Homemade Water Block Review - My Scrapyard Wars 2 Cooling Solution!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,910 words · ~9 min read
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so all this work we've been doing on scrapyard Wars 3 which is started by the
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way definitely you want to check that out up there it's awesome has gotten me
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thinking about previous scrapyard Wars that we did in scrapyard Wars 2 the
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Highlight for me was constructing my own water block with the help of my neighbor
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who has a CNC and I realized that while we did
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Benchmark the actual cooling performance of my system we never determined if it
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was cooled so poorly because of the copper coil that I was using to
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dissipate the Heat or because of the neighbor natator 5000 CPU water block so
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today I going to be doing a review of my
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own water block that I built well with a lot of help in scrapyard Wars 2 so come
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along for the ride let's find out just how practical building your own water
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block can be compared to a pre-done solution
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the Logitech g33 features a lightweight design an advanced Optical sensor with
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Delta zero technology for precise tracking and RGB lighting check out the
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link in the video description to learn more so I guess this is how reviews
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usually start right is taking a look at the product now if you watch scrapyard
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Wars 2 you'll already know a lot about the construction of this block but if
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you haven't then I'll give you guys a quick run down it was cut on a customade
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CNC that my neighbor actually uses for his uh solar powered scoreboards
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business that he runs out of his garage and is constructed out of two pieces of
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metal so there's an aluminum plate at the bottom I had originally intended to
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use copper so that we wouldn't be mixing Metals but due to the ease of working
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with aluminum we opted for aluminum so there's an aluminum block on the bottom
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that actually has a cutout for some capacitors that would otherwise
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interfere with it specifically on this motherboard so these are these are a
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match made to go together then there's a
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copper plate on the top and copper was chosen in this case because soldering on
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copper Barb fittings was going to be a lot easier than tapping out threads for
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normal barbs so yes we're mixing Metals
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no that's not recommended for the long term even if you have an anti-corrosive
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additive even though that that will help quite a bit uh but it was more about the
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temporary operation of the thing than anything else anyway so on the inside which I
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unfortunately can't show you but we should have some footage to pop up here
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there are actually uh fins or channels cut into the copper now there's a lot of
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engineering that goes into the optimal thickness of the base plate compared to
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where the channels start the optimal thickness of the fins themselves and the
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direction of the water flow inside we didn't do any of that but what I want to
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know is how much that actually affects the end result so for comparison we are
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going to be using an EK Supremacy MX the
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included water Block in their Predator all-in-one liquid cooler so we'll also
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be using the rest of the Predator so that's a DDC plus I believe pump as well
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as a dual 120 mm radiator and a couple Noctua n12 fans to get the best Apples
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to Apples comparison that we can on our core i7 930 CPU so without further Ado
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let's get this party started assembling the test was pretty straightforward
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we're using a classic style bolt through mounting system um then just a couple of
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thumb nuts over the top to hold it on tight the only real key thing here is
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don't go too tight because you can actually crack or at least flex your
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motherboard and also make sure you're using some kind of insulating cover on
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the heads of the screws that come up through the back of the board we're not
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using any clamps on the hoses not because I wouldn't recommend doing this
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in a permanent install but just because we're only testing very temporarily on a
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test bench one thing I didn't foresee is that I'm going to have to refill the EK
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Predator oops but that shouldn't be too big of a deal because there is a fill
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Port right up here on the top okay hold on a second we interrupt this compelling
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footage of me installing a water block to bring you this breaking
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update this just arrived at the door and
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actually has some relevance to the project we're working
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on okay this my
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friends is our first samples of the
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lonus tech tips special edition
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n12 and nf14 fans from
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Noctua yes my friends they are here all
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black plastic and orange accents I'm going to install them on the radiator uh
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they'll be available for purchase soon I don't know exactly when and we have
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retailers lined up in the United States
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Australia uh uk/ Germany and Canada so
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uh yeah going to be awesome so we got
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our water cooler installed we got our block installed we got our sexy new fans
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installed all that's left is to boot this poppy up and make sure that we're
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able to get into Windows where we can do our comparative temperature
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testing okay so we're back with some results and I I think it's fairly safe
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to say that the bottleneck was either my
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copper cooling coil or I had a bad Mount
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last time because this is not bad I'm sitting anywhere from 29 to 33°
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generally speaking I take the second hottest core when I read Via Real temp
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so we'll call it 30° idle on the CPU not
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too shabby but that doesn't really tell us anything about its performance when
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the going gets tough so we're going to start up our Ida 64 stress test and find
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out what happens to our CPU temps then now we have to give it about 10 to 15
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minutes to reach equilibrium and then we'll come back and Report our load
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temperatures with our custom block all
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right so we've got our load temperatures as usual they're bouncing around a fair
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bit but I think it's safe to say somewhere in the 55 let's call it
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56° territory is going to be our load temperature not bad that's actually
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going to be pretty uh pretty challenging
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for our commercial block to beat by a significant margin so let's go ahead and
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change out the block and see how it does installation of the second block
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was fairly straightforward I just had to pop off my homemade one SWA the other
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block onto it just using a bucket to catch some water that spilled then I had
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to go find a back plate since out of the box this block is not compatible with
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LGA 1366 and from there I was able to
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use the stock thumb screws and bolts and screw into the back plate and it was
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pretty much Off to the Races after topping up my
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radiator okay so I think we're there
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idle temperatures very close but we expected that when the Chip's not
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kicking out a ton of heat you can't really expect there to be a massive
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difference from one cooler to another this is the case for water coolers air
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coolers whatever so we're looking at about 29° on our second hottest core for our
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chip now let's turn up the heat and see
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how our commercial block compares to our
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DIY one all right so we've got our final
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results and they're actually looking not
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too bad we only managed to beat our
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homemade block by about 6° with a
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commercial block now with that said the
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Gap will continue to widen as the heat output of the processor Rises so as you
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overclock the homemade block will lag behind
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significantly not to mention that it's got a bunch of other problems as well so
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overall the conclusion of my review is this A+ for effort but it's ugly as Sin
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difficult to mount it's going to corrode eventually and when you factor in all
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the time that I spent building it as much fun as that was it's just not worth
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it compared to buying a commercial block but that shouldn't surprise anyone since
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the whole DIY CPU block thing has gone pretty much completely out of fashion
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over the last 5 to8 years
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so if you thought this project was cool maybe check out squarespace.com it's a
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pretty cool website where you can build your own website at your own URL with
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your own content on it whatever that happens to be whether it's your you know
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homemade water block building service or a portfolio for some great photography
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work that you do or uh a corporate website with just information about your
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staff like we have at linusmediagroup tocom the way it works is you sign up
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for Squarespace which is free for the first two weeks by the way you get a
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free trial in there to make sure you like it you build your website it'll
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look great on mobile desktop or whatever else because all of their templates
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feature responsive design and you just kind of plop things in and move things
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around in their templates they've got 247 tech support via live chat and email
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and you build a beautiful website that's always working because their plans start
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at only $8 a month but they are scalable depending on what you need to do and
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what kind of traffic you need your site to be able to handle so visit Square
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space.com Linked In the video description and use offer code Linus to
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save 10% on your first purchase so thanks for watching guys if
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badge next to your name I think that pretty much wraps it up thanks again for
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watching and if you're looking for something else to watch now we did the
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freaking coolest project ever even better than this one where we took a
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single gaming tower and ran two copies of Star Wars Battlefront off of it at
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the same time two Gamers running discreet copies check that video out
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we've got it linked up there see you guys next time