$500 DIY Water Cooled PC Challenge - Scrapyard Wars Episode 2b
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,704 words · ~13 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 for our computer and a maximum of
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$200 for the water cooling parts. But
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there's a twist. We cannot use any offtheshelf PC water cooling gear. Nada.
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Yeah. Scrapyard Wars.
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Scrapyard Wars 2. The scrapping.
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I yell over to Taran to tell Brandon that I need him to get the camera ready
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so we can go. Um, and that never
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happened. Brandon was never told. We're leaving now. It's about 12:30. Yeah. So,
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we're late. Okay. So, my first hit for Aluminum Block Vancouver is from
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Hardware Conucks. One of the first, good old Sugar J. One of the first
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recommendations is Metal Mart. So,
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Vancouver in the suburb of Langley.
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Yeah, boy. We're practically sitting on one of
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their locations. Okay. Awesome. All right. So,
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here's what we're trying to do. We want to make a um a cooling block for a
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computer component. There we go. Can you give me
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some idea of what we'd be looking at for like a block of aluminum? Maybe yay yay
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thick. Maybe yay big or Yeah. Like what
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does that cost? Well, is that the like cheapo scrap bin? But
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there's things like that. Yeah, that that's the one I actually saw right when
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I walked in and I thought that looks pretty appealing. Yeah. Okay. I need it
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today. And this is thick enough. So, um
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So, like do you just sell it by the length or sell you 5 in or whatever you
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want? So, how much does it cost?
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I wasn't even able to pick that stupid thing up when I looked at it. And is
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there a particular grade or like alloy that it is or Yeah.
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6061 uh T6 alloy. Uh-huh. So, um that
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meant nothing to me. It's uh it's
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machinable um weldable. It's uh like a
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structural type of aluminum. Okay. Um Okay.
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Yeah. It's pretty decent quality. Pretty
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decent qual. What a sales pitch. I like this guy. I didn't even know shops like
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this existed. Just like here's a
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ginormous metal rod. So 5 in would cost $661 after tax.
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$6.61. Wow. It's uh 1475 foot. Not bad. Okay.
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Um and then you guys have a charge for for cuts, right? First cut on that is
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free. Every cut after is a dollar. Okay. Um hey, that's very reasonable.
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Okay. Can I can I have a couple minutes with a napkin and a pen and kind of um
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figure out what exactly I need? Yep. Fantastic. Thank you. Okay,
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so CPU block. There's a couple different
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ways we can go about this. We could go really small like the older Nexos Alpha
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Cool blocks um that were only about yay
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big, but what I worry about is we wouldn't
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be with the camera.
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Lionus is here. They're here. They're here.
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Well, I'm just going to hide this diagram. What's in there? Nothing.
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What's that? See you later. What is it? Bye. Show me.
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This isn't awkward at all. I wonder what we're both doing.
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Well, I guess we're going to we're going to we're going to get what we're getting
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and then get out of here cuz if you give us 5 minutes, we're pretty
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much we're allowed to stay in the store. Pretty much it.
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Wow. All right.
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We'll be we'll be back. We'll be back later then cuz I can't give away too
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much of my plan.
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You're leaving, too? Oh. Oh, I see. I
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see. All right. All right. I'll see
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you. Well, he's found a source for metal. We know this much.
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Okay. So, I saw online that you guys could do fabrication. Not this location.
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Not this location. Porks. Porks. Okay, that's fine. If I asked them, if I
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showed them this, could they make me a plate with a little pod on it? Can I get
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one? Probably. Yep. Um, what kind of
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pod? It's I was looking for a copper
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plate with holes through it so I could go through there. And then just any form
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of dome pod that would go over top of the CPU.
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You have to ask them. Um, it sounds like something they could do. They're pretty
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talented up there. So, so Port Kels, can you give me the address manager?
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I think we just saw Brandon and Luke on the road, but it couldn't be, you know.
