PC Build in a Fridge - Does it Work??
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,250 words · ~11 min read
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all right we're locked out of our own video
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but this video is going to be great we are going to be building a computer
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inside a mini fridge we are going to answer the question once and for all is
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it a good idea to build a computer inside a mini
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fridge like the video if you think that's a good question to answer I
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didn't have any other teasers ready okay I need a key
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Corsair delivers real Mech or oh here I have one H real Mech or nothing with
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their new strafe mechanical keyboard featuring genuine german-made Cherry MX
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key switches click on my chin to learn
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more I'm going to move my chin now just to throw you for a
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loop this may not look like a computer
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case to you nor does it look like a
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computer case to me because it's not a computer case this is a fully functional
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that is to say working but not plugged in mini fridge and if you're like me and
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you've trolled many a forum you've either witnessed or come up with the
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idea on your own of building a computer inside a mini fridge where well hey it's
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cold in there must be great for overclocking right let's put it to the
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test do you even lift bro yeah I lift all
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right okay now before you go full bore
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on any kind of project you want to at least validate the concept so we'll be
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taking the Zotac ZBOX Pico Pi
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320 and we will be experimenting to find
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out if this Compact and power efficient
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passively cooled PC can actually
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experience an improvement in thermals and or performance inside the mini
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fridge right but of course first we have to establish a baseline reading in our
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ambient temperature test here so we're booting up the ZBOX and then we're going
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to run a stress test to find out just how she runs before putting her inside
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the fridge all right so we've got our Baseline numbers we're looking at
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anywhere from about 46 to 49° C on our
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course which puts us at about 22 to 25°
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above our ambient temperature which is about 27° now let's go ahead and fire up a
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stress test what is
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that that's
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weird what is that noise is my backpack
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here it's more on shut up it got louder
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maybe that's the maybe it's the low battery alert that is a pretty
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aggressive low battery alert and yet apparently that's what it is apparently
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that's what it was okay so with that crummy experience
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out of the way it looks like our CPU temperatures have settled into 59 to 63°
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and our ambient temperatures are actually a touch higher at
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27.5 okay so what we'll find out now is
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whether our fridge is even ready for us to put our system inside it I thought
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it's supposed to be like 4° maybe that's a touch hot oh well then it is going
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down very fast okay so let's go ahead and put this puppy on the Shelf then
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let's start it boom okay so no real surprises here
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our idle temperature test gives us anywhere from 25 to
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27° our ambient temperature around the
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Pico is around 5° and that stands to reason because
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we're looking at about a 20° Delta between ambient and CPU temperature so
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that means that at idle the mini fridge
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works it cools the Pico so this is the
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part where the video gets really interesting our fridge is compressor is
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running all the time but it is maintaining a frosty internal
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temperature as low as 2 to 2 1/ 12° C
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and our CPU has settled in at around 38
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to 40° C under load the mini fridge
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concept is a massive success achieving a
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let's see wow greater than
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20° Improvement in load CPU temperatures
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now we're going to take things up a notch I'm going to steal Luke's test
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bench and find out if the type of rig that you would actually benefit from
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cooling down for better overclock Lo ability uh will actually work in our
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mini fridge setup so this is a Titan X
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this is a 5930k or 5960x not sure which 16 gigs of
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ddr4 memory let's go he'll never miss it
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actually he'll come looking for me so now it's Baseline time with Luke's rig
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here in the garage so our ambient temperatures are a little cooler than yesterday but that's okay we can correct
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for that the most important thing is the difference between amb temperature and
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CPU temperature when you're measuring this sort of thing and our CPU
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temperature we're going to simplify things a little bit instead of looking at all the cores we're just going to
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take the CPU reading and we're looking at it's fluctuating between 29 and
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30° so now let's start the stress test
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and see where we end up outside of the
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cooling box we have our numbers so the
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room cooled down a little bit thanks to some breeziness at about 22 and 1/2 de
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and our CPU settled in just under 45° on
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the hottest of its six cores it is a 5930k I have now confirmed that so now
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it's time let's do it go ahead and start by
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removing some shelves I do not recommend cooling down
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hard drives um especially while they are
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operating so we're not going to be putting our hard drive in there and uh
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another thing this Pico now that it's cold and it's below ambient temperature
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should not be powered on until it reaches ambient temperature on its own
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because otherwise condensation can be a factor and any moisture with powered on
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electronics is a terrible idea okay I
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think we've actually got enough clearance on our fans here that they
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should be able to cool the CPU just
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fine there's a bit of a problem here I
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have a solution
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ah there we go problem
