The ULTIMATE Sleeper PC Build
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,424 words · ~7 min read
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In the automotive world, a sleeper is typically a slow car, like say a Toyota Cressida,
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that has been modified to be insanely fast.
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And there's another key element.
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The best sleepers, like this one from Mighty Car Mods, feature no external modification.
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So potential challengers would have no way of knowing that it's capable of chopping them to shreds,
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eating aforementioned shreds, then pooping them out.
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So, inspired by this concept, we grabbed the nastiest, oldest, your-great-uncle-is-still-using-it-for-some-reason case
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that we could find and vowed to make it Smash Games once more.
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Meet Hubert.
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Plain name, plain looks, plain performance.
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You know, that kind of plain.
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Synergy allows you to share your mouse and keyboard
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between mouse and keyboard.
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And multiple computers at once.
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Check it out now at the link in the video description.
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So first, we needed a case.
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And our good friends over at FreeGeek hooked us up with this.
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An Antec SX840, which back in the day was pretty dope.
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But after almost 15 years of filth collection,
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well, let's just say it was perfect.
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Opening it up, though, the insides actually could have been a lot worse, all things considered.
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I wonder if this thing has even been opened since shortly after it passed QC back in 2003.
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I really hate that that's a long time ago now.
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Anyway, next order of business was a plan to pack it full of as much power and water cooling as we could.
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And because Alex can't resist an opportunity to fire up that copy of SolidWorks that they gave us for just such occasions,
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we created a model of the case and started virtually test fitting our components.
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Radiator in the bottom with vent holes?
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Hmm. Well, that could fit, but then we'd be stuck with a single graphics card.
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Unacceptable.
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So we settled then on a thick triple radiator in the front.
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This might seem slightly overkill,
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but these new Core i9 processors run hot as hell when overclocked and we wanted to be able to push this baby as
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far as possible.
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Time to head down to the workshop.
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We pulled the drives, then spent about the next half an hour
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drilling out rivets with our trusty bottle of rapid tap.
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Ah, that's better.
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I mean, who needs ancient mechanical drives when you can have more room for cooling?
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Time for a test fit then before we make any irreversible modifications.
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Our pump reservoir position was the trickiest to figure out.
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At first we wanted it to go in the bottom,
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but because of the PCIe slot positioning on our ASUS Prime X299 Deluxe, we couldn't make that work.
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There is some room up top, but that would make filling the system more difficult without putting in a fill port in the top and ruining our
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beautiful sleeper aesthetic.
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So finally, we came up with an idea.
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Maybe we could mount it to the fans.
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I mean, sure, that's not the greatest for airflow, and it means that we'll have to be darn careful while drilling into them,
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but it might be just crazy enough to work.
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How to mount the radiator though?
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Holes in the front of the case would be the most obvious solution.
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But stealing the top radiator mount from a Mastercase Pro 5 would save us some time,
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so we flattened it out a bit and...
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Ah shoot.
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It's still about a half an inch too thick.
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Not a problem though.
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It's angle grinder man to the rescue.
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So with the cuts tidied up, it did still interfere slightly with the motherboard tray rivet,
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so out those came with the drill,
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and these holes here should serve us well for mounting the radiator.
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Of course though, our troubles kept coming.
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Of course though, our troubles kept coming.
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Of course though, our troubles kept coming.
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Weren't finished and we were still having some difficulty getting it in due to these pesky tabs
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Thankfully almost every problem in life can be solved with abrasives much better to line up the screw holes
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We poked the drill through the existing holes and gave it a little spin just to remove some of the paint
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So we knew where to drill next we center punched where the screws would be and drilled on through
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We then poor man's tapped the mount with some thumb screws and a lot of love
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And holy crap
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This might actually work
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Now since the reservoir can't go anywhere else we had to make some modifications to this poor fan
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So we started small then worked our way up to the thick objects. That's always the best way
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Okay, then awesome the reservoirs mounted, but clearly we'll need more airflow angle grinder to the rescue again
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And as though like magic, that's more like it
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So with hopefully all of our modifications to the case finished
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It was time to finish it off with a nice coat of black paint
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so at this point we were ready to slap all the parts in plan out our water cooling loop and
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Call it a day, but then
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Shortly after the cameras turned off for the night
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Getting jiggy with it came on the radio and we realized the soft tubing weed planned
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wasn't big Willy style
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So we flipped the script and flip the rad
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Extended the res and devised a plan for a loop sexy and hard enough for even the biggest Willy's
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Mmm, so instructions for hardline then measure cut fill heat
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bend
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check
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insert
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secure rinse
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And repeat until done boom custom hardline water cooling
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Easy as that
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After several hours of cable management man old cases suck for that. We were ready for the final touch-ups
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So we disassembled the loop installed the storage RAM
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80-millimeter og case fans which only got cleaned on the inside to maintain our sleepers perfect external filth and then
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Reassembled the loop and filled it up
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so then at this point
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We put back together the outside of the case
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front panel goes on a
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on with double side taped CD and floppy drives the side panels go back on and
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would you look at that it's still awful and dirty on the outside leaving anyone
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without a very keen eye to dismiss it as old crap but open it up and holy frig is
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it beautiful and with the horses to back it up with an Intel Core i9 7900 X 10
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core 64 gigs of RAM RGB of course dual GeForce GTX 1080s a Samsung 940 pro SSD
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in a fully custom water cooling loop we are looking at a machine that can run
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with pretty much anything out there today while staying both cool and quiet
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that is if you disable the rear fans because they're really really loud ow so
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bask in the glory now of Hubert and stay tuned for Dale because the
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sleeping
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is far from over so if you're a game developer or a video editor or you you
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use both Linux and Windows one for serious work and one for gaming whatever
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the reason is that you have two computers synergy solves once and for
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all the problem of needing to have two keyboards and two mice to go with them
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because it allows you to share your peripherals between multiple computers
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computers so you won't get confused anymore they have a basic and a pro
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option for synergy with a one-time payment for features that include copy
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and pasting between the computers dragging and dropping files between
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computers the ability to set up hotkeys and more and the best part is that
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synergy works cross-platform between Windows Mac and even Linux so check out
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the link in the video description and get 50% off synergy today so thanks for
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watching guys if you disliked this video I'm sorry that you hate fun but if
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you liked it hit that like button get subscribed and maybe consider checking
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out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description
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also down there is a link to free geek huge shout out to them for hooking us up
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here as well as our community forum and our merch store both of which you should
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check out