Many people claim to be gaming on a potato, but very few have the spuds
to actually do it. And I know what you guys are thinking, Lionus. It's easy.
You just mash a little bitty raspberry pie into a
boom, it's done. But come on, that's
small fries. We want the full starch experience, friends. I'm talking a full
Windows PC in one of these. And since it's a plant, well, it's going to need
to be watered, which Oh god, we're
liquid cooling it. That's just the beginning. When we're
done, this potato is going to play Bother's Gate 3, Cyberpunk, Halo
Infinite, and sponsor Segway Simulator 2000. Oh, I love that game almost as much as I
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below and use code LTT for 20% off. Our
biggest problem for this project, ironically, is that potatoes are very
small. So, initially we set out to find
bigger potatoes. But in spite of some promising leads, finding one big enough
to fit a full fat gaming system was a fruitless endeavor. Get it? Even our
hand selected Super Spuds are much smaller than a standard MiniITX
motherboard. So, we turned our attention to finding a smaller computer, and that
we did. Meet the Minis Forum EM680.
It's got eight Zen 3 Plus cores that turbo up to 4.7 GHz and Radeon 680M
RDNA3 graphics. It's shockingly powerful
for such a small package. The whole package is just 10 Pringles tall. We're
going to have a link below if you want to pick up one of your own. Of course, even at that size, it's not small enough
for us. So, we'll be taking it apart with this prototype LT precision
screwdriver, complete with bit storage and hybrid ceramic bearing top. Yes.
Yes, we will. Sign up for a notification at ltstore.com.
Got to love that nice strong magnet. I
couldn't believe how small this computer was. Originally, we had another minis
forum that is about 14 cm uh both directions. And that was small to me.
But uh when we got this one in, I was blown away. I didn't know computers came
this small. This is tiny. So small.
Actually, the power of a gaming PC in the palm of my hand.
Now I've got the power of this cooling solution in the palm of my hand here.
Okay, pop that out. Oh, liquid metal on
the stock cooling solution. After the issues we had with it on custom builds,
I just never thought this stuff would go mainstream. But with the right
protective measures like these covers for the surface mount components and
these gaskets, it seems like manufacturers can make it work. Even big
ones like ASUS and Sony, it really does help you get the most out of a small
cooling solution. Of course, we apparently will not be using this one
because we like playing on hard mode.
Hey, there we go. Oh, cool. They've got
a main board up here and then they've got a daughterboard down here that's
handling all of the IO, including the micro SD slot. IO is um going to be a
challenge, huh? USB 4 is truly incredible. We actually only really need two USB 4s to go in.
One for power and one that's going to go to a dongle for everything else.
Now that we've got the whole thing apart, I can show you how the two boards
go back together. There we go. And that's it. CPU, 32 gigs LPDDR5 memory, a
terabyte of PCIe Gen 4 storage, and even USB 4. So, we could hook up an external
GPU to this thing if we really wanted to. We don't want to, though, because we
want it all to fit in here. So, without further ado, let's throw this little guy
into the frying pan. Figuratively, of course. Unless
Now that we found a computer small enough, we need to select our potato.
Oh, any one of these is fine. Any of these should do. I think there's
some that are better than this one. She's soft, though.
Uh, how long have we had these potatoes? About a month. They're a little old.
How about this guy? That's pretty That's a pretty good size. It's got a nice regal shape to him.
The It kind of looks like you. Uh, never thought I'd be asking this,
but what's our plan for potato carving? My original plan was to slice the potato
in half and then just scoop it out with an ice cream scoop. Oh yeah, that's what I did in all exactly all my
all my testing. Okay,
David's getting a cutting board right now, but the way I see it, it's not necessary. Not for a fruit ninja like
me. Damn, I actually kind of nailed that. This cutting board is much fancier than
I expected. Oh wow, cool swag, Corsair. Anyway, uh
which way do you find it's best? Um there's no method to this madness.
It's just madness. You'll want to be careful when you get close to the edges. Sometimes it can kind of just jump and
then rip some skin off. But I see of the potato or of my hand.
