Why don't more people do this...?

Or, not completely, but it is overheating, which is costing me quite a bit of performance. And I'm sure it's not good for computer components either. When I first built

this

PC, the whole world of custom PC building was a completely different landscape. The original drawer PC was consuming between 200 and 250 watts of power, a couple of refresh cycles later. And

this

current version consumes up to 600 watts of power. And to make matters worse, I just bought an RTX 4080, which could bring that number closer to 700 watts. All that waste heat has to go somewhere, and this current setup just can't get it out of there fast enough.

So today we are going to do something that I have wanted to do since I was a little kid. Let's water. Great, my PC. But first, let me tell you about the sponsor of today's video, AnkerWork, and their new M650 wireless microphone. I'm actually using it to record this right now and I used it throughout the production of this video. It features dual-channel wireless recording with built-in voice protection technology that helps reduce background noise and ensure you sound as clear as possible. It has a unique and colorful design with interchangeable faceplates and a variety of mounting solutions.

You can clip it to your collar, use the magnetic mounting system to attach it anywhere, or do what I do and just keep it in your back pocket with a bunch of similar things hanging under your shirt. They are truly wireless. The technology gives you up to 200 meters of wireless transmission range. You can connect it to your camera, your phone, or almost anything that can record audio. Setup is incredibly easy. Simply plug and play with one-touch controls and a bright, responsive LCD screen so you can easily see your settings at a glance. My favorite feature of this entire system is its integrated charging case.

Not only does it keep the entire system organized, but it also has an internal battery that charges your microphones when you're not using them and gives you up to 15 hours of battery life. This will legitimately be my new microphone setup for making all my videos. So if you want to get one, check out the link in the video description and let's get back to building this water-cooled PC. Very good. Here we are in the store. We've got a ton of really fun computer parts from Alpha Cool here. But before we get into that, let's start doing some woodworking.

I originally wanted to reuse the existing drawer, but quickly realized that rebuilding it would allow me to integrate

more

features and improve its functionality. Basically, we are starting from scratch here. The first thing I did was build what I like to call the sleigh. This will be where the computer will be mounted. Then, using my CNC, I cut two large openings for twin extractors. These will keep air moving over all heat generating components that are not directly cooled by water. Once that was done, I also started working on these two struts that will hold the sled inside my desk.

And because they will be supporting such high value components, I use the strongest joinery technique known for pocket holes. Alright, that's done. Now let's change the subject and do something completely different. We'll take this new RTX 4080 and install this water block on it. And the reason we're going to do this is because the overall length of the GPU with the water block will determine exactly where I can place the motherboard on the sled. So we have to figure it out before we can move further back towards a much cleaner environment. That's my office. I started to disassemble the graphics card.

This voids the warranty 100%. But it will be worth it for that sweet, sweet performance. Removed old heatsink. And that was the new Alpha Cool water block. This antique chrome copper slab has a series of channels cut into it that allow water to circulate throughout the boards, components that generate heat and remove heat much

more

effectively than air. And thanks to the innovation of dynamic clock speeds, better cooling actually means better performance. So we'll do some benchmarks once everything is finished on this project. And so, I think we're done. I don't understand why more

people

don't do this.

I mean, look how small and skinny he is compared to what he used to look like. I think it's a big size difference. Over the next few hours, I carefully took measurements and planned the layout of my new computer. Alright, we're back in the shop and the next thing we're going to do is build some swoops for our box. What is a scoop? Good question. Basically these are just two panels that will go in the top and bottom drawer. I just call them swoops because they have a swoopy look and well, I had the C and C on.

I also added this recessed area in the bottom slot. This allowed the motherboard to sit a little lower because it was hitting the limit of my z-axis. This actually ruined a cool feature I had planned, but we'll talk more about that during the post-mortem at the end of the project. As is customary on this channel, I use the motherboard as a template to drill some holes to which I then screw some brass standoffs. This will keep the base plate elevated slightly and prevent it from touching the wood in any way. So this guy comes here with something like that.

This boy goes here. And what they do is give us something that we can build on. And they also give us a convenient place where we can melt things like power switches and this little USB-C port. However, before we could worry about features like that. First I had to cut a platform from the reservoir. This simple piece of plywood will do double duty. Not only will it support the component responsible for retaining excess coolant and circulating it through the system, but it will also be a panel that covers the back of the motherboard where many unsightly cables congregate.

