Building the world's first 'breathing' PC

this is my homemade bellow system with a rather modern twist and i built it a while ago as an experimental method of moving air without using fans and remarkably it works fantastically well able to shift its entire internal volume every second while barely making any noise at all and being extremely cool to watch however it was always intended to be more than just a novelty so in this video i'm going to be putting it to good use by building it into what it was always designed for a high power pc this video is sponsored by kiwiko more about them later before i get going a quick recap is in order of how this unique air movement system actually works as it's fascinating and it all hinges around the biggest challenge in making it which was to get the mover to go back and forth quietly as using a motor and pulley system was out of the question due to the noise that it would generate my first attempts were to make a silent linear motor with some magnets in a tube and some wire coils while this did work to some extent it wasn't particularly successful with the movement being judgy and weak however observing how well the magnets fitted into the tube inspired me to what would ultimately be the system by which it works which is to move a single magnet in the tube back and forth using water getting the flow to instantly reverse to make the magnet go back and forth though was a real challenge and my first attempt involved making a set of homemade solenoid valves with a focus on silent operation with no loud click they worked by using some of the magnets to direct the flow of water and at first it looked pretty promising as the magnet could be made to go back and forth with the flick of a switch and encouraged i proceeded with making the main enclosure for it which was simply made out of painted mdf with some nice glass panels the mover itself however was made out of two sheets of acrylic that were sandwiched together for rigidity with a set of bearings at each end to move it smoothly along a set of glass rods a ring of magnets in this mover's center initially repelled the magnet in the tube until it was forced within their magnetic field at which point it snapped into position and was held there very securely locking them together without actually touching unfortunately though while the direction reversed nicely thanks to some reed switches triggering a relay it overall didn't work very well at all with the motion being very weak and slow this was down to the valves simply not being strong enough to overcome the flow of water so it was time for a rethink and essentially the project was rescued by these cheap little water pumps you see unlike many pumps these having no internal circuitry results in them instantly starting and stopping when provided with power so after stringing a set of them together with half orientated to pump in one direction and the others orientated to pump in the other direction things were finally looking up as they could instantly jet water out with a significant amount of power thanks to them all working together so once it was all plumbed up it was time for the grand test and yes i was pretty excited to see it working at last yes yes look at that look at that so what's remarkable about the system is how silent it is during use and how quickly the mover changes in direction this rapid change in direction is thanks to some magnets being positioned at the ends of the tube that actually oppose the mover so it already begins to slow down before the water flow is reversed when the flow is triggered to go the other way its inertia is almost completely preserved as it just gets bounced back following the magnet in the tube as everything is magnetically coupled it all operates smoothly with plenty of shock absorption which is amazing to watch so a fascinating device to be sure but using it to cool a pc does have its own challenges notably that getting a continual and consistent flow of air out of it is going to be a bit tricky you see as it stands air is pulled in from one side at a time and pushed out of the same side it came from this would still cool something like a heatsink placed in the path of this airflow but it would repeatedly pull hot air back in harming the cooling efficiency so some kind of air valve chamber is required in keeping with the rest of the design i've made the panels for this again out of the mdf giving them a nice coat of paint for appearance with some ash veneer finishing off the edges nicely my plan here is for these valves to operate passively with only air pressure opening and closing them so to make sure that they close softly i'm gluing some soft string around each opening which will also help to make a nice seal once they're closed i've chosen foam board for the valves themselves as it's very lightweight and somewhat rigid with some little pins being used for the hinges so that they can open and close without much resistance at all so with the chamber now screwed together you can see that if the air were to be pushed in through one side it would push against the opposite valves keeping them closed with the only way of escape being through the opening in the top so in theory this should work and as there's so much empty space inside here it's perfect for housing all of the pc components as well to really test out the cooling ability of the bellow system i'm using top of the line components here with the rig being based around the very powerful amd 5950x and a zotac rtx 3080 at the time of making this video graphics cards are in short supply so a big shout out to zotac for sending this over for the build so that it can be cooled by the bellows though rather than its original heatsink i'm going to replace it with a water block and you'll see why this is important in just a moment crucial 2 have sent over one of their new 64 gigabyte ram kits which clock out at an impressive 3600 megahertz perfect for a maxed out amd based build now to keep the processor cool as well i'm using an alphacool ispare solo cpu block which amazingly has both a pump and reservoir built into it making the whole water loop much much simpler to put together as you'll see in a moment for the mounting system i'm using some aluminium right angle lengths and as these are going to be seen it makes sense to give them a polish believe it or not this is the first time i've actually used polish on aluminium in a build and i'm impressed with how nice it looks ideas are flow these rails are intended to be mounted onto the chamber's top panel helped along by another piece to hold the graphics card nice and securely the large gap here has been left for the system's radiator which is super easy to plumb up thanks to the ice bear solo taking care of so much of what makes a water loop complicated and once filled up is essentially complete with just three pipes required easy after adding two sheets of acrylic glass to the chamber the system can be lowered in place with a passive psu being added to the bottom to power it all so as you can see they aesthetically match each other really rather nicely which is great however they do need to be interfaced together for the air valve system to work properly and that's why i've made these really rather large panels it's gonna be big the cutouts in these panels are for each of the modules to be slotted into place using some brackets to secure them down the bellows themselves so are extremely tricky to get into position and i don't know how it happened but disaster the acrylic tube for the magnet has shattered and it's not as simple as just buying a new one you see the magnet fitted inside this tube miraculously well almost as if it were machined to fit by someone with a lot of skill this fit was so precise that the magnet could just drop through with absolutely no resistance yet when one end was blocked with my finger it made the drop incredibly slow due to the air taking a while to squeeze around the magnet itself to reach the other side the precision here is about 0.01 of a millimeter which is why it could literally bounce on a cushion of air in an attempt to find a replacement i've bought over 40 different tubes from various manufacturers but not a single one of them is going to be suitable as they're either too small for the magnet to even fit into at all or too large resulting in a fit that's so loose that the magnet just drops through with no cushioning even when both ends are blocked a loose fit like this would mean that the bellows would operate extremely weakly if at all so things aren't looking good and it shows