00:00SPEAKER- Okay, Brad, I'm about to do some unnecessary work
00:03SPEAKERthat is of extremely limited benefit
00:07SPEAKERand is probably gonna be something that annoys me
00:09SPEAKERto the point after I do it that I undo it.
00:11SPEAKER- It's the best kind of work.
00:12SPEAKERSome might say the only kind of work.
00:14SPEAKER- I mean, maybe this is all work.
00:17SPEAKERBut so for the last, like, I don't know, five years,
00:20SPEAKERI've had two monitors, high, low, one high, one low.
00:24SPEAKER- Wait, only two?
00:25SPEAKER- Only two.
00:26SPEAKERI have a third one for the Stream PC off to the side.
00:28SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah, so I've had 'em
00:30SPEAKERon one pole, on one, like, desk mounted arm,
00:35SPEAKERand then I have a split arm dealie.
00:38SPEAKERI don't know what you call it.
00:39SPEAKERIt's like a, it's like a, it's like a turn one,
00:42SPEAKERone pneumatic arm into two monitor pneumatic arm deal.
00:48SPEAKERLike, it's official, it's part of the,
00:49SPEAKERit's an Ergotox or Ergotron, or I guess Ergotron thing.
00:54SPEAKERAnd I've had that on, with both monitors on it
00:59SPEAKERfor years and years and years.
01:00SPEAKERThe problem is, the monitors are kind of heavy,
01:04SPEAKERand when I bump the table, it looks like I'm having
01:07SPEAKERlike a 8.0 earthquake in here.
01:11SPEAKER- Okay, yes, you know what I can attest?
01:13SPEAKER- Yeah.
01:14SPEAKER- The experience sitting on the other end of your webcam.
01:17SPEAKER- Angry typing will do it, like a gentle nudge, a bump,
01:21SPEAKERand I think it's because the monitor, the camera's attached
01:25SPEAKERto the bottom monitor, it like sits between
01:27SPEAKERthe two monitors, and I think it's just too much weight
01:31SPEAKERfor the pneumatics on the arm to kind of absorb.
01:34SPEAKERAnd I think if I moved one monitor to one pole,
01:38SPEAKERand another, the second monitor to a second pole,
01:41SPEAKERit would be a lower impact on all the poles.
01:44SPEAKER- Gonna be a two pole household soon.
01:46SPEAKER- We might be a two pole household, so.
01:49SPEAKER- There is nothing sadder to me.
01:50SPEAKERI've got some, I've got an echo gear,
01:52SPEAKERtwo arm monitor mounts.
01:54SPEAKER- Yeah.
01:54SPEAKER- But I was sent years ago a giant bomb.
01:57SPEAKERThere is nothing sadder to me than when you just barely
02:00SPEAKERoverload the monitor arm.
02:02SPEAKER- And it just kind of set droops slowly?
02:04SPEAKER- And it very slowly starts drooping downward.
02:06SPEAKERThere is nothing more infuriating or more pathetic.
02:09SPEAKER- Well, and so the challenge I have is like the monitors
02:12SPEAKERare mounted on this vertical bar, and if I don't kind of,
02:18SPEAKERI don't know what the right way to say it is,
02:19SPEAKERbut like I got to balance them just right,
02:22SPEAKERor else like they get, it starts tilting.
02:25SPEAKERAnd then also, no matter what I do,
02:27SPEAKERthe top one's always like five degrees off of the bottom one,
02:30SPEAKERwhich makes me kind of crazy.
02:32SPEAKER- I am embarrassed to admit this,
02:33SPEAKERbut there was a period of time,
02:34SPEAKERit's been years since I did this.
02:38SPEAKERI have been known to get out the level.
02:40SPEAKER- Oh, I use the phone level all the time, are you kidding?
02:42SPEAKERThere's no shame there.
02:43SPEAKER- Oh wait, you use a virtual level, a V level?
02:46SPEAKER- It's built into my phone.
02:48SPEAKERI just jammed the phone up to the thing and I get,
02:50SPEAKERit's a square edge, it works great.
02:52SPEAKER- You know what, I like an air bubble.
02:54SPEAKER- I mean, that's, look, I'm not here to level shame you.
02:57SPEAKER- I have a quick release mount on my nice DSLR,
03:00SPEAKERor I'm sorry, it's a mirrorless camera,
03:03SPEAKERthat has no fewer than I think four levels in it.
03:06SPEAKER- Well, yeah, of course, I mean, that makes sense.
03:08SPEAKER- I've got it on a friction arm, speaking of, I mean,
03:10SPEAKERin fact, actually that's what I was gonna say.
03:12SPEAKERWhat if you just decoupled your camera
03:14SPEAKERfrom your monitor stand?
03:15SPEAKER- Well, so the vertical, the two monitor mount
03:18SPEAKERmakes that difficult, 'cause in order for me
03:20SPEAKERto get the camera close to the center line
03:23SPEAKERof the monitors, which is important,
03:25SPEAKERthen the back of the camera's no longer accessible
03:29SPEAKERbecause the vertical brace thing is in that spot.
03:35SPEAKERI need three things in the same spot, basically.
03:38SPEAKERSo yeah, so the other part of this is that once I do that,
03:42SPEAKERonce I have that bar gone, then I could use any number of,
03:46SPEAKERlike I have a million of these Elgato stick things.
03:49SPEAKERI have a Baratza or a Manafrotto friction arm that rules.
03:55SPEAKER- Hell, I was just about to ask.
03:57SPEAKERThe words magic arm were on the tip of my tongue.
03:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't have room, like there's no,
04:01SPEAKERthe problem is that, like I said,
04:03SPEAKERthree things need to fit that same physical space, so.
04:06SPEAKER- I get it, I get it.
04:06SPEAKERI have a magic arm, it may be the most aptly named product
04:09SPEAKERI've ever bought because that thing
04:10SPEAKERquite literally feels like magic.
04:12SPEAKER- Those things are so like-
04:14SPEAKER- I have no idea what's going on inside of that thing.
04:17SPEAKER- So the thing about those is there's things that you buy
04:21SPEAKERand you're like, wow, that was a really good deal
04:22SPEAKERand it's really useful.
04:23SPEAKERAnd then there's things that you buy
04:24SPEAKERthat are like really expensive and you're like,
04:26SPEAKERGod, that is, this is the best thing I've ever bought.
04:28SPEAKERAnd this is definitely the latter
04:29SPEAKER'cause those things are crazy expensive.
04:31SPEAKER- Yeah, well, yeah, okay, yes, actually,
04:33SPEAKERthey are more than I remember them costing.
04:37SPEAKEROr maybe I've got mine during the pandemic,
04:39SPEAKERmaybe it was a little cheaper than 110 now.
04:42SPEAKER- They've always been insanely expensive.
04:44SPEAKER- I thought I remembered it being like 80 when I got mine,
04:46SPEAKERbut it's indispensable.
04:47SPEAKERIt is so good if you need to mount a camera
04:48SPEAKERin an exact orientation, just worth it.
04:52SPEAKER- What do you mount the other end to?
04:53SPEAKERJust the clamp on the desk?
04:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I've got a, oh gosh, who makes that thing?
04:58SPEAKERImpact, is Impact a brand?
05:01SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.
05:02SPEAKER- It is just a pretty standard like clamp mount
05:04SPEAKERsort of thing with kind of standard quarter inch holes in it.
05:08SPEAKER- Yeah, the neat thing about them is that
05:09SPEAKERat least the one I have, you move one lever,
05:12SPEAKERpush one button and it releases all the joints on it.
05:16SPEAKERBrad's now holding up a Target bag, wow.
05:20SPEAKERWow, hold on, wait, when you're talking to me,
05:21SPEAKERyou don't get the good camera out?
05:24SPEAKER- Sorry, man.
05:25SPEAKER- Wow, wow, okay.
05:27SPEAKER- It's kind of a lot of setup.
05:29SPEAKER- I mean, you're not wrong.
05:30SPEAKER- It's kind of, this thing weighs probably close to 20 pounds
05:34SPEAKERso I've got it on the weighted, the Elgato weighted base.
05:36SPEAKER- Can I?
05:38SPEAKER- It's a Elgato key light.
05:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
05:41SPEAKER- But I couldn't use the desk clamp
05:43SPEAKERthat comes with the key light for reasons
05:44SPEAKER'cause I've got that giant cable rack mounted
05:46SPEAKERon the back of the desk and it wouldn't fit.
05:49SPEAKERSo I had to get this, I had to get the weighted base
05:51SPEAKERwhich is just literally a 10 pound.
05:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
05:54SPEAKER- You see this, literally just a 10 pound base
05:55SPEAKERwith a stand.
05:57SPEAKER- Can I, when you use this, hold on,
06:00SPEAKERwhen you use this every day, do you?
06:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not every day, it's like twice a week now.
06:04SPEAKER- Okay.
06:05SPEAKER- But go on.
06:06SPEAKER- You don't just leave it plugged in
06:07SPEAKERand set up on your desk all the time?
06:09SPEAKER- It's a huge eyesore.
06:10SPEAKER- You and I have very different priorities
06:12SPEAKERabout keeping the desk clean.
06:13SPEAKER- It is ugly as sin.
06:16SPEAKERIt also takes a lot of space.
06:17SPEAKERLike it's, I have to move stuff out of the way
06:19SPEAKERwhen I use it the couple of times a week,
06:21SPEAKERI need a nice camera.
06:22SPEAKER- See, if you just put it up there
06:23SPEAKERand left it there all the time,
06:24SPEAKERyou wouldn't have to move anything ever.
06:25SPEAKERIt'd just be done.
06:26SPEAKER- This desk is still a place that I like to enjoy
06:29SPEAKERspending some leisure time.
06:30SPEAKER- Yeah.
06:31SPEAKER- And it's nice to get all the things that you do
06:33SPEAKERfor work out of your face when you're not working.
06:35SPEAKER- Oh, no, no.
06:36SPEAKERI just need full clutter all the time.
06:38SPEAKERLike I got a thumb drive here.
06:41SPEAKERI got some chapstick.
06:42SPEAKERI got two or three pencils.
06:43SPEAKERI got a bunch of thumb,
06:46SPEAKERfingerprint sensors I need to return.
06:48SPEAKERI got some camera lenses.
06:49SPEAKER- You know that whole thing about like some,
06:51SPEAKERlike when you work from home,
06:52SPEAKERlike some separation between work life and personal life,
06:54SPEAKERyou know?
06:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't believe in that though.
06:57SPEAKER- Yes, clearly.
06:58SPEAKERRemember Norm's whole thing about like he needs to shower
07:01SPEAKERand put on work clothes to feel like he's at work?
07:04SPEAKER- Yeah, but that's what he said during the pandemic.
07:05SPEAKERI know for a fact that that doesn't happen anymore.
07:08SPEAKER- That didn't last, I see.
07:09SPEAKER- I don't think it lasted.
07:10SPEAKER- Okay, well anyway, getting that camera off my desk
07:12SPEAKERand in the corner of the room is my version of that.
07:14SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
07:15SPEAKERI believe you.
07:16SPEAKERIn the meantime, if you ever need tweezers,
07:18SPEAKERI got them right here
07:19SPEAKER'cause they're just sitting on my desktop all the time.
07:21SPEAKER- Well, you know.
07:21SPEAKER- Where I might need them.
07:23SPEAKER- Pros and cons.
07:24SPEAKER(upbeat music)
07:35SPEAKER(upbeat music)
07:52SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.
07:54SPEAKERI'm Will.
07:55SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
07:56SPEAKER- Brad, this week we're doing a little FAQ.
07:59SPEAKER- Whoa, really?
08:00SPEAKER- It stands for frequently asked questions.
08:02SPEAKER- Did you just say FAQ?
08:04SPEAKEREverybody says FAQ, right?
08:05SPEAKER- I've always said FAQ.
08:07SPEAKER- Okay.
08:07SPEAKER- Like, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you.
08:09SPEAKERThere was a game, I think it was a ritual game, right?
08:12SPEAKERThat--
08:13SPEAKER- Oh yeah, Heavy Metal Fact 2.
08:14SPEAKER- Fact 2, yeah.
08:15SPEAKERStorm, yeah.
08:17SPEAKERAnd I was like, they missed a real opportunity
08:19SPEAKERby not calling the FAQ for Heavy Metal Fact 2, the F-A-K-K.
08:24SPEAKERBut then I guess the whole thing doesn't work.
08:26SPEAKERThere's a thing there and I don't know what it is, okay?
08:28SPEAKER- This is material that only dudes pushing 50 years old
08:32SPEAKERare over, are even remotely going to care about.
08:36SPEAKER- Okay, so on that tip, before we get into the FAQ,
08:41SPEAKERI dug out the Zune.
08:43SPEAKERWe talked about it a little bit last week, I think, right?
08:44SPEAKER- Yes.
08:45SPEAKER- Maybe we didn't.
08:46SPEAKER- I said, oh, did we?
08:47SPEAKERI saw, this is a weird situation.
08:49SPEAKERI won't get into details,
08:50SPEAKERbut I was where you were yesterday, briefly.
08:53SPEAKER- I saw you in person, yeah.
08:54SPEAKER- And the Zune was there?
08:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
08:56SPEAKER- But we did not discuss the Zune.
