We Built a CPU Water Cooler!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
3,378 words · ~16 min read
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now you guys might have seen the video we did recently where we disassembled an
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8k red camera with the intention of water cooling it and um
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well we do intend to do that eventually
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but uh you know baby steps right so the first step is making
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any water block and that is exactly what we have in store for you
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guys today the first ever Linus media
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group water block well except those ones they made in
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scrap air wars
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mack weldon wants you to be more comfortable so if you don't love your
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first pair of underwear you can keep it and get a full refund with their try on
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guarantee use code tech tips 20 to get 20 off at the link below so we have we
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have no we have no script and no structure for this whatsoever then is
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that do i understand this correctly yes okay
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so step one uh drawing inspiration you
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want to come over here david we actually did a video a little while ago where we
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bought a bunch of cheap water blocks off like aliexpress
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and um some of them actually were so simple that we looked at them
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went well we could do that with like
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you know half an hour in solidworks and then
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you know a couple hours of cnc time and that's exactly what we did pretty much
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yeah so this right here is even simpler than
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what we did it's kind of smart how they did it
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and like uh it's really smart how cheap it is to make this so if we look this is
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just acrylic and it would just be like six holes
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you're done so six holes and then you tap two
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g1 quarter threads and bippity boppity finished okay
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and then they don't even bother with doing anything besides holes in the
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copper because machining copper is a huge pain in the butt
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so they just have another piece of acrylic that's the right size for this o-ring and don't even bother with
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anything on the inside either wow
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this is like actually less than a dollar worth of
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materials pretty much yeah and so we kind of took some inspiration
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from that but it's it's too like easy even for us like
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because we're going to need to figure out how to properly machine copper to do
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some of the stuff we're doing later right so what have we done for okay so this is
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the other end of the spectrum yeah this is like
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pretty good where would you say that lands so by
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contrast this is a much more advanced design so starting with the base it
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requires machining on both the top and
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bottom so you can see they've countersunk the holes for these screws
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right here so that you're not going to even on a large died CPU you're not
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going to just have like screw raising the block away from it so it
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can't transfer heat and then it's actually got also much much finer work
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than we see on our very very basic just piece of copper
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here with these little fine fins that kind of guide the fluid as it goes
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across where the CPU die would be underneath and then away
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furthermore it's got a metal mid plate so this is to
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add rigidity and allow for mounting flexibility across various sockets and
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then it's got again double-sided machining work on the top here that not
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only just sort of allows it to be attached to the base but actually has
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guides for the fluid flow to help make it more efficient we're not really
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aspiring to this at this point are we no we're kind of getting half the way there
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so they do have the o-ring groove and
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those are actually really hard to machine because you need super high tolerances
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you mean in the groove low tolerances yes you need super low
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tolerances within this groove because otherwise i mean
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to put some perspective on how important that is if your o-ring doesn't fit
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correctly you leak water on your
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you know thousand dollar computer or thirty thousand dollar camera as it were
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we aren't going to be able to get these kind of fins unfortunately could we have
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done any kind of fins we could have potentially got like so the bit that we
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used this is our actual block here it was an eighth of an inch and that's
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getting it in like this groove right here is just a
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bit over an eighth of an inch got it so that's kind of like we could have like
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two fins we do have finer bits but running them in copper it isn't really
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working at the moment got it so i don't know i'm actually
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really stoked that we can just simply machine copper i wasn't expecting us to
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get this far i was thinking that we would start this
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and the bit would get like halfway in and then gum up and explode like we
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already have three more in the mail because i thought that we're just going to ruin a bunch so it might be
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surprising but this is a huge success for us okay
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a flat piece of copper with an o-ring in it
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do you want a metal like is it here
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thank you okay so have you tried this yet no
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so we have a couple more things that we need to do we need to tap the holes in
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here okay and in here so that the fittings go in
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and the bolt can go down and secure the
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whole thing together okay and then we're pretty much good to go okay so uh pitter
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patter let's get at her then yeah which one do you want to go at
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i want to do the plexi first because that seems a lot easier to replace if i
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bung it up this is really ugly acrylic that's just the machining marks there we
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could why did we machine the top of it to make sure that it's nice and flat
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when you get a piece of acrylic you don't necessarily know so we can get
