$500 DIY Water Cooled PC Challenge - Scrapyard Wars Episode 2e
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
3,553 words · ~17 min read
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yeah scrapyard Wars scrapyard Wars 2 the
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scrapping I started off the Morning by
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picking up this case and a fan
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and a power bar I'll explain why the
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power bar in a little bit but first
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things first I need to do a case
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swap I didn't realize the bottom hard drive cage was riveted in that will have
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to be removed but it's fine for now I
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bought this core 3000 but it's dusty and
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gross as hell um none of the pictures he had on
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Craigslist showed how dusty it was but it's still a nicer overall case
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than the one that I had and I didn't have any time left to buy anything else
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so I was like whatever might as well just spend my money on it honestly if I had more time I might not have even
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accepted it I probably would have accepted it I just would have hopefully
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had more time to clean
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it wonder what fractal Josh will say when he sees that I mutilated his case
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within like minutes of having it I'm going to say I thought you had style man
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stop making lonus look good what am I going to see next for me socks and
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sandals just remember buddy karma's a
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um I'm trying to get the pump and the
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radiator higher so I can clear the power
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supply just fill up your computer you just be like all
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right except you won't have to fill it up cuz the computer's going to short
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when you try to turn it on so don't worry about it you know I don't even
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care anymore as long as the loop Works screw the computer what's going to end
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up happening here is I'm going to end up gluing a
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whole bunch of these cables unintentionally but it's going to
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happen a whole bunch of those cables are going to be glued
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together then I just have to try to use whatever is available to me to try to
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make it stop leaking I have a tiny bit more epoxy not much though and I have
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one full pack of sugaroo and one and a
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quar possibly a bit stuff of more sugaroo the chances of this right here
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not leaking are like 1% I 100 I
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99% believe that it's going to leak I mean can you imagine if I have to
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present a leaky system to the judges so we need a bigger piece of copper from
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the Metal Mart to uh put over top of our
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CPU here now was that a WTF look or what I
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just realized I'm holding an invoice for one of their competitors that un
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unfortunately I just realized it it well well for what it's worth the thing we
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have isn't going to work I don't no not the stuff you made for us
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the other day yeah I need basically that y but 3 and 58 by 3 and
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58 okay so we're we're hooped then let's
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go to metal market then where is this oh
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Street or it's way above it's oh look
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like pass the Colossus oh that's all
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right can nothing go right
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today now there's a freaking train absolutely brilliant so we're just
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going to sit here and wait for a train to go through completely the center of
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Langley city everywhere we shop people
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keep telling me they hope I have a great
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day not having a great day this put me
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by every possible way of accounting for it over
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budget we couldn't find the mounting hardware we
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need so we're just going to cheat whoa whoa
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whoa wait a minute lonus is cheating wait a minute why am I acting
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surprised introducing lcr's all new
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patented power panel equipped with a 6ot cable so you can
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plug yourself in super far away yeah
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your stuff that isn't going to work at all cuz it's going to be covered in
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water and metal it's going to short itself out and
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then short itself out again want to go leak test it
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almost almost this works
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and whatever leaked didn't actually leak much I don't even know what it is cuz
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the cloth like didn't even get wet really we watched long enough I'm bound
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to do something clever
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eventually copper
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sugar new plan we're going to find a much bigger
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object to coil around maybe one of these five Gall buckets and we are going to
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make an external coil that we put on the
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side panel here
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um we have no choice I don't know if it'll fit I don't
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know if it'll fit in there what if we went right on top and we kind of like
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spread it out a little bit actually that could kind of work all
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right so John is sleeping so we're going to try and get our copper tubing in
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inside our case somehow let's drill a
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hole I'm sure someone's going to point this out I know this is a wood hole saw
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I know this is steel I know that's a
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problem just so we're all on the same
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page going make it through this puppy okay let's go see if John's home
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or awake I'm going to send this video to John when we're done and he's just going
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to be like what the hell he's going to
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be he's going to be amazed that we got as far as we did without his
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help okay so we finished cutting out the
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little cutaway that we need for the Caps that are next to the socket but what we
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haven't done is actually finish the surface of the CPU block where it's
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going to make contact with the CPU so for that we actually need to change the
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bit so this is what we're using yeah this little guy here is it's more for
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Milling that means that there's a cutting blade here and a cutting blade
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over here and that goes in takes the place of this little bit here so it goes
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in like this and then I Center everything and I just set it up so it
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the ne next time it goes past and here it's going to be taken about a th off so
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it just clean this up it'll make it look like it you got it in the store now the
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college educated among you will have probably noticed that there are some
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definite marks on the bottom of the block that's actually not as important
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as having a flat surface because our thermal compound is going to fill these
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little micro scratches in the surface here we smooth those out too oh we can
