Watercooled, Overclocked SERVER Build!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
2,514 words · ~12 min read
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so the editing team here asked me for something very specific they want the
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fastest machine that I can build for exporting videos and they want it in the
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server room so that they can just remote into it and Export their projects
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directly from Premiere instead of going
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from premere to C form and then having a separate machine take it to h264 so I
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kind of went okay only one small
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problem with petabyte project coming
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space in our rack is at something of a premium and if you want the fastest
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machine I can build I want to overclock it but I've only got two used to do it
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so what's the solution water
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cooling tunnel bear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse
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privately and enjoy a more open internet to try tunnel bear for free check out
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the link in the video description so believe it or not uh
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water cooling servers is actually a pretty common thing but as with anything
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that we do around here there's a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to
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do it so the right way to water cool a server is to buy a server or usually
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server solution that is designed to be
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water cooled so typically that'll be servers that plug in with quick
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disconnect fittings to a a cabinet or
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even an entire room or building that has
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giant heat dissipation units located on
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the outside the wrong way to do it as the uh
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regular viewers have probably already figured out is the way that we're going
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to go about this is to just grab an off the-shelf server and uh jury rig some
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liquid cooling into it
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come on out you bastard
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okay so let's meet our victim then shall
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we I actually threw this box together
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during our server maintenance weekend yesterday and the day before and the day
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before that it was a it was a long weekend just to make sure that it was
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all working before I went and water cooled it so in here we've got an ASUS
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x99 Delux 2 we've got a coree i7 6950x
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extreme Edition 10 core we've got a
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Noctua cooler that's clearly got to go I mean I love Noctua but not going to be
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suitable for that CPU we've got uh 32
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gigs of Corsair Dominator Platinum painted orange RAM we've actually got a
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GTX 980 in here that's about all we need
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for video acceleration and then I wasn't sure what to do on the boot Drive I
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actually have a PCI Express SSD down there just to see if it was going to
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work in that second slot but I think we're going to go with these two guys in
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raid one yes I know they're refurbished yes I know they're old but it's raid one
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it should be
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okay so now I need some water cooling gear normally I would reach out to all
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The Usual Suspects and get them to send
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over some cool stuff but uh this project
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was not planned out at all
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so what I'm stuck with is just kind of going through the shelves here and
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seeing what I can find some of this is what I would have used anyway like the
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Primo chill Advanced LRT tubing I found some in red uh but some of this stuff is
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a very random mish mash of what I had on
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the water cooling shelf so here's um a
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D5 pump with a top from Ek that was from a previous project here's a a phobia
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Reservoir that's just the smallest tube Reservoir that I have on hand here's an
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old Alpha cool rad that I found and
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finally this is an interesting story I
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take pride in completing the sponsored projects that I asked for hardware for
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and over two years ago I asked bits power for a very specific set of
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fittings for a water cooled bit Phoenix Prodigy built and I never delivered it
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for a number of reasons and so I've just
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kind of shamefully looked at these every
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time I've gone through the fittings box having not really any use for all these
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like 45s and right angles it only had two straight fittings in it but that all
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changes today because I finally have a
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project that I can use them for so stage
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one is to kind of tear everything out that I already had in there and have a
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look at the space we're working with this was actually our old router case
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and as you can see there is a lot of wasted space for like 5 and 1/4 in Drive
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Bay these fans that are just kind of hanging
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out in the middle of nowhere we're still going to need intake fans but a lot of
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this space could be utilized for something else but I still have some
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concerns so we've got an EK Supremacy Evo block I'm using the all metal
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version we don't want to take any unnecessary risks with leaks since this
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will actually be sitting above paby project and I just wanted to make sure
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that it's actually going to fit in the
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2u height with our 90° fitting so that's
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good then same thing metal caps for the
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end of our tube Reservoir I need to find somewhere to put that which looks like
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it's going to be right about here and then I need somewhere to put my
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radiator and it looks like we've got a small clearance issue there but nothing
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we can't resolve so this is great everything came out really easily giving
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us actually more space what we're going
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to do is actually sub in a triple
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radiator where I had intended to use a dual
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radiator now the mounting though is
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going to be a little bit tricky we're actually going to raise it a little bit
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off the bottom of the case then we're going to have the fans blowing up this
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way and we're going to have these three fans carrying the air through the case
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as a whole bear in mind guys this is a
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triple radiator and we don't have enough room to cool the video card anyway so
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it's only responsible for cooling the
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CPU so there are a couple of things you're going to notice me doing about
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this build that would be a little bit different than normal uh number one is
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I'm going to be using everywhere that I can so on the radiator on the CPU block
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and on the reservoir actually I'm going to be using vice grips to tighten up
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these nled fittings like this because I
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can cannot risk a leak and as long as we are screwing into metal there's no
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danger other than to the finish on the nled fittings the other thing you're
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going to notice is that I'm going to be optimizing for the shortest possible
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tubing runs wherever I can because no matter how good your tubing is it will
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be slightly porous and that's where
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water evaporates from a water cooling
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system so I'm going to have as little of
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that exposed as possible now I'm getting really excited I think I
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finally got a pretty solid plan for how
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this is going to come together so I need some kind of riser for this Reservoir to
