The Experiment with Concrete Cooling

As we sat at our workbench, surrounded by various components and tools, we decided to try out an unconventional method for cooling our computer's CPU. The idea was to use concrete as a coolant, taking advantage of its high heat capacity and ability to transfer heat into the surrounding environment. We had heard that concrete could be used in liquid cooling systems, but nobody seemed to have explored this approach before.

We began by creating a makeshift radiator using a block of concrete. We carefully placed the CPU onto the block and secured it in place, making sure not to touch any of the internal components. Next, we attached a pump to the system, which would circulate the coolant through the tubes and back into the CPU. As we worked, I couldn't help but think about how this idea had been overlooked for so long. Why hadn't anyone thought of using concrete in liquid cooling systems before?

We carefully filled the radiator with water, making sure not to overfill it. The cool part was that the concrete block would act as a thermal mass, absorbing and releasing heat into the surrounding environment. We also noticed that the coolant seemed to be behaving strangely, with small flecks of debris floating around the inside of the tubes. It was almost like there was an inner channel of movement, but around the outside of the tubes, nothing seemed to be happening.

As we continued to experiment, we discovered that the CPU temp was actually dropping significantly. We were seeing temperatures as low as 28 degrees Celsius, which is a significant improvement over our previous results with just water cooling. The concrete block seemed to be doing its job, absorbing and releasing heat into the surrounding environment. It was an incredible feeling, knowing that we had stumbled upon something new and innovative.

However, not everything was perfect. We did notice that the concrete block was taking on a strange color, almost like it was getting stained by some unknown substance. And when we turned off the pump, the coolant seemed to be behaving strangely, as if it was still trying to circulate even without the pump's help. It was clear that this system was not yet fully understood and required further experimentation.

Despite the setbacks, we were excited about the potential of concrete cooling. We had seen significant improvements in our CPU temps and couldn't wait to see what other benefits this technology could offer. And as I looked around at our makeshift workshop, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. We had taken on a challenge and come out on top.

Our Experiment with Concrete Cooling

In the world of computer hardware enthusiasts, it's not uncommon to see people pushing the boundaries of what's possible with their systems. But one approach that had never been tried before was using concrete as a coolant. The idea seemed crazy at first, but after some experimentation and tinkering, we discovered that it could be surprisingly effective.

One of the benefits of using concrete cooling is its ability to transfer heat into the surrounding environment. Unlike traditional liquid cooling systems, which rely on convection or conduction to cool the CPU, concrete can absorb and release heat through a process known as thermal massing. This means that the concrete block will slowly absorb heat from the CPU during periods of high activity, only to release it back out when the temperature cools down.

Another advantage of using concrete cooling is its ability to reduce noise levels. Unlike traditional liquid cooling systems, which can be noisy due to the pump and fans required to circulate the coolant, concrete cooling is relatively quiet. This makes it a great option for those who want to build a silent system without sacrificing performance.

Despite these benefits, there are also some downsides to using concrete cooling. For one, it requires a significant amount of material, which can be expensive. Additionally, the concrete block may need to be replaced periodically due to wear and tear or other factors. And finally, there's always the risk that the concrete will stain or discolor over time, affecting its performance.

Our Hands-On Experience

As I looked at our makeshift setup, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and curiosity. We had taken on an unconventional approach to liquid cooling and come out with some impressive results. The CPU temp was dropping significantly, and we were seeing improvements in our system's overall performance.

But as I also looked around at the mess we had created, I couldn't help but think about how this idea had been overlooked for so long. Why hadn't anyone thought of using concrete in liquid cooling systems before? It seemed like a no-brainer, but maybe that was because it had never been done before.

One thing that struck me was the smell of concrete. It's a strong odor that can be overpowering at times. But despite this drawback, I couldn't deny the effectiveness of our system. We were seeing significant improvements in our CPU temps and overall performance, and that was all that mattered.

As we continued to experiment with our concrete cooling setup, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. We had taken on a challenge and come out on top. And who knows? Maybe one day, this technology will become mainstream and we'll see more people using concrete cooling in their systems.

The Future of Concrete Cooling

As we look to the future, it's clear that concrete cooling is an area worth exploring further. With its unique properties and benefits, it has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach liquid cooling systems. But for now, it remains a relatively unknown technology that only a select few have tried.

