- Everything about this computer
is designed to do one thing beat the competition, price
or practicality be damned. RTX 3090 TI. $1,200 motherboard. Graphene-infused liquid coolant. And the centerpiece of our "so fast its kind of stupid" computer; the Intel Core i9 12900KS, a product that as far as
we can tell only exists so that Intel can still say, no matter how many asterisks, they have the fastest gaming CPU. And what do you do with
something like that? Well, you don't really bother to review it because it's never gonna make any sense. Instead, you take things one step further by making it even dumber. That's right, we have obtained the Rockit Cool Copper IHS for 12th gen. This is a product that assumes you have so much disposable income, you can not only buy the fastest thing just to have the bragging rights, but you can spend more,
risk destroying it, and all just to drop your
CPU temps by a few degrees. - [Alex] Well, like 15 some people say. - 15 degrees?
- [Alex] Yeah, 15. - Holy crap. Well this is gonna be fun then, innit? Almost as fun as telling
you about our sponsor. - [Narrator] Build Redux. Build Redux offers competitive pricing as compared to building a PC yourself. Their website makes it easy
for you to configure your build alongside their helpful support guides. Head to buildredux.com/linus and start building your PC right now. - Rockit Cools claims raise
a lot of questions for me. There's no doubt that copper's an excellent conductor of heat, or that the 12900KS is
a hot, power hungry chip that could benefit from
additional cooling, but here's the issue. Integrated heat spreaders have been made of. Holy (beep) is this one not copper? Ah, yes it is. Integrated heat spreaders
have been made of copper, basically going back as long
as I've been an enthusiast. I mean, this is a Pentium 4 from 2003. Of course you might say, but that copper has this
other stuff on top of it. But that's the thing,
that's not a problem, that's nickel plating. Nickel plating performance
coolers has been common practice for over 10 years, and
the layer is so thin that it's been well demonstrated that it doesn't have
any impact on cooling. According to Rockit Cool, it
comes down to their design which supposedly improves surface area by 9 1/2%, as well as their quality. They say that their IHS is extremely flat, which we know should have a
positive impact on our cooling. But here's the thing. Alex, I know that Intel is
mass producing these things by literally the millions, but is it conceivable that
in that mass production they're allowing their
tolerances to slip such that some random could
make it more perfectly? More accurately? - [Alex] Yeah, I really
doubt that Intel spends $33 on their or IHS. - I'm sure it's clear to everyone that neither of these
are $33 worth of copper, and both of them had to be CNC machined, so what makes one of them
more expensive to machine? - The tighter your tolerance
is, so the flatter it is, the more expensive it gets. - Why? Better machine, more time? - Both? - But then why wouldn't Intel just use a better machine at their scale? - Well, because they're
doing so much scale. They only have to make
a couple of these guys, Intel's making thousands
and thousands of those. That adds up fast. - [Linus] So they wanna go fast? - [Alex] Yeah, they wanna go fast. - Could it make that much of a difference? We can actually get some
idea by taking a closer look at the thermal paste
pattern of our stock IHS. - It looks like there was
way more pressure right in the center, which is good,
that's right where the dye is, and then around that, not so much. So I imagine this part, not
doing a whole lot of cooling. - But enough talk. Now it's time to perform surgery on the $800 CPU that I
just bought yesterday. Can you believe Intel wouldn't
send us a second sample after the review? - [Alex] What a bunch of jerks. - I know, right? (Linus huffing) There are a few different configurations that you can get your
copper IHS upgrade kit in. You can get just this and that's $33, or if you don't have any delidding tools or anything like that,
you can get the full kit for 80 U.S. dollars, which
is everything you need to take apart and reassemble your CPU. - [Alex] Well, there's no glue. You need to buy the glue separate. - Oh, you go buy silicone glue? Well, that's probably fine. - [Alex] They recommend CA actually- - CA?