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H, no, we're not going to chase them. I think they're heading to Home Depot,
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though. That's okay. We've already been to Home
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Depot. Yeah. Well, I I have. You
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haven't. All right. So, they're making
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progress then. Oh, ball sack. This might be one
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of the ones I really liked. Oh, but I can't get it till after five. Which one
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is this? Never been overclocked. It's a
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ble 150. You know what? You know what? This
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isn't a in a Sonata 3 case.
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Um, it's it's by the time we put a graphics card in it. Oh, we could afford
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a better graphics card though than the one we're about to go. We're just going
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to go see it. Yeah, we're going to go we're going to go see it. And you know
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what though? Barring anything unforeseen, I'm just going to grab it, I
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think.
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Oh, we're getting pulled over. So, I know you're you're touching your phone,
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which you can't do while you drive. Yes, sir. Super duper don't know.
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Here for a Craigslist computer pickup.
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So, this is it, you say?
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This is an X58 based system. I did not see that one
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coming. This is what we're going to be dealing
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with. This card shouldn't be a problem.
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Um although it's a really good thing that we didn't go and pick out a chunk
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of aluminum for our CPU cooler based on an LGA75 socket size because this is
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using LGA 1366.
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Does it have a front fan in it or not? It does not. We are not going to
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have a lot of air flow. So, I'm going to have to get really creative about how I
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jam all of this in there to even have
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any chance of cooling this thing. Okay.
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Well, there you go. That's that's pretty much all of our PC budget right there.
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The rest we have is cooling budget. Uh
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you might want to count it. Yep. That is one
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rancid front filter. Oh.
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Whoa. Ready? I'm going to do it. Don't
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be downwind. Which way is downwind? That way.
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Oh. Oh, it's going back to the computer.
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No. Get away from my
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car. Oh, look at that. It's a feather.
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There's a feather. the cooling for the CPU itself. Yeah. If
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I just got a small amount of metal from you guys in a sheet um that I could put
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on, could I just essentially epoxy a cap on there? Would that be
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fine? The cost of fabrication was high, although that totally makes sense.
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That's what they do here. Um, so getting it welded is probably not an option
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right now. That would be super cool if I was doing this on my own and had more than a $200 budget, but I don't. So, I'm
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going to fall back to the JB Weld solution. So, this probably sounds
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terrible because it looks like they're cutting my sheet probably right there,
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actually. Um, so I'm getting a copper sheet, little blocks of copper. It's
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super cheap just to cut it. So, that's pretty nice. And then I'm going to have
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to kind of cut it to size my own, drill the holes myself, and then I'm going to
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hopefully find a copper or aluminum cap of some sort at uh Home Depot or
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something. So, I just got in total the
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copper plate for about six bucks. Um,
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only because he had to sell it to me at a minimum quantity. Um, I didn't know
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that until he was tilling me out. So, I probably should have just got more just
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in case, but I didn't. So, oh well, I'll figure it out. I need more. It's not
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that big of a deal. It wasn't that expensive. Um, and I'm sure if I go back
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there, I can be like, "Here's the invoice. You charged me for half a pound. I only got
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like.125 of a pound. Can you just give
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me some more? And it might be fine. The cap cost about $2.75. Copper cap. It's
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gross. I'm going to have to clean that up. But that's no problem. I'm not
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worried about reservoir. I'm going to pretty much ignore reservoir as of right
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now because I can just do the fallback
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of like going to Safeway and buying a $1
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2 L bottle of pop um and just like
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pouring the pop out, cleaning it up, and then using that as a reservoir. But pump
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and radiator is going to be a pretty serious problem. Um, radiator is going
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to be expensive and large. So, there's the idea of just
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buying a car radiator and there's also the idea of doing the copper coil thing,
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but I'd kind of rather not. But, I'm going to buy a copper coil right now so
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that I can cut it up and use parts of it. So, I guess we'll see what happens
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from that. So, I got my copper tubing that I was looking for. This should be
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small enough to fit into that cap that I was talking about. And it's actually
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fairly flexible. So, I got a fair amount of it cuz it's not too expensive. And
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I'm going to try to just use it as all my tubing. Um because that would
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actually be be kind of nice because if I can just JB weld this into my blocks and
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whatnot, then I can save money on fittings, which would be pretty sick.
