$500 DIY Water Cooled PC Challenge - Scrapyard Wars Episode 2d
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,154 words · ~10 min read
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yeah scrapyard Wars scrapyard Wars 2 the
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scrapping we are headed to Andrew sheret again um the plan this time is to get um
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some fittings probably so we can adapt her from that heater cord that I got to
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the copper tubing so we can adapt her from the flexible tubing to the copper
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tubing and I might pick up one of those copper caps again uh just so we don't
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waste a trip if I decide to water cool the graph
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card all right so Andre sure went well
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I'm basically out of budget for water
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cooling stuff um but I still need that plate so
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let's go see if we can figure that out I just did some counting of a lot of
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change cuz that's all I have left for a water cooling budget I have
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$6.20 left I have one more thing to buy
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and it's a copper plate I'm hoping they'll just give it to me because I
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bought half a pound and they only gave me 0.125 which is fine cuz that's all I
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needed but so if I get a different dude this time that's like no you have to buy
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the minimum quantity then it'll be twice that price and then I super definitely
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can't afford it it's technically a two
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priority but I think I need to mod the
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case because if I don't do that it's
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going going to be very difficult for me to
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know how much space I have for my copper
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coil you just unscrew that you don't need to grind it off ah it's
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riveted awesome a little bit bigger
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totally work yeah great I'm not wor l no
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okay you do want all my change
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no okay awesome I mean technically I had
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to overcharge you on the other thing yesterday I that's actually why I
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brought this back in but I was it was would have been totally fair if you
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didn't hon that anyways yeah supposed to you I was going to say you also were
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supposed to charge me a full pound so I don't know awesome thank you very much
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no problem I'm going to get to work have a good day yeah you
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too
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damn freaking batter's
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dying someone unplugged the drill battery charger
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thing the battery the spare battery wasn't fully charged I'm in pretty bad
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shape there's things that I can do but I
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want to get this done right now oh that's bloody impossible
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um it is supposed to it might work for the tubing but I'm
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supposed to be able to tighten it up and then pull it around and cut it but this
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thing's so big compared to it that I can't rotate it while it's
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inside so I have no idea how I'm supposed to do it and because it's on a
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curve already if I try to rotate it while it's
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inside it's like it doesn't sit properly and and like I can't rotate it past this
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angle so I don't know I could be doing something wrong but I'm probably going
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to have to cut it with a drel on the end anyways and then I bought that tool for nothing um luckily tools don't come out
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of the main budget but I still feel really dumb buying that tool if it's not
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going to work at all it'll it'll work for the the copper
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tubing but that's just
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brutal
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go that way please honey you're not going to be able to take your try
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through the garage off you
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go I have to wait for Mom first no mommy
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will be at the front go go let's hope he doesn't text a drive anytime
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soon Dremel tool my
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ass that that is a rotary
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cutter okay well this is clearly got
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absolutely no strength left after I did that so um I don't even know how much
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point there is leaving it on
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there where's my axe it's over there
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thank you
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oh okay no problem okay here we
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go man I love this thing okay I'm sorry did you say steel
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case construction I'm sorry did I say anything that sounded like I give a
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probably got enough room for our copper
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coils but I'm not sure if we can still put a
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computer in
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here
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any other case modification we do will be relatively minor I might drill a hole
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here or there uh but now we've done the
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vast majority of the cutting that I foresee us needing to do I ended up
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leaving this in I think that should be okay so the plan then is Reservoir
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here coil all up the front of the case then
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maybe if we can end here then coil here
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and coil all in front of the power supply and then end here and coil here
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or something down GPU I really hope we can figure this
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out red green would almost be
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proud du yeah that's why
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almost H was that the idea uh yeah I wanted
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this in the middle oh
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well did you break
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it oh yeah darn shoot that's
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terrible two places okay this is a big problem
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because now we need to find something pretty much exactly this size because
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the pump has to fit in whatever Reservoir we're using so I had already
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validated those two components to work together I really didn't think it was
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going to be that fragile there was only one left one what one of these where I
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bought it oh
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no yeah let's find out just how broken it is it's possible the cracks don't go
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all the way through this one's pretty deep
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okay huh is it good it's too early to
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say but it's possible that we got away with
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one here that came from the top that's
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there's there's water here what we're looking at is right here and even as I
