My 10 Year Old Chiller WORKS! -20C on THREADRIPPER!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
2,399 words · ~11 min read
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oh you guys are in for a treat today oh
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this right here is a relic
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a pc cooling solution
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that i haven't used since the last time that AMD had a
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relevant high-end desktop processor
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and so what better way to celebrate AMD's revival as a bonafide high-end
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option thanks to the threadripper 1950x
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then by resurrecting what i call
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the chiller a sub-zero liquid cooling device that
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might not look like much but like the uh
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thousand-year bird of prey i don't want to get in trouble with disney
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has got it where it counts
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okay so step number the first i have already done this before but it never
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hurts to do a sanity check when you're gonna do something insane
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is to make sure that what used to be a
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window mounted air conditioning unit
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is still fully functional so here's your hot side this is called the condenser so
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this is where your phase change coolant comes to have the fans blow through it
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and change it from a gas to a liquid this is our compressor which compresses
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that fluid and then right over here this is our evaporator so this is where the
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compressed fluid goes to be exposed to something hot in our
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case it'll be our CPU's heat and evaporate then it gets moved back
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around to the condenser
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full load in ida 64. about 73 degrees on the CPU
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okay cool now we know that
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let's see how much of a difference we can make
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there's that hand mark beautiful while that's running we're going to need
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a few supplies first up is a care package from none other than
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the legendary der bauer funny story like
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two months before i decided to resurrect that thing i threw away so since the
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last time i went sub-zero for like a 24
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7 system there have been some changes to the
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conventional wisdom so it used to be that we used dielectric grease in
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anywhere where there were pins around the socket and
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kneaded eraser was the most popular thing for filling in the bigger gaps
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around the socket not so anymore nowadays apparently we're
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just using vaseline anywhere where there are contacts
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and then we're using this stuff paint it onto the board
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because it comes off really easily
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liquid tape we're not as concerned about
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condensation as guys that are doing like crazy
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you know liquid nitrogen overclocking or anything like that
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because we are not going down that low and it should be noted that we don't
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have to put this on too heavy because we're not trying to thermally
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insulate or anything like that we're just trying to keep moisture out of
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everywhere that the brush touches oh you know what i can probably just use
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the big brush for this woo here we go
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technically removing things like stickers would probably be a pretty good
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idea um though again i'm just really not that
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concerned about it oh look at that oh
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abuse hardware abuse yeah i don't think ASUS is gonna want
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this board back the other important thing here is that we've gone with a metal top one
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so this is a nickel topped version of the block and the reason that's
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important is that if we were running oh shoot these uh
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these barbs aren't gonna fit i'm gonna have to go get different ones whoops
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okay then so if we were running a different version of the block this
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plexi here could crack and over the long
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term it would be degraded by the kind of coolant we're using is that my vaseline here
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yeah yeah dog okay
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i'm just gonna jam that in there and
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vaseline it up i mean the vaseline is supposed to make it go in easier but
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so normally you would really you know cut around capacitors and you would do a
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super amazing job of getting it all nice and tight
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but the idea is that this is the actual thermal insulation
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now the key to any good insulation application
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is no air gaps this is literally the worst insulation of all time
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not every thermal compound is suitable for sub-zero cooling some of them
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actually perform worse if you go too low so this one is
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whoa shoot that was not what i meant to do
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stop it oh this is goopy thermal compound we also actually have to
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insulate our block and the reason for that is that if you
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think about it metal is quite thermally conductive right
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so if we have below ambient
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coolant running through it
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this block is actually going to sweat and it's going to
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drip onto the other components of our system if we let it uh oh one thing
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we're going to need to do before we do that though is get our tubing attached
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so there are better tubings you know what i'm just not even going to
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say what i'm using because there are definitely better tubings for sub-zero
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applications but one thing that we are doing that's a little bit unusual is i'm using 3 8 inch
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tubing over a half inch barb
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and this is kind of a classic aka old people water cooling technique i
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would actually expect this to do a reasonably good job like i'm going to
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leave this running while i go down and do lanchow later
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and i do not expect there to be any condensation on here
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so that right there is the CPU area
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and then next up you really want some of this stuff
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so this is another armaflex product and it's just a
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an insulation tube thing that you can that you can throw onto the tubing oh
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okay this is legitimately kind of a problem
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maybe with a like a stick you do a couple layers of this guy
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followed by another thing that will be different from this guy
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is he really putting that graphics card in there again
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knowing what he knows from last time
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yes yes he is there's nothing about this project that
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i recommend trying at home
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oh yeah okay
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literally literally dangerous
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yeah like how was there enough room for oh
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this has been moved like ah look at this
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that's been shifted why did i do this why am i showing other
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people this like where's the screw from there we go now you might be wondering
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if this is actually enough airflow and the answer is yes
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so the whole cooling system actually requires three plugs
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one for the compressor one for the pump
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and one for the cooling fans
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now what we're gonna do is fire it up for real
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okay why aren't those cooling fans spinning
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hey there they go okay