- [Alex] Yeah. - I would think it'd be
too brittle. Alright. Well, we're gonna follow the instructions. (component clattering) - [Alex] Geez. - Sorry. The delidding
tool is machined delrin. Not as fancy as Der8auer and you actually have to insert your CPU and then screw it shut
in order to operate it, which is a little less user friendly, but it's also significantly lower cost. And they say the whole thing
can be done in a few minutes, and from the look of it I believe them. Wait, why am I using this thing? When I have an lttstore.com
screwdriver! Yes. The next page of the
instructions are pretty crap. It just says set a two
minute timer with a heat gun, no mention of temperatures
or anything like that. Fortunately we're fairly smart. We can figure out that we
need to melt the solder that is attaching the
original IHS to the dye. Oh, that's actually a
benefit to the delrin, it'll sap away less heat
once we clam shell it up. What are we at? - Looks like we're right
around 130 degrees, so that isn't hot enough to melt solder. Probably let free around 270 degrees, but it is gonna be
getting softer for sure. The delrin's at about
140 degrees right now, so probably don't touch it. - [Linus] We're gonna wanna
move reasonably quickly here. This seems like a crap ton of pressure. I feel like I'm ruining it. - I found on soldered CPUs, if it doesn't feel quite right when it starts moving in one direction, like it doesn't pop off, if you flip it and then push it the
other way you can kinda just strain fatigue it. - [Linus] Well, it's moving freely now, - Oh, there you go.
- so that's cool. Boop. Look at that. Beautiful. And not even that burn-y. The next step is to scrape it then, right? - [Alex] What are you scraping? - I'm gonna scrape the solder. - Okay, well first we need
to get rid of the black crap. It's one step at a time. - I told you they include a scraping tool. Man, I can't believe that
we bought this yesterday and we are already doing this to it. - [Alex] This isn't abuse,
we're making it faster. (Linus groaning) - Scraping tool just feels
like just the right hardness. Sorry, how exactly does
this tape gun work? The blade is recessed. - [Alex] You just push the thing. - Oh.
- When you have a box it goes over, you push, it comes out. - Oh, that's actually quite clever. Which is good, because
I think I paid a lot for this thing way back in the day. It's taped down. Now what? - This is cool part. I really
like how they've done this. Instead of, you know, sometimes
you have to use a razor to get the solder off - Yeah, for sure.
- and it's just terrible. Here, use these chemicals. I believe this indium and
it eats away the solder. So you just apply it, - Shut up. - spread it around, and it gets rid of it. - [Linus] What? Okay. That's pretty neat. You don't wanna get, woo, you don't wanna get that in your eyes. - [Alex] But the other way to
do this apparently is mercury, and that's a lot worse. - That's true. And a one, two, three. Gotta say, the little tissues I dispose of usually don't look like this. (Alex sighing) - [Alex] The next bit is you just wanna give it a little polish. - [Linus] Okay. - Little dab of this on some paper towel. - Oh, I thought this said
Flitz Polish, like from Poland. Oh. - [Alex] Yeah, if you kinda
look at how they did it here, they just do a little bit of the corner. - [Linus] Uh huh, yeah. - [Alex] Yeah. - Don't mind me. I'm just
polishin' my CPU, here. (CPU clicking) - That's probably good. - Ooh. Hi Brandon, how you doin'? I am really glad that I did an
accurate job of that taping, because that ended up being quite messy. - To be clear, I don't think the process
has to be that messy. - That's what she said. (Linus laughing)
(Alex sighing) Look at that. It's gorgeous. Oh, balls. Oh, it's everywhere. Oh, it's all over my hands. - I guess this is a situation where having a delrin thing would be good. That would be eating in
into aluminum right now. - Okay, I'm just getting more liquid metal on this by touching it, because my hands are
covered in liquid metal. At any rate, there's
a 12th gen thing here. 'Kay, go ahead. We put our CPU in. Whoop. We're gonna put this here. Oh God! Oh God. - [Alex] Jesus Christ. - Okay. Where'd our liquid
metal go? Oh, here it is. Whoa, no, that's too much. Oh, stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Come back. (Linus mocking bubbles) Hm, I mighta put on too much, hey Alex? - [Alex] No, that's seems good. - Unlike applying thermal
compound to your heat spreader, here it's important to have
complete coverage of the dye because every part of it has the potential to get extremely hot and any part of it that doesn't have thermal
compound coverage is a disaster. Oh man, this is, what a ride. I feel like we've waited
so long to unbox this now. Look at that, you can actually see the
tooling marks in the top. It's kinda hard to catch,
but they kinda go this way. That's not necessarily a bad thing. That doesn't mean that it's not flat. It just means that you can
see the marks a little bit. Oh, I see. So it is a little bit bigger. Yeah, I see that. Wow, Alex, I see what you mean. This yellow rectangle, it's like they didn't
even try to center it. Why? Rockit Cool includes a
nice little guide here to show you where to
apply just a little bit of liquid metal to the
underside of the IHS. Not gonna lie, this looks sick. Okay. Wait, we didn't put glue on. Oh my God that is a giant thing of CA. How are we applying this? I have an idea. Ready? (component thunking) For our CA I'm just gonna
make a puddle of CA. (Linus booping) We go ahead and just
drop it into place. Wop. And here we go. Does this feel like
absolute madness or what? - I don't know, this seems fine. Intel making a CPU's the madness. - In fairness, it does, what is it? 5.5 on - two cores.