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put stress on it nothing comes out then
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this one which I thought was actually much less likely to like we might have
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gotten away with one
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here
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um
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so while we were having lunch my neighbor arrived at home so we are
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heading over there with our raw materials and our components that we
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need to cool and hopefully we will have
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some kind of a plan within the next I don't know hour or so for how we can
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turn this into something that fits on
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that exciting times now internet this is John John this is
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the internet the internet is it all right
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you guys you guys are going to be blown away by this garage it makes our
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workshop look less awesome John makes
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okay solar power digital scoreboards that's right basically that's awesome
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runs off the sun radio control no wires
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slice and dice come on guys and my my
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buddies so pretty much the kind of gear he has in here is
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mindboggling so he like makes all kinds of little gadgetry like this these coils
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in here all pretty much by hand except the tools that he has that he builds
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himself by hand this is why we're here
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this is a CNC machine oh
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wow here's what we need to design today
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these are our raw materials okay and this little doad so
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for we've got our graphics card can turn okay that's your graphics card pull that
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baby off so this is pretty simple all
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these 9 11 okay need to be covered by
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this and we could of kind of score it or something to get kind of a heat sinky
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sort of effect to it and then we got to carve out a spot for that and I'm just
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going to stick it on there no problem so that's pretty easy that's your little
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sink then this is where things start to get more difficult so these two pieces
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combined will be our CPU water block and
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they need to go right on top of the CPU here and then we need some kind of a um
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we need a way to seal it around the outside no problem more modern CPU block
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designs tend to use micro channels or micro fins directly over where the CPU
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die is going to sit but because we're not using the kind of sophisticated
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Machinery much tighter than that so on tigh much on a much much tighter scale
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and very very short but we don't have the kind of Machinery that would allow
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us to build something like that you can cut it pretty accurately oh yeah I could
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do a little tiny between this point and this point here I could probably
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do uh 20 25 uh little
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channels okay that's not too bad we can work on that one thing we want to be
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careful of too is we don't want the design to be too restrictive too flow
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restrictive because I know it'll it'll oh I see what you're saying we li in
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terms of our pump budget thanks to the constraints of this project I got you
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okay so what we'd want to do is we would probably want to bring the whole thing
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down a little bit so that it can flow freely over top if it wants but it can
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also sit around in see I got you then as far as this goes we'll just tap uh some
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uh holes in the corners y uh to and die
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thing and then we'll use silicone around
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the side here and put it on here now
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again more Advanced CPU block designs would use a rubber gasket which is
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removable and replaceable but because we don't have the uh time or necessarily
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resources to Source a custom rubber
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gasket for our block uh we're going to go with a more permanent solution which
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isn't to say that a silicone seal is permanent permanent you could rip it
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apart and re silicone it and seal it back up it's just not quite as elegant a
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solution as you know if we were to commercially manufacture them back up a
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little bit you oh you want to put in a rubber gasket now no I can do better
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than that this could um cut out our gasket for us using vinyl does that work
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oh yeah for sure for sure for sure or like for
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sure closer to
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you makes me feel close to you
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somehow
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let's see if he wants to talk to us right now or if he'd prefer to wait till later also I need to give him his pen
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back cuz I stole it I believe about 15
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minutes after you left it broke a bit no
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way I got a spare one put a cheaper bit in this one isn't as
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much I'll just run it
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slower
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sorry this ended up being a much bigger project than a little bit it was
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supposed to be but if we reduce the scope if we kill
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the graphics card then that should help it fair bit I hope
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sorry about this I just want to curl up into a ball and cry I'm going to I'm
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going to do that later oh with or
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something oh I'm TI I haven't even
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been doing this following you
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around so lonus how did it go today so it's the
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end of day two we have abandoned our
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plan to build a GPU water block we
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still really don't know how to get
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enough copper coiled into the case to
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dissipate the heat from our CPU even so it's probably a good thing the GPU block
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isn't happening and we still haven't even put
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the holes in our Reservoir and finished our CPU block we
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still don't actually have a way to put our fittings into the CPU block the good
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news is we can free up some budget by
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returning some things tomorrow I can return GPU fittings for example so we
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need a tap for that pipe thread which Lord only
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knows where we're going to find and then
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yeah we're going to have to get at it pretty bright and early
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tomorrow