Uh, yes. Who would have thought a potato has this much juice? Speaking of, now that we've
worked out size, our next problem is that potatoes are
well food. Uh, you know, boil them, mash them, stick them in a stew. However you
skin them, they're not an ideal environment for a computer or any
electronics for that matter. How are we looking horizontally? Uh,
pretty good. Good news. Uh, reaching the IO is not
going to be an issue. I'm up. Yeah, like the IO's going like right to
the edge. Oh, wow. We chose kind of the perfect potato.
I couldn't help noticing then that I'm hollowing this out too much. Maybe.
Airflow, baby. Sure. For a water cooled system.
Sure. Do we have a fan? Why would you need a
fan? You're water cooling. I keep getting potato juice in my eye.
It's good for the skin. Sure, but is it good for your eyes?
There's an eye of the potato. It's the eye of the potato. It's the
keen eye among you might have noticed that we were just kind of willy-nilly
putting this thing in here to mitigate some of the risk of the
juice shorting out any of the components on our board. We gave it a a battering
like not this like French fries. uh a battering of conformal coating to
protect it from dangerous potato juices. All while being careful to leave access
to any ports or any contact pins that we
need for the system to function. Of course, that wasn't the original plan,
was it? No. The original plan was to preserve
the perfect potato for the shoot. I tried dehydrating, baking, freezing, a
vacuum chamber, resin, a resin vacuum chamber, but nothing really worked. No
matter what I did, it would rot, collapse, or just look disgusting.
I see that. Uh, so instead, we decided we're just going to yolo it, do it all on set for
better or for worse. Uh, you're welcome. Yeah, I'd say that's for better. Is this
even safe? Let alone food safe. I wouldn't take a bite.
Anywh who, another part of the original plan was to transplant the entire
cooling system from the minis form just to make our jobs a little bit easier.
But that's dead, too, huh? Yeah. It turns out problem number three.
Potatoes aren't very good for cooling. In fact, they're kind of good at
insulating. So, we had Justin, our resident mad scientist, fabricate this
absolutely gorgeous water block. You did an amazing job.
So good. Even like the design on the top. I don't know if that was intentional, but it looks really good.
The cold plate is machined from billet copper, and then the rest is resin 3D
printed. Now, I'm told I'm not allowed to take it apart for you guys since the
O-ring is kind of fragile, but we've got a render, and you guys can actually find
the plans for this in the video description if you ever need to. This
for some reason, uh, we ended up having to reinforce the
seal with some CLA to prevent leakage, but the rest of the parts are recycled
from our laptop water cooling adventure. Don't watch that video right now if you
have a weak stomach though. Or if you want to witness history because if you
want that, you're going to have to watch this video. Yeah. Okay. Moment of truth. The blocks on.
It fits perfect. It actually does fit
really, really well. All we've got to do is carve out some IO. You'll have to let
us know in the comments. Is it game t or put gameo? Now, David, question for you.
Do we need to get at any of the other IO or is this side enough?
That's all we need. We can power it through this dongle. We can do up to 90
watts. Okay. Through this. Let's give it a shot. First boot. That's
my computer. It's Hey, don't mock my computer.
No, I love it. From my research, I don't think anyone has actually built a gaming
potato. No, I didn't manage to find one either. So,
world's first baby, which is kind of shocking with how many
times it's been me'd. Yep. I was expecting to find like a hundred different YouTube videos about
it. And then there's basically homeless who's gonna just do it way better than
this. You can't do better than this. Don't challenge him.
No, no, no. You can plug it. You can plug it right into the dongle. Or I can plug it right into the potato.
Okay. I have proper peripherals, but for this part, we'll use these
proper peripherals. Oh god. How do we
power it on? I guess there just So there's a light. There is a power
switch. And there should be a light or there wasn't a case. Okay, there's a
light. We know we don't have the water cooling hooked up yet, but hopefully we
can at least just get a post out of it. How long does this thing take to post?
It doesn't take that long. Come on, turn up. Okay, it's off. That's
good. Ooh, it's really hot. It's really hot. That's a good sign, though, right? Uh, I mean, yeah, but also, we didn't
get an output. Let's get the water cooling hooked up outside of the potato,
then. Yes, real quick. Real quick. We've gone with a dual 40mm radiator, which
for this kind of thermal load should be enough to run completely passively. And
then this adorable little pump from the water cooled laptop setup.