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some sandpaper and make it a bit better okay but we aren't are we
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well we are a few leagues
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so here we go friends oh crap i'm not putting enough pressure it's kind of
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hard oh geez okay oh i am shredding this
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okay i need i just needed more pressure and the great news is that this is just
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the first one yeah oh we're getting pretty close yeah
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actually really close we were going to go into the table if we went another half turn how straight did we go
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actually not bad
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oh why are you doing that so
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again yeah number two tom petty was wrong
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the starting is the hardest part can i take this off yeah yeah take it
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off oh yeah see this side's much worse
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but we can probably work with that right yeah should be fine just flip it over
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um we need some fluid coming straight really
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definitely not trying to ow i just poked myself in the hand why don't you just
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ask for better tools instead of just making me use crappy ones
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i don't think you need that okay let's put it on the table all right okay like
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every every half turn or so you should go back and break the chip
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that's probably good
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all right times three more yep that was a good idea lubing it i
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take back what i said before look at that it's like a threaded hole
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and everything up in this biz like trying to make this
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with an angle grinder would have been a much more interesting video
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or the sawzall wasn't that like your entire like second
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day of work like through that heatsink everyone got so
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annoyed it was so loud right beside the editing right outside
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the editing deck so now we have to do what's
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kind of the make or break for this so we've got this o-ring here it's um
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eighth inch yep oh my god it's like not a continuous
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piece no
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in fact didn't Jake show both of us a site where you can just order any o-ring
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you want at any size you want why the hell did we do this
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because for a lot of the custom stuff that we're going to have to do later for
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like the reds and crab we're going to have to be able to make our own o-rings
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this is like way smaller than the groove that is not a tight fit oh it's it's not
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supposed to be a tight fit just let's just think about this one for a second
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yeah yeah you mush it down a bit but not that much
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oh this is the actual specification we have the parker o-ring handbook you go
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in there and you're like parker over yes it's like the bible for like
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engineers and stuff all right all right all right all right so what are we gonna
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do like like at the you know the fair where they take the special glue and
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they stick the two pieces of rope together in the water oh look one piece
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of rope it's cyanoacrylate it's amazing yep
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really yep i'm so unhappy right now
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that's really what we're using oh my god that's actually what we're doing yep
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what really it's cyanoacrylate
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i hate you all right here's your mark smart guy
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please don't slice my hand is this really a recommended way to do
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this you know what let's just see what happens
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okay you ever gotten the stuff on your hands before yes i have please don't
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yeah it's a really bad time yeah i know please don't yeah that's good that's
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good less is more well less is less but less is good
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is what i was trying to say oh wow it's not that close it's pretty bad well in
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fairness to me i think the whole thing's a little short anyway so we might as
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well just put it in there and see what happens oh
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actually no it's probably fine okay so i can just put it together now no no no no
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we need some petroleum just this this makes another appearance we need to get
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rid of this garbage this is the worst petroleum jelly i've ever encountered
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you're responsible for this oh we got to grease up our o-ring yeah okay it's
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disgusting it's like chunky i like my petroleum jelly like i like my
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peanut butter smooth okay
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so that's it um which uh which screws are we using
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those ones oh it's the wrong way oh it matters no no i know i did that on
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purpose but there's no way the o-rings for the fittings are to seal on the
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other side when i took those chunks oh yeah so we're just gambling here
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i mean theoretically there's nothing like really climactic what's happening
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right now please catch we're good okay hit me with another one
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two so that's it moment of truth
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yeah find out if it leaks
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um dot in the center and then little dots on either
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corner all right so yeah no why would we why would we drain the loop all we have to do we're going to open up a side here
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and we're above the water level in the reservoir so what should happen
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is we should start to draw in air is this open enough
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that's totally open so as long as we don't lift this up too high see how the
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water level rises there we go then we can have the tops of
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our tubes drained this is it moment of truth
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that's only a bit wait did we even thread this correctly well maybe we have
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to go from the other side we did tap it down from the other side
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oh that's gonna suck
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all right let's put it on the other way we'll do it the way you want this did
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actually come together pretty smoothly
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we're not done yet we can't be too happy at this moment
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oh this gives us a better look at the o-ring actually so you can see where we
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mushed it together there that might not leak so you were right the