- two cores? It's fast. - Really fast. In my testing that I did it
was doing 5.2 all core all day. Pretty great.
- Wow. Okay. - [Alex] Oh, did you CA
glue it to the thing? - [Linus] No. Oh, there it goes. - [Alex] What's that? - Liquid metal. (beep) Why don't you handle the CPU from now on? - Okay.
- Fun fact, alcohol not only dries quickly,
but it's a drying agent. - Don't do that. If you want a good ole
sandpaper wank later that's how you do it. - Okay, that's pretty cool. And the cooler we're gonna put on it is about as good as it gets until you get into Peltier
or phase change cooling. It's a fully custom loop with ample radiator space for this heat. And that bit about
graphene infused coolant, we did a whole video about it. It actually does drop the
temps a couple of degrees. So this is as good as it gets. Man, this is way more extreme than just buying the highest end parts and throwing them together. We are trying to shave every
degree off of this CPU. Moment of truth. (something mocking flatulence) Oh hey, there we go. (keyboard clicking) Do you believe this will have worked? 15 degrees is a bold claim for $33. I mean, you could spend 33
more dollars on a cooler and it wouldn't drop your
CPU temps 15 degrees. - Well, this cooler will do that. Anyway, I think it'll be around 10. I've seen a lotta people comment that it's like a 10 degree drop, - Really?
- Which is crazy. - That's also really impressive. And it booted, which is good. We haven't managed to kill it. Really Alex, Windows 11? You know the people are
gonna be mad, right? Prime95? - [Alex] Yep. - Small FFT? - [Alex] Blend. - Wait, this thing hit a
hundred degrees in a blend test? - [Alex] After like nine
minutes or something, yeah. - Really?
- [Alex] Yeah. - On custom water cooling? - [Alex] Well, it's like
240 watts sustained. - Out of the box? - Yeah.
- Wow, actually, two of the cores are at 5.5. - Yeah.
- Just like they said. Now, before we actually put
the processor under load, is a perfect time to have a look at all of our temperature
sensors and make sure that none of them are a huge
outlier, which could indicate that we didn't have adequate
coverage of our liquid metal, and it looks like this
is all in okay shape and we're ready to press go. I mean, we're gonna know almost
immediately if this worked. Wow. - Now to be clear, it
did take eight minutes for it to thermal throttle last time, but. - [Linus] I don't think
we're gonna get there. - [Alex] Yeah, we haven't hit 60 yet. - This is interesting.
For a couple of reasons. First, we can see why it's
best not to use Prime95 Blend for a stress test. That's okay. But as long as we do it both times, that's kind of flippin' incredible. It's not 15 degrees incredible, but it's a lot better
than a kick in the teeth. It's in the neighborhood just shy of 10. - [Alex] Nine degrees while
consuming 20 more watts is really impressive. - Remember, that extra
power consumption means that our cores are boosting
higher, and for longer. This is great. Right? - Yeah.
- I mean, I'm pretty stoked. - Do you know what's even more impressive? When we went for lunch
we forgot to stop it. Yeah, it's still fine. - Under 90. - It's been running for an hour now, and before after like 10 minutes
it was thermal throttling. Now it's what? 85 degrees. It's amazing. - Yeah. 90 on the hottest P-core. I can really feel the
heat comin' off it though. - [Alex] Oh yeah. - It doesn't feel like that's
just a CPU worth of heat. I mean, that's what?