There's water all over the board. What happened? It leaked.
Fudge. Uh glass half full. You guys get to see the inside of the block now.
I mean, theoretically, this board's conformal coated. So, that's a good point.
My bigger concern is just that we didn't get an HDMI output from this thing.
That's fair. Our contact with the die is actually not
great. It's probably fine. Just need to put some more thermal compound on here.
Uh, let's just test it without it being installed and see what happens.
Oh my god. Did it work? Okay, it makes that that's a sensible
picture. By the way, we're kind of bringing it back but in a more everyday
wearable form. Ah, coming soon to LT
store. We're going to find the leak. We're going to stamp it out. That's how
you stop a leak. You just stop leaking.
Oh snap.
Literal. Oh no. Yeah. How long does it take to resin
print a new top? I guess we're about to find out.
While we're waiting for our new block to print, let's talk about the advantages
of resin printing. You can do more complex shapes with higher detail. It's
low cost uh as well as much faster than
machining from acrylic. And it's just watertight, which is kind of important
when we're making a water block. So, it's a much better choice than FDM
printing. This is going to take about 40 minutes. That's pretty fast. Once we're
through that, we're going to wash it and cure it. Uh, and we're going to get back
to it and hopefully finish this today. The downside to resin printing, as we
experienced, it can be brittle depending on the resin you use. We're now using
tough resin, which should give us a little more Linus proofness. And the
other big downside is just it's a mess and there's fumes. It can be kind of
annoying when you're done a print just dealing with the leftover resin, getting
it back in, you know,
watertight. Could you 3D print some water cooling tubes? Are we making a
video on that right now?
The top is not the same as the previous one that was printed.
Oh, I see. It doesn't have the divider in the middle, which quite honestly is
not going to make a difference. Fantastic. What could go wrong?
Y'all ready for this?
Uh, these holes are really small. Are you guys aware of that?
Uh, yeah. It's Look, the blocks Well, that's why it cracked. Are you
aware of that? I wasn't aware of that. Oh, here. Look. Uh, Justin flew pretty
close to the sun on the size of these holes, and you can see that's actually
probably what caused the cracking. We did a rush cure job, so the resin's
still a little malleable. Oh, well that's good. It's good.
This is gonna go. It's gonna go. It's a goer, not a shower.
Without it being cracked, which is a plus. Time to mount this bad boy. Now,
just a gosh darn second here.
It's not as thick as the old one, and the screws are too tall. We can fix
that. We will never be able to unscrew and rescrew them, though, cuz this will
mangle the threads. Oh,
hey. And we've got much better contact with the dye this time. I wonder if
those previous screws were sticking through a little bit as well. Oh, maybe.
There it is. That's what I'm talking about.
Looks like cheese. I want to eat it. It's an appropriate topping for a potato. Certainly.
Oh, man. I wish I had the foresight. What? To make a block out of cheese.
Is conformal coating cool or what? The fact that we just spilled water all over
this board and here we are like half an hour later just using it.
Why doesn't everything have conformal coating on it? Cuz it's expensive. It adds another step
and it's more difficult to repair after the fact. Oh, that makes sense.
So, there are reasons. I'm going just start covering everything I own in conformal coating.
Do you have like a spittle problem? Is there a reason?
Really excited when I game. Is there a reason your electronics get wet?
Oh, no way. I think we're good. Tough resin.
Sure. Yeah. Well, it's working. Oh, we need to make a little cutout for
the tubes. Oh, yeah. We need quite the cutout for the tubes. Oh, balls. So, David, do you
want to eyeball this? Sure. So, right about Yeah, sure. Okay.
He looks like he's got braces. Who knew a potato case could be so
modular? Man, I'm water cooling my pumpkin next Halloween. Uh, did we have any thoughts
for how to like seal up our case? Like, what about hot glue? Would hot glue
hot glue's worse? Hot glue is worse. All right. Oh, so you've actually put
I've tried measurable R&D in everything to try and make potatoes
happen. If you can pull on the tubes a little bit just to Yeah. Oh boy. Oh yeah. There
we there. Oh yeah. There. Oh, there we go. Okay. A little more.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh buddy. I mean Oh.
