$500 DIY Water Cooled PC Challenge - Scrapyard Wars Episode 2c
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,324 words · ~11 min read
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we're going to build a budget PC and then we're going to water cool it we're
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going to have a full budget of $500 $300
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for our computer and a maximum of $200
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for the water cooling parts but there's a Twist we cannot use any off-the-shelf
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PC water cooling gear NADA yeah
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scrapyard Wars scrapyard Wars 2 the
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scrapping on this all depends
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so let's keep it safe so nice guys at the Metal Mart they
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actually looked us up in between uh the
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first time we were there and the second time and they said to us uh you guys
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aren't just some too bit guy in a camera
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you guys uh you guys have got a lot of subscribers on that their YouTube and uh
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they actually offered us a discount on the metal but because I'm an honest
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competitor who never cheats I didn't accept it and but we're going to we're
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going to mention the Metal Mart anyway just because they they seem to be pretty
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pretty good guys they let us film in the store they uh have lots of metal it's
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everything I know about them so this is interesting Luke's back and he's parked
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in an unusual place I think he might be
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uh leaving some space to work in the
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garage so I wonder what he's up to back there so I was uh trying to
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I was yelling I was saying so I guess you guys are probably in the garage but
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uh I think that's my answer doesn't say anything about my camera person staying
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out and showing me the footage later
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I think my decision making here is going to come down to uh measure never cut a
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whole bunch of times um which I guess
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falls under the do as we say not as we do mentality
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because I would always say measure twice cut once but I'm not going to go as bad
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as Linus and like counterweight this motherboard with the Titan X and A 780
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Ti so you don't have to worry about that um I'm going to do shallow Cuts so I'm
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going to cut not nearly as far as I need to um and just try to kind of keep on
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creeping it a little bit
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closer for tubing I don't know whether
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or not I want to use this copper tubing
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for the whole thing or not
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um it's probably possible
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but I don't know because I I have no idea what I'm going to end up with in
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terms of radiator or pump so I don't really want
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to dedicate myself to
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anything never works right so we're at my house now because Luke took over the
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garage at the uh at the office and it's
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time to do some test fit stuff with our uh with our scrapyard PC so all right
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this is my uh this is what I practice my knife throwing and this is where I'll be
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finding out if my plans to bend the
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copper are even even remotely have any basis in
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reality so
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um what I wanted to do was actually use
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the Bender from our hard pipe liquid cooling so so we used this for bending
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and I am actually going to try to do it with copper if I can bend
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at 90 then I think I'm safe so what I'll
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have to do is disassemble the computer fully cut apart the case and then as
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long as I can bend the copper into 90s
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then I will pretty much try to fill in as many of the gaps as I can with copper
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tubing as you can see we're probably not
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going to get the entire length in there but I'm certainly going to try and and
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put in as much as I can twist it as it bends that I didn't know that I probably
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won't be able to do well that makes sense to you though right no it doesn't
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make sense I don't know let me just try this okay the fact that we can't use
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tools we don't have access
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to makes this a little tougher cuz otherwise I'd be blowing my entire
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budget oh it's going to Kink okay told
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you okay okay that's fine
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that's fine we can saw that back off so let's
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try um a larger
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radius okay oh now I'm
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worried I want to disrupt as little of the uh of the nice part of this as I
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can okay we might be screwed
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though okay let's try and go for
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something very gradual here yeah holding having this held down
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better is going to help a lot
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but for now what we're doing is mostly experimentation yep okay so it kinked
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again is that ruined this part of it yes
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so we're going to cut it off here for sure okay yeah okay okay all right so
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let's I don't know if you have the right tools for the job man that's okay we'll find a we'll find
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a way I'm not going to I'm not going to be defeated by this
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um but this obviously isn't going inside
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the case obviously was probably obvious to a lot
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of our viewers before I figured it out but I've caught up
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now how to bend copper pipe and tubing without crushing it step one fill it
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with salt straighten it out to begin oh
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okay well this this might actually work this is probably how they do it okay so
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here let's take this out into the driveway I
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guess okay well I obviously can't leave this stupid copper tube in my driveway
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so we need to move it to my backyard which is the only place I have that's
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big enough to keep it
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oh you hit the tree this doesn't really get me any
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closer to figuring out how much space
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it's going to take up in here how tightly I can coil it and
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and if and how much is going to need to
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come outside of the case so you know what we can do for the next few minutes
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here before we wrap up is start tearing
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this thing down so I'm picking up a radiator uh we have
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to be there in 20 minutes we have to be
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out of the store in 23 minutes how big of a r you yeah PA talking I guess but