08:58SPEAKERSomebody else showed me the Zune
08:59SPEAKERwhile you were busy doing other stuff.
09:01SPEAKER- So I finally got the Zune.
09:02SPEAKERWe talked about the Zune a while ago, I know.
09:04SPEAKERAnd I finally got the right gauge wires to fix it
09:07SPEAKER'cause it needed really, really small wires.
09:09SPEAKERAnd I think the smallest wires I had were like 24, 26 gauge.
09:13SPEAKERSo I got some 30 gauge solderable wires.
09:16SPEAKER- That sounds pretty small.
09:17SPEAKER- It's insanely small, yes.
09:20SPEAKERMaybe the smallest wires I've ever used.
09:22SPEAKER- And this is a Zune HD, is that correct?
09:24SPEAKER- This is a Zune HD.
09:25SPEAKER- Those are the one with the big screen?
09:27SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it's not a very big screen,
09:28SPEAKERbut it has the bigger- - For the time.
09:30SPEAKER- Yeah, it doesn't look like the iPod Classic.
09:32SPEAKERIt looks like something,
09:34SPEAKERit looks like a tiny cell phone, basically.
09:36SPEAKER- Right.
09:37SPEAKER- So I finally got it fixed and I started listening to music
09:39SPEAKERand it had all my music from like
09:41SPEAKERthe early "Whiskey Media" basement days.
09:43SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
09:44SPEAKER- 'Cause that was the last time,
09:45SPEAKERlike when I was writing "BART" into the front street office,
09:47SPEAKERI was using the Zune on the reg.
09:49SPEAKER- Oh, man, what a fun time capsule that must be.
09:51SPEAKER- Okay, I listened to a lot of mashups
09:54SPEAKERthat are pretty much unavailable
09:55SPEAKERon modern streaming services, right?
09:57SPEAKER- Okay.
09:58SPEAKER- And I was listening, some of them were good,
10:00SPEAKERlike the danger mouse stuff and the girl talk and all that,
10:06SPEAKERreal bangers in there.
10:07SPEAKERBut then I got to the Neil Cisaraga section of the Zune
10:13SPEAKERand I was listening to mouth sounds for the first time
10:14SPEAKERin a really long time and that album still slaps,
10:18SPEAKERbut it's also kind of aggressively,
10:22SPEAKERlike it builds tension,
10:23SPEAKERlike a Steve Martin standup routine from the '70s
10:26SPEAKERwhere it just never has any kind of musical release at all.
10:29SPEAKERIt just keeps building and building and building.
10:32SPEAKERAnd also, it's all songs that are only,
10:37SPEAKERlike the songs that he samples reference exclusively
10:41SPEAKERlike late '90s, early 2000s, so it only applies to,
10:46SPEAKERlike if I played that album for my daughter,
10:48SPEAKERshe wouldn't know any of the songs and it wouldn't work.
10:50SPEAKERIt would just be an annoying album.
10:53SPEAKERSo anyway, that was weird, but the Zune's awesome.
10:55SPEAKER- Zune rips, I'm enjoying it.
10:57SPEAKERWe'll talk about it on a project episode
10:58SPEAKERat some point in the future 'cause I've done some business.
11:00SPEAKER- Is this just for the nostalgic value, basically?
11:03SPEAKER- I was looking for a project.
11:05SPEAKER- That's all the justification you need?
11:08SPEAKER- Yeah, we found it.
11:09SPEAKERI kind of have been thinking
11:11SPEAKERabout standalone music players lately, honestly.
11:13SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems like a lot of people are.
11:15SPEAKERWhat I meant was there's nothing it does
11:16SPEAKERthat you can't do some other way, though.
11:18SPEAKERLike it's purely just 'cause you want a Zune, right?
11:20SPEAKER- I mean, it can send, should I ever happen to bump
11:23SPEAKERinto another music, another Zune user.
11:26SPEAKER- This came out yesterday.
11:28SPEAKER- I could score a song from my Zune to their Zune.
11:32SPEAKER- You already said it, goddammit.
11:34SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a technical term, Brad.
11:36SPEAKER- You guys quizzed me for like,
11:38SPEAKERwhat felt like five minutes yesterday,
11:41SPEAKERtrying to get me to come up with the branded term
11:43SPEAKERfor sending a song from one Zune to another.
11:46SPEAKERThe closest I came up with was like bump.
11:49SPEAKER- Look, the lesson there is that you need
11:51SPEAKERto have every public facing company
11:55SPEAKERthat makes products that are sold,
11:56SPEAKERneeds to have some absolute pervert
11:59SPEAKERthat knows all of the bad words
12:00SPEAKERand all of the potential slurs
12:02SPEAKERand all of the shit that you don't want to put
12:03SPEAKERon your billion dollar gamble before it's too late.
12:09SPEAKERSo anyway, yeah.
12:10SPEAKER- I just ran a little Google search,
12:14SPEAKERwhile you can still run Google searches,
12:16SPEAKERwhile they still serve classic headlines to you.
12:19SPEAKER- I don't even want to talk about that.
12:20SPEAKERIt's made me really angry.
12:22SPEAKER- For whatever short period of time we have left.
12:24SPEAKERThe second headline that came up
12:25SPEAKERwas a Newsweek story from 2006 entitled,
12:28SPEAKERZune should go beyond squirting.
12:31SPEAKER- I mean, they're not wrong.
12:33SPEAKER- No.
12:34SPEAKER- I cared that Zune for years
12:37SPEAKERand I never ever once met another Zune user, so.
12:41SPEAKER- That's dire. - Never came up, yeah.
12:43SPEAKER- That is dire.
12:44SPEAKER- I remember at one point,
12:45SPEAKERI think Norm and I were joking about doing a video
12:47SPEAKERwhere we'd go stand outside the Microsoft offices
12:50SPEAKERon Market Street at the time
12:51SPEAKERand see if we could find somebody to squirt with.
12:53SPEAKER- That's real good.
12:54SPEAKER- Yeah, it just, it never, we never got around to it, but.
12:58SPEAKER- You know, that probably would have done some work.
12:59SPEAKERThat would have gotten some eyeballs.
13:01SPEAKER- You think? I don't know.
13:02SPEAKER- I think that would have played.
13:04SPEAKER- It was before that kind of stunt cast,
13:06SPEAKERthat stunt video really like,
13:08SPEAKERwe were doing really stupid videos at the time.
13:11SPEAKERLike that was when we would go around
13:12SPEAKERand like talk on cell phones in different places
13:15SPEAKERand that was a video.
13:16SPEAKERI don't know, it was a weird time.
13:17SPEAKER- There's like actual utility to that video though,
13:19SPEAKER'cause you want to try the feature
13:20SPEAKERand you can't find anybody to do it with.
13:21SPEAKER- Yeah, and weirdly,
13:23SPEAKERMicrosoft didn't send us two Zunes to test, so.
13:27SPEAKERBut that's not, we're not here to talk about the Zune.
13:29SPEAKERWe're not here to talk about old music players.
13:32SPEAKERWe're not even here to talk about squirting.
13:33SPEAKER- No, we're here to answer
13:35SPEAKERfrequently asked questions, I guess.
13:36SPEAKER- Frequently asked questions about PC cooling.
13:39SPEAKER- That is my frequently asked questions among others.
13:43SPEAKER- Well, specifically, yeah.
13:44SPEAKERSo, Brad, when you built this PC,
13:49SPEAKERyou chose a controversial path, maybe not controversial,
13:53SPEAKERbut a conservative path, let's say.
13:55SPEAKER- Well, yes and no.
13:57SPEAKERIt's conservative in some ways, very out there in others.
14:00SPEAKER- Yeah, so you--
14:01SPEAKER- Let's say like the size of my case, for example,
14:03SPEAKERwas one of the less conservative choices.
14:05SPEAKER- It's absolutely ridiculous for like a multitude of reasons,
14:09SPEAKERbut it's a really big case.
14:11SPEAKER- And you put a really huge air cooler on a fairly hot CPU.
14:16SPEAKER- Yes, at the time, so it was the first-gen Noctua NH-D15,
14:20SPEAKERwhich is their big bruiser of, you know,
14:23SPEAKERtheir incredible Hulk.
14:24SPEAKER- It's like a three tower, two tower cooler
14:26SPEAKERwith three fans or something, right?
14:28SPEAKER- And when I got it in 2023, when I did that first,
14:30SPEAKERit was when I did that 7950 X3D build,
14:33SPEAKERthe short-lived AMD build that I had.
14:36SPEAKER- Brad hates AMD, confirmed.
14:37SPEAKER- Yep, yep, you guessed it.
14:39SPEAKERAnd so at the time, I think that was the biggest cooler
14:41SPEAKERthat Noctua made, but it was very old.
14:44SPEAKERIt was like their flagship from way back,
14:46SPEAKERlike 10 years or something, I think.
14:49SPEAKERLike the year after that,
14:50SPEAKERthey shipped a gen two of that thing
14:51SPEAKERthat can dissipate way more heat.
14:53SPEAKER- Oh.
14:54SPEAKER- But the other thing that happened was
14:55SPEAKERI bought that thing for that AMD build,
14:57SPEAKERwhich like that ship, not the coolest thing on the planet,
14:59SPEAKERbut like reasonably, you know,
15:01SPEAKERthe AMD ships, zone four, were pretty--
15:04SPEAKER- It's like 150 or 180 watts or something.
15:06SPEAKERIt wasn't like a, it wasn't a Raptor Lake.
15:09SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, yes, so they're fairly efficient.
15:12SPEAKERAnd then I promptly, like six months later,
15:14SPEAKERmoved to a Raptor Lake, a Raptor Lake refresh,
15:16SPEAKERI should say, 14th gen,
15:17SPEAKERwhich I don't think they make them hotter.
15:20SPEAKER- No, it's the GOAT for a lot of things,
15:23SPEAKERheat generation one of them.
15:25SPEAKER- 250 watts is the kind of boost TDP,
15:28SPEAKERis the highest it's supposed to get.
15:32SPEAKERAt any rate, I've kind of been in a holding pattern
15:34SPEAKERfor two and a half years on that CPU.
15:39SPEAKER- Well, you did the firmware update, so it's safe now.
15:40SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:41SPEAKERYes, all the voltage stuff was fine.
15:44SPEAKERI don't think I ever really did any damage to it
15:45SPEAKERas far as I can tell.
15:47SPEAKERBut I've been having to throttle that CPU
15:49SPEAKERpretty significantly ever since because,
15:53SPEAKERso Noctua, I don't know about every other manufacturer,
15:55SPEAKERbut Noctua doesn't put like raw TDP values
16:00SPEAKERin their specs anymore, or if they ever did,
16:02SPEAKERI could have sworn they used to.
16:02SPEAKER- I don't think they ever did.
16:03SPEAKER- I could be wrong, I could have sworn
16:05SPEAKERthat I had read a straight up TDP value
16:07SPEAKERin the specs for that thing, but.
16:09SPEAKER- The other thing is TDP, everybody measures TDP differently.
16:12SPEAKERSo like Intel and AMD TDPs are like
16:15SPEAKERnot exactly comparable to each other.
16:17SPEAKER- So I looked right before this,
16:19SPEAKERthey have a whole big explainer on their site
16:21SPEAKERas to why they don't use TDPs.
16:23SPEAKERAnd that's the first listed reason is like,
16:24SPEAKERah, that spec is increasingly meaningless
16:26SPEAKERas CPU makers contort the meaning more and more.
16:30SPEAKERBut so they have their own formula
16:31SPEAKERfor their own like proprietary performance score,
16:35SPEAKERwhich is like of some use, but I'm not gonna like dig in
16:39SPEAKERto see what their numbers mean.
16:40SPEAKERBut they also have a rating out of three,
16:43SPEAKERthey have a little needle on a three segment gauge.
16:46SPEAKERMine was a two out of three.
16:48SPEAKERThe one I have is a two out of three for that CPU.
16:51SPEAKER- In terms of like how effectively it's gonna cool.
16:53SPEAKER- Well, no, on overclocking overhead
16:55SPEAKERis what they call it, turbo and overclocking overhead.
16:57SPEAKERSo that's like for the boost stuff.
17:00SPEAKERBut anyway, whatever they say,
17:02SPEAKERI was seeing pretty significant throttling
17:05SPEAKERwhen I first installed that chip playing
17:06SPEAKERlike the Unreal Engine five heavy games, for example.
17:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean anything that hits a CPU hard
17:12SPEAKERis gonna throttle on an air cooler with that.
17:14SPEAKERLike Intel recommends you pair that CPU with an AIO.
17:17SPEAKER- Yep, they sure do.
17:18SPEAKERSo anyway, I've been running that ship capped at 185 watts
17:22SPEAKERinstead of the full 250 for two and a half years.
17:25SPEAKERBut even with that,
17:26SPEAKERhere's where I'm really going with this.
17:29SPEAKEREven with that cap, as we played more UE5 games,
17:32SPEAKERlike we streamed Subnautica 2 the other day,
17:34SPEAKERlike there's a lot more games
17:36SPEAKERhitting CPUs way harder these days.
17:39SPEAKERThat fan really goes up and down a lot.
17:42SPEAKER- And it's interesting 'cause one of the things I've found
17:44SPEAKERover the years building PCs is that the problem,
17:48SPEAKERlike the fan being constantly the same speed,
17:51SPEAKERnot that annoying, but the fan spinning up and spinning down
17:54SPEAKERwill make me pull my hair out.