how remarkable it was that the original tube the first and only one i bought unseen online worked so well with the magnets i had and ultimately resulted in the inspiration for the entire build a coincidence you decide however there is still hope you see the magnets themselves are nickel coated which has given me an idea for this i'm going to need a jar full of white vinegar into which i'm going to dip a strip of pure nickel on one side and a few bunched together on the other these strips are going to function as electrodes so after hooking them up to a power supply and mixing in some salt to increase the vinegar's electrical conductivity you can see tiny bubbles begin to form on one of the electrodes as the electricity flows between them through the vinegar as time progresses the solution gradually turns green as it takes on nickel ions that are being stripped from the electrode that's hooked up to the positive connection on the power supply this electrode is basically sacrificial which is why i used several strips for it and once they're fully dissolved into the solution it can be filtered to remove any residue leaving an emerald green liquid that's going to function as a plating solution also known as an electrolyte after adding a new electrode one that goes all the way around this time for even distribution the magnet can be suspended from a mini speaker and lowered into the center of the solution the reason why i've suspended it from a speaker is so that it can play a sine wave and vibrate the magnet rapidly just to help to disperse any bubbles that form on it for a more even finish once both the magnet and the perimeter electrode are connected to the power supply the nickel ions that are in the solution begin to attach themselves to the magnet following the flow of electricity with the speaker helping to dislodge any bubbles as more and more nickel irons get added to the magnet it slowly gets larger and my hope is to fine tune it to match one of the new rods so after a few hours it's gone a frosted silver colour partly i think due to an acid wash that i gave it earlier to make sure that it was clean enough to plate no matter though after a quick polish it's as good as new and looks at first glance identical to how it was before giving it a measure though we can see that it's been built up by 0.4 of a millimeter and testing it with one of the tubes that was initially too large for it we can observe that it now fits well enough to gain some of the cushioning effect that the original setup had and after putting the bellow system back together with the new tube and magnet it does indeed work again which is a huge relief so after fitting it to the frame more carefully this time you can see that there's one last piece to the puzzle the side intake vents these again are made out of mdf though i've rounded the external side of the vent holes with my router to make them look a bit nicer and after the usual trim up process including some additional foam buffers for silence they can be screwed in place along with a top panel to cover the radiator and with that the world's first breathing pc is complete so with it finally together it's looking absolutely ginormous but thanks to the glass it doesn't actually feel too heavy in the room because it's somewhat transparent anyway it's going to be really interesting to see whether the bellows are going to be powerful enough to push the air through the vents and cool down the system but before we try that out and test all sorts of things like thermals it's time for a quick add from this video sponsor kiwiko kiwiko makes super cool projects that are not only fun but also educational and each project has been designed to introduce kids to concepts in steam which is science technology engineering arts and maths and they're a great resource for learning with at home they offer eight subscription lines for different age groups and each monthly crate which includes everything you need to make it has its own theme to teach its core concepts with an educational magazine included that's filled with extra content to learn even more about it this tinkercrate for example teaches the science behind how animation works including the beta effect and how motion can be perceived from still images which is the fundamental way that all modern displays used to operate as for this eureka crate it explores the concepts around hand pumps including various valve systems which is similar to what we've been exploring in this very video which is super cool now kiwico have a great offer on at the moment where you can get your first month completely free and you can take advantage of it by visiting kiwico.com diy perks which you can also find linked to in the description so again to get your first month completely free visit kiwico.com diy perks okay so it's now time for the grand switch on and for those wondering um everything is plugged in through a little port on the back here and i earlier threaded the necessary cables underneath the radiator and then out through this hole sealing it with a bit of foam right so are you guys ready i've got a power button just here so let's see if it works [Music] oh yeah with the bellows activated by the system the vents do appear to be opening and closing exactly as i hoped they would with a rhythmic motion that looks very futuristic almost like alien technology from a sci-fi film the way the vents are configured allows for a continual flow of air over the components where it then goes through the radiator into which all of the system's heat is dumped and then in turn kept cool by the passing air there is a small drop in this flow whenever the mover changes in direction but for something that works passively it does appear to function surprisingly well so all this looks extremely promising and is very cool to watch but does it actually keep the system cool well it's time to do some tests now i've got my monitor here and i'm just going to plug it in with the cables i've already prepared so the first thing i'm going to do is slam it with prime95 which should stress the cpu which is again a 5950x to its absolute limit and generate a lot of heat so let's see how this goes right so it's been running for a while now and i think the maximum temperature has been reached as it is sticking at 60 degrees celsius that's pretty good especially considering this is a 16 core processor so i'm very impressed so far but what about the graphics card now it's worth noting that graphics cards can generate a lot more heat than a cpu can so this is going to be interesting amazingly the temperatures from the graphics card are equally as impressive with it topping out at a maximum of 62 degrees celsius which it appears to remain at no matter what kind of load is thrown at the system for such powerful components these results are fantastic and definitely a step up from what you could normally expect from a single radiator water cooling loop despite my previous tests indicating that it was only about on par with four large fans i think that this is because in practice the bellow system is able to push the air through the radiator fins more effectively than fans mounted directly to it could ever hope to and yet because there are some losses in the system from slight inefficiencies in the air valves there's plenty of room for improvement from this initial prototype as for the sound profile the bellows on their own aren't too distracting but the air vents do thump little which i'd like to further reduce by replacing the foam pads with small opposing magnets instead to make them completely silent even so though it's a pretty relaxing sound and has a peaceful quality to it so i think those performance results are actually quite good considering this is basically a fan replacement and i know that it's huge and not at all practical but it is a new type of cooling system and it works so i think that that's mission accomplished it's just fascinating to watch all the vents in action as well as the bellows going back and forth it just seems organic and there are some variations as well that are random in its function that just make it feel kind of alive which is quite weird but yeah so it's not super practical or anything but it definitely does what i set out to which was just to make something really unique but anyway i hope you've enjoyed this video and uh i hope you've enjoyed watching the build process as much as i've enjoyed making it and i hope you join me in my next video but other than that you've been watching diy perks and i hope to see you next time goodbye for now super cool you