One of the next steps for us will be to refine our design and improve upon our results. We'll need to experiment with different materials, shapes, and sizes to see what works best. And we'll also need to investigate ways to mitigate some of the drawbacks associated with concrete cooling, such as staining and discoloration.

Despite these challenges, I'm excited about the potential of concrete cooling. It's a technology that has the potential to make a real difference in the world of computer hardware. And who knows? Maybe one day, we'll see it become mainstream and change the way we approach liquid cooling systems forever.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennow whether it's whiskey orange juice or mountain dew i guarantee you if it's in fluid form somebody somewhere has filled up a loop with it cooled their computer and posted their results online so given how done to death this concept is i really never thought that we'd end up exploring the whole like weird or wacky exotic coolants concept that is until i read a comment from one of our viewers jorar lagerstet who suggested that we try using concrete now hold on i know what you guys are thinking but based on some of our preliminary testing i have reason to believe that this may actually work over the last couple of days alex has put together all the materials that we're going to need to build what i believe is going to be the world's first concrete cooled gaming pc and this video is brought to you by honey honey is the free browser extension that helps you save money at popular sites like oh i don't know amazon ebay and more by finding you the best coupon codes so go over to joinhoney.com ltt and get it now all right so the first thing we're gonna need is some hardware so we gathered up the parts for a pretty sweet modern gaming pc here we've got ourselves a uh core i7 9700k uh 16 gigs of memory we've got uh rtx uh 2080 not too shabby i mean the thing is if we're going to be doing a test like this we want to use something that's representative of a high performance gaming machine because if you use all low power stuff and then you end up with really great thermal results then all you've managed to demonstrate is that low powered hardware produces less heat and doesn't run as hot as high performance stuff so like what's the point of that right exactly which one is this the master case something really yeah oh the maker 5t oh this is an older one they did a bunch of um sponsored stuff with it oh no it's not actually locked is it um can we unlock it from the inside okay my left arm's a little skinnier than my right for no reason at all well problem solved thermaltake wins by default power for the motherboard there we go then if this works i'm going to be just it really shouldn't but then like you can't deny the initial testing yeah you really can't we weren't even gonna do this video yeah people might be surprised how many things we try and just never makes it to video now normally these days we use a triple 120 millimeter radiator but again if alex's calculations are correct we should be able to get away with just a double and get similar or even better results so this is it for our build you know it's actually got kind of like an old-school charm to it i like it that is the heaviest bag of coolant i have ever seen before oh wow 34 kgs one part quick creep mortar cement two and a quarter to three parts masonry sand yeah we're we're not uh putting sand in there well yeah obvious reasons yeah that'd be stupid okay i'll bring this guy i'll uh i'll get a bucket of water okay what did you need my health card exactly i don't know for whatever reason i thought we'd need two people want to like sort of hold it and make sure but this is actually working pretty well do we even need such a big mixer we need like a liter of concrete well um have you ever made concrete before yes actually it's been a while though now that i think about it yeah just make sure we have enough yeah i think it needs more concrete okay i mean if we want to take advantage of the cooling potential of it then we have to make sure we actually have enough concrete in there okay that's starting to look kind of closer look we're a tech channel how the pros you want concrete tips you watch the concrete channel just look at this yeah this will be great all right so i guess let's get a baseline reading with water first oh right i was just gonna start putting the concrete in no ah shoot right yeah good call good call and that way we can make sure the system actually even works too you know it's funny you seem to be expressing a fair bit of skepticism about this whole idea but need i remind you that you were the one who did the initial testing like look at this hey it posted nice okay so we've got working hardware now let's just see if we can boot into windows so we're at about 35 to 40 degrees idle let's go ahead and start our stress test here okay pretty good that's like about what i'd expect so 55 to 60 degrees so everything seems to be working normally so it seems like it's basically leveled off like we could run it for a while longer but we're just at 62 degrees maximum yeah this is exactly what we'd expect yeah all right let's drain it we want to blow it as much of the water as we can so that we don't have i mean obviously the concrete is just concrete and water so a little bit of extra water isn't going to kill it but we don't want to get our ratio off you know i'm beginning to have some second thoughts i need to be a bit water here hold on a second look at this as it moves you can actually see it turn more liquid that's what you were saying was supposed to help us right see that like you can see it's really solid but as it moves it actually turns to a liquid