With all panels cut. The time had come to properly screw in the slit. If all these raw plywood edges are offensive to you, don't worry, we'll take care of them. But first we have to play with some parts of the computer. Alright. So there are still a few more pieces to build for the sled. But let's see how this fits together, because I won't be able to make the next pieces until I figure out where everything goes. Exactly. So this is the motherboard. Next, CPU, the pump and the tank. It's going to go right there. Last but not least, PSU, will go right there.

So now let's find out exactly where this reservoir pump unit will go. Obviously, Alpha Cool ships their shells with mounting brackets, but they are made for a more traditional PC case. That meant I had to modify mine first. IBM, one of the tabs at a 90 degree angle and then using a cut off wheel I removed the other mounting point as I wouldn't need it anymore. And what I was left with were two nice little compact stands. I screwed them to the piece of plywood I made a few minutes ago. And then I was able to easily mount the reservoir, but the Intel 13900 K at the core of my computer has a serious design flaw.

The factory mounting system is so strong that it even bends the CPU. So I removed it and replaced it with this contact frame that holds the CPU in place without bending it. This will allow my 13900 K to make much better contact with the alpha cool xpx aurora pro which is another very strong nickel plated copper piece. Perfect for taming this power-hungry 24-core beast. I bolted it on and then bolted the fittings onto each of my blocks and into the tank. These accessories connect the tubes that will join all my components. And while we're on the subject, the tubes.

Let's talk about the different types. There are basically two ways to do this. You can do this with soft line tubes, which is the easiest way. And then there's the hardline pipeline, which is the harder way. Can you guess which one I chose? We do it and we do it hard. I'm ready. I'm ready to get hard. Yes. Let's talk about the process. Hardline tubes, as the name implies, are curved and rigid. So in order to fold it and connect our various accessories, we will first have to heat it up. But don't just heat it up.

First, you want to insert a chuck; This slippery silicone snake helps maintain the inner shape of the tubes while bending them. Another important thing to keep in mind is that you don't want to overheat the tubes. If they get too hot, they can discolor the bubbles and, in the case of my frosted tubes, lose their texture. Be patient. Spread the heat over a fairly large area, rotate the tube continuously, and eventually you'll find a penis joke somewhere. Or not, sorry. The tube will soften and then you can start bending it. So now we can bring our tube here and we can put it there and we can see that, well, we have the 90, right?

It's obviously too long. We're trying to attach this accessory to this one, so we just need to trim it to fit. I wonder if I'm the first person to cut hardline water pipes without the Japanese poles. It's true. This method will waste a little more material, but it is much easier than trying to calculate the total length of the tubes and then bending them all. Now, before we do any test fit, we want to quickly deburr it with the appropriately named deburring tool. After cutting the tube, they can often have rough edges and you don't want to jam one of them in the connector because it could cut the O-ring and create an opportunity for water to leak out of the system.

This just puts a little chamfer on the edge of the tubes and makes them slide, and they are nice and easy. And now we test fit, so this is one of those things where you can force it. So, yeah, that's not bad for a first try. So now we have to do from here to here, which is going to be a little more complicated. This second section of tube was much harder than the first because it had two 90 degree bends going in different directions. That meant I had to measure the offset between the two fittings and bend the tube to match.

To be honest, it took me more than a couple of tries to get it right. But thanks to the miracle of movie magic, it seems I did it in one go. After that I had an easier corner to make and then it was time to do some problem solving. Alright. So at this point, we run into a small snag. You see, at this point, somewhere right around here, we need to transition from a hard line tube to a soft line tube because this jaw still needs to be able to move and obviously these hard line tubes are not very flexible.

To do that, we need to use this adjustment monstrosity right here. This is actually a quick disconnect so we can easily disconnect the rear radiator. But it's very heavy and I don't want it to hang on these lines. So we need to build a little bulkhead here to support this. So let's go to the CNC. My design here couldn't be simpler. I would make two pieces of walnut that fit together like a puzzle piece and then place a thin sheet of copper between them. Copper has two advantages. First, it will not corrode brass fittings. And two, it looks really cool.