Channel: DIY Perks

Views: 3,120,442

Rating: 4.9519606 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: C3GKe7eXbPE

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/fireproofcat]

DIY Perks always does really cool shit and seems like a really sweet guy. Cool to see his stuff here.

[u/HW_HEVC_Decode]

This is brilliant. I think I literally wow‘d when he started electroplating.

[u/1leggeddog]

The amount of air being pushed through the radiator is impressive.

[u/Zeroth-unit]

As someone with a chemistry background, the moment he brought out that cell with a sacrificial nickel electrode I had an inkling that he might try electroplating it but was thinking he wouldn't be crazy enough to do it. And he did.

Mad props to this guy and given how well the whole thing worked, I was absolutely floored. Just wow.

[u/fistymcbuttpuncher]

Like an Iron Lung for the PC.

[u/DaBombDiggidy]

I have nothing deep or educational to say about this other than it's a really god damn cool project. Wild that it actually worked with such beefy components too.

[u/fozters]

Damn that's original and also clever, even though A LOT larger than assumed from the preview pic.

Such a tiny cute itx board with huge lungs 8).

[u/23523536]

inb4 someone builds an external CPU pump using a heart.

[u/GhoastTypist]

Well this is what we've been needing for a little while now.

The industry has been pushing more fans or more liquid. In order to keep up with faster systems.

I really like this approach to it, not bad for a prototype and hopefully this project gives it's creator enough positive results that they want to spend more time on it making it more efficient. Maybe this can inspire more work to be put into the silent/passively cooled category.