Custom Liquid Cooling for LESS $ than an AIO Cooler!?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,867 words · ~9 min read
0:00
now I know what you're thinking a custom liquid cooling Loop for less than an AO
0:04
cooler clickbait clickbait not true but
0:08
wait no it's true for
0:12
$522 with prime shipping on
0:15
amazon.com I obtained everything I will need to build a custom water cooling
0:21
Loop for my CPU now what kind of Hardware did he find for that kind of a
0:26
price that's a great question and I'm going to show you this is going to be a
0:31
good
0:40
one verar ergonomic s and plus lines of
0:45
Gaming Chairs make for a great addition to any gaming setup check them out at
0:49
the link in the video description okay let's run through what
0:52
we got here now I'm going to tell you guys right off the Hop that shopping for
0:56
these was not particularly easy the AGP
0:59
Tech 12 pipe aluminum heat exchanger radiator for PC for example did not even
1:06
include the specs of what size the barbs
1:09
are and actually looking at the picture
1:12
telling the difference between qu in and 38 inch barbs is not that easy but uh
1:17
Hey for $16.99 I'm feeling pretty good about
1:21
this purchase all right next up is the pump
1:25
this is not what was in the picture so
1:29
if this works then great it's rated at
1:32
240 lers per hour flow with three meters of Max Head theoretically plenty no
1:38
connector or anything but we'll we'll solve that problem later and finally the
1:43
centerpiece of my water cooling Loop this thing same thing man Amazon needs
1:48
like a like a like a scale next to
1:51
pictures on their site because look at this look at this product page looks
1:56
pretty big right in person the length pure red
2:02
copper water cooling block for CPU Graphics radiator heat sink 40x40
2:06
millimet which I guess should have tipped me off is this dinky little thing
2:11
before we get started there are a few more things that we need so first of all
2:15
I scrunched up some tubing a mixture of 1/4 in and 38 this can be obtained very
2:20
cheaply so it doesn't affect the price of our setup much and a couple of 38 to4
2:24
in reducers as well as a 3/8 in Te
2:28
because we don't want to waste money on a budget project like this on a
2:32
dedicated Reservoir we'll show you how to use that later next up we'll need our
2:36
soldering iron why is the sponge missing for this why why we will need our drill
2:45
we'll need a sacrificial Molex connector a sacrificial case side panel and we'll
2:49
need some screws along with anything else that I realize that I've forgotten
2:53
along the way is there any PC that's not totally miss the wano
2:58
PC I'll use my Franken cooling Solution
3:01
on the wancho PC so in order to do that
3:04
we will need a baseline reading for the temperatures with the Noctua NH
3:09
something D9 L that's in there right now NH D9 whatever the cooler that's in
3:14
there right now to compare against our custom liquid cooler so check this
3:19
out 61° on the CPU let's see if we can beat that shall
3:25
we I'm back one step and a half more
3:33
every time I'm outside your front
3:37
door our $25 special does not come with
3:42
any mounting hardware whatsoever we're going to need a hold down plate it's
3:46
going to be the ghetto sort in case any of you were wondering we're going to Center this baby by eyeball we're going
3:52
to find a bit let big enough for these babies to come
3:56
through oh oh the eyeball in it system
4:01
works again I mean it's like if uh it's
4:04
like if art was more
4:09
beautiful where my screws
4:16
go 832 832
4:21
832 washers or
4:25
or stick with me here a zillion washer
4:30
one zillion washers now presumably you could find like some plastic junk or you
4:36
could use a proper length screw and that would solve this problem for you
4:42
but I am nothing if not willing to do things entirely the wrong way for
4:47
the sake of finishing this video right now that was probably a lot of thermal
4:51
compound oh yeah 20 washers right there
4:55
20 Ro washers is a magic number arguably
4:59
this is a bit of a hack for me to say the cost is $52 and and whatever because
5:06
I did not factor in the cost of a fan for the radiator but I also don't think
5:11
it's an entirely unfair assumption that if you have a computer it probably has a
5:17
120 mm fan in it somewhere so we're
5:20
going to repurpose the one that's in the case I don't even think the product page
5:25
specified that this was a 120 mm
5:28
radiator but it would appear as though the spacing is
5:33
correct nice that looks legit right so when
5:38
you're using a crappy pump it's more
5:41
important to uh carefully plan out the
5:46
position of everything within the loop so that you're able to bleed the air
5:50
bubbles out because a super powerful pump will just blow them through um but
5:55
a crappy one will not be able to do that
5:58
now the reason I chose this pump had
6:01