Also, I actually needed these copper sheets for my next project, but I'll tell you about that at the end of the video. For now, let me show you how it all goes together. Now we have our three main pieces. This is the main metal bulkhead. We put the copper sheet in there like this, and then this kind of filler slides in there like this to fill it, let's combine these three pieces into one. And to achieve it, it was not as difficult as it seems. All it took was some wood glue, plus a few trips through the drums.

The last step was the drilling tools for the accessories, which I started doing with the drill press. But it got a little sketchy towards the end when the bits got a little bigger. So I decided to manually end things with the file. Hey, look, this is cool, right? Yes, I am quite happy with the result. So let's see if what's going there works. Like. I believe we now have a bulkhead and to determine the exact location of said bulkhead I simply attached it to the hardline tubes, clamped it in place and then bolted it in from the outside of the sled.

Very good. Now that we're done with the bulkhead, let's talk about where that bulkhead will send the water. Once everything is warmed up, you'll need a place to cool down. And that's why I bought this. The NexXxos XT45. This is fine, it's probably more suitable for a car, but it's 1080mm. Rad And you call it 1080. Mm Rad because it has space for not one, not two, not nine, but 18 individual fans. Alright, let's set this up and then I'll show you how I plan to set it up. Two 90 degree soft line fittings will allow water to flow out one side of the radiator and then out the other side, hopefully much colder on thatspot.

This third fitting located at the lowest point of the entire setup is actually a drain port that will allow me to drain the circuit in case I ever need to repair something. Then it was time to install all the fans. Now, because this radiator has so much surface area, I opted to run nine fairly simple fans. This will limit the overall thickness of the radiator, plus it will mean half the cables. to manage later. Alright. That's a lot of cooling potential. I mean, yeah, there's a mess of cables right now, but we'll clean it up later.

But before we do that, think about what we need to do is figure out how we're going to cast this radiator into this piece of quarter-inch plywood, which is going to be the back of the cabinet. So we'll do something like that. Standard Disclaimer Obviously, you don't need a CNC to cut a hole like this, but if you have one, you can use that too. And speaking of getting tools, I'll provide links in the video description to all of the tools I used, as well as some cheaper alternatives and key products like all of these water cooling parts.

So could you look at that? The radiator is now mounted on this panel. The panel mounts to the back of the desktop and this should basically be done at this point. So now the next thing we need to do is something I've been putting off for a while. We had to sand and finish all the carpentry pieces. Nobody likes raw plywood edges. So the first thing I did was install some trim. I opted to use the heat activated adhesive type. Basically, you just cut it to size, use an iron to heat it, and then press it with a block of wood.

Once it's cool to the touch, you can use a knife or even a more specialized tool to trim off the excess. A little sanding for the layers. My favorite polyurethane finish and what you'll end up with is a reasonable imitation of genuine hardwood that only the most pretentious woodworkers will recognize as anything less than the real deal. Now that the finish has dried, there's nothing left to do but put this all back together in 3 to 1. Boom. Here we go. It's all set up. And we are ready to take it home, fill it with water, see if it fits in the drawer.

And I'm sure many others will do troubleshooting work. But look at that. Alright, let's not waste time. Let's get this bad boy home, let's try to prepare him. So step number one is to move this desk a little bit away from the wall so he can come in and work. I love this desk, man. Do you ever weigh? It must weigh, I don't know. The old 300 pound back panel comes off nice and easy. I guess I should have said something funny, but I didn't understand anything. Now we are going to reuse these slides because they are good slides.

However, using them in this setup hasn't really been optimal. So what we're going to do is change its orientation. But first I had to install those vertical struts I made earlier to make sure the door worked smoothly. I used spacer blocks to place the struts exactly where I wanted them and then it was time to do a quick test fit. So this is a very important test. We need to see if there is enough space between the slides and the edge of the case for the computer to actually fit there. But no, I think we're fine.

It just fits, which is what I was looking for. Yes, it fits. Fits. So to center the drawer inside the cabinet, I actually just used these credit cards as a shim to evenly space the space between the top and bottom. And now we're going to take it out and screw it to the slides one at a time. Next came the rear panel. With the radiator already installed. All I had to do was screw it to the back of the cabinet and I was done. I connected the line tube to the radiator and then the quick disconnect fittings to the PC side of the equation.