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direction you thread it definitely matters either that or we didn't go through enough so that goes on there
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oh yeah that does that's not that's not before that yeah we could just zip tie
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it we could just not no no no no no this is a very well worn
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okay you know what yes we can just not just a sec
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no why would we why do we drain the loop okay this one goes on we can use this one
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well yeah that's also a good plan yeah that was the problem with these fittings
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so what's gonna happen now is i'm gonna move this down here
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and uh it's gonna fill with water
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you can actually see some water in it oh no it's completely full of water now
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okay and then we can seal up the top of our reservoir here where'd that fitting
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go i feel so bad for the people out there that like know what they're doing
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this must be like watching monkeys like just when i hit this button we're gonna
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find out if it leaks or not
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seems to be fine now it could take a while for us to find out if it's gonna
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leak but yes it actually
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does seem to be fine how about that
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just can't stop looking at it i'm just like so sure it's gonna leak why
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well you saw that o-ring yes
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look at it right now do you not trust parker i mean is this like is this like
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restaurants like working at a restaurant where as soon as you do that you'd never
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eat the food like as soon as you like make anything you just like never like
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you just never drive in a car again like knowing what the tolerances are like
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well cars are pretty good it's airplanes that really scare me their safety factor
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is like under 10 like normally on a car you do at least 50 and they're just like
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nope any extra weight is a bad thing so now what we just give her
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all right so well let's let's for say what we need to do yeah but it's gonna
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take a while before we're gonna know so we should probably give her
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okay sure all right we're giving her boom all right so here comes the heat
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max of 82 degrees to beat the aliexpress
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and that's this one that we i think is even more cheaply constructed
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than ours is that correct um ek is 64.
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so we're already up to 78. so
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oh wow really oh on the hottest corner on the hottest
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core yes oh also we never machined the bottom
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which they clearly did yeah have you seen what swift does with their skeeved
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thing where basically it like slices into the metal and then folds up a slice
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no it it's amazing can we get one of those
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machines nope no close all the tabs done
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and we're at 83 degrees damn it
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84. actually it settled back into 81. i wonder if that was just for me like like
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pushing on it i mean obviously you can't design a product to have the user just
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like hold it down well but we can just tighten these a bit more
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hey victory 80 degrees yay
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we beat aliexpress
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for a higher cost so there are some other factors to
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consider here too um like whether or not our base
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was made convex oops or concave by the uh mounting
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pressure of putting the top down on our o-ring that might be part of the reason
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why these guys went with this plastic plate like we
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actually don't know why they went with an acrylic plate oh wow they didn't even take the
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freaking who leaves like the paper on a
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finished good that they shipped to the customer so what was what was this one's result
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or did we not test that one we didn't test this one okay we just did the ek i
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mean it doesn't really matter we got our asses kicked by everything
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yeah but but
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the really positive takeaway here is that
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it really is not leaking so
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what that means for our future projects is that given that we're not going to be
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trying to cool a 7820x freaking 8-core CPU
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yeah we're going to be like we're in good shape yeah
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we can make water blocks to fit on anything now they won't be the best
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water blocks no they won't i really want to do the network switch yeah network
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network switch next and then
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a challenge yes like we only need to beat this
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that's going to be this sucks look at it it's terrible it's terrible
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okay i'm feeling good yeah
16:17
lg's hashtag scale up contest goes along
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with the launch of the new lgram 17 laptop which we will actually have a
16:24
full review of coming out soon and you can win it three different ways method
16:29
one watch a youtube video and answer questions by leaving a comment method
16:33
two watch an instagram video and answer questions leaving a comment with both
16:37
the hashtags lgram and scaleup quiz and
16:41
method three is the trick photo contest
16:44
for instagram post an image on your instagram channel that relates to one of
16:48
the key features of the grand like its weight screen size or battery life get
16:52
all the details by clicking the link below and good luck everybody
16:56
so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that
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button i guess but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider
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checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description no lie we're gonna list this
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block on ebay it can be yours for the low price of whatever people bid for i'm
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just kidding don't worry we're not shipping this to anyone yeah that would be a pain yeah no no we're not doing
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that we'll give them the cat though uh also linked in the video description is our merch store which has cool shirts
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like this one these are actually really nice look at look at the quality of the printing
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we're doing a much better job of merch now so you should definitely check that
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out and uh oh yeah our community forum which you should totally join this is
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going to be a royal pain in the ass yeah so did i tell you i want to put it back
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together first because we never actually like did a
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pre-test on the thermals