DON’T Water Cool Your PC! - IceGiant Copper Prototype

Intel's Core i9-12900K is a beast that needs taming, and the IceGiant team thinks they might have a solution. Can ANY of our coolers keep up?

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
0:37 The Problem
1:52 The Old Version
2:47 The New Version
4:10 Results
5:39 Splave's Results
6:30 Power Requirements
8:00 360mm
9:15 Conclusion
11:25 Outro

[SleepyFen]

I definitely think manufacturers should target lower TDPs instead of going sky-high in power consumption and heat output. It's incredibly wasteful in this day and age.

[iwolfman]

I am once again throwing out there the idea for Linus Tech Tips to revisit the idea of a power efficient PC ! While it's cool to just throw more power at a rig and see what the top end of performance you can get is, the honest reality is that a vast majority of people do not need it and it only serves as one big energy waste, and turn your PC into one very expensive space heater. I would love to see a PC build where you test what great performance you can get while maintaining a moderate to low wattage, especially one that could even somewhat rival a laptop. Possibly by undervolting/ underclocking the CPU or GPU. I know you guys have done it in the past, and I would love to see it again !

[Mumantaii]

Cool to see a followup on IceGiant. Was really hyped about this technology when I saw your first video on them and I'm glad they're improving their stuff.

[lategamingwithiainjarvis]

LTT: “Don’t water cool your PC”
Also Linus: *Building a pool to also be used to cool his home’s server racks, in conjunction with Solar Panels*

[bryanbaskin]

At some point, Intel/AMD are going to run out of surface area on the socket and case for cooling and fundamentally more efficient architectures are going to enable more powerful computers that are cheaper and more reliable. It’s like the P4 era all over again. This video neatly dovetails with Anthony’s video on the end of PC modularity at a minimum and perhaps x86 as we know it. The time is coming for a significant architecture clean up.

[kyek]

Thanks for calling out the excessive wattage direction the industry is going. In an age of higher living costs (lower budgets), higher energy costs, hotter rooms (weather) we need to be going in the OPPOSITE direction! Cooler, lower power, cheaper CPUs.

[SergeyPupkoMusic]

At the rate Intel and Nvidia are going,

"We're gonna.need.a bigger breaker"

[espresso]

Stoked to see Ice Giant releasing another product. I got the aluminum model for my threadripper build and I have been incredibly happy with it. The biggest downsides are the ram clearance and you have to remove the CPU cooler to swap out any ram sticks, which can be a pain. Other than that, performance is great. Keeps my CPU below 70c when I'm rendering. Stoked to see how the final copper version will perform.

[votezoidberg]

Can we even say that this is the best gaming CPU anymore? When Top Gear would take a car around the test track to see how fast it was they would disqualify vehicles that could not drive on the road. If they didn’t have mirrors, muffler, able to go over speed bumps it would be removed from the scoreboard completely. Maybe it is time to do this with CPUs as well.

[Fat_Paws]

At this rate, pretty soon we will need to buy coolants every month for our external radiators. 100+ degree CPU temps is just plain insane. That is literally past the boiling point. You can now officially make coffee/tea with your CPU now.

[therealpbristow]

So... if the orientation of the cooler is important (because it's using gravity to return the liquid), then which orientation is it meant to be used in? 'Cos that test bench has the motherboard laying flat and the cooler physically sitting directly over the CPU - which seems like it would be optimal - but does that means it's not suitable for use in a tower case? Or is it in fact designed with the expectation of being mounted on the side of of vertical CPU in a tower case, and maybe not delivering it's best on that test-bench? We need a comparison video: Vertical versus horizontal orientation, *as well as* open versus closed-case. =:oo

[uponpaul]

I do agree with the fact that power usage and requirements are getting quite insane. On the other side I do understand it from the CPU and GPU manufacturers. Getting smaller than 5 nm, both just designing it as well as making the wafers be consistent enough is a super hard challenge. Therefore I think they are 'filling' this production issue with higher power usage and tuning the processors to that, which is I think easier than getting production stable and small enough. Going forward this will be a interesting challenge.

[watercannonscollaboration]

As I always say, the 12900KS and the 3090ti is the global warming combo

[killianf]

Remember the time that the AMD FX had a bad reputation due to their "high" TDP of 125W for the FX 8350, and nowadays it seems to be fine 🤷 So weird how time make things normal 😅

[RimaNari]

And here I was, thinking that Intel's adoption of bigLITTLE would bring on more power-efficient CPUs. Instead, things are going the opposite direction it seems.

[tonimahoni]

A GPU version of the ICE GIANT cooler would be intresting.

[thesuperrobertlol]

linus: "cooling with no moving parts"
meanwhile the fans: "am i a joke to you?"

[squidapple]

"DON’T Water Cool Your PC!" proceeds to water cool nearly every build at LTT for years to come

[TheDarkestPhoenix]

I think we're starting to plateau in terms of performance/power draw, because this same issue is occurring with GPUs as well. They're getting up to 4 slot territory to get a reasonable cooler attached and even the back plane needs cooling.

[oscarmike]

I have been watching LTT for a few years now. I just wanted to say thank you to the LTT team. I know it hasnt always smooth sailing but watching you grow brings a smile to my face. I have learned a lot from this channel (and subsequent chanels) and you always keep things fun and interesting. What has kept me a viewer over these years has been the transparency of LTT. Always remaining as honest as possible (without jeopardizing your company) with your audience. there will always be the haters, fanboys and conspiracy guys but we know to ignore them. your always gonna have those people on any platform on the internet. Keep doing what your doing guys its great. Your an amazing team. PS. linus, book a holliday you deserve one.