17:56SPEAKER- Yes, that is exactly it.
17:57SPEAKERSo you're in that fan spin up, fan spin down situation.
18:01SPEAKERAnd that's fairly typical of air cooled PCs, right?
18:05SPEAKERIs that your fan goes up when the CPU load goes up
18:08SPEAKER'cause the temperature on the CPU spikes
18:10SPEAKERand the fan curve is usually tied to the CPU temperature.
18:13SPEAKER- Yeah, and so we've covered this
18:15SPEAKERto some degree in the past.
18:16SPEAKERWe did a fan control episode or part of an episode
18:18SPEAKERsome years ago, maybe two years ago.
18:21SPEAKERBut a lot has changed since then.
18:23SPEAKERYou've spent a lot more time
18:24SPEAKERin the hardware testing minds of late.
18:26SPEAKER- I have, I've been doing a lot of,
18:28SPEAKERlike over the last two and a half, three years,
18:30SPEAKERI've done a ton of hardware benchmarking.
18:32SPEAKER- Yeah, so you have a lot more hands-on experience
18:35SPEAKERwith that stuff.
18:36SPEAKERI think we have both dumped fan control,
18:38SPEAKERthe Windows software in the--
18:39SPEAKER- No, I still use fan control.
18:40SPEAKER- Do you still use fan control?
18:41SPEAKER- Well, when I'm in Windows, I do.
18:42SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but how often are you in Windows these days?
18:44SPEAKER- Once a week on Mondays
18:45SPEAKERwhen I do a stream with Nexlander usually.
18:47SPEAKER- For about two hours, right?
18:48SPEAKER- Yeah, two and a half, three hours sometimes on a big day.
18:50SPEAKER- So all that has changed.
18:51SPEAKERAnd I just off and on over the last two years,
18:53SPEAKERI have just thought to myself here and there,
18:56SPEAKERboy, I hate listening to this fan ramp up and down.
18:59SPEAKERShould I get an AIO or something?
19:01SPEAKEROr now there are way better coolers on the market
19:03SPEAKERif I wanted to stick with air.
19:05SPEAKERShould I make a change?
19:06SPEAKERAnd then 30 minutes later, I've forgotten about it
19:07SPEAKERand I just put up with it for another six months again.
19:10SPEAKERAnyway, I think I might be at the point
19:12SPEAKERwhere I'm finally going to make a move.
19:14SPEAKERSo with all of that in mind--
19:16SPEAKER- Let's talk about AIOs.
19:17SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I thought it might be a good time
19:18SPEAKERto revisit where CPU cooling is at a little bit.
19:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I feel like we've hit the,
19:23SPEAKERlike the big points of the,
19:26SPEAKERwell, okay, so the other thing that's changed
19:27SPEAKERon the air market is that there are a lot
19:29SPEAKERof really low profile air coolers designed
19:33SPEAKERfor small form factor machines.
19:35SPEAKERAnd this is, the situation with a lot
19:40SPEAKERof the small form factor stuff these days
19:41SPEAKERis that if you want to have a big giant GPU
19:44SPEAKERin your small form factor machine,
19:46SPEAKERthat often means that you're going to have an air cooler
19:49SPEAKER'cause there's not room for a radiator
19:50SPEAKERin those little like 15 liter boxes or whatever they are.
19:54SPEAKERWe're not going to talk about those.
19:56SPEAKERThere's a thermal right that's really good.
19:58SPEAKERIt's copper.
19:59SPEAKERIt comes in, I think it's 48 and 54 millimeter heights
20:04SPEAKERoff of the socket.
20:05SPEAKER- Man, that's pretty low profile.
20:07SPEAKER- They're really small.
20:08SPEAKERLike I wouldn't put, obviously you're not going
20:10SPEAKERto put a Raptor Lake on those.
20:13SPEAKERI have my daughter's, I think she's a 5600X on her PC
20:19SPEAKERand it runs great with that.
20:20SPEAKERI have another similar one with the Intel Core series three
20:25SPEAKER245K and like that's on a really low load machine.
20:29SPEAKERIt's the streaming PC and it works great.
20:32SPEAKERSo there's definitely places and times
20:35SPEAKERfor air coolers still.
20:36SPEAKERHowever, if you have a computer that spikes up
20:40SPEAKERand like the CPU utilization spikes up a lot
20:42SPEAKERand you don't want to hear the fan spin up and spin down
20:45SPEAKERand you don't want to, like you can fix that
20:47SPEAKERwith hysteresis a little bit.
20:50SPEAKERIf you use fan control or if your BIOS
20:53SPEAKERhas fan control curves, has more advanced fan curves,
20:56SPEAKERall hysteresis is is the rate at which the fan speed
20:59SPEAKERincreases or decreases and you can slow that down.
21:03SPEAKERSo if you say, hey, you're only going to increase 1%
21:06SPEAKERevery five seconds or something like that,
21:08SPEAKERthen it'll spin up slowly and it'll spin back down slowly.
21:11SPEAKERBut then you're going to throttle as you do highlight,
21:14SPEAKERlike as you hit those boost clocks for a few seconds.
21:17SPEAKER'Cause the other thing that's, the reason this is
21:19SPEAKERcomplicated now is that in the old days,
21:23SPEAKERyou'd buy a CPU and it ran at 500 megahertz
21:25SPEAKERand it always ran at 500 megahertz.
21:27SPEAKERAnd then we started paying attention to power management
21:30SPEAKERand we got a bunch of multi-core CPUs,
21:33SPEAKERbut are still doing a lot of single-threaded workloads.
21:36SPEAKERAnd Intel and AMD came up with a bunch of stuff
21:38SPEAKERthat lets you crank up the clock of one of those cores
21:41SPEAKERand crank the others down so that the heat
21:42SPEAKERis all being generated on one core.
21:44SPEAKEROr let you go way beyond the normal,
21:48SPEAKERlike the sustained load power draw for like a few seconds,
21:54SPEAKERjust to get a big burst on the launch of a game
21:58SPEAKERor when you're calculating shaders or something like that.
22:00SPEAKERSomething that runs for just a moment or two,
22:03SPEAKERbut takes a lot of CPU grunt.
22:06SPEAKER- Yeah, which is where a lot of these variations
22:08SPEAKERand fan speed come in.
22:09SPEAKER- Yeah.
22:09SPEAKER- Can I sidebar here real quick?
22:10SPEAKER- Yeah, sidebar. - Apparently.
22:11SPEAKERSo we've talked about this a few weeks ago.
22:13SPEAKERYou know, this is kind of Microsoft's big like,
22:15SPEAKERyear of Windows improvements.
22:17SPEAKERWe're gonna make Windows 11 less shitty.
22:19SPEAKERAnd apparently one of the first things they have instituted
22:24SPEAKERin like insider rings for boosting performance
22:26SPEAKERand making things feel more responsive
22:28SPEAKERis to basically do exactly what you're talking about.
22:30SPEAKERKind of more aggressively spike CPU usage
22:32SPEAKERwhen you open some interface element,
22:35SPEAKERthe start menu or whatever,
22:36SPEAKERlike just make things happen faster
22:38SPEAKERby throwing more compute at it.
22:41SPEAKER- Makes your fans spin louder too though.
22:42SPEAKER- It does, yeah.
22:43SPEAKERBut I see all these people getting mad about it though.
22:45SPEAKERAnd I'm like, isn't that just how modern CPUs work?
22:48SPEAKERLike, have you ever watched a CPU monitor?
22:50SPEAKERLike the speeds go up and down constantly
22:53SPEAKERas the machine is doing things.
22:54SPEAKERLike, I don't think that's especially atypical,
22:57SPEAKERbut also I should know better than seriously interrogating
23:01SPEAKERlike social media rage bait about computers these days.
23:04SPEAKER- Look, we talk about this a lot at PC World.
23:07SPEAKERThe modern internet is a factory
23:10SPEAKERwhere they create angry people
23:12SPEAKERand they do it by taking something arbitrary
23:15SPEAKERthat seems like it's unusual or weird
23:17SPEAKERand then yelling about it a little bit.
23:18SPEAKERAnd then you get an army full of kind of half informed
23:22SPEAKERpeople yelling about things on the internet.
23:24SPEAKER- Yeah, so I mean, that is the actual problem though.
23:25SPEAKER'Cause I don't know, as you described that,
23:28SPEAKERI'm sitting here thinking like, okay,
23:29SPEAKERis it better to like push back
23:30SPEAKERagainst misinformation like that?
23:31SPEAKEROr is it better to just ignore those people?
23:33SPEAKER- Look, how did it work out for Donkey Hodie
23:36SPEAKERwhen he went up against the windmills?
23:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I know, but the problem isn't the vacuum
23:39SPEAKERthat that creates a bunch of people just come,
23:42SPEAKERa bunch of people just come to believe all the things
23:44SPEAKERthat they are being rage baited into.
23:46SPEAKER- There's 8 billion people in the world.
23:48SPEAKERLike we can't fix the stupid people on the internet.
23:51SPEAKERWe can fix the people who listen to the podcasts though.
23:53SPEAKERThat's what we're here for.
23:57SPEAKERNot that the people who listen to this podcast need fixing
23:59SPEAKER'cause they're generally intelligent
24:00SPEAKERand attractive folks in the first place.
24:01SPEAKERBut the point is, I don't remember
24:05SPEAKERwhat the point was actually.
24:06SPEAKER- We were talking about variable CPU speed
24:09SPEAKERand how that affects cooling.
24:10SPEAKER- I would argue that the actual solution for Microsoft
24:14SPEAKERsaying, hey, file explorer takes too long to open is,
24:17SPEAKERyo, they maybe need to like make the new file explorer
24:21SPEAKERas good as the old file explorer was, right?
24:23SPEAKER- That is undoubtedly also true.
24:25SPEAKERBut I've seen other response to that news
24:27SPEAKERfrom people saying like, yeah, Linux does the same thing.
24:30SPEAKERMac OS does the same thing.
24:31SPEAKERThis is just kind of our computer's work.
24:33SPEAKER- I really, I kind of want to like set up an XP machine
24:38SPEAKERwith error appropriate hardware and do things
24:42SPEAKERlike open the start menu and right click on things
24:44SPEAKERand open file explorer and task manager
24:47SPEAKERand see how a 64 megabyte computer operates
24:53SPEAKERcompared to a modern 64 gigabyte computer.
24:56SPEAKER- I bet that would do well traffic wise.
24:58SPEAKER- I bet a lot of people would watch that.
25:00SPEAKERBut I don't have a good, well, actually,
25:02SPEAKERI'm probably doing the, anyway, the point is,
25:05SPEAKERwe're here to talk about AIOs.
25:06SPEAKERAnd the solution to this problem,
25:08SPEAKERyou could do the histories of stuff.
25:10SPEAKERNot all motherboards support that in the fan curves.
25:12SPEAKERSetting up fan control is a little bit of a hassle.
25:14SPEAKERI still like, if you are an enthusiast and you are,
25:18SPEAKERyou want to make a real quiet computer,
25:20SPEAKERI still recommend it.
25:20SPEAKERI think it's really good.
25:21SPEAKERI use the Linux equivalent to that still,
25:24SPEAKERwhich is a cooler control.
25:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, the problem there.
25:27SPEAKERWe talked about this last year.
25:28SPEAKERI think we both got away from fan control.
25:30SPEAKERAlthough, I mean, I know you still use it,
25:32SPEAKERbut when they have that brief security issue.
25:35SPEAKER- They fixed that within like two weeks.
25:36SPEAKERI never, it didn't really impact me.
25:40SPEAKER- That's been resolved with that.
25:41SPEAKERI use that as an excuse to just dump the software
25:43SPEAKERbecause it's not cross-platform.
25:44SPEAKERAnd I, at the time, I thought I was going to probably
25:46SPEAKERbe doing more Linux desktop stuff than I have proved to do.
25:49SPEAKERBut I'd still like a, you know, an OS agnostic solution.
25:53SPEAKER- That'd be nice.
25:54SPEAKER- So as I talked about at the time,
25:55SPEAKERI did try to get into the UEFI
25:57SPEAKERand set the histories there.
25:58SPEAKERAnd boy, is that a huge pain in the ass.
26:00SPEAKER- The support for it varies wildly
26:02SPEAKERacross motherboard vendors and even like product lines.
26:06SPEAKERSo they don't put that on the low end boards.
26:08SPEAKER- And even when the support is there,
26:10SPEAKERI found it to be of limited effectiveness.
26:12SPEAKER- Yeah, you end up in a weird situation
26:14SPEAKERwhere you do things like take a picture of the fan curve
26:16SPEAKERand fan control on your desktop.
26:17SPEAKER- That's exactly what I did.
26:18SPEAKER- And then boot into the UEFI
26:20SPEAKERand start changing things until it looks kind of the same.
26:22SPEAKER- And even when you think you've matched the settings
26:24SPEAKERexactly, it does not work out so well in practice.
26:27SPEAKER- So the bad news is,
26:29SPEAKERI think you're still going to be running fan control
26:30SPEAKERif you switch to an AIO, probably.
26:32SPEAKERThere's some alternatives.
26:34SPEAKER- Well, maybe.
26:35SPEAKER- Yeah, we'll get to that.
