YouTuber sets out to cool a CPU with infinite ice loop machine and actually achieves it
YouTuber mryeester, he of zany tech-tweaking antics fame, is at it again, this time creating an infinite ice-cooled PC setup. It may sound silly, it's probably hideously inefficient. But, by Jove, it actually seems to work.
The basic idea here is to use plain old water ice to cool a CPU. You can test the basic viability of that, as indeed mryeester inevitably has, by simply sticking a metal cup on top of a CPU and chucking in some ice.
In the short run, that is actually a pretty effective way to keep a CPU cool. The problem is that the ice melts pretty fast. And then you're in trouble. So, what you really want is some kind of infinite ice cooling apparatus for your PC.
That starts with a pump to pull the water away as the ice melts. Then you have the problem of topping up the ice. You could do that manually. But where's the fun—and practicality—in that?
No, some kind of ice machine is surely in order. And that's exactly what mryeester has rigged up. Essentially, a somewhat hacked up ice machine feeds a tall plastic collection tube that holds about a foot of ice, which sits atop a metal cup that in turn is placed on an aluminium block that sits on the CPU. Got that?
A water pump connected to a motherboard fan header pulls water from the cup as the ice is melted by the CPU, and pumps it into the ice machine, thereby creating an infinite loop. The machine creates new ice cubes from the water pulled from the cup.
As mryeester says, this isn't exactly the most efficient setup in terms of power consumption. Running the ice machine will significantly up overall system draw. And then there's the noise from the pump and the general precariousness of having all that makeshift kit pumping water and kicking out ice cubes right above the motherboard.
But as he says, "the fact that this works at all is blowing my mind." It appears to be actively cooling the CPU to around 40 degrees Celsius under load, which is none too shabby. Exactly how long this homebrew lashup could reasonably be expected to operate reliably is an open, and maybe redundant, question.
Instead, it's a bit of harmless fun and does actually look like something that wouldn't be all that hard—or expensive—to replicate. Not that we're actually recommending that. Not with all that water and electricity, not to mention to cost of hardware right now. Emulate these shenanigans very much at your own risk.