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But kind of funny story, while while I was in there, I wanted to ask if Brandon
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could come in and film, and there was no one for me to ask. I couldn't find any
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employees anywhere, which is fine. It's a more of a self-s served store and
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we're in, uh, Princess Auto, by the way. So, um, I get up to the teller and I go
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to buy my whole big roll of copper tubing and she's like, "Oh, did you get
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it cut?" I'm like, "Oh, no, no, I just wanted to get all of it." And she's
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like, "Oh, you should get it cut." So, I go back to get it cut. Some guy's trying to steal a whole bunch of stuff from the
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store. He has his pockets completely full with like products literally coming
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out of it. They're like, "You have to pay for that. You have to pay for that." So, he freaks out and just starts
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throwing products down the aisles while leaving the store and just hucks
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everything all over the place and then gets pissed off and leaves the store.
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And then I get my thing cut and there's like a billion employees and I could have easily asked for Brandon to come in
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and film, but I was finally done. So, let's
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go. 50 bucks. So, what I saved on my
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radiator, I may have actually just had to spend on
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coolant. But I have my pump. I have my
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coolant. I have my reservoir. I have my
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rad. And we're going to go pick up the raw materials for our blocks. Now, I
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just want to do a quick sanity check to make sure that my pump fits inside my
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reservoir before we leave here. Oh, that's really close. Uh-oh. Oh, that's
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quite restrictive at the inlet, isn't it? Oh, not too bad, actually. Okay,
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hold on. Hold on just a gosh darn moment
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here. These really are the world's worst suction cups,
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though. Uh, we might get away with
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that. This thing isn't going to seal anymore, though, that's for darn sure. I
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guess I didn't really think of
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that. Okay, so we're back at MetalMart.
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Let's go ahead and have a close look at exactly what we need for metal for our
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blocks. No, that's fine. Don't get the door for me or anything. Just hold that camera.
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It's not even worth noting that guy. Actually, I don't know
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who you got to pay for that kind of information.
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I I don't I have a very I have a very fixed budget. That's part of the uh
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competition. You wanted some um copper thing made. We sent him out
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the other shop. Ah, I know what he wants. Copper plate. I know what he
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wants. With holes in it and a dome. I know what he wants.
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Dome or something. I have a better plan than him anyway. Pro trolls, man. Pro
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trolls. You'll do it all day. Looks like
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Man, this is I wish I had my calipers. And he's got digital calipers. Nice.
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You're the man, man. Okay, so center to
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center and then the
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Oh, zero that bad boy again.
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Ah, what did you do? Slice my hand. Wow, that's surprisingly deep for not drawing
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blood. Oh, there's a little bit. Yeah, these are sharp, by the way, in case
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anyone is wondering. Here's our order. We need
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eight pieces. We need I'm basically just
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buying two of each to give us a buffer to screw up. Okay, so our metal's
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costing us 3837. I had I asked for a lot
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more cuts than I had gotten my original quote on. So, this is definitely more
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than I had necessarily wanted to spend on it, but uh I think 40
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bucks for two water blocks I can find a
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way to live with. So, that means we have
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left in our budget for fittings, any
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miscellaneous stuff. We've got
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$85. Not bad. Not bad. I think we're still I think we're still uh I think
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we're still okay. So, here, let's have a look at the
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goods here. So, these two are going to
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be those uh that's going to be that heat sink for the GPU um VRM. These bad boys
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here are going to be my tops for my CPU
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blocks, which are here. And then our GPU blocks. And this is heavy though. We're
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going to have to take a lot of material out of this just for weight. So, we've
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got two of those as well. So, we have two of everything so that we don't have
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to leave the uh the CNC tomorrow. Uh oh.
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Was the $2 a change? Yep. Okay. Awesome. Thank you very much. You're very
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welcome. My good sir. Happy. And uh I
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really hope this works. I have no backup plan.
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Next time on Scrapyard Wars, the mayor of Cohog does the outro. Lionus climbs a
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40ft tree. No, really. He actually climbs a tree. So, stay
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tuned. All right, that's it. No more. It's going to get dumber and
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dumber. My IQ is going to go down with it.