26:36SPEAKER- We'll get there.
26:37SPEAKER- So the big benefit of using an AIO
26:40SPEAKERis that instead of using,
26:43SPEAKERis that the thermodynamics behave a little differently.
26:45SPEAKERSo on an air cooler,
26:48SPEAKERyou have the cooling surface interfaces with the CPU.
26:53SPEAKERAnd then there's some things called heat pipes.
26:55SPEAKERAnd those heat pipes usually have
26:56SPEAKERsome sort of low pressure liquid
27:01SPEAKERthat is right at the phase change
27:04SPEAKERat the operating temperature of the CPU.
27:06SPEAKERSo like 80 Celsius, 90 Celsius,
27:10SPEAKERthe heat in those heat pipes
27:12SPEAKERwill evaporate whatever liquid's in there.
27:14SPEAKERIt runs up the pipes and gets to the cool end
27:18SPEAKERat the other end of the pipe and then condenses back down.
27:20SPEAKERAnd there's also a wicking material
27:22SPEAKERthat coats the inside of those heat pipes
27:24SPEAKERthat pulls the liquid back toward the hot end,
27:28SPEAKERregardless of the orientation of the cooler.
27:30SPEAKER- I never knew exactly how a heat pipe works.
27:32SPEAKER- Yeah.
27:33SPEAKER- How effective.
27:34SPEAKER- Yeah, it's really simple.
27:36SPEAKERThe reason this works is that phase change,
27:39SPEAKERit takes, for example, with water,
27:42SPEAKERit takes one kilocalorie of energy
27:47SPEAKERto warm a gram of water one degree Celsius.
27:50SPEAKERIt takes 540 kilocalories of energy to boil,
27:54SPEAKERto transition from liquid to gas
27:56SPEAKERof that same one gram of water.
28:00SPEAKERSo 540 times more energy to go from the liquid
28:04SPEAKERto the gas phase at the same temperature.
28:07SPEAKERAnd by manipulating that phase change,
28:10SPEAKERyou can get really efficient cooling
28:12SPEAKERand heat transfer from the heating,
28:15SPEAKERthe hot part of the CPU, to the cool end of the cooler.
28:19SPEAKERAnd then you blow fans through some radiator fins
28:21SPEAKERand cools off the liquid at the top
28:23SPEAKERso that that part stays cool
28:24SPEAKERand the whole thing continues to work.
28:25SPEAKERAnd it's a really simple system that works really well
28:28SPEAKERand is highly effective.
28:29SPEAKERNow, the problem is that you have some choices
28:33SPEAKERon the fan speed, right?
28:34SPEAKERSo you can either run the same fan speed all the time
28:36SPEAKERand just know that it's gonna throttle sometimes.
28:39SPEAKERYou can set the fan, tie the fan to the CPU load
28:42SPEAKERor the CPU temperature,
28:43SPEAKERwhich is the same as tying it to the CPU load.
28:45SPEAKERAnd then it's gonna go up and down like crazy.
28:47SPEAKERAnd ultimately, there's not really a whole lot
28:50SPEAKERof holding capacity for heat in that system, right?
28:55SPEAKERSo the heat comes in the CPU end
28:58SPEAKERand it dissipates out the radiator end
29:00SPEAKERand it gets through the air that's blown through it.
29:02SPEAKERAnd that's pretty much the entire complexity of the system.
29:05SPEAKER- Right, but I'm guessing you need to get rid of the heat
29:07SPEAKERpretty quickly or it's just going to sit in.
29:10SPEAKERThe excess heat is just gonna sit in the CPU
29:12SPEAKERand then you're gonna have problems.
29:14SPEAKER- Yeah, if you soak the radiator
29:16SPEAKERand it doesn't get the heat out,
29:18SPEAKERthen your CPU will throttle because it'll overheat.
29:21SPEAKER- Right.
29:22SPEAKER- I mean, and that's the other part about this.
29:24SPEAKERThe modern CPUs that have throttling,
29:26SPEAKERgenerally you're not gonna do any damage to your stuff
29:29SPEAKERby letting it run, by letting it throttle, right?
29:32SPEAKERYou're just gonna not get the performance you paid for.
29:33SPEAKER- Yeah.
29:34SPEAKER- Okay, so now the thing that the AIO does,
29:36SPEAKERthe thermodynamics of the liquid are interesting
29:38SPEAKER'cause you have a lot more carrying capacity
29:43SPEAKERfor the thermal energy in the water
29:48SPEAKERor the coolant that's circulating in your AIO.
29:52SPEAKERSo what that means is if your CPU spikes up
29:54SPEAKERfor a second or two, it might raise the temperature
29:56SPEAKERof that coolant loop one degree Celsius
29:58SPEAKERor two degrees Celsius and then the fans will,
30:02SPEAKERwhen the load goes back down, the fans will keep going
30:04SPEAKERand they'll just dump that heat back into the case
30:06SPEAKERand it'll blow out the back and it'll be fine.
30:09SPEAKERSo you don't have to make those sudden changes
30:11SPEAKERwith the water cooling setup.
30:12SPEAKERAnd this applies to both AIOs and discrete custom loops.
30:16SPEAKERWe're not gonna talk a ton about custom loops
30:18SPEAKERbecause they're kind of a specialty thing at this point.
30:20SPEAKERThey're really expensive.
30:22SPEAKERThey're super a pain in the ass to deal with
30:24SPEAKERin my experience.
30:26SPEAKERAnd they require way more maintenance than an AIO does
30:29SPEAKER'cause like when you're putting,
30:31SPEAKEReven if you use distilled water in a,
30:33SPEAKERyou're putting it in a non-sterile environment
30:35SPEAKERand like you have to change it every few months
30:38SPEAKER'cause stuff grows in there.
30:39SPEAKERYou have to watch out for corrosion.
30:41SPEAKERIt's like there's a whole host of problems.
30:43SPEAKER- I remember when water cooling was all custom loops.
30:45SPEAKER- Yeah, it was a bad time.
30:47SPEAKER- Yes, I put a custom, I probably mentioned it before,
30:49SPEAKERI put a custom loop on that very Athlon Thunderbird
30:52SPEAKERthat I won at that AMD event that I mentioned last week.
30:54SPEAKERIt was a mess.
30:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
30:57SPEAKER- It used what I'm pretty sure was a small car radiator.
30:59SPEAKERIs that such a thing?
31:01SPEAKER- No, it was a standard radiator.
31:03SPEAKERLike it was a computer radiator, yeah.
31:05SPEAKER- Well, it definitely had a fish tank pump.
31:07SPEAKERI can tell you that.
31:09SPEAKERIt was definitely a pump from an actual fish tank.
31:11SPEAKER- Both submersible pumps are submersible pumps.
31:14SPEAKER- What I mean is nobody was making
31:16SPEAKERlike computer specific cooling,
31:18SPEAKERwater cooling parts at the time.
31:20SPEAKERExcept for the water block, but I remember getting that
31:22SPEAKERfrom some like relatively boutique little outlet
31:25SPEAKERthat was machining them.
31:27SPEAKER- Well, and the problem is when you're doing
31:29SPEAKERthe custom loop, you have to be aware of things
31:32SPEAKERlike you can't mix certain types of metals.
31:34SPEAKER'Cause if you put like, I think it's when I say it's zinc
31:36SPEAKERand copper will basically turn your whole water loop
31:39SPEAKERinto a giant chemical battery and cause a lot of corrosion
31:43SPEAKERon one end and build up on the other.
31:45SPEAKERAnd it's gnarly.
31:46SPEAKER- Yeah, so to be clear, I barely do what I was doing
31:48SPEAKERand did not stick with that set up for long.
31:50SPEAKERI also cut a hole in my case at the time
31:52SPEAKERto get all the piping through.
31:54SPEAKER- Well, yeah, and like, so when I had the custom,
31:57SPEAKERnow you have cases that have the holes built in.
31:59SPEAKERYou have cases that will accommodate multiple radiators.
32:02SPEAKERLike your case will accommodate, I think three radiators
32:04SPEAKERif you set your stuff up right, it's wild.
32:06SPEAKER- The number of radiator mounting options in this,
32:09SPEAKERI think I have four actually.
32:11SPEAKERLike what's the smallest size, 120?
32:13SPEAKER- Yeah, you can do 120s.
32:15SPEAKER- There is technically a fourth position in the back
32:17SPEAKERon the exhaust fan where they show
32:19SPEAKERyou can put a 120 radiator in the back.
32:21SPEAKERSo I could have a lot of radiators in this case if I wanted.
32:25SPEAKER- Yeah, and so if you care about,
32:28SPEAKERand you can do other things like you can do hard tubes
32:30SPEAKERthat you have to bend to custom fit exactly the hardware
32:33SPEAKERyou have and all that kind of stuff.
32:34SPEAKER- Do most people use hard tubes and custom lutes?
32:36SPEAKER- They're an enormous pain in the ass.
32:37SPEAKER- I definitely see sometimes people will kind of proudly
32:40SPEAKERpost pictures of their hard tube set up
32:43SPEAKERand it's like, it looks really nice,
32:44SPEAKERbut boy, does it seem like a lot of work.
32:46SPEAKER- They should, it's an insane amount of work to build those.
32:49SPEAKERWe've done a couple of those in PC World,
32:50SPEAKERnot since I've been there,
32:51SPEAKERbut it's always way more work than you think it's gonna be
32:55SPEAKERand you start out thinking it's gonna be a lot of work.
32:57SPEAKER'Cause you have to bend those tubes custom for each run
33:00SPEAKERand then if you mess up the bend
33:02SPEAKERor if you make something too long or too short or whatever,
33:05SPEAKERyou have to just throw that out and do another one.
33:09SPEAKERSo anyway, we're not gonna talk about
33:10SPEAKERthe DIY stuff too, too much.
33:13SPEAKEROkay, so what we are gonna do is talk about
33:15SPEAKERa little bit more of the theory of why these things work
33:17SPEAKERand why, like what you need to watch out for
33:20SPEAKERwhen you're picking one out.
33:22SPEAKERThe radiators, you kind of think all radiators are the same,
33:25SPEAKERbut the benefit of the radiator
33:28SPEAKERis that the more surface area you have in that radiator,
33:31SPEAKERthe more heat you can dissipate by blowing air over it.
33:34SPEAKERAnd that's not just the size of the fans, right?
33:37SPEAKERSo if you see like, you see a two by 120 radiator
33:41SPEAKERthat's 240 millimeters by 120 millimeters,
33:44SPEAKERthe thickness of the radiator also matters.
33:47SPEAKERSo some radiators are like four inches thick these days.
33:52SPEAKERPeople are crazy about radiator thickness.
33:54SPEAKER- So I've heard.
33:55SPEAKER- They want the thick radiators.
33:57SPEAKERNot all cases will accommodate them.
33:59SPEAKERSo if you're in like a midsize mid tower,
34:01SPEAKERyou may not be able to put a big giant thick radiator
34:04SPEAKERin the front of your case,
34:05SPEAKER'cause it may interfere with your video card
34:07SPEAKERor something else for the top and memory slots,
34:10SPEAKERstuff like that.
34:11SPEAKER- Are those thicknesses standardized?
34:12SPEAKER'Cause we'll get to, great.
34:14SPEAKER'Cause the one we'll get to it,
34:15SPEAKERbut the one I had been looking at
34:16SPEAKERuses a thicker radiator than most.
34:18SPEAKERAnd I didn't know if that was something you could count on
34:21SPEAKERbeing planned for in your average case.
34:23SPEAKERI guess not.
34:24SPEAKER- Well, so most vendors, if you have a fairly common case,
34:27SPEAKERlike if you're buying a case from Fraktor or NZXT
34:29SPEAKERor one of the larger vendors,
34:31SPEAKERmost of the vendors will have a compatibility chart
34:35SPEAKERor they'll give you the clearance that you need.
34:38SPEAKERAnd there's also ways you can play around with that.
34:41SPEAKERLike on my case, you can put the fans
34:43SPEAKEReither on the outside of the case
34:44SPEAKERor on the inside of the case.
34:46SPEAKER- Interesting.
34:47SPEAKERI think I saw in a video some,
34:49SPEAKERwell, you're talking about the radiator on the inside,
34:50SPEAKERbut the fans on the outside.
34:51SPEAKER- The radiator's on the inside
34:53SPEAKERand the fans go through the front bezel.
34:55SPEAKER- Okay, that might be an option for me.
34:57SPEAKER- The other thing you can do is,
34:58SPEAKERlike you can do double fans.
34:59SPEAKERYou can have fans sucking in from the outside
35:02SPEAKERand blowing, pulling through.
35:05SPEAKERYou obviously want the airflow to go in the same direction
35:06SPEAKERon all the fans.
35:08SPEAKERBut there's a bunch of different ways to do this.
35:11SPEAKERAnd your results will vary dramatically
35:15SPEAKERbased on how you set it up.
35:18SPEAKERI don't think you need to have a super thick radiator,
35:22SPEAKERfor what it's worth.
35:23SPEAKERLike if you're doing a big AIO, a custom loop,
35:26SPEAKERand you wanna have your video card
35:27SPEAKERand your CPU and everything all on one loop
35:29SPEAKERand you only wanna have one radiator,
35:30SPEAKERthen get the biggest, thickest boy you can find.