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do that too yeah yeah yeah good old fashion sandpaper oh I gu none of the
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judges will ever see and
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appreciate the block manufacturing that went on all they're going to see is this
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copper plate with a couple old nubbins sticking out of it they're not going to
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they're not going to know what's going on under the hood here so I want the
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audience to at least appreciate app the uh magnificence of our water
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block here now we could have done better
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if we' done certain things and I'm aware of the things that we could have done
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better like for example having a rubber gasket sealing this or not using mixed
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Metals but hey for a homemade
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block that we know nothing about its performance
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yet pretty darn good someone might be wondering how you drain this Loop the
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answer is you don't ever do that
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it's impossible as far as I can tell
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considering everything is epoxied together it would literally be
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impossible to trans Loop unless you inverted the computer and then poured it
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out of there but if you're going to do that this stuff at the bottom isn't
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fixed and everything's probably going to break I'm just I'm stuck here for a
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while I have to hold each side of this tightly so that water doesn't come
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through so the epoxy can hopefully dry how long does it take usable strength in
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8 hours
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we're kind of uh we're kind of stuck for about 30 minutes here so all that's left
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is to solder our tubing onto the CPU
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block fuse the CPU block with some kind
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of a sealant probably just silicone because we're not at the point where we
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can do anything fancy anymore do up our Reservoir and build the
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computer that's where we're at it is now
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the end of the fourth day of scrapyard
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Wars 2 the judges are going to have to be extremely generous for me to get
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anything resembling a competitive score in this
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competition I'm going to give it one more code of epoxy but I think we're
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done I think that's it yeah one more Cod
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of epoxy but I'm basically calling it right now I'm just going to do one more
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coat but I'm I'm finished I'll bring it out to the garage
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after this and just let it's it all right so as you can see it's
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getting dark taran's gone home for the night but John out of the graciousness
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of his heart is still helping me because we still have to attach the pump to the
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reservoir and I think we've got a plan
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wasn't my plan I think we've got a plan
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that's going to work if she fits she sits just like that
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nice and tight now we wanted a clear silicone for this
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but Home Depot is a little closed at the moment so uh we went with a white one
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it's not as pretty but it should seal up just nicely we'll know in half an hour
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we're going to use our sealant and four screws here to close up
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the block y that I actually had almost no hand whatsoever in actually making
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mm silicone seal yep here we
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go so it's finally poor time I have very
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little confidence in this seal at the uh
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for the power cord for the pump but at
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the very least we can find out how everything else is doing no obvious leak
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at the pump Outlet that's the most essential because worst case scenario
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our judges aren't that water cooling savvy so we could just um
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we could just try to get away with one here and just have our water level down
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here okay so that is clearly
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dissolving either because in half an hour it's not cured enough or because it
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just plain wasn't going to work for this so I had 100%
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silicone in my bathroom drawer
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our pump doesn't have enough head pressure to start our Loop we might be
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able to tip it to make it a little bit easier on our pump the good news is our
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CPU block isn't leaking yet so that's
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the good news there isn't much good news right now that was all the good news I
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had W hey look at that okay so basically what we're doing
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right now is cleansing the system of all
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the junk and debris and and dissolved
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crap that's in there now then what I'm going to do is take the CPU block and
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the reservoir parts that are bad
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apart redo them with silicone let it set overnight and hope
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that by 24 hours they mean 12 hours for
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Better or For Worse this computer is liquid
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cooled well you know what hold on hold on let's go ahead and ask who you guys
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think is going to win I think Luke will win scrapyard Wars 2 the scrap ining
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he's taller I think Luke will win if he doesn't we all lose I think luk is going
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to win scrapyard Wars sorry lonus love you both and myself rooster who do I
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think is going to win I think Luke is going to win because just uh I think
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lonus will win because he knows how to climb trees which you know is really
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important for building computers after all welcome to Scrapyard Wars 2 the
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finale we're doing the format a little bit differently this time because it's
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not as simple as oh well let's Benchmark it and find out who wins so we actually
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have a panel of four judges including Taran Brandon and the two Knicks so one
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person for each of us who toiled with us through the entire Endeavor and two
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people who have never seen the system first section is creativity worth 10
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points next up is Effectiveness worth another 10 points then Aesthetics 10
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more points Acoustics 10 more points and finally overall just general category 10
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points to a total of 50 now the overall is very much up to the Judgment of well
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the judges so if we did things like went over time went over budget or utilized
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lifelines so if we got outside help with our project that we didn't directly pay
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for then they're going to have to factor that in to our scores I would like to
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point out that it was actually just for lifelines and going over time and going
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over budget we actually like completely breaking everything but it's okay we'll
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move forward I guess so you guys can actually come
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around here we're facing the system here first of all I would like to welcome all
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the judges here today to the unveiling of the ghetto FR 3000 you're honored to