Holy (beep) 300 watts? - Yeah. - That's crazy. How can you have a CPU pulling three. Ow, the freakin' VMR heat sink is. Where's my thermal camera? - Oh yeah, I guess there's
no fans pointed at that 'cause it's just a test bench. - Yeah, well I didn't think it was gonna be pushin'
300 flippin' watts. - Those poor VRMs are putting like 250 amps through them right now. - The PCB is at 72 degrees. What? What are you? Oh, network
switch. UPS. A power brick. I need to take this thing home and just play with it with my kids. This thing is so cool. - [Alex] Alright, do you
wanna run a couple more tests? - I'd love to. BMW's a pretty short
blender render though, hey? - Yeah, but it allows us to see if it runs faster in thermal
velocity boost range. - Mm, right. - So, 1 minute 28 to beat, and the maximum temp was 95 degrees. It's really fast, yeah.
- It's really fast. - [Brandon] So that there
is about 10 degrees better. - Oh yeah, I guess that's
a good point, Brandon. That actually is 10 degrees
better as advertised. Here it is. 75 versus 82 degrees. Okay, only eight degrees, but
that's at higher power draw. So wait, if it's higher power draw was the result even any different though? - [Alex] It was one second better. - One second faster. But then by the time you're
spending $800 on your CPU, you're probably spending
a total of around 3 grand, 3,500 on the whole machine, what's another 40 bucks
for one second better? - And you could over clock it now. There's enough head room that if we want. - Do we go for 5.6? - I don't see why not. - Do we have XTU on here? - Yeah, of course we do. XTU shows us just how
good this CPU has binned. I have the same profile that's pretty much exactly the same clocks as this was stock, and that was pulling about 350, 400 watts. - Should I just push
everything up 100 megahertz and see what happens? - Yeah. (Linus gasping) Current limited. So we're gonna need to
up our voltage a bit. Do 0.1, that's pretty safe. - It's amazing how close to the sun Intel is flying with this thing. I just wanna see if it
actually hits that frequency. - [Alex] No, it's slower. - Okay, definitely gonna
take some fine tuning to get this thing to run
any faster than stock, but it's cooler. Alright, you wanna do a game test? - [Alex] Yeah. For our tests I chose
"Shadow Of The Tomb Raider" and "Forza," just because they give you what the CPU is out outputting. 'Cause this CPU's so fast that everything's GPU bound pretty much. - That is some killer coil
whine on this 3090 TI. (Linus mocking coil whining) I mean, that's what happens
when we have 450 watt, or it's rumored they could be even higher for the next gen GPUs. - This computer,
legitimately, if you have bad, not up to code wiring in your
house, it might burn down. - But look at these reflections. 110 FPS. - That's exactly the same as
before, but it's GPU bound. We actually got five more FPS on the CPU. That's a win. - If we had a faster GPU
we'd get five more FPS. - Yeah. - And a 378. - We'll worry about CPU game. - And 237. - That's seven FPS higher. (Linus grunting) And the average FPS is
exactly the same again. - So there you have it. If you want every last
little bit of performance, you can buy one of these. Or if you want almost as good,
you could spend way less. Oh, and you could check out our sponsor. - Ting Mobile. Do you like saving money? Ting Mobile's a low cost carrier with rates to help you do just that. Almost every phone on the market
will work with Ting Mobile, and they have the perfect
plan for everybody, no matter what your needs are. Start with the unlimited talk and text with their flex plans
charging just $5 per gigabyte. Their Set 12 plan with 12 gigs
of data is only $35 a month, and if you need it, unlimited
data plans are $45 a month. You can even share your
data on a family plan with all those ungrateful
children you have and save even more. Even with those saving, you still get nationwide coverage
and award-winning support. In fact, consumer
reports named Ting Mobile their number one carrier in America, and that's a big country. Check them out at linus.ting.com and receive 25 bucks credit. - If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out this one
where we did subzero cooling. It was fun.
I bet most of the improvement is from the LM being a much thinner interface than than the stock indium solder and the replacement IHS doesn't really do much(especially if you just lapped the stock IHS).
I would rather get the ihs which is the bottom part of a block.