35:34SPEAKERBut in terms of a CPU cooling AIO, thicker is nice,
35:39SPEAKERbut it's not a necessity.
35:41SPEAKERIt just means you can run your fans a little lower speed
35:43SPEAKERand you'll get the same result.
35:44SPEAKER- Well now can a thicker radiator offset the needs
35:47SPEAKERfor the length of the radiator?
35:49SPEAKERLike would a thicker 280 be in the same ballpark
35:53SPEAKERas like a thin 360?
35:54SPEAKER- Well, so a thin 360 and a 360 and a 480,
35:59SPEAKERsorry, a 280 are basically the same surface area.
36:02SPEAKER- Okay, interesting.
36:03SPEAKER- So like here's the real answer to this question
36:07SPEAKERis you don't have to think about this stuff this much, right?
36:10SPEAKERIt's fine.
36:11SPEAKERLike a 280, a 360, both are gonna be great.
36:16SPEAKERYou probably don't wanna do a 120,
36:18SPEAKERa single 120 fan radiator at this point
36:20SPEAKERfor any of the CPUs we're talking about.
36:22SPEAKERYou probably don't wanna do a single 140 radiator
36:25SPEAKERfor the stuff we're talking about.
36:29SPEAKERThat's the big stuff.
36:29SPEAKERThe other thing is you need different fans for radiators
36:33SPEAKERthan you do for airflow in your case.
36:35SPEAKERSo you use different,
36:37SPEAKERit's basically a different kind of fan blade
36:40SPEAKERthat does more static pressure
36:42SPEAKERto push air through the radiator
36:43SPEAKERthan you do when you're just trying to circulate air
36:46SPEAKERinside the case to keep things cool.
36:48SPEAKER- That's a good tip 'cause I was sitting here going like,
36:50SPEAKER"I've got all these nice Noctua fans.
36:52SPEAKER"Should I just use those?"
36:53SPEAKERApparently not.
36:53SPEAKER- Depends on the Noctua fans.
36:55SPEAKERIf you bought the Noctua fans that are for static pressure,
36:57SPEAKERthen they're probably fine.
36:58SPEAKERIf you didn't, then no, you should not use the Noctua fans.
37:01SPEAKER- These are for the case.
37:02SPEAKERThese are for just straight up air movement in the case.
37:04SPEAKER- Circulation, yeah.
37:06SPEAKERSo let's see, there's that.
37:09SPEAKERThe pump, you wanna,
37:11SPEAKERGamer's Nexus did a great video that,
37:14SPEAKERit's funny, when you buy, I think Arctic Cool,
37:18SPEAKERactually in their instructions
37:20SPEAKERhas a link to the Gamer's Nexus video.
37:22SPEAKER- Yeah, or Arctic, I think.
37:23SPEAKER- Is it Arctic?
37:24SPEAKERYeah. - Yeah.
37:26SPEAKER- They basically, the gist is
37:31SPEAKERyou always want the pump to be below the water.
37:33SPEAKERYou want the pump to be at the lowest point
37:37SPEAKERso that you don't have bubbles rising
37:40SPEAKERto the top of the loop and hitting the pump region.
37:42SPEAKERYou need that, yeah.
37:44SPEAKER- I watched that video right before we did this.
37:46SPEAKERApparently a bunch of AIO manufacturers were straight up
37:49SPEAKERdepicting the installations incorrectly
37:51SPEAKERin their own marketing materials and instructions.
37:54SPEAKER- Look, it happens, yeah.
37:56SPEAKER- Like essentially the idea is that there is going to be air
37:58SPEAKERin any, even a closed loop.
38:01SPEAKERLike it's just, it's inevitable.
38:02SPEAKERIn fact, it's good because they need some excess,
38:05SPEAKERthey need margin for the liquid to expand when it heats up.
38:09SPEAKERBut air, you want air to collect
38:11SPEAKERin the least damaging part of the loop.
38:14SPEAKERSo you don't want a bunch of air running through your pump.
38:16SPEAKERYou want the pump to be submerged all the time
38:18SPEAKER'cause it's both better for the lifespan of the pump
38:20SPEAKERand also cuts down on noise.
38:22SPEAKER- Yeah, the noise is the big thing.
38:23SPEAKERThe lifespan of the pump, realistically,
38:26SPEAKERI don't think you're gonna keep
38:27SPEAKERone of these things for 10 years.
38:29SPEAKER- Yeah.
38:30SPEAKERBut yeah, they did say that kind of incorrect installation
38:34SPEAKERaccounts for a lot of the pump wine
38:36SPEAKERthat you're people complaining about.
38:37SPEAKERAnd also they even said,
38:39SPEAKERif you're mounting your radiator vertically,
38:41SPEAKERthat the tubes should go at the bottom.
38:44SPEAKER- If you can do that, then that's great, yeah.
38:46SPEAKER- Because tube fittings at the top is not damaging,
38:48SPEAKERbut it does create gurgling sounds.
38:50SPEAKER- And it creates potential for air locks too.
38:53SPEAKER- Wait, what is that?
38:54SPEAKER- Air lock is when you get a bubble in the hose
38:56SPEAKERand it prevents the water from pushing through.
38:59SPEAKER- Yee, that sounds bad.
39:00SPEAKER- It doesn't happen very often.
39:03SPEAKERIt's more likely in a custom loop.
39:07SPEAKEROkay, so let's see, keeping the pump low is important.
39:12SPEAKERKnowing about temperature limits.
39:13SPEAKERSo the other thing is you don't want the coolant
39:16SPEAKERto get above 60 Celsius.
39:19SPEAKERA, because it's really, really hot,
39:20SPEAKERit's usually not a problem,
39:22SPEAKERbut you can start to damage your grease breaks down
39:25SPEAKERand your pump fittings and stuff break down
39:27SPEAKERand the seals break down and you're gonna kill your pump
39:30SPEAKERwell before you would expect it to if you do that.
39:32SPEAKER- Interesting, that's pretty universal across manufacturers.
39:37SPEAKER- That's what I've always been told.
39:39SPEAKER60C is really hot, just to be clear.
39:41SPEAKERYou're not gonna, like the only times
39:44SPEAKERI've ever seen an AIO loop at 60C are when a pump has failed
39:49SPEAKERor when I did something stupid like unplug the fans
39:53SPEAKERand didn't realize it for a couple minutes.
39:55SPEAKER- Got it.
39:57SPEAKER- But it's something to think about
39:58SPEAKERwhen you're setting up your fan curves
40:00SPEAKERfor the AIO.
40:01SPEAKER- Sure.
40:02SPEAKER- The other features on AIOs that are important
40:05SPEAKERare that some of them report the temperature of the liquid
40:07SPEAKERand some don't.
40:08SPEAKERMost of the ones that report the temperature of the liquid
40:11SPEAKERreport it in a custom software interface.
40:13SPEAKERThere's no like universal way to get that out.
40:16SPEAKER- No, I assume that makes them problematic
40:20SPEAKERfor use in alternative operating systems.
40:22SPEAKER- You know, you'd think that,
40:23SPEAKERbut it turns out that the kind of people
40:25SPEAKERwho use alternative operating systems
40:26SPEAKERare also the kind of nerds who will debug a USB signal
40:29SPEAKERand they've reverse engineered
40:31SPEAKERa lot of the more popular ones.
40:32SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, fair.
40:33SPEAKER- But if you want to make sure that you have that
40:39SPEAKERand have access to that,
40:39SPEAKERespecially if you're gonna use Linux,
40:41SPEAKERit's really important to look at the HW mon,
40:44SPEAKERthe cooler control and the liquid control,
40:48SPEAKERL-I-Q-U-I-D, E-U-I-D CTL pages
40:53SPEAKERand see what stuff is supported.
40:55SPEAKERGenerally speaking, NZXT coolers are pretty well supported.
40:59SPEAKERI'm not a huge NZXT fan.
41:02SPEAKERSome of the ASUS models,
41:04SPEAKERthe newer ASUS models are supported
41:05SPEAKERin both HW mon and liquid control.
41:09SPEAKERThe other stuff is all up and down.
41:11SPEAKERYou gotta look at a cooler master.
41:13SPEAKERIt depends on which version of the controller you have
41:16SPEAKERin some cases.
41:17SPEAKERIt's a little frustrating.
41:20SPEAKERSo do your research before you buy something.
41:23SPEAKERNow, Arctic is an interesting outlier
41:25SPEAKER'cause they don't actually report temperature at all.
41:27SPEAKERThey, instead of using a USB interface for their cooler,
41:31SPEAKERthey don't do screens or anything fancy like that.
41:34SPEAKERYou plug the fans into the fan header on the motherboard
41:36SPEAKERand you plug the pump into the pump header
41:38SPEAKERon the motherboard and that's what you get.
41:40SPEAKER- Okay, I'll just say right now,
41:41SPEAKERthe Arctic Freezer 3 Pro is the one I was looking at.
41:45SPEAKER- Those are widely regarded as,
41:49SPEAKERlike they review incredibly well.
41:50SPEAKERPeople really like them.
41:52SPEAKER- That's exactly why A, they review very well.
41:54SPEAKERB, kind of high performance, no frills is like my entire vibe
41:59SPEAKERand that's what they are.
42:00SPEAKERLike no screens, no weird RGB shit,
42:03SPEAKERlike just a relatively inexpensive,
42:05SPEAKERvery high performing efficient thing
42:07SPEAKERthat I'm not gonna look at or ever think about.
42:09SPEAKER- The one thing that they do that's quite nice
42:12SPEAKERis they do have a fan on the pump unit,
42:15SPEAKERon the pump head that goes on the CPU socket,
42:19SPEAKERwhich helps circulate air around the VRMs and the memory.
42:23SPEAKER- So do all AIOs not have fans on the pump, on the wall?
42:27SPEAKER- Hardly any, Asus does, Arctic does.
42:31SPEAKERI wanna say one of the NZXT ones.
42:33SPEAKERSome of the ones with LCDs in them do.
42:35SPEAKERThey have them hidden behind the LCD.
42:37SPEAKER- So why is that necessary or why is that something
42:40SPEAKERthat air coolers don't also have to account for?
42:42SPEAKEROr is that just a nice to have?
42:43SPEAKERLike is that more of a bonus than anything?
42:45SPEAKER- Well, no, air coolers already have air moving
42:47SPEAKERin those areas 'cause they have fans on them.
42:48SPEAKER- Does it reach the VRMs though?
42:50SPEAKERLike I think all the-- - It's just not, it's about not having stagnant air.
42:53SPEAKERIt's not about-- - Yeah, I guess so.
42:55SPEAKER- Like they don't need to be actively cooled.
42:56SPEAKERYou just don't wanna have a dead air pocket
42:59SPEAKERright on the hottest part of the computer.
43:00SPEAKER- It seems like on an air cooler,
43:01SPEAKERall the air is blowing perpendicular to where the VRMs are,
43:04SPEAKERbut I guess that's still displacing enough air
43:06SPEAKERto make a difference.
43:07SPEAKER- It's just about, like I said,
43:09SPEAKERnot having stagnant air there.
43:10SPEAKERAnd when you have like a pump
43:12SPEAKERthat doesn't have any kind of air moving,
43:14SPEAKERif people have like back fans that aren't set up right
43:16SPEAKERor don't have top fans blowing down or something like that,
43:18SPEAKERthen you can get in a situation
43:19SPEAKERwhere there's no air moving at all there and that's bad.
43:22SPEAKER- Yeah, that makes sense. - Shortens the life.
43:23SPEAKER- Yeah, but all that said though,
43:26SPEAKERlike hearing that that Arctic does not report
43:29SPEAKERactual liquid temperature or more to the point,
43:32SPEAKERhearing the liquid temperature actually is something
43:34SPEAKERyou need to think about,
43:35SPEAKERwhich I did not assume to be the case at all
43:37SPEAKERis a little dismaying.
43:38SPEAKER- So I don't, I like to pay attention to liquid temperature
43:42SPEAKER'cause it means that I can get the best,
43:45SPEAKERfor me, that's the best of both worlds, right?
43:47SPEAKERIt means that I get temperature changes.
43:49SPEAKERI get to control the temperature,
43:51SPEAKERthe fan speed based on the temperature that matters,
43:53SPEAKERnot inferring it from other things
43:57SPEAKERthat the system reports, right?
43:58SPEAKERAnd that means that I have less noise
44:00SPEAKERunless I actually need it and that to me feels right.
44:05SPEAKERIf you, there are other alternatives, right?
44:09SPEAKERFor a long time when I had a AIO
44:11SPEAKERthat didn't report temperature,
44:13SPEAKERI took the thermistor probe that comes with my motherboard
44:15SPEAKERand I took a piece of Kapton tape
44:18SPEAKERand a little bit of thermal grease
44:19SPEAKERand I smeared the thermal grease on the thermistor probe
44:22SPEAKERand I jammed it on the side of the radiator
44:24SPEAKERand taped it up there.
44:25SPEAKERAnd that gave me a number that was about five degrees less
44:30SPEAKERthan the AIO's software reported.
44:33SPEAKER- Oh, okay.
44:34SPEAKER- And I fed that number into fan control
44:35SPEAKERand I got more or less what I wanted.
44:37SPEAKER- Okay, all right, that's an option, I guess.