everything to do with placement and size
6:07
nothing to do with cost which if you remember from the intro of this video is
6:12
an outright lie let's keep it really simple not drill any more holes and
6:17
let's mount it on the bottom right here so next order of business is we need
6:20
some kind of PC compatible connector on our pump cuz it just straight up doesn't
6:25
come with one because whatever right only all kinds of stripping were this
6:29
easy I wouldn't have to make YouTube videos that's the key to good stripping
6:33
use your
6:40
teeth okay couple minutes later boom Molex
6:45
connector there we go pump's powered the radiator is 3/8 in
6:53
so that's where I need to use wait a
6:57
minute oh well
7:01
I was just saying we needed a snag it is not 38
7:06
in it's like a really ginormous quarter
7:12
inch which is actually terrible because
7:15
my 1/ quter inch tubing is super old and
7:18
was not particularly pliable in the first place okay
7:24
fortunately I have this norprene tubing
7:27
that I ripped off of some Swift Tech thing a long time
7:32
ago sh so positioning of the tline very
7:38
important because when we fill it we want it to go straight down to the inlet
7:43
of the pump and when there are air bubbles we want them to make their way
7:49
out so it has to be at the highest point is in the loop actually up here might
7:53
have been a little bit better but we're not going to stress about these minor Minor Details keep in mind that normally
7:59
would put zip ties on these barbs but this is a very
8:05
shortterm solution so I'm not going to bother I would also normally cut this
8:09
tubing to a reasonable length but this is expensive tubing and so I'm going to
8:13
save it so let's go ahead and
8:19
uh let some of that water work its way into the system here so I think I'm
8:24
about to have a bit of a bit of a witness me moment here
8:30
um because this is quite possibly the jankiest thing I have ever done on
8:35
lineus Tech tips what you guys are about to
8:40
see I need a faster way to do this not a recommended way a faster
8:47
way so we are going
8:50
to put this computer on or do something
8:55
like this and actually this was a
8:58
mistake I me everything about this was a mistake but this in particular filling
9:02
the glass that was a mistake oh that's why I wanted the glass
9:07
full now I remember thinking thinking it doesn't look like
9:12
I'm thinking but I assure you I am oh no
9:15
no no no no no okay okay we're good
9:20
theoretically it is now full it's loud as all hell but uh I realized why we
9:26
probably have a post code there's no graphics card in there so like we could
9:29
still get away with this we're going to have to give it some
9:32
time but this is looking very promising
9:36
it might be loud it might be janky and
9:39
it might be ugly but damn it it
9:43
outperforms a decent aftermarket cooler coming in a whopping 5° cooler after an
9:50
extended stress FPU load in Ida 64 so
9:55
thank you guys for coming along for the ride whether you believed in me from the
9:58
start or whether you are a hater a
10:01
member of the corrupt media and I bid you good
10:07
night this Black Friday be sure to visit iby power.com and be on the lookout for
10:12
their doorbuster Deals they begin on November 21st and you can shop from the
10:17
comfort of your own home in your own underwear that's not to say that you
10:21
would have to wear someone else's underwear if you went to a store but just to say that you wouldn't have to
10:25
wear anything in addition to them so there's no need to wait in line in the
10:29
deals include dozens of free upgrades for their gaming PCs and laptops this
10:33
year you can even Finance your Black Friday PC with month-to-month payments
10:37
if you're into that sort of thing they're one of the top choices for
10:40
Esports athletes and proud partners of UCI Esports CLG and Cloud9 they also
10:47
offer lifetime tech support with all of their products so check them out at the
10:51
link in the video description this is the Revolt to by the way for those of
10:54
you who don't remember the unbuild log we did a while back which maybe you can check out here
11:01
so thanks for watching guys if you dislike this video go ahead and hit that dislike button but if you like this
11:05
video hit that like button get subscribed maybe consider checking out
11:08
where to buy the stuff we featured today at Amazon in the video description
11:13
although I wouldn't necessarily recommend buying any of this stuff it is definitely worth a look see also linked
11:18
in the video description is our merch store where you can buy cool shirts like
11:21
this one as well as our community Forum which you should totally join now that
11:26
you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so hey hey it's been a long time since we
11:30
did this so maybe check out whole room water cooling if you haven't uh had
11:34
enough of me jenly trying to water cool things for today