 On multiple occasions, we have tried liquid cooling a computer with the cheapest parts we could find, be they from eBay or the local hardware store. But the problem always comes back to this. Building a loop with parts designed for something else, like say using an aquarium pump, is pretty jank. So we endeavored to track down some parts that are actually designed for cooling PCs, but are as inexpensive as the non-purpose built stuff. And thanks to the power of AliExpress, they are finally here. And a total mess. Origin PC offers beautiful custom desktops and laptops such as their EVO 15S that weighs only 4.3 pounds and is under an inch thick featuring smooth 144Hz, 1080p or 4K displays and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. Be sure to check them out at the link below. The first step on our journey was of course to source the parts. And because of that, the surprises actually started early on. I mean, little did I know that there is a massive market of off-brand water cooling gear, like brands I've never heard of like SisCooling and Barrow and My2Fang. And some of it, surprisingly, actually looks pretty legit. So naturally, we did what any sane person would do and ordered a freaking whack-ton of it. Like a whole bunch of them, including a few parts that I would describe as decent looking and a few that were not so much, just sort of like a like a auto shoddy approach. You know, fire at the wall and see what sticks. So once we had everything on order, I figured, yeah, OK, probably like a month for free delivery on a boat from China, right? Wrong. So we actually ordered most of the parts back in September of 2017. And the last one arrived in January of this year. So needless to say, that was quite the setback. While we waited, we also ended up buying a couple more odds and ends, like which radiators are you talking about? These radiators? Like these radiators and a couple of pumps. So that's why it has taken us until July, almost an entire year to actually make this video. So like, yay, free international shipping. You get what you pay for. And what exactly is it that we did get, Jake? Like, do I just like go through this stuff? I mean, yeah, go for it. Holy crap. Look at this thing. So this is just a copper plate, a piece of plexi, a gasket that doesn't even seem to be made of like any kind of malleable, like soft material. It's just hard plastic. And it's just a straight up like flat piece of copper on the bottom. This one is based on a very similar design. If you can call a flat piece of copper design, this one's almost the same. This is the same thing. This is the same thing with a different bracket. This bracket is stupider. So I guess these guys are the engineers of the dumps class. Okay, but then these look all right. The postings on the Internet, they don't give you that great of a description of what you're getting. These guys went to school. And this one actually looks not bad, too. So these are both kind of pin array style blocks that, again, are based on very similar designs. So they are direction agnostic. They just go in, pass through some fins and then come out. So is that all the CPU blocks? Oh, no, there's more. This one looks ballin'. How much was this? I think it's like 15 bucks. 15 bucks? It's cheap. Wow. I mean, I'm not including these EK fittings, of course. But like that's not a performance difference. It's nickel plated. These pumps look pretty friggin' sketch, though. Look at this thing. It's got some weight to it, so I'll give it that. It's got some weight to it. It's not just a fragile little piece of trash. But I don't know that that's necessarily meaningful. These two are basically the same, just a different top. You see this a lot when you order stuff from China, where... This is the same company as well. It's like designs that are clearly, you know, borrowing from each other or straight up produced at the same factory and then just rebranded with... Like, Chinese companies rebranding Chinese products in the same way that like international companies just rebrand Chinese products. So it turns out these radiators are actually aluminum. Okay, so heads up for you guys. You don't wanna mix metals. Aluminum plus copper equals corrosion. But the good news is that we did follow up the aluminum radiator orders. Like sometimes when you're ordering stuff from China, you don't even know exactly what it is. Like one of the... One thing we thought was a block is just an LED to go in a block. So you can get copper and brass radiators with just aluminum fins that don't touch the water for like five bucks more. Even if you're going the AliExpress water cooling route, spend the extra five bucks. Now, one thing you might notice that we didn't order any of is fittings and reservoirs. And the reason for that is that while there are some really cheap options out there, they don't affect performance. So using them in this kind of a test where we're evaluating the performance serves no purpose other than to have more potential points of failure where we can leak water onto our hardware. So we just stuck with the stuff that really affects performance, like this LED. But how much should we pay for this block? It was like five bucks. Five bucks. But then given that we probably paid about five bucks for this. It's into one of these actually. Oh really? Oh, it's the nice one. So you can actually stick little LEDs in there. So this is just LEDs for this. For blocks. For blocks, yeah, okay. Of course. No, no, I've seen this kind of thing before. Probably worth the five bucks. Yeah, it's not bad. Enough fun and haul videos for now though. We need to actually test these things. But before we can do that, we need something to compare our numbers again. Some kind of standard. Luckily, Jake keeps his test bench water cooled for some reason. So we can just use that. This is actually a pretty standard setup from one of the best