And at that point I was ready to try to build the loop. It's always a good idea to spread out some paper towel so you can easily locate any leaks. And it's a good thing I did because, boy, did I ever have some. The first one was easy to fix, just a loose cap on the tank. But the second one, well, that one was much better. No no no no no NO NO. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And that's why you always perform leak tests on your system without turning it on. Anyway, I had basically pinched the ring of snow inside the reservoir, so I had to drain everything, all the drainage, and rebuild the reservoir.

After that, I filled the system almost completely and then ran into another obstacle. The circuit is basically full at this point, but there's still a ton of air in the tank that I can't really get out of there. The only way to access it is to open the fill port at the top and take it out through there. Add some liquid to the top of the fill port. The problem is that there is no way to access the top of the reservoir. A design oversight on my part that I rectified by simply drilling a hole directly above it.

Unfortunately, this is a bit ugly, but don't worry, I'll fix it with a cool new tool I got a little later in the video. But first I finished filling a circuit by spraying 12 milliliters of coolant at a time. And then I had to do very ceremonial work, like passing the torch from one generation to the next. I removed the drawer front from my old desktop PC and plugged it into this new one. I use double-sided tape and more credit cards to precisely locate the front of the drawer. Who would have thought that being so in debt would actually be useful?

A pair of screws permanently fix the drawer front in place. And then I had many hours of tying cables and joining cables to make the whole setup look half-organized. Well, now we can put it together. Well, here we go. 3 2 1 running waters... I see movement. You know, I don't mind a little lighting in the case. I think it makes him look great. But I don't understand why

people

make these crazy rainbow patterns. Oh, they throw us out like this. We have 36 degrees on the CPU right now. That's a good sign. I mean, I'm not under any burden yet, but I like that number.

That's a good sign. Very good. A couple of days later, I had the machine more or less set up and also made a couple of key improvements. First, I 3D printed this eyelet to cover the ugly hole here. I also 3D printed this cover to cover all the cables on the bottom of the computer and just clean things up a bit. And this one is a little hard to see, but I actually ordered a temperature probe that screws into the top of the reservoir, which monitors the cooling temperature and allows me to control the fans more effectively.

And speaking of fans, well, they barely spit. This is one of the key advantages of water cooling. Your computer is completely silent in all but the most strenuous activities, and even then it's barely audible. For example, right now I'm rendering a video. And yes, the fans don't go around. The ones in the back are spinning a little and I can't even hear them popping. And since we're talking about improvements, let's talk about performance. I benchmarked this computer at the beginning of the project and it scored around 36,000 points on Cinebench. Now I am registering more than 40,000 points.

So we're talking about a 10% increase in what is already the fastest consumer CPU Intel has to offer. The 3D performance, on the other hand, is absolutely off the charts, almost double in many scenarios, but that's to be expected. Since I upgraded the GPU. This new GPU is locked between 45 and 47 degrees Celsius, allowing it to reach its maximum turbo and also allowing substantial overclocking above that. So we run cooler or quieter. We've gained some additional performance, and in addition to those benefits, I also think this new computer looks a lot better than the old one. We go from something that looks like this to something that looks like this.

So that's all to the good. Now let's talk about what's wrong with the postmortem analysis. First of all, we have cable management. Honestly, this setup could be a little better. And I had a plan to hide all the cables behind the motherboard, but I actually ran out of Z-axis height because the chip would hit the case if it were any higher. So I was thinking that a possible solution might be to run the cables to the back of the door and then just zip tie them very tightly. Likewise, I feel like my 3D printed cover could be a little better.

And truth be told, as I get better at three 3D printing models, that's probably the route I'll take to manage all these cables. I'll just print custom covers to cover all the things I don't want. The economical use label is another thing I would like to take care of with the 3D printer. As you can see, it saves about a millimeter or two. So what I'd like to do is print a strut that goes from here to here, hide this cable, and then obviously raise the GPU up a little bit. And finally, this last one is a little complicated to even show on camera, but I would like to add a drag chain inside the cabinet to help manage the cables and hoses.

As you can see, it's actually not bad, but I worry about them in the long run. Opening the door hundreds of times can become a problem. In my next video, I'm going to modify this phone that I bought on Craigslist for a couple hundred dollars into the ultimate mobile retro gaming machine. So subscribe so you don't miss that and I'll see you in that article.