so you can see the reservoir is actually filling up a lot better than we expected well than i expected anyway i don't know what your expectations were so i am more than halfway done check this out oh yeah and what's crazy is you can actually see that even though it's clearly a liquid because it's flowing in there it's kind of solid right now how's that gonna affect things when we get the pump hooked up uh we might need to power cycle it a couple of times but it also might just work for those wondering this is why we use half inch tubing because you're gonna need a pretty thick with two c's tube in order to get concrete through it so uh how how do i do this without making a mess oh the tubes yeah oh that's not a problem spray it down with some water and then just give it a wipe down with this i mean it's not going to be perfect but yeah yeah for sure um oh this is exciting so we've got two pieces of tubing filled so we can go ahead and attach the pump so alex this is great i've got two of the tubes on already and i can actually attach the other one to the rez right now oh nice so hey i guess this this the uh the moment of truth so when we do get the uh the heat and the pump going it should like make it more liquidy and just kind of get her on through but uh these are like the heaviest tubes i think i've ever felt and that that looks really thick in there oh that sound do you hear the pump wait oh uh it's moving it it sounds questionable but uh crap i think you're all right is it gonna boot though no i already posted you have got to be kidding me this shouldn't work okay so hold on a second i was pretty scared up to now why does this work can you are you seeing this no no the tubes like are you seeing this okay so we're idling moving finally at 24 we're doing 40 hold on check this check the step 28 maximum uh no way start we jumped like right up to like 52 four wait what do you mean 52 you mean on the other one yeah on the last one we jumped like holy 50 in that even though the coolant is moving like you can clearly see there's flecks that aren't it's almost like there's an inner channel of movement but around the outsides of the tubes it doesn't move at all right you know maximum 48 degrees so like we can leave this for a bit the thing about water cooling is that normally you only get heat being transferred at the block and at the rad yeah because like the great thing about water is that has such a high heat capacity right yeah well that's exactly why water is supposed to be the best thing for liquid cooling well but the thing is is that concrete is sort of like a ceramic of sorts but a ceramic that you can like have sort of flowing around right so it not only is like heating up there and there but it's also like getting into the concrete that can deposit the heat into the water all along here and then like all along here it'll be just taking that heat away that makes so much sense that's why nobody likes having like a concrete floor in their bedroom like when you get out of bed and you step onto a concrete floor immediately it draws all the heat away from your feet and like same thing with like a basement then that's why your basement never gets hot in the summer so why has nobody ever explored this before we are sitting right now at anywhere from 49 to 50 degrees celsius that is a significant improvement and if you look at this the cpu temp is actually at 28 degrees that's a 10 degree delta from just water so this is incredible i mean it doesn't look great i mean we could we could clean it up a fair bit yeah everything but you know it doesn't look amazing but the results totally speak for themselves i mean is it high five time i think so just wow my hands are kind of cold from working with the concrete which makes sense again like that's why your hands get cold when you work with it like it's so obvious now honestly you have to come see this what's up uh just just come along it's uh okay so i'll be back kind of bad things hold on oh no it's not the concrete pc is it you know how we just kind of left it last night yeah because like you know oh my god it's not running yeah i think we had like a brownout or something last night oh no yeah uh oh crap this like doesn't bend but like i don't know if you can see in there but this is clearly problematic yeah like we we could maybe try uh turning it on and seeing if it'll go but oh i don't think that's a very good idea no shoot okay so we've definitely identified the downside to concrete cooling but that kind of comes with the territory with any sort of enthusiast grade solution and i don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to have a ups so given that we got a 10 degree improvement in our cpu temps i'm still comfortable recommending it we have certainly seen computer hardware aficionados do more crazy things for less benefit than that speaking of more for less our sponsor for today's episode dollar shave club dollar shave club is the place to go to get more great bathroom supplies for less and they've got some special offers on right now for just five bucks so you can get their shower shave or oral starter set that's right guys dollar shave club has way more than just shaving supplies now so the shave starter set comes with the executive razor and a trial size tube of their dr carver shave butter the oral starter set comes with their weighty toothbrush and a trial size version of their toothpaste and the shower starter set comes with three trial sized versions of their amber lavender body cleanser citrus and hawaiian ginger face cleanser and sage and black pepper shampoo after the starter set the restocks will be regular sized products at their regular pricing so go try it out it's dollarshaveclub.com linus we're gonna have that