44:40SPEAKER- Yeah, the other thing you can do
44:41SPEAKERand I think this is a fair solution
44:43SPEAKERis you just set fixed speeds for everything
44:45SPEAKERand you run the fans on the radiator.
44:47SPEAKERIt's like the static pressure fans
44:49SPEAKERare usually relatively quiet
44:50SPEAKERand like you can run them at 60, 50 to 70%
44:54SPEAKERand just run at that speed all the time
44:56SPEAKERand not think about it.
44:57SPEAKER- I have to say that is a pretty appealing option to me.
44:59SPEAKERThe idea of just, I mean, but I guess
45:02SPEAKERI would probably do some monitoring early on
45:04SPEAKERjust to make sure.
45:05SPEAKER- Highly recommend that.
45:06SPEAKER- Yeah, like you would wanna make sure
45:08SPEAKERyou don't go too low on your constant speed,
45:10SPEAKERbut having the speed, like you said at the top of the show,
45:12SPEAKERlike having a constant hum is far easier
45:16SPEAKERto get used to and not be annoyed by
45:19SPEAKERthan having something go up and down.
45:20SPEAKERI mean, granted, I assume fluctuations on this
45:22SPEAKERwould be way less noticeable than on an air,
45:24SPEAKERlike a tower cooler, but.
45:26SPEAKER- Yeah, the fluctuations on this are really, really low.
45:28SPEAKERThe hard part actually is getting,
45:31SPEAKERif you're fluctuating speed,
45:33SPEAKERthe hard part is making sure that your exhaust is doing,
45:36SPEAKERthat you're exhausting the hot air out
45:38SPEAKERas fast as it's coming in
45:41SPEAKER'cause then you can end up soaking the case
45:43SPEAKERand making the whole case warm if you're not careful.
45:45SPEAKER- How about pump speed?
45:46SPEAKERIs that something you also need to vary?
45:49SPEAKER- So pump speed, I usually set a fixed pump speed.
45:52SPEAKERI think I run, like basically I turn it up as loud as it is
45:56SPEAKERwithout making noise that annoys me
45:58SPEAKERand then that's where I stop.
45:59SPEAKER- That is an easy rubric.
46:01SPEAKER- Yeah, 50, 60% I think is totally fine for the most part.
46:05SPEAKERThe things that are important to monitor,
46:07SPEAKERI was gonna say it's worth monitoring
46:09SPEAKER'cause you do wanna keep your liquid under that 60C number.
46:13SPEAKERSo if you do set up the thermistor,
46:14SPEAKERyou can set up the curve in your UEFI
46:18SPEAKERand have it spike up when you get to like 55C
46:21SPEAKERand turn the radiator fans way up, right?
46:23SPEAKERAnd then A, it'll keep it cool,
46:26SPEAKERB, it'll let you know that something's going on,
46:28SPEAKERyou should maybe take a look at it.
46:29SPEAKERSame thing for pump speed.
46:31SPEAKERBut like pump speed, I leave low
46:33SPEAKERand then when the thermistor hits the right temperature,
46:36SPEAKERthen it goes up.
46:37SPEAKERThe nice thing about using the thermistor
46:38SPEAKERversus the AIO reported temperature
46:41SPEAKERis the thermistor you can access in the BIOS
46:43SPEAKER'cause it shows up as just another temperature sensor
46:45SPEAKERthat the BIOS usually knows what to do with.
46:48SPEAKERNot all motherboards support that though,
46:49SPEAKERso your mileage may vary.
46:51SPEAKER- Actually sitting here not entirely sure
46:53SPEAKERif my board has that kind of support or not.
46:56SPEAKER- So my ProArt board did,
46:57SPEAKERbut I had to buy a thermistor cable that went with it.
47:01SPEAKERIt was a board. - Oh whatever, that's fine.
47:02SPEAKERThat's five bucks, I'm sure.
47:03SPEAKER- Yeah, they're like five bucks.
47:05SPEAKERI also had one from an old motherboard
47:06SPEAKERthat I just never even unwrapped.
47:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, the key is just
47:10SPEAKERif the sensor header is there or not.
47:13SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:15SPEAKERSo that's kind of like, that's the gist, right?
47:18SPEAKERIs that you, if you do this stuff right,
47:24SPEAKEReven on Reddits where people complain about PC hardware,
47:28SPEAKERI don't see people complaining about leaks too often
47:32SPEAKERor at all, really.
47:33SPEAKERLike you have to make a boneheaded decision at this point
47:36SPEAKERto make one of these things leak.
47:38SPEAKERI have to assume like AIOs have been in production
47:40SPEAKERfor so long at this point
47:41SPEAKERthat that's kind of a solved problem
47:43SPEAKERas long as you observe best practices.
47:46SPEAKER- I haven't had an air cooler on a primary computer
47:49SPEAKERsince like Nehalem probably.
47:51SPEAKER- God, really?
47:52SPEAKER- It's been a long time.
47:54SPEAKERI did, I bought multiples of those 120 millimeter,
48:01SPEAKERI think Cooler Master was the first one that did an AIO.
48:04SPEAKERThey did the ones that Intel was selling,
48:06SPEAKERthat Intel was bundling with CPUs for a long time.
48:09SPEAKERAnd I was using those from like 2009, 2010 on one way.
48:14SPEAKER- That's been a while.
48:15SPEAKER- It's been a long, it's been a minute.
48:17SPEAKERAnd I've never had leakage.
48:18SPEAKERI've had pumpsty, but that was, again,
48:21SPEAKERon those early 120 millimeter ones.
48:23SPEAKERThe newer ones, usually, generally what happens honestly
48:27SPEAKERis that the radiator gets weird gunk in it after a while.
48:30SPEAKERAnd it's just, when they cost $80,
48:33SPEAKERit's easier to just buy a new one
48:35SPEAKERthan it is to clean it out.
48:36SPEAKER- They have gotten wildly cheap.
48:38SPEAKERIt's insane.
48:39SPEAKERI mean, not all of them now.
48:39SPEAKERLike there's a newer company called Trix,
48:42SPEAKERwhich sure does look like Trix
48:45SPEAKERuntil I confirmed it's actually Trix, T-R-Y-X.
48:48SPEAKERBut they have been rated super highly recently,
48:50SPEAKERbut theirs are like all $300 plus
48:52SPEAKERbecause they've got these like gigantic wraparound screens
48:55SPEAKERon them and stuff like that.
48:56SPEAKERAnd I'm not about to pay wraparound screen money
48:59SPEAKERfor something I'm not even gonna see.
49:01SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I mean, that's the thing is
49:03SPEAKERthe market has gone toward,
49:05SPEAKERlet's give you an extreme bling streamer PC.
49:08SPEAKERAnd if you just want something that does good cooling,
49:10SPEAKERthen those Arctics are really good at 80 bucks.
49:13SPEAKER- The Arctic 280 millimeter that I was looking at
49:15SPEAKERis like 75 bucks.
49:16SPEAKERIt's crazy cheap.
49:17SPEAKER- But now the asterisk on the Arctics
49:20SPEAKERis if you're on AM4, AM5, they're just normal coolers.
49:24SPEAKER- That's the thing that has stopped me all this time.
49:27SPEAKER- Well, so I was gonna say the bracket
49:28SPEAKERon the AM4, AM5 bracket,
49:32SPEAKERyou have to take it apart in order to swap the CPUs,
49:35SPEAKERwhich isn't a problem that impacts normal people.
49:37SPEAKERBut for me, when I'm testing stuff,
49:39SPEAKERit's always a hassle to have to unscrew this thing.
49:41SPEAKER- Right.
49:43SPEAKER- On the Intel side though, they use a contact frame.
49:46SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's already that, that is not the AMD thing.
49:49SPEAKERIt's that since I've been on Intel all this time,
49:51SPEAKERthat's the thing that I have always held off because of.
49:56SPEAKER- So for folks who don't know,
49:57SPEAKERa contact frame is a thing you basically take off
49:59SPEAKERthe little metal bracket that has the lever
50:03SPEAKERthat locks the CPU in place.
50:06SPEAKERAnd you instead put the CPU in the socket naked,
50:09SPEAKERwhich is scary, and then you put this thing over top of it
50:12SPEAKERand you screw that down through the four screws.
50:14SPEAKERNow, their mechanism is pretty good.
50:17SPEAKERIt's pretty hard to over tighten it.
50:19SPEAKERThe challenge with this is that if you over tighten
50:21SPEAKERor under tighten, then your computer can be unstable.
50:25SPEAKERAnd it requires, it's A, riskier, and B, fiddlier
50:30SPEAKERthan I like, especially for non-enthusiasts.
50:33SPEAKER- Yes, so I have the kind of $15 thermal right contact frame
50:37SPEAKERon this Raptor Lake that I think you also have used
50:40SPEAKERin the past.
50:40SPEAKERI think it's kind of the one most people used
50:42SPEAKERwhen this first became a problem.
50:46SPEAKERI swore after I put that thing on,
50:47SPEAKERI would never do another contact frame.
50:50SPEAKERIt took me a whole weekend to get that thing stable.
50:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean.
50:53SPEAKER- It's just taken like, and to be clear,
50:56SPEAKERyou can envision what the process was.
50:58SPEAKERSo think about how much work it is
51:01SPEAKERto take a giant CPU tower cooler on and off.
51:05SPEAKERLike I have to pull that thing off,
51:08SPEAKERlike do some micro adjustments
51:10SPEAKERto the tightness of the screws on the contact frame,
51:12SPEAKERlike build the whole tower assembly back up,
51:14SPEAKERtry booting it again, use it to see if it was stable.
51:17SPEAKERHalf the time it would even get past post,
51:19SPEAKERbut occasionally it would do a little better,
51:21SPEAKERbut it was that for a whole weekend over and over.
51:24SPEAKER- So the good news is it's been a while
51:25SPEAKERsince I worked on this,
51:26SPEAKERbut I don't think you have to take the whole thing apart
51:28SPEAKERto adjust the tension.
51:29SPEAKER- In this case, it would be less work purely
51:32SPEAKERbecause you're not doing a giant tower cooler
51:34SPEAKERon top of the frame.
51:35SPEAKERLike the frame is the thing that the thing mounts to, but.
51:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
51:38SPEAKER- And I assume, I would like to think their install
51:41SPEAKERis maybe a little more foolproof than that little,
51:43SPEAKER'cause I mean the thermal right is literally
51:45SPEAKERjust a little machine piece of metal and some screws,
51:47SPEAKERthat's all it is.
51:48SPEAKERI assume this is maybe a little bit more robustly designed,
51:52SPEAKERbut I still, I don't know, man.
51:54SPEAKER- So on this one, whenever I do one of these in the lab,
51:57SPEAKERI always read the instructions
51:59SPEAKER'cause they have some really explicit instructions
52:01SPEAKERabout hand tightening it.
52:03SPEAKERAnd then you do like a quarter turn past hand tight
52:06SPEAKERand that's the right amount.
52:09SPEAKERI've never had stability problems
52:10SPEAKERusing one of their contact frames in the lab,
52:13SPEAKERbut I have also done quite a few of them.
52:15SPEAKER- So that's fair.
52:16SPEAKERI talked to our friend Adam at PC World,
52:18SPEAKERhe has also used that particular AIO quite a bit
52:21SPEAKERand he said he's never had stability issues either,
52:23SPEAKERso maybe it's okay.
52:24SPEAKER- For what it's worth, that's the AIO we use
52:26SPEAKERfor CPU testing in the PC World.
52:30SPEAKER- I mean, that's a pretty good vote of confidence.
52:31SPEAKERI don't know.
52:33SPEAKERHow did we screw up CPU retention mechanisms?
52:36SPEAKERHow did it get to this point?
52:37SPEAKER- Well, Intel stopped making square CPUs
52:38SPEAKERand they started making tall.
52:39SPEAKER- Fair, yeah.
52:40SPEAKER- And then they got warpy and then, you know, anyway.
52:44SPEAKER- Yeah, also, I'm not entirely convinced
52:47SPEAKERthat the warping frames is actually a problem
52:51SPEAKERthat is worth worrying about.
52:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know.
52:54SPEAKERLike Gamers Nexus does a lot of like pressure testing,
52:58SPEAKERinkblot type stuff, I assume you've seen.
53:00SPEAKER- Yep.
53:01SPEAKER- That kind of shows what the warping
53:03SPEAKERwith different coolers is over time,
53:04SPEAKERbut I've never seen any evidence
53:06SPEAKERthat it's more than like a degree or two
53:07SPEAKERof cooling difference.
53:09SPEAKER- I think it's more of a problem for people
53:10SPEAKERwho are doing actual overclocking
53:12SPEAKERand less for people who are just using their computers.
53:15SPEAKER- Although, frankly, at this point,
53:16SPEAKERI would hope you could forgive me
53:18SPEAKERfor wanting to baby my hardware a little bit more
53:20SPEAKERwith the state of things and kind of make sure
53:23SPEAKERthat everything continues to be in working order
53:25SPEAKERfor some years.
53:26SPEAKER- Look, I don't have 7,200 megatransfer RAM anymore,
53:30SPEAKERbut if I did, I would not be running it
53:32SPEAKERat 7,200 megatransfers.
53:34SPEAKER- Yeah.
53:35SPEAKER- So yeah, so that's basically it.
53:37SPEAKERThat's the kind of TLDR on this whole thing.
