal compound is suitable for sub-zero cooling some of them
actually perform worse if you go too low so this one is
whoa shoot that was not what i meant to do
stop it oh this is goopy thermal compound we also actually have to
insulate our block and the reason for that is that if you
think about it metal is quite thermally conductive right
so if we have below ambient
coolant running through it
this block is actually going to sweat and it's going to
drip onto the other components of our system if we let it uh oh one thing
we're going to need to do before we do that though is get our tubing attached
so there are better tubings you know what i'm just not even going to
say what i'm using because there are definitely better tubings for sub-zero
applications but one thing that we are doing that's a little bit unusual is i'm using 3 8 inch
tubing over a half inch barb
and this is kind of a classic aka old people water cooling technique i
would actually expect this to do a reasonably good job like i'm going to
leave this running while i go down and do lanchow later
and i do not expect there to be any condensation on here
so that right there is the CPU area
and then next up you really want some of this stuff
so this is another armaflex product and it's just a
an insulation tube thing that you can that you can throw onto the tubing oh
okay this is legitimately kind of a problem
maybe with a like a stick you do a couple layers of this guy
followed by another thing that will be different from this guy
is he really putting that graphics card in there again
knowing what he knows from last time
yes yes he is there's nothing about this project that
i recommend trying at home
oh yeah okay
literally literally dangerous
yeah like how was there enough room for oh
this has been moved like ah look at this
that's been shifted why did i do this why am i showing other
people this like where's the screw from there we go now you might be wondering
if this is actually enough airflow and the answer is yes
so the whole cooling system actually requires three plugs
one for the compressor one for the pump
and one for the cooling fans
now what we're gonna do is fire it up for real
okay why aren't those cooling fans spinning
hey there they go okay
dang it Jake this is what happens when you put Jake in charge of zip tying the
stupid fans before you start
okay so now we need to figure out our tubing runs we're going to go from the outlet of the block and we're going to
give ourselves a little bit of slack and then we're going to come through
this cable management hole here and then we're going to go underneath
the evaporator and we're going to let that kind of pin it down so that the
warm liquid is as far away from here we go the
outlet of our reservoir as possible so that it has to travel across
the evaporator before it can be sucked into the pump so right now it's at 80
degrees fahrenheit whatever the hell that is i don't know fahrenheit
if anyone's wondering no this is not to code
and also no it will not be staying running for very long
okay there's so many things that can go wrong
here so many things to go wrong
and what can go right a cold CPU is this really worth it
ah that's better that's
dang it out
i think we're ready i hope i have enough
i sincerely hope this is enough
and here we go again
and now we don't actually want to run a sub-zero cooling system without the
system running because then it gets too cold you'll get condensation for sure
you need some heat to offset it
so let's see if the system fires up here CPU initialization is going
this thing better fire up why is CPU initialization still going
uh systems up CPU fan speed error that's fine um
like i had said before uh having some airflow around the socket is definitely
a good idea um some airflow around the RAM sticks is
good as well uh so let's have a look at our initial
temps hey we haven't even had the chiller running
for very long but i'm expecting them to be pretty good uh
wait what 52 degrees that doesn't make sense
i've got water flow right 52 degrees
i'm finding that very confusing
the only thing i can think of is if it's grabbing the temperature off of an
external sensor and then just using an offset
because the CPU is probably not that cold like that coolant is still close to
room temperature okay so for our next trick
i'm dropping a thermal probe into the liquid and finding out how cold it is
that we're running so far so about we're at about 9.2 degrees celsius
and let's see what ida has to say about our temps here
ah that's more like it
so yes that CPU temperature was
reporting with some sort of offset near the socket which as you guys might
remember we insulated
so the CPU diode
at somewhere between 10 and 20 degrees
that actually makes sense because you should be a little bit over the
temperature of the coolant while you're at idle okay rancho is over and whoa
it's working fantastic
oh there we go
minus 20 degrees on the coolant
minus 17 degrees
on the CPU freaking
fantastic we're looking at CPU diode temps
that are under the ambient temperature of this room
by seven degrees
seven degrees less than the ambient in this room
freaking unreal
so it's frosted over anywhere where the evaporator is uh
exposed to the air which makes perfect sense
you guys can actually get a pretty good look at what our uninsulated tubing
would look like check that out remember this tubing is
black you guys remember that black tubing
it's just completely snowy and then this stuff insulates better
than that stuff for sure but you see the pump would also have to be uh insulated
here check that out cool right
okay so by this point you guys are probably wondering
why why
well believe it or not this was at one point in time anyway a fairly popular
way to get sub-zero temperatures relatively speaking and the reason for
that is that compared to direct die
cooling with an evaporator this doesn't have to be custom done so
you don't need any hvac certifications you just go buy a window ac unit strip
it down and do this compared to that it's much cheaper and
obviously compared to regular water cooling you're able to get much much
better results so even now that it's been running for about five minutes we
are still sitting at less than 30 degrees on the diode something that is
going to get us significantly
better temperatures which could lead to better overclocking
now as for the disadvantages those i hope are fairly obvious disadvantage
number one is that to do this properly is extremely time consuming and um
yeah very few people end up doing that everyone kind of does it pretty janky
disadvantage number two is it's extraordinarily difficult to relocate
your pc because this thing is exactly
as heavy as it looks disadvantage number three it's loud like
check this out i'm putting my mic into the thing here
super loud and disadvantage number four
is it can in some cases result in dead
hardware if you're not careful about your insulation now for my part i'm
actually expecting like as quickly as i did that i'm expecting my insulation job
to have held up just fine i'm going to shut this baby down and we'll take a look at it here though so yeah we're
doing just fine here this is barely even cold to the touch out to the very edges
of our insulation here the problem is just that it's easy to make a mistake
and anything worth sub-zero cooling is probably expensive and high-end so
unless you can afford to lose that stuff you might not want to take the risk and
the last drawbacks a lot of drawbacks taken a long time is power consumption
and heat so in addition to your system you have to run an air conditioner that
not only doesn't cool down your room
it actually spits massive amounts of heat into your room
so you can air condition your air conditioner so
you can air condition while you're air conditioned so
thank you very much ASUS for sponsoring
this fun little video where i showed you guys
a whole lot of what not to do thanks you guys for watching if you disliked it you
can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed maybe consider
checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description zenith extreme we've been
really happy with this board for our threadripper testing also link down there is our merch storage has cool
shirts like this one as well as our community forum which you should totally
join