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have me here this first thing that I would like to point out okay first thing
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that I would like to point out is the patent pending easy fill technology
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have so as you will see in a moment this goes into the computer is actually the
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reservoir so you can fill the computer directly or drain the computer directly
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just through the top very easy to do another thing in our patent pending easy
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technology is the uh we're inspired by
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Tesla technology so what we did was we introduced the power panel not the power
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wall but the power panel so on the back of the computer here if you guys kind of
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rotate around a little bit you can see that there's a mounted powerb bar and
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actually only one power cable actually leaves the computer so you can plug plug
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your monitor into there you can plug your speakers into there all of your
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power can plug directly into the computer with our patented patent
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pending easy uh Power panel so once you
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open the side of the case you actually get to the the the
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challenging parts of this build so you can see we spared no cost I don't know
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if I'm going to mention brand names but yes it is a high quality high quality
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water bottle eco-friendly actually yes here this is this is uh the Luke
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Industries Luke Industries yes more like re War oh as you can see here The
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Benchmark is currently running and we're at a not too bad 55° let's go ahead and
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see what the judges think I actually discovered something quite interesting
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if you want to hop on over here I just saw this little thing leaking a little
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bit of water into the power supply I don't know how reliable it is
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now is this a functional build M uh it
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it it's not we saw that water leaking straight into the into the power supply
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which is not good it have to be fixed up honestly how bad do we know that leak is
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okay so aside from our bias judge we think that uh the build may be
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functional if he fixes the link but at this point we're not entirely
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sure ladies and gentlemen gentlemen gentlemen gentlemen you've seen the
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zero now you're going to see the hero
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welcome to the unveiling of the winner of scrapyard
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Wars 2 my system is
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horrible oh
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damn girl that looks
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good this is the Uber
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cooler Magic Machine
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5000 it features what I call and this is my uh
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personal trademark the
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uh what do I call it I don't remember what I call it uh this is a copper coil
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cooling system or CCS for short so let's
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start by firing up the system just to demonstrate that it does in fact work
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you can see here at the front of my case all bays are populated by either a
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drive or a bay cover I also have an e
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SATA port for outstanding connectivity
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very modern two USB 2.0 ports my air
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intakes are here this door folds out
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more than a typical door you can see it's on two hinges so that if you
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accidentally bump it it doesn't break off as
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easily quiet H I think that's a 10 out of 10
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for Acoustics not that I can uh tell the judges too much about how to judge the
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system but that's a 10 out of 10 now you can clearly see the copper coil is is
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very stable okay this is the moment everyone brace brace yourselves this is
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a thing of beauty in here okay hold on there we go you see
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that security it doesn't lock but it's so hard to remove you'd think it was
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locked so this my friends is the heart and
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soul of this machine now there is some water down here that is old water that
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is old water from this last night when this was still leaking now I have to
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confess I did go a little bit over time probably about 18 to 20 hours over time
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wo wo wo now we've gone with the what I
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call a camel top system where the cooling hump is located on top of the
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system instead of using fittings
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soldered or brazed to the ends of our copper we have actually just zip tied
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tubing directly onto our copper pipe is
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that reliable actually it seems to be working okay surprisingly another
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Innovative cost-saving measure and I'm saving this one is the fact that the CPU
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block is using saw off pieces of this
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tubing soldered to The Copper Top of our
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fully custom CNC cut water block as
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fittings so we brought our budget by
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returning about $40 worth of fittings that we had already purchased by
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returning it we brought our total spent on the water
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cooling down to
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$198 just shy of the 200 Mark for our
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system we paid 280 and I bought some uh
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Ninjago ninjas that I was planning to put in it but they weren't they weren't
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very posable and I forgot if you want to come over here judges and have a look at
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where we're sitting we've been under load for about 7 minutes while I've been
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talking and we're sitting at around 87°
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on the CPU which gets us fully turboed up on our core i7 930 which is a very
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high heat output CPU by the way full
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performance not the lowest temperatures but incredibly
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quiet with the CPU actually being passively cooled by the copper Loop but
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wait there's more if you had a little bit more money to spend than we did you
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could get yourself a room fan oscillating room fan right there cools
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the coil cools you cool cools the coil cools you hot summer day computer's good
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you're good everyone's good and that is my presentation thank you judges I think
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it's about time the judges pick a winner and pick a sore loser for Luke
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system 100 38 points the possible total
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scoring for lus system out of
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200
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10031 I can't believe you got that close to me actually ridiculous I guess mine
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did me yeah a Lifeline almost a whole
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day of extra time yours will literally thanks for watching scrapyard Wars 2 uh
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we will definitely be back with more scrapyard Wars scraping like and SC like
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and like And subscribe scrap button and
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we could have a special celebrity guest on the next episode of scrapyard very a
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very hard nippled celebrity guest see you next time bye