53:40SPEAKERI'm like 80 to 90% of the way to sold at this point.
53:44SPEAKER- I'm gonna go and tell you from a noise perspective,
53:47SPEAKERpeople always talk about overclocking with AIOs.
53:49SPEAKERFor me, the noise is the more important thing.
53:52SPEAKER- Oh, totally.
53:53SPEAKERI will never overclock again.
53:54SPEAKERI just, A, CPU's got too fast.
53:56SPEAKER- Yeah. - B, I don't care.
53:58SPEAKERBut I am ready for a quiet PC.
54:00SPEAKERI'm ready for a, what's the opposite of rowdy?
54:04SPEAKERLike I'm ready for a docile. - Sedate.
54:06SPEAKER- Sedate, steady, consistent PC.
54:09SPEAKERLike not just quiet,
54:11SPEAKERbut I want it to be roughly the same volume all the time.
54:14SPEAKER- Have you considered a Mac mini?
54:16SPEAKER- You know, it's got some advantages.
54:18SPEAKERActually, was it on this show that you suggested this
54:23SPEAKERor was it some people on our discord
54:24SPEAKERthat floated the idea of like still having
54:27SPEAKERthe big beefy gaming PC for such needs
54:31SPEAKERas require a gaming PC,
54:33SPEAKERbut then using like a mini PC or Mac mini style thing
54:36SPEAKERfor like, that really fucked me up, frankly.
54:40SPEAKERWhen I heard that whole philosophy described,
54:43SPEAKERI was like, man, I'm sitting around
54:45SPEAKERwith this gigantic machine.
54:47SPEAKERI know that, you know, the graphics card runs
54:49SPEAKERat like very low power draw.
54:52SPEAKER- Not really. - When you're not playing.
54:53SPEAKERWell, I mean, certainly lower than when you're playing games.
54:56SPEAKER- Well, yeah. - The fans don't even spin
54:58SPEAKERon the GPU when you're not playing a game.
55:00SPEAKER- Look, I'm using 20% of the power right now
55:03SPEAKERthat I use when I'm playing a game,
55:05SPEAKERbut it's still 10 times the power that my laptop draws.
55:09SPEAKER- That's what I'm saying.
55:10SPEAKERLike I know the PC throttles quite a bit
55:11SPEAKERfrom what it would be at full load,
55:13SPEAKERbut even then, like how much,
55:15SPEAKERthat's still 10 times more than a little mini PC
55:17SPEAKERfor a use case that a mini PC would serve just fine.
55:22SPEAKER- The answer, the real answer is probably
55:24SPEAKERyou have a quite a nice laptop
55:26SPEAKERand you should probably just plug in the laptop
55:28SPEAKERif you're not gaming stuff.
55:29SPEAKER- That's fraud for a whole bunch of other reasons.
55:32SPEAKERDo you know how bad Macs have gotten
55:33SPEAKERat outputting to non-Apple monitors?
55:36SPEAKER- What? - Are you familiar with that?
55:38SPEAKER- No, you just need like five dongles.
55:40SPEAKER- No, no, it's not that.
55:41SPEAKERIt's that they don't scale to common resolutions well
55:44SPEAKERin a lot of cases.
55:45SPEAKER- What? - You should go look it up.
55:46SPEAKERIt's crazy.
55:47SPEAKERIt seems like an insane thing for-
55:49SPEAKER- You have like 2560 by 1440 monitors, right?
55:51SPEAKER- You would think that would be just fine,
55:53SPEAKERbut a bunch of common resolutions Mac OS
55:56SPEAKERwill not scale to very well.
55:58SPEAKER- Oh, that's obnoxious. - Yeah, it's terrible.
56:00SPEAKERIt's not that it's not usable,
56:01SPEAKERbut it's been so long since I tried it.
56:04SPEAKERI can't remember exactly what the specifics were,
56:06SPEAKERbut it's like font scaling and stuff like that.
56:07SPEAKERJust ends up looking a little bit jank
56:10SPEAKERon non-Apple monitors, which is ridiculous.
56:13SPEAKER- My choice to learn how to use Linux feels better every day.
56:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
56:17SPEAKER- So yeah, I guess that's it.
56:19SPEAKERIf people have more questions about this,
56:20SPEAKERnext week is a Q&A episode.
56:22SPEAKERSo fire them into the email at techpod@content.town.
56:24SPEAKERI'm happy to answer what I can.
56:26SPEAKER- Yes, we do have a little section here about custom loops,
56:28SPEAKERbut I don't think that-
56:29SPEAKER- I think we hit most of the stuff in there
56:31SPEAKERwhen we were talking about the beginning.
56:33SPEAKER- I mean, since this is a fact,
56:34SPEAKERlet me just hit you with a couple.
56:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
56:37SPEAKER- When you have a custom loop, as they are conceived today,
56:41SPEAKERnot the janky shit I was using 20 years ago,
56:43SPEAKERbut like the stuff you would get from a major vendor
56:46SPEAKERthese days and assemble yourself,
56:48SPEAKERcan you set the PC on its side or is that a bad idea?
56:52SPEAKER- It depends on how you build the loop.
56:58SPEAKER- Okay.
56:58SPEAKER- If you have a reservoir that seals,
57:00SPEAKERso usually on a custom loop,
57:02SPEAKERthe main parts are a pump that's built into a reservoir.
57:05SPEAKERSo you have more liquid in the loop,
57:06SPEAKERwhich gives you more kind of carrying capacity for heat.
57:10SPEAKER- Got it.
57:10SPEAKER- You have one or two radiators usually,
57:13SPEAKERand then you have cooling plates for the CPU
57:15SPEAKERand possibly the GPU as well.
57:18SPEAKERAnd if your reservoir pump combo
57:22SPEAKERaccommodates multiple orientations,
57:24SPEAKERthen you can lay it on its side.
57:26SPEAKER- Got it.
57:27SPEAKER- Like you're talking about to work on or to run?
57:28SPEAKER- These days I like to set a PC on its side to work on it.
57:32SPEAKER- I would always drain it before I put it on its side.
57:35SPEAKER- Okay, that alone means I will never touch
57:37SPEAKERa custom loop again, too much work.
57:39SPEAKER- The fundamental thing about the custom loop is
57:42SPEAKERif you build the computer and then you don't touch it
57:44SPEAKERfor the life of that computer, custom loops are pretty rad.
57:48SPEAKERThey require more maintenance
57:49SPEAKER'cause you do have to change the water
57:50SPEAKERevery three to six months.
57:52SPEAKER- My giant case straight up has,
57:54SPEAKERor maybe this is common on most cases,
57:55SPEAKERbut this case has like a fill, it's not a valve,
57:59SPEAKERbut a fill, like an intake cut out in the top.
58:01SPEAKERYeah, you can align the fill line
58:06SPEAKERof your reservoir to the top of the case
58:08SPEAKERso you don't have to take the case apart.
58:10SPEAKERIs the reservoir that kind of like vertical clear tube
58:14SPEAKERlooking thing attached to the pump that I see in photos?
58:16SPEAKER- Yeah, they look like bongs.
58:18SPEAKER- Yes, exactly.
58:19SPEAKERBong for a CPU bong.
58:21SPEAKER- Yeah, usually often the pump is integrated
58:24SPEAKERin the bottom of that.
58:25SPEAKER- Yeah, that was my understanding.
58:26SPEAKER- So that way that solves your,
58:28SPEAKERhey, the pump is always an underwater problem.
58:30SPEAKER- Sure.
58:31SPEAKER- It also, often the top will also screw off
58:34SPEAKERof that reservoir so you can fill,
58:36SPEAKERif you need to top off, you can do that in there.
58:38SPEAKER- Sure.
58:39SPEAKER- People do things like add dye and stuff like that
58:42SPEAKERto make the tube different colors,
58:43SPEAKERmake it glow in black light or whatever,
58:45SPEAKERwhich is like you're almost always better off
58:48SPEAKERgetting colored tubes than putting dye in the coolant.
58:52SPEAKERI know that there's, people have worked this out
58:55SPEAKERso that it's less of a problem now,
58:56SPEAKERbut it used to be that you would,
58:58SPEAKERthat was a good way to create corrosion
59:00SPEAKERor to make stuff grow or whatever.
59:02SPEAKER- What kind of liquid do you use in a custom lube?
59:04SPEAKER- Distilled water.
59:05SPEAKER- Is it just distilled water with, I assume, some additives?
59:07SPEAKER- Yeah, you use distilled water
59:09SPEAKERand then you can choose to put anti-corrosives in,
59:12SPEAKERyou can choose to put dyes in,
59:13SPEAKERyou can just put antibiotics in,
59:15SPEAKERnot antibiotics, but things that retard growth, yeah.
59:20SPEAKERPeople also do things like put silver anodes in,
59:23SPEAKERor they put different kind of anodes into,
59:26SPEAKERlike they're basically sacrificial anodes
59:28SPEAKERso the corrosion happens on them
59:29SPEAKERinstead of on your expensive cooling plate or whatever.
59:32SPEAKER- Interesting.
59:32SPEAKER- There's a lot to, like, as opposed to an AIO,
59:36SPEAKERwhich is fairly idiot-proof,
59:37SPEAKERand the hardest thing you have to do
59:38SPEAKERis figure out which way the fans are gonna blow,
59:40SPEAKERwhich I realize we haven't talked about yet.
59:43SPEAKERThe custom loops you have to actually,
59:49SPEAKERlike, you shouldn't, one should not idly decide
59:52SPEAKERthey're going to build a custom loop
59:53SPEAKERand then just go buy a bunch of stuff.
59:54SPEAKERYou should do some reading and watch a bunch of videos
59:57SPEAKERand understand how it works.
59:58SPEAKER- Well, and the other thing is, and I kind of knew this,
1:00:00SPEAKERbut when I really started looking for five minutes,
1:00:03SPEAKERwhen I first got interested in doing liquid cooling again,
1:00:05SPEAKERI spent five minutes looking at custom loop gear
1:00:09SPEAKERand then quickly concluded that if I were to do,
1:00:11SPEAKERlike, a whole loop that included a graphics card,
1:00:14SPEAKERcustom water block, and the whole thing,
1:00:16SPEAKERlike, it seems like you were looking at, like,
1:00:17SPEAKERa thousand dollars to build something like that out,
1:00:19SPEAKERand, like, no thank you.
1:00:20SPEAKER- It's a huge investment, especially the GPU blocks.
1:00:23SPEAKERThe GPU blocks are only good for one particular GPU.
1:00:26SPEAKER- That's the other thing is you have to get a block
1:00:27SPEAKERthat fits your specific card.
1:00:29SPEAKER- Yeah, so, like, realistically what you're saying
1:00:31SPEAKERwhen you do that is I'm never gonna change that GPU
1:00:33SPEAKERfor the life of this computer.
1:00:34SPEAKER- Just does not seem worth it.
1:00:35SPEAKERNow, I mean, all that said, again, I'm not gonna do this,
1:00:37SPEAKERbut when I mentioned earlier
1:00:40SPEAKERthat my case can accommodate four radiators,
1:00:43SPEAKERin a perfect world where I had unlimited money and time
1:00:46SPEAKERto tinker with something like this,
1:00:48SPEAKERwhat if I put as many radiators at the maximum size
1:00:52SPEAKERas possible in this case, and then ran no fans on them?
1:00:57SPEAKER- That won't do what you want.
1:00:59SPEAKER- Even with that much, sir, because, I mean,
1:01:00SPEAKERI could pull it up and tell you,
1:01:01SPEAKERbut, I mean, that's like a 480, a 360, a 280.
1:01:05SPEAKERI'd have to look at the case,
1:01:06SPEAKERbut it can accommodate a shitload of radiator,
1:01:10SPEAKERbut I assume some amount of airflow is required, right?
1:01:13SPEAKER- Yeah, you could do something goofy,
1:01:15SPEAKERlike have the fans on the inside sucking in
1:01:19SPEAKERor blowing in from the inside, blowing out from the inside.
1:01:22SPEAKER- Just to kind of help dampen the sound
1:01:23SPEAKERby having them buried inside.
1:01:24SPEAKER- Yeah, but you need something to,
1:01:27SPEAKERlike if you want to have passively cooled,
1:01:30SPEAKERit's a different kind of radiator, right?
1:01:31SPEAKER- Oh, I see.
1:01:33SPEAKER- I can't remember the company.
1:01:34SPEAKERWe've talked about it before.
1:01:35SPEAKERThere was a company that used to make, Zalman maybe,
1:01:37SPEAKERused to make a tower radiator.
1:01:39SPEAKER- Zalman is a name I haven't heard in a long time.
1:01:42SPEAKER- Yeah, but they made a tower radiator
1:01:43SPEAKERthat was about 16 inches around
1:01:46SPEAKERand had fins three feet high on the side of it.
1:01:49SPEAKERAnd the pump was in the bottom of that thing
1:01:51SPEAKERand the coolant would go inside that thing.
1:01:53SPEAKERAnd you could put a little fan on top of it
1:01:56SPEAKERthat would blow air down the fins,
1:01:58SPEAKERbut it would just passively radiate heat out.
1:02:00SPEAKERNow, this was in the late 2000s,
1:02:02SPEAKERso computers are much less hot now than they are now.