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just a the smallest essentially it's it's for a computer so heater heater
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core would work that too small uh really small is good a heater
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core yeah guy right
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there probably
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yeah like something that size would that
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be about the red size or yeah I know that would actually be this is perfect
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yeah that's perfect there you go that's
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going to work for you yeah that'll totally work that's not too small that's
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that's great yeah I was put that you were going to give him that haunted Civic R whatever but yeah this that's
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way bigger than this so yeah yeah that's more appropriate size then we'll do that
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one I didn't even know these were a thing but yeah if if this can take just
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water then which I'm sure it can I'll take one of these this one I guess sure
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yeah fine you one yeah how's how's 50
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bucks on sure yeah okay done cool that
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was easy oh man it's it's great it's the the
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fittings are way smaller than I expected this will fit in the computer this just
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looks like a normal computer radiator except these things were welded on there
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which could be great yeah so let's
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go okay so I got the pump it was a
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little bit expensive it was twice the price of the one that I was expecting to
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buy but the radiator that I got was half the
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price of the radiator that I thought I was going to buy so it's probably okay
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it's actually threaded if I open this up and look
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inside it's a threaded pump these are the threaded little knobbers that he
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gives me and these are fine but I could
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replace them if I really needed to so
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tomorrow when I go to Home Depot or whatever if I really need to replace
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them so I can get copper on there or whatever that's totally possible um I
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don't think I'm going to do that as this was expensive in itself and the budget
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is starting to WAN but that's okay cuz I basically have everything um but yeah
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expensive pump but I think it'll be good scrapyard Wars will return right
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now beautiful morning birds are all like
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chirping and stuff well I don't think I have his number you
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know what okay no maybe we'll do this in like half an hour let's go fill the
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copper pipe with sugar up the tree F
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the okay this is not my greatest idea
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ever there's not much growing between the trees so now I just have to decide
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well if I'm going to fall to my death I guess I want to fall in my own yard so
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my wife doesn't have to have that awkward conversation with the neighbor
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so I'm going to climb the right hand side tree
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if we were smart we would have actually marked out on the extension cord how
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high I have to
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go okay I'm trying to get the uh trying to get the funnel out oh no the funnel
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is not quite small enough no hold on
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hold on maybe well it like kind of meets up perfectly oh no no I can probably
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make it work anyway yeah I'll just spill some it's okay I got this yeah it's not
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draining anymore okay I can put it a little
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up oh that sprayed sugar all over me oh
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you know what it's not draining at the top but I can hear it moving I could
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probably now that I think about it I could probably lift it up 10 ft above my
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head it says we have 6 minutes of uh of
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filming left okay uh what about the
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other card the other card in the camera yeah it's full okay um oh I wish we were
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having this problem at a different time hold on just let
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me my butt my right butt totally asleep
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okay okay so here's our tuck taped
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copper tube here's our tuct taped copper tube here uh this is where I've got the
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the copper tube and the extension cord tied off um so basically the filling
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process looked a little something like
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like this I used to have a funnel it fell um so this is how we know that it's
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full because I try to pour things and it just falls down the tree so actually we
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didn't use that much of the bag I still got this much sugar bag full could have
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could have just bought one of the little boxes of salt I just I couldn't find the big thing of salt in the grocery store
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kids were waiting in the car so uh so I just went with sugar and got the crap
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out of there I'm sure there's some super easy way to do this and people are just
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watching the train rack it's probably like a copper tube sand filler machine
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capping it and in theory my copper tube is now
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bendable in theory we have not tried
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this it would have been a good idea to try this before I spent an hour up a
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tree all right Taran you might need to uh help me out with the lowering process
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here pull it across the yard as we go okay I'm dropping the backpack okay you
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ready ready yeah yeah yeah oh oh oh oh oh oh
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oh I almost hit the camera well it it it
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moved where it was falling to that's what I meant when I said
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Plinko do you not have Plinko in America
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no oh all right grab the copper tube
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okay we have a plan for this we're going
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to head over to the neighbor's house since it's not so early and we are going
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to find out what the feasibility of our block manufacturing
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is don't actually know no I'm pretty sure his car's there
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oh am I not standing in the window is it John on the other side of the
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door was that you exhaling I thought I heard someone
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oh okay uh they'll have to return
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later so I just bought the reservoir for
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my computer which came
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pre-filled although uh okay probably
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just going to empty it anyways but I'll empty it before I start building cuz
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I'll probably drink it next time on scrapyard Wars Luke's budget is drying
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up cuz that's all I have left I super definitely can't afford it and Linus's
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plans might be a wash I'm not sure if we can still put a computer in here