in the biz, EK Water Blocks. So to cool the four gigahertz 5960X, we've got EK Supremacy EVO, made it to a 360 millimeter PE series radiator and a D5 PWM pump. And we're gonna crank that pump to 100% for the purposes of this test. Now, with the baseline test out of the way, it's time to take some of our AliExpress wonders for a spin. Now we're gonna assume that if you're buying some parts super cheap from AliExpress, you're probably buying most of them there. So because of that, we're gonna build the whole loop out of these parts. The only EK stuff we're using, again reminder, is the reservoir and the fittings. So what do you wanna start with? You know, I was thinking I really wanna try one of these just like gross flat blocks. Sure. But I think we should get- Are we gonna save that for the climax? Yeah. I think we should get like a proper- Do you wanna do like the really legit looking? Yeah, I wanna do like a baseline of our AliExpress stuff. Like the stuff that you can actually buy. Okay. I don't think you should probably buy this, but you can. This is actually cut, like have you taken this apart and put it back together or something? No. Cause this is like not an amazing design actually from everything that I know about water cooling. Yeah, and it needs like a jet plate. While Jake builds up our first AliExpress loop, let's talk pricing. That EK config that we showed first with everything included would cost you a whopping $380. I know that sounds like a lot, but for custom water cooling, that's not actually that outlandish. Now with that said, what Jake's building right now is around $90, including everything that you need, about a quarter as much. Okay, so this is it. We're on the full AliExpress loop. The, the express loop. It sounds like a train or something. The AliExpress loop with the SysCooling SCP67F, which Jake found was pretty much the best bang for the buck. And he had Ida64's FPU test running for about 20 minutes to give it a chance to reach equilibrium. And we're sitting at about 65 degrees on average. Pretty darn impressive for the price. Really, honestly, not that far off our EK setup. Okay. Now I want to see the worst case scenario. What happens when we throw this gutter trash? That one's not going to fit. Okay. It's the same thing. This gutter trash. Yeah. All right. This is my favorite type of trash. So it's done. Loop number two is set up using one of those completely flat blocks. Now our expectations for this thing, pretty freaking low. Most water blocks have channels cut or like machined or something into the base to increase their surface area because more surface area means more heat transfer. So we would think something with negligible surface area by comparison would perform very poorly. And now that it's been running for about 20 minutes on a 5960X, it's actually doing okay. Like way, way better than I expected. So conclusion time then. Custom water cooling has really evolved from the days of like basement scientists with their aquarium pumps and like, you know, weird hunks of metal that they got from like some one, that one guy in Australia that makes them and ships them around the world or whatever, to having tons of options. I mean, everything from, you know, super high end stuff that would scare away most newcomers just due to the sheer cost all the way down to thanks to the power of Chinese manufacturing and free international shipping, low end options where you can actually get reasonable performance and that coolness factor for about what you would pay for an AIO from a name brand. With that said, the performance of your AIO that would come with a warranty or even a high end Noctua Air cooler that would also come with a warranty would also be pretty good. So doing a build like this, super cool, was definitely fun to experiment. I'm just not sure if we're gonna put the Linus Tech Tips seal of approval, especially on the pumps. Please don't cheap out on your pump. Not recommended. It's not that bad. I don't recommend it. Okay. Never recommended. Well this thing with- Buy D5, nothing else. What about a DDC? Nothing else is acceptable. No? I've seen so many DDCs fail, man. Where's my D5? What about this thing? Didn't somebody give this to you? Maybe. I think so. Someone at LTX last year. LTX is like, what? You cracked it? I cracked it, and then look, I fixed it. I welded it. Oh lordy. Massdrop is back with another deal. This time on the Sennheiser OpenBacked HD58X Jubilee headphones. These were tuned by Axel Grell. Met him. Super cool for like an engineering-y German dude, by the way, of Sennheiser and Massdrop based on feedback from the community. They feature new 150 ohm drivers and a colorway inspired by the HD580s. They're clear, fast, with a dynamic sound profile, and they've got a glossy black headband, elliptical ear cups, and replaceable soft Velour ear pads. They've got a detachable six-foot cable, and you can get yours today at the link in the video description. Seriously though, Axel, cool guy. So thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. If you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Also linked down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our Community Forum which you should totally- Okay, hold on, hold on. Now I'm gonna get this. Also link down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our Community Forum... Oh no, I'm gonna make it. And our community forum. Also linked down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one which has cool shirts like this one, and our. Ah, did I get it. I don't have time for this. And our Community Forum. Last time. Last time, okay. I promise. Also linked down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum Which you should totally join Oh my god, I was waiting for that to happen. I knew it was gonna happen. Cut cut cut. Because you really should leave juggling to the professionals and a Mac user