1:02:06SPEAKERIf you wanted to do that now,
1:02:06SPEAKERyou'd have to drill a hole in your floor
1:02:08SPEAKERand run a bunch of pipes down there to an exchanger, yeah.
1:02:13SPEAKER- Wow, think about displacing your cooling
1:02:16SPEAKERinto another room.
1:02:17SPEAKER- So, Linus Tech Tips did this a few years ago.
1:02:21SPEAKER- Of course.
1:02:23SPEAKER- When we first started doing this podcast,
1:02:25SPEAKERI idly said, man, I'm tired of being in my office
1:02:27SPEAKERand it being 90 degrees in here.
1:02:29SPEAKERAnd somebody was like, well, this website,
1:02:31SPEAKERthis guy did a video about this
1:02:32SPEAKERand then I went and watched the video.
1:02:33SPEAKERI was like, there's no way in hell I'm doing this.
1:02:35SPEAKERThis is a disaster.
1:02:37SPEAKERBut I have joked--
1:02:39SPEAKER- What if your radiator was in your crawl space?
1:02:44SPEAKER- It would be nice to have radiant heating for the floor.
1:02:46SPEAKER- How effective are slugs at dissipating heat?
1:02:48SPEAKER- Well, it's snails.
1:02:49SPEAKER- Or snails, I mean, same thing.
1:02:51SPEAKER- They're mostly dead, so it's probably no problem.
1:02:54SPEAKERBut the bigger issue is,
1:02:57SPEAKERI don't think I want the PC to be the main heat
1:03:00SPEAKERfor the house, which is what that would end up making it.
1:03:03SPEAKERAnd also, I'm on a standing desk now,
1:03:05SPEAKERso I'd have to have some sort of hose system
1:03:07SPEAKERthat goes up and down with the desk.
1:03:11SPEAKERThis is all fraught.
1:03:12SPEAKERI'm not, this is a bad idea.
1:03:15SPEAKERFan direction, though.
1:03:18SPEAKERGenerally speaking, and this isn't,
1:03:21SPEAKERpeople are gonna have opinions about this,
1:03:22SPEAKERso please send them into the comments
1:03:24SPEAKERor post them in the Discord.
1:03:26SPEAKERI like to do air in the front and air out the back.
1:03:31SPEAKERAnd if I have a radiator on the top,
1:03:33SPEAKERI usually suck cold air in from the top
1:03:37SPEAKERand blow it out the back,
1:03:39SPEAKERpartly because these days we all have GPUs
1:03:42SPEAKERthat are giant heat engines in our top slots
1:03:45SPEAKERthat block off the bottom half of the machine,
1:03:49SPEAKERpartly because I don't like the top of my,
1:03:51SPEAKERthe bottom of my desk getting hot when I play a game.
1:03:54SPEAKERSo I used to blow,
1:03:56SPEAKERwhen the PC sat under the desk on the floor,
1:03:59SPEAKERI would blow air out the top and it was fine.
1:04:02SPEAKERNow that it's hanging under my desk,
1:04:04SPEAKERI want the air, the cool air coming in the top
1:04:07SPEAKERand blowing out the back, just so that my desk
1:04:09SPEAKERdoesn't get warm and I don't blow a bunch of hot air
1:04:12SPEAKERaround my junk when I'm sitting at the desk, but that's it.
1:04:15SPEAKER- What case do you have, again?
1:04:16SPEAKER- I'm on a fractal meshified compact,
1:04:18SPEAKERthe second generation, second version.
1:04:20SPEAKER- Is the top of that just open by default?
1:04:22SPEAKERNot open, open, but it's like mesh or, okay, yeah.
1:04:25SPEAKER- You can pop it off, it's metal.
1:04:28SPEAKERIt has a cleaning, a filter you can clean underneath there.
1:04:32SPEAKERI usually take that out and blow it out
1:04:34SPEAKERwith the air gun like twice a year.
1:04:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so this is probably my last question here,
1:04:38SPEAKERor I don't know if this is even a question,
1:04:39SPEAKERbut for reasons that are not really worth getting into,
1:04:42SPEAKERit might be best for me to mount the radiator up top.
1:04:46SPEAKERBut I currently have the solid version
1:04:48SPEAKERof the top panel on this case,
1:04:50SPEAKER'cause this whole case is just a giant black obelisk
1:04:53SPEAKERand I'd like to keep it that way.
1:04:54SPEAKER- What case is it, Brad?
1:04:56SPEAKER- It's the fractal defined seven XL.
1:04:59SPEAKERSo it comes with an alternate top panel that is mesh,
1:05:02SPEAKERthat's cut out with mesh, blah, blah, blah.
1:05:05SPEAKERI totally can mount the radiator up top,
1:05:07SPEAKERbut I kinda don't wanna have to change that panel
1:05:09SPEAKER'cause I don't want the top of the case open
1:05:11SPEAKERfor dust and sound reasons,
1:05:13SPEAKEReven though the whole point of this is to lower the sound.
1:05:15SPEAKERSo I might just have to bite the bullet
1:05:18SPEAKERand put that mesh version of the top on it.
1:05:21SPEAKER- I was gonna say some cases have
1:05:23SPEAKERa little bit of space up there.
1:05:24SPEAKERI think you're going to make your whole computer real hot
1:05:28SPEAKERif you don't have airflow through there.
1:05:30SPEAKER- This is definitely not one of those cases.
1:05:31SPEAKERThis thing is like sealed tight
1:05:33SPEAKERwithout swapping that top panel.
1:05:36SPEAKER- I got bad news for you then.
1:05:37SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah.
1:05:39SPEAKER- Also, I don't know where that panel is.
1:05:40SPEAKERIt's been two and a half years
1:05:41SPEAKERand I don't remember where I put it.
1:05:43SPEAKER- So the nice thing about fractal is if you call them,
1:05:45SPEAKERthey will happily send you a new one.
1:05:47SPEAKERIf you, you can just buy it from them,
1:05:49SPEAKERthey'll send it to you.
1:05:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I'll figure it out.
1:05:52SPEAKER- I, yeah, I would not,
1:05:54SPEAKERthe whole point of having this
1:05:56SPEAKERis that you need airflow through this thing.
1:05:57SPEAKERSo you gotta have the--
1:05:59SPEAKER- I know, I know.
1:06:02SPEAKER- But yeah, so you're going to get glass,
1:06:04SPEAKERput some glowy liquid in there.
1:06:05SPEAKERYou can call it, you can get it all fancy.
1:06:07SPEAKER- Just doing the fishbowl case.
1:06:09SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the future.
1:06:11SPEAKERThat's what the kids crave.
1:06:12SPEAKER- I don't want to see what's in there.
1:06:13SPEAKERI don't want to hear it.
1:06:14SPEAKERI don't want to know about it.
1:06:15SPEAKER- Well, okay, there you go.
1:06:16SPEAKER- I'd build the PC into the wall if I could.
1:06:19SPEAKER- I, maybe you should go to those Leon Lee desk cases.
1:06:24SPEAKERThey have, we talked about in the full nerd
1:06:25SPEAKERa couple of weeks ago, but they have a,
1:06:26SPEAKERit's like a sunken panel.
1:06:29SPEAKERThey're expensive, but it's a standing desk
1:06:31SPEAKERwith like a space for two computers in the desktop.
1:06:34SPEAKER- Oh, have they started?
1:06:35SPEAKER'Cause I've seen, I think it's Linus
1:06:37SPEAKERthat has done that custom before, right?
1:06:39SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:06:40SPEAKER- Companies are actually making that as a product now?
1:06:42SPEAKER- Leon Lee has made these for several years.
1:06:44SPEAKER- Oh, has they?
1:06:44SPEAKER- This has been around, like this is one of those things
1:06:47SPEAKERthat they sell like not a lot of every year, I assume.
1:06:49SPEAKER- Sure.
1:06:50SPEAKER- So they, but they've been doing it for a long time.
1:06:52SPEAKER- Oh God, I can't imagine how expensive these things are.
1:06:55SPEAKER- It's not like, look, it's not that much more expensive
1:07:00SPEAKERthan buying a desk, a nice standing desk in two cases.
1:07:03SPEAKERI don't know how good the standing desk is.
1:07:05SPEAKER- Yeah, it's neat that they do this.
1:07:07SPEAKERIt's not for me.
1:07:08SPEAKERIt's like, look, it's like the TV VCR combo.
1:07:10SPEAKERYou don't want to combine too much functionality
1:07:12SPEAKERinto too few devices.
1:07:14SPEAKER- Well, and also the cover is a piece of tempered glass
1:07:19SPEAKERand I don't want, like, I don't feel great about it.
1:07:22SPEAKER- That sounds real scary.
1:07:24SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, if they want to send us one,
1:07:25SPEAKERI'll test it out and let you know how it is.
1:07:27SPEAKER- 'Cause it would be really nice to put like,
1:07:30SPEAKERlike I could put my stream PC and my gaming desktop
1:07:33SPEAKERin that thing and then just have nothing else around,
1:07:35SPEAKERwhich sounds pretty nice.
1:07:36SPEAKER- From a clutter reduction standpoint,
1:07:38SPEAKERI can see that for sure.
1:07:40SPEAKER- Yeah, but I put too much crap at my desk
1:07:42SPEAKERfor the tempered glass to be a viable solution.
1:07:44SPEAKER- Yeah, also do you want your desk making noise though?
1:07:46SPEAKERProbably not.
1:07:48SPEAKER- Like my computer's quiet, man.
1:07:49SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, that's the goal.
1:07:51SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the dream.
1:07:53SPEAKERSo yeah, if you have questions, post them in the Discord.
1:07:55SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, I look forward to feedback on this episode.
1:07:58SPEAKERI know tons of people on our Discord will have opinions
1:08:01SPEAKERabout these products and best practices.
1:08:04SPEAKER- Yeah, it is much less scary than it used to be.
1:08:08SPEAKERI know some people in the Discord really dislike AIOs.
1:08:12SPEAKERWe can talk about it.
1:08:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, that's where I've been for all these years.
1:08:16SPEAKERLike I just enjoy the simplicity of something
1:08:18SPEAKERthat I know leaks are not really a realistic problem,
1:08:21SPEAKERbut like something that by definition can't leak, you know,
1:08:23SPEAKERlike you can turn the PC any which way.
1:08:25SPEAKERIt's just simpler, but also the noise
1:08:27SPEAKERis kind of driving me crazy.
1:08:29SPEAKER- Well, and to be clear, when you're doing an AIO,
1:08:31SPEAKERI would absolutely lay it on its side
1:08:32SPEAKERwithout any hesitation.
1:08:34SPEAKERIt's just the other, like you want to give it a minute
1:08:36SPEAKERwhen you fire it up for the bubbles to work out,
1:08:38SPEAKERbut yeah, it's no big deal.
1:08:40SPEAKERAnd if you're not in the Discord,
1:08:41SPEAKERyou want to get in the Discord,
1:08:42SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod,
1:08:44SPEAKERwhere for $5 a month, you know,
1:08:47SPEAKEReverything else is more expensive,
1:08:48SPEAKERbut you know what's still the same price?
1:08:49SPEAKER- What's that?
1:08:50SPEAKER- The Patreon tech for tech pods.
1:08:52SPEAKER- That's right, six years and counting?
1:08:55SPEAKER- Six years, god, we've been doing this for that long, yeah.
1:08:57SPEAKER- Well, the Discord just, I think it'll be seven years
1:09:00SPEAKERon the podcast in September, I believe.
1:09:02SPEAKER- Wild.
1:09:03SPEAKER- But I think we just passed six years on the Discord
1:09:06SPEAKERat the same price.
1:09:07SPEAKER- Yeah, same price.
1:09:09SPEAKERInflation can't beat the tech pod.
1:09:11SPEAKERIf you would like to find out how to join,
1:09:13SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.
1:09:14SPEAKERIt's like I said, it's five bucks a month.
1:09:16SPEAKERIt supports the show.
1:09:17SPEAKERWe don't take ads, so this is the way we make money
1:09:19SPEAKERat doing the show and we appreciate everyone's support.
1:09:23SPEAKERIf you, that's it, we appreciate everyone's support,
1:09:27SPEAKERbut we especially appreciate our executive producer
1:09:30SPEAKERtier patrons, including InfelicitousRips, Andrew Slosky,
1:09:34SPEAKERJordan Lippett, OctothorpeBunnyForWork, David Allen,
1:09:39SPEAKERJames Kamik, and Pantheon, makers of the HS3
1:09:41SPEAKERhigh-speed 3D printer.
1:09:43SPEAKERThank you all so much.
1:09:44SPEAKER- Thank you.
1:09:45SPEAKER- And we'll be back next week.
1:09:46SPEAKERIt's questions next week, so get your questions in.
1:09:50SPEAKERGet them in.
1:09:51SPEAKERWe love questions.
1:09:52SPEAKER- Feels like a minute since we did a Q&A.
1:09:53SPEAKERI don't know why.
1:09:54SPEAKER- It's May, a short month?
1:09:55SPEAKERNo, it's 31 days.
1:09:57SPEAKERI think it just felt weird.
1:10:00SPEAKERBut anyway, we'll be back next week with more TechPod.
1:10:02SPEAKERAs always, please consider the environment
1:10:04SPEAKERbefore printing this podcast.
1:10:06SPEAKERBye.
1:10:07SPEAKER(upbeat music)