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solved so we're getting ambient temperature readings the compressor is
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running and we can see our idle CPU temperatures here so let's find out
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where she settles in at idle bear in mind guys that we are talking a very
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different level of heat load here I think the Pico has a power supply that's
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something like 10 watts total whereas
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even at idle this computer is going to consume somewhere in the neighborhood of
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80 to 90 Watts now I was really hoping I
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was rooting for it I was hoping that the
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idle scenario would give us subambient
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temperatures but in fact it has settled
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in around 23.3 de almost exactly the
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ambient temperature of the room which means we are
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basically achieving nothing other than consuming electricity by putting the
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computer inside the fridge but I promised you guys a load scenario and
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that is what I am going to deliver it's
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should be noted that I observed that to the touch the side of the fridge which
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is where this particular unit seems to dissipate heat from the hot side of the
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HVAC unit is hotter than I have
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experienced before you can see we actually just crept up another fraction
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of a degree so at 23.4 right now let's
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go ahead and kick it into high gear kids okay so you can see they've already
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jumped to about what we observed in our
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outside control test but what this
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doesn't account for is that the ambient temperature in here is going to increase
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now that the compressor and refrigeration system inside here is
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overwhelmed so let's watch it happen shall we all right so this is taking
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longer than I thought to completely reach unreasonable temperatures and here
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we are 12 minutes later the system is still running but we know enough to know
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that it doesn't work this is not even an overclocked rig and our ambient
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temperatures inside the fridge are steadily climbing I took a reading about
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30 seconds ago it was 26 and2 now it's
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peaking at 27 depending on how I jiggle the probe um so all that's really left
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is the explanation for or why this
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doesn't work well there's no airflow this is a closed system so this system
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relies on itself to move any heat that's
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generated inside out so that's going to be done through the sides of the unit or
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in many cases on fridges a coil at the
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back a heat sink effectively so unless you're using a unit with enough capacity
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to handle not only keeping the insides cold but also removing a constant heat
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load it is n going to work so we can't
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just introduce airf Flow by like you know punching fans in the side so a
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closed system depends on the capacity of
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the system for cooling now with that
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said you guys might go okay well hold on a second lus you showed off that the low
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powered PC could work and even the idle PC was not failing at the rate that the
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load PC is well that's only sort of true
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because fridges are designed for occasional use some heat from the
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outside will transfer inside through the insulated barrier and it'll have to you
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know maintain that also the user will open it up from time to time to remove a
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drink so the compressor fires up and it gets things back down to a nice cool
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temperature they're not designed with components that are rated for 24-Hour
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7day a week operation that type of
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workload rating is only going to be found in a more industrial unit
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something like an air conditioner and I guess that's where we get into the
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Practical sort of side of phase change cooling for computers if you have a
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large high capacity air conditioner say for example designed for a room that can
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handle that kind of a heat load or something where an entire building is
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air conditioned then you will get the benefit of the lower ambient temperature
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not only for yourself but also for your computer also if you checked out our
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phase change BC build guide which you
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can check out in the little I in the corner well if you apply the phase
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change cooling directly to the heat load and you're controlling the scope of what
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you're cooling we haven't even fired up the graphics card in here and we're
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overwhelming it then it can be useful as well but again we're talking high-end
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components not a you know couple hundred mini fridge and we're talking custom
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designed stuff in that case from LD cooling so yeah I mean most of you
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probably knew how this was going to turn out some of you might not have cuz it's
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all about how how you think about it if you think about your computer in terms of that it runs at 30 or 40° and so you
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know it should be able to be kept cool then I get where you're coming from but
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it's more to do with the total thermal energy not the actual temperature which
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are two completely different things and if you think about it this way a
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computer that consumes you know 300 400 watts at load is going to be kicking off
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basically equivalent amounts of heat that's about the same as a as a modest
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space heater and you wouldn't think putting a space heater inside a fridge
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would keep that cool either would you so
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there you go guys the answer has finally
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been provided online as Tech tips not that anyone else hasn't ever proved this
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before you can see in the time I've even been talking here we've gone up almost
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an entire additional degree so I'm going to go ahead and put this system out of
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its misery now thank you for watching if you disliked this video bam you know
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to watch now that you've done all that stuff I'm going to pull up my calendar and find out what I've done recently ah
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yes Luke should have just uploaded the
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Doom Hama machine where we built the ultimate possible machine out of all the
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components in our office and ran it through the gauntlet for you so check
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that out I'll see you guys again next time