linked below so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description actually hold on what was it uh um commercial grade quick crete uh type mcs uh that's the one we need to make sure we have that linked below also linked in the video description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which is totally worth a joinnow whether it's whiskey orange juice or mountain dew i guarantee you if it's in fluid form somebody somewhere has filled up a loop with it cooled their computer and posted their results online so given how done to death this concept is i really never thought that we'd end up exploring the whole like weird or wacky exotic coolants concept that is until i read a comment from one of our viewers jorar lagerstet who suggested that we try using concrete now hold on i know what you guys are thinking but based on some of our preliminary testing i have reason to believe that this may actually work over the last couple of days alex has put together all the materials that we're going to need to build what i believe is going to be the world's first concrete cooled gaming pc and this video is brought to you by honey honey is the free browser extension that helps you save money at popular sites like oh i don't know amazon ebay and more by finding you the best coupon codes so go over to joinhoney.com ltt and get it now all right so the first thing we're gonna need is some hardware so we gathered up the parts for a pretty sweet modern gaming pc here we've got ourselves a uh core i7 9700k uh 16 gigs of memory we've got uh rtx uh 2080 not too shabby i mean the thing is if we're going to be doing a test like this we want to use something that's representative of a high performance gaming machine because if you use all low power stuff and then you end up with really great thermal results then all you've managed to demonstrate is that low powered hardware produces less heat and doesn't run as hot as high performance stuff so like what's the point of that right exactly which one is this the master case something really yeah oh the maker 5t oh this is an older one they did a bunch of um sponsored stuff with it oh no it's not actually locked is it um can we unlock it from the inside okay my left arm's a little skinnier than my right for no reason at all well problem solved thermaltake wins by default power for the motherboard there we go then if this works i'm going to be just it really shouldn't but then like you can't deny the initial testing yeah you really can't we weren't even gonna do this video yeah people might be surprised how many things we try and just never makes it to video now normally these days we use a triple 120 millimeter radiator but again if alex's calculations are correct we should be able to get away with just a double and get similar or even better results so this is it for our build you know it's actually got kind of like an old-school charm to it i like it that is the heaviest bag of coolant i have ever seen before oh wow 34 kgs one part quick creep mortar cement two and a quarter to three parts masonry sand yeah we're we're not uh putting sand in there well yeah obvious reasons yeah that'd be stupid okay i'll bring this guy i'll uh i'll get a bucket of water okay what did you need my health card exactly i don't know for whatever reason i thought we'd need two people want to like sort of hold it and make sure but this is actually working pretty well do we even need such a big mixer we need like a liter of concrete well um have you ever made concrete before yes actually it's been a while though now that i think about it yeah just make sure we have enough yeah i think it needs more concrete okay i mean if we want to take advantage of the cooling potential of it then we have to make sure we actually have enough concrete in there okay that's starting to look kind of closer look we're a tech channel how the pros you want concrete tips you watch the concrete channel just look at this yeah this will be great all right so i guess let's get a baseline reading with water first oh right i was just gonna start putting the concrete in no ah shoot right yeah good call good call and that way we can make sure the system actually even works too you know it's funny you seem to be expressing a fair bit of skepticism about this whole idea but need i remind you that you were the one who did the initial testing like look at this hey it posted nice okay so we've got working hardware now let's just see if we can boot into windows so we're at about 35 to 40 degrees idle let's go ahead and start our stress test here okay pretty good that's like about what i'd expect so 55 to 60 degrees so everything seems to be working normally so it seems like it's basically leveled off like we could run it for a while longer but we're just at 62 degrees maximum yeah this is exactly what we'd expect yeah all right let's drain it we want to blow it as much of the water as we can so that we don't have i mean obviously the concrete is just concrete and water so a little bit of extra water isn't going to kill it but we don't want to get our ratio off you know i'm beginning to have some second thoughts i need to be a bit water here hold on a second look at this as it moves you can actually see it turn more liquid that's what you were saying was supposed to help us right see that like you can see it's really solid but as it moves it actually turns to a liquid so you can see the reservoir is actually filling up a lot better than we expected well than i expected anyway i don't know what your expectations were so i am more than halfway done check this out oh yeah and what's crazy is you can actually see that even though it's clearly a liquid because it's flowing in there it's kind of solid right now