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make sure that it is high enough that the pump's Inlet is going to be easily
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fed by it then that conveniently gets me right up to the same level as this right
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angle coming off the radiator that will go back into the res very cool stuff
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then the CPU is easy this tube looks like it's just going to fit under the
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graphics card and this one comes right over here giving me a total of only
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about like two feet and change of
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exposed tubing mounting everything to the bottom
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of the case is extremely important and
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needs to be very precise if I screw up
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the placement just a little bit for the radiator the pump and the reservoir they
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aren't all going to fit the other thing that's going to be really tricky down
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down here is the fact that this is a rack
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mounted case so I can't just have like
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the head of a screw sticking through here it'll bump on the next one down so
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what I've got are these sunken type screws here and the plan is to use what
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is not a proper bit for metal but I only
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need a few holes out of it but I'm going to use one of these uh stepped style
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drill bits to see if I can create a counter sunk hole as as best as I can
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yes I know it's not 100% the best way to do it but come on you're watching M the
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decks we're going to pre-drill a hole in
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the red to tap
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into
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oh went too far hit the tube well I am
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not sure if I could be more pissed off right now so the bad news is that we
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punctured the radiator and I don't have another one of the same but the good
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news is that that hole that I was drilling these screws thread in and kind
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of self-tap perfectly nice solid
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connection the plan would have worked perfectly if I had just put something
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back I thought I could control it but it
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slipped so I have to fix this now which
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means the best solution we have on hand is Marine
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epoxy claims to bond brass so I have
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mixed it thoroughly for 1 minute I have actually done this before
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with jbweld that radiator continued to work for years but I've never tried
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using epoxy so here we
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go this is how you can tell the difference in my videos between a
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problem and a
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problem that will go there for a bit
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let's get the pump and res mounted we now return to you live from
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problems lonus was expecting to have to solve okay so when we try and close the
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lid we're going to see that there's a
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bit of a bit of a bulge so to speak I can't have even that
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little bit of play it's only about this much fortunately this mount for the pump
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has a little bit of unnecessary
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thickness at the bottom that I think we can just remove we bought the sticky
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kind when we need the velcro kind no
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problem this is just a finer grit than I had wanted to use it'll just take a
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little bit
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longer I should have just mounted the radiator with double-sided
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tape why did did I screw through it
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anyway cart before the horse let's find out if it
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fits perfect no bulge
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whatsoever all right I was bound to be successful at
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something not having a good day today
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it's okay I always pull it off usually
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oh man did you see those scissors Bend always pull back before trying to insert
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yep I am never too mad to make a dick
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joke maybe we should just call this video problems linet could solve easily
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if he had enough time to wait around for a 3D print job I need spacers I need
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spacers for my screws so I found this old acrylic CPU block hold down and I'm
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cutting it up to get
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holes these may be the jankiest
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spacers of all
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time oh shoot just call this video lonus
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being grumpy for 20 minutes so as long as everything stays in place exactly
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perfectly okay oh
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sh the radiator is in making real
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progress now we're getting
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close here we are again a 3D printed Mount
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would be a perfect solution for our Reservoir but
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uh no time so it came to
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me Minecraft boom brick boom Another Brick
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oh yes wait is that too
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high ah back to the drawing
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board D Minecraft
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we'll use this Square hockey puck okay not my straightest
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cut
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okay we have a big problem we are like
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done it's time to power it up and this
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this is how set our epoxy is clearly
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that's not enough but possibly fractal design to the rescue fractal has
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removable fittings from the components of their AO
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but what I don't know yet is if they're using G1 qu threads if
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they are then I can just Swap this
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Radiator in it is it is right it's right
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we have another
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red love
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tap love tap now I'm having fun
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okay oh could that have been any
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easier oh yes in there just fine we've
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got our tubing run all our fittings are tightened so all that's left to do is
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throw in our network card throw in our graphics card wait what is this really
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going to interfere with this oh come on now you vicious bastard
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okay well this computer doesn't get 10 gbit networking
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ssds and one tape it down and a two tape
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it on top of the other one power for the
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ssds one MOX connector over
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here 24 pin power oh we're close now
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baby we got to make sure everything here is nice and flat cuz this graphics card
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does not have a lot of clearance
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here and you
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go okay that is a Primo Rat's Nest right
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there Moment of
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Truth okay so this is it it's finally
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done the pump was dead to replace that
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anyway the project is a success so our
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hottest core after about 20 minutes of
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sitting running small ffts in IID to 64
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is 60° which is pretty darn impressive
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given how low profile this sucker
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is what a
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project anyway guys thanks for watching if you dislike this video do that if you
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liked it though hit the like button get subscribed maybe consider checking out
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where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merge store and our
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community Forum which you should join now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to
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watch next so click the video and go
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watch another one of our videos I can't guarantee they'll be as
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epic as this one but they'll be
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good