Oh. It's a filthy joke.
What do you expect? It came out of the ground. Oh, we need power button.
Oh, right. No, no, that's okay. I got a solution for that. Okay,
now you're speaking my my language. Power button. Okay,
my jankuage. So, this maybe I could cut a little spot
for it after after first. Let's make sure this thing works. Oh. Uh uh pump.
Whoa.
All that's left then is to seal up our
potato. Oh. Uh-oh. Totally fine. Yeah. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. Uh, see advanced
repair. No, we we got to Windows before. I bet this just boots. This probably
just boots. Time to seal the deal. The only thing we're missing is some
peripherals. Oh, wow. That worked really well. That immediately was like, "Yo, you're
not taking this apart anymore." Okay. Potato PC.
Okay. Okay. Does it need uh I think we need a little stand so it doesn't roll around.
That's a potato wedges. Potato wedges. I get it. What about
Okay, our potato fry monitor bezel.
Oh my goodness. Wow, David, you um you
made that hash brown desk mat, baby.
Oh, what? Oh, what? Why? Oh,
and what better mouse to use than a potato mouse?
Did you guys get a Makey Makey or something? No, it's just it's just a mouse. They
took the insides out. I've conformal coded it and it it works.
I think I can even hear the clicks. Yep.
Yeah, there it is.
Surprisingly, this does appear to be tracking serviceably. Hold on. I'm going
to launch a game. Let's play some uh
Hold on. The click is a little bit of a challenge.
I'm launching Halo Infinite. Okay, here we go. The mouse works.
Oh my god, it actually kind of works.
Ah. Ah. And no self-respecting gamer can
possibly complete their setup without RGB. Potato powered RGB.
You've got one LED lit. Yeah. RGB.
Well, is there not enough current to light more than one LED?
So, I actually have a battery powering it currently. Oh, it's cheating. It was really cool when
it first was put together. You're lucky I didn't have time to make the potato
keyboard. The mouse is surprisingly somewhat
usable. What do you think of the hash brown desk pad? Uh, it's really it's kind of unpleasant
and greasy, but LTT Store went okay. What how's our CPU doing? Uh,
we're at 50° right now. That's definitely warmer than we got
when we first tested the system. Okay, but we wasn't in a potato. So,
change of plans. We're going with Doom Eternal. The goal, one kill.
I was pretty impressed with the performance I was getting out of this thing. I was a little bit worried and
doomed because I was only getting 25 frames and I realized ray tracing was on. And you know what? 25 frames with
ray tracing. Pretty good. Oh man, my like my ARM muscles from how
hard it is to push on the click. I am getting 455
frames per second. Right click.
Get him. Come on. Oh, did I get him? I think you did. Oh, no you No, I
didn't. Hold on. Right click. Am I Oh, I'm not Am I not on the right uh Oh,
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got it. Yeah. Glory kill. Glory kill. Here we go. Here
we go. Yes. Potato gaming, boys. Med
pack. Med pack. Ah, my
fell apart. Hold on. I got this. I can't
click. It's coming apart. No.
I can't click. This has got to be top 10 stupidest
things we've ever done. No. No. Top three.
I'm so happy I got to be here for this. And the desk mats come apart.
Oh no. Oh wow. Well, everything.
Okay. But like, can we appreciate for a
moment how amazing this is? With root
access, we're managing some seriously impressive hash power.
Which of us is responsible for that line? I think it was a team team thing.
Sorry. It was big potato that forced us to put that in there. As much of a meme
as this project was, it is amazing, guys, what you can do with a tiny APU
powered PC these days. And I really hope
that even if this wasn't the most practical application of this, this gets
your tractor rolling, coming up with cool ideas for fitting powerful
computers in places that they have no
right to be, like in this, the world's first peelable case.
And in this segue to our sponsor, if you guys enjoyed this, if you like janky,
dumb, but spectacular builds, you might like our video where we built
Compensator 4 with the most expensive consumer parts we could get our hands
on.