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dang it Jake this is what happens when you put Jake in charge of zip tying the
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stupid fans before you start
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okay so now we need to figure out our tubing runs we're going to go from the outlet of the block and we're going to
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give ourselves a little bit of slack and then we're going to come through
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this cable management hole here and then we're going to go underneath
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the evaporator and we're going to let that kind of pin it down so that the
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warm liquid is as far away from here we go the
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outlet of our reservoir as possible so that it has to travel across
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the evaporator before it can be sucked into the pump so right now it's at 80
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degrees fahrenheit whatever the hell that is i don't know fahrenheit
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if anyone's wondering no this is not to code
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and also no it will not be staying running for very long
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okay there's so many things that can go wrong
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here so many things to go wrong
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and what can go right a cold CPU is this really worth it
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ah that's better that's
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dang it out
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i think we're ready i hope i have enough
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i sincerely hope this is enough
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and here we go again
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and now we don't actually want to run a sub-zero cooling system without the
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system running because then it gets too cold you'll get condensation for sure
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you need some heat to offset it
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so let's see if the system fires up here CPU initialization is going
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this thing better fire up why is CPU initialization still going
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uh systems up CPU fan speed error that's fine um
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like i had said before uh having some airflow around the socket is definitely
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a good idea um some airflow around the RAM sticks is
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good as well uh so let's have a look at our initial
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temps hey we haven't even had the chiller running
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for very long but i'm expecting them to be pretty good uh
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wait what 52 degrees that doesn't make sense
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i've got water flow right 52 degrees
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i'm finding that very confusing
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the only thing i can think of is if it's grabbing the temperature off of an
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external sensor and then just using an offset
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because the CPU is probably not that cold like that coolant is still close to
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room temperature okay so for our next trick
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i'm dropping a thermal probe into the liquid and finding out how cold it is
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that we're running so far so about we're at about 9.2 degrees celsius
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and let's see what ida has to say about our temps here
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ah that's more like it
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so yes that CPU temperature was
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reporting with some sort of offset near the socket which as you guys might
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remember we insulated
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so the CPU diode
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at somewhere between 10 and 20 degrees
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that actually makes sense because you should be a little bit over the
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temperature of the coolant while you're at idle okay rancho is over and whoa
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it's working fantastic
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oh there we go
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minus 20 degrees on the coolant
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minus 17 degrees
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on the CPU freaking
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fantastic we're looking at CPU diode temps
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that are under the ambient temperature of this room
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by seven degrees
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seven degrees less than the ambient in this room
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freaking unreal
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so it's frosted over anywhere where the evaporator is uh
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exposed to the air which makes perfect sense
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you guys can actually get a pretty good look at what our uninsulated tubing
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would look like check that out remember this tubing is
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black you guys remember that black tubing
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it's just completely snowy and then this stuff insulates better
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than that stuff for sure but you see the pump would also have to be uh insulated
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here check that out cool right
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okay so by this point you guys are probably wondering
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why why
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well believe it or not this was at one point in time anyway a fairly popular
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way to get sub-zero temperatures relatively speaking and the reason for
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that is that compared to direct die
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cooling with an evaporator this doesn't have to be custom done so
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you don't need any hvac certifications you just go buy a window ac unit strip
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it down and do this compared to that it's much cheaper and
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obviously compared to regular water cooling you're able to get much much
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better results so even now that it's been running for about five minutes we
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are still sitting at less than 30 degrees on the diode something that is
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going to get us significantly
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better temperatures which could lead to better overclocking
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now as for the disadvantages those i hope are fairly obvious disadvantage
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number one is that to do this properly is extremely time consuming and um
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yeah very few people end up doing that everyone kind of does it pretty janky
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disadvantage number two is it's extraordinarily difficult to relocate
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your pc because this thing is exactly
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as heavy as it looks disadvantage number three it's loud like
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check this out i'm putting my mic into the thing here
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super loud and disadvantage number four
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is it can in some cases result in dead
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hardware if you're not careful about your insulation now for my part i'm
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actually expecting like as quickly as i did that i'm expecting my insulation job
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to have held up just fine i'm going to shut this baby down and we'll take a look at it here though so yeah we're
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doing just fine here this is barely even cold to the touch out to the very edges
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of our insulation here the problem is just that it's easy to make a mistake
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and anything worth sub-zero cooling is probably expensive and high-end so
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unless you can afford to lose that stuff you might not want to take the risk and
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the last drawbacks a lot of drawbacks taken a long time is power consumption
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and heat so in addition to your system you have to run an air conditioner that
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not only doesn't cool down your room
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it actually spits massive amounts of heat into your room
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so you can air condition your air conditioner so
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you can air condition while you're air conditioned so
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thank you very much ASUS for sponsoring
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this fun little video where i showed you guys
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a whole lot of what not to do thanks you guys for watching if you disliked it you
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can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed maybe consider
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checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description zenith extreme we've been
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really happy with this board for our threadripper testing also link down there is our merch storage has cool
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shirts like this one as well as our community forum which you should totally
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join