how's that gonna affect things when we get the pump hooked up uh we might need to power cycle it a couple of times but it also might just work for those wondering this is why we use half inch tubing because you're gonna need a pretty thick with two c's tube in order to get concrete through it so uh how how do i do this without making a mess oh the tubes yeah oh that's not a problem spray it down with some water and then just give it a wipe down with this i mean it's not going to be perfect but yeah yeah for sure um oh this is exciting so we've got two pieces of tubing filled so we can go ahead and attach the pump so alex this is great i've got two of the tubes on already and i can actually attach the other one to the rez right now oh nice so hey i guess this this the uh the moment of truth so when we do get the uh the heat and the pump going it should like make it more liquidy and just kind of get her on through but uh these are like the heaviest tubes i think i've ever felt and that that looks really thick in there oh that sound do you hear the pump wait oh uh it's moving it it sounds questionable but uh crap i think you're all right is it gonna boot though no i already posted you have got to be kidding me this shouldn't work okay so hold on a second i was pretty scared up to now why does this work can you are you seeing this no no the tubes like are you seeing this okay so we're idling moving finally at 24 we're doing 40 hold on check this check the step 28 maximum uh no way start we jumped like right up to like 52 four wait what do you mean 52 you mean on the other one yeah on the last one we jumped like holy 50 in that even though the coolant is moving like you can clearly see there's flecks that aren't it's almost like there's an inner channel of movement but around the outsides of the tubes it doesn't move at all right you know maximum 48 degrees so like we can leave this for a bit the thing about water cooling is that normally you only get heat being transferred at the block and at the rad yeah because like the great thing about water is that has such a high heat capacity right yeah well that's exactly why water is supposed to be the best thing for liquid cooling well but the thing is is that concrete is sort of like a ceramic of sorts but a ceramic that you can like have sort of flowing around right so it not only is like heating up there and there but it's also like getting into the concrete that can deposit the heat into the water all along here and then like all along here it'll be just taking that heat away that makes so much sense that's why nobody likes having like a concrete floor in their bedroom like when you get out of bed and you step onto a concrete floor immediately it draws all the heat away from your feet and like same thing with like a basement then that's why your basement never gets hot in the summer so why has nobody ever explored this before we are sitting right now at anywhere from 49 to 50 degrees celsius that is a significant improvement and if you look at this the cpu temp is actually at 28 degrees that's a 10 degree delta from just water so this is incredible i mean it doesn't look great i mean we could we could clean it up a fair bit yeah everything but you know it doesn't look amazing but the results totally speak for themselves i mean is it high five time i think so just wow my hands are kind of cold from working with the concrete which makes sense again like that's why your hands get cold when you work with it like it's so obvious now honestly you have to come see this what's up uh just just come along it's uh okay so i'll be back kind of bad things hold on oh no it's not the concrete pc is it you know how we just kind of left it last night yeah because like you know oh my god it's not running yeah i think we had like a brownout or something last night oh no yeah uh oh crap this like doesn't bend but like i don't know if you can see in there but this is clearly problematic yeah like we we could maybe try uh turning it on and seeing if it'll go but oh i don't think that's a very good idea no shoot okay so we've definitely identified the downside to concrete cooling but that kind of comes with the territory with any sort of enthusiast grade solution and i don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to have a ups so given that we got a 10 degree improvement in our cpu temps i'm still comfortable recommending it we have certainly seen computer hardware aficionados do more crazy things for less benefit than that speaking of more for less our sponsor for today's episode dollar shave club dollar shave club is the place to go to get more great bathroom supplies for less and they've got some special offers on right now for just five bucks so you can get their shower shave or oral starter set that's right guys dollar shave club has way more than just shaving supplies now so the shave starter set comes with the executive razor and a trial size tube of their dr carver shave butter the oral starter set comes with their weighty toothbrush and a trial size version of their toothpaste and the shower starter set comes with three trial sized versions of their amber lavender body cleanser citrus and hawaiian ginger face cleanser and sage and black pepper shampoo after the starter set the restocks will be regular sized products at their regular pricing so go try it out it's dollarshaveclub.com linus we're gonna have that linked below so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description actually hold on what was it uh um commercial grade quick crete uh type mcs uh that's the one we need to make sure we have that linked below also linked in the video description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which is totally worth a join\n"