Water Cooling a Network Switch! #Helpful Post

recent recently Alex and I shot a video

assembling what is the very first Linus

Media Group manufactured CPU water block

now of course our objective though in

all of that was not to build a CPU water

block because quite frankly we could

call up our friends at alpha cool decays

basically anyone and they would do a

much better job of it than we did no

thanks yeah none taken

the objective was for us to water cool a

red 8k camera but baby steps right so

this was doing something pretty normal

where we could basically clone a Chinese

design and then just put it on the CNC

today we kick things up a notch

this we're gonna water cool something a

little unusual our ten gigabit twelve

port network switch from Netgear that

was actually the first 10 gigabit piece

of equipment that we've got well not

counting like network cards like a

switch

the hot docs uses the Ergo docks design

which keeps you comfortable typing away

for long periods of time and features

qmk firmware and hot swappable key

switches check it out at the link below

so this is it they don't get their

network switch anymore in the camera

again

yep just don't plug it yep alright well

- oh crap we were supposed to do the

sound test first that's kind of the

whole point if you guys it's really loud

yeah this is gonna be a very inexact

unscientific test here fifty six

decibels you're on boot-up okay let's

water cool it

how much does Steve pay us for all this

product placement that he gets on our

Channel like nothing so the reason that

network switches are really loud and run

really hot is not necessarily because

the hardware inside them it has a ton of

power draw or anything like that it's

because cooling them is a real challenge

most network switches even at the

prosumer level are in what's called a

single u which is the I don't know the

universal unit that's where the U comes

from I'm just kidding I made all of that

up for height in a rack so that means

you can only use these wimpy 40

millimeter fans and a lot of the time

you also don't have a lot of ventilation

holes for whatever reason no it's funny

I actually brought my own handle because

I was using this for something before we

started so I can help oh man I just

stripped that dude that took a long time

I'm gonna go get a bigger screwdriver oh

there's the one he stripped

oh bloody hell I just tricked this one

to see I just had to go in the street so

my mom always said what I'm actually

really looking forward to this I have

it's it's a funny thing because like

computers the first thing I do with them

is open them up like laptops and stuff

but it's never occurred to me to open up

our 10 gig networks which is this one oh

oh there we go up and back

whoo holy crap there's a lot of stuff to

pull in here

what is this are they ripping us off is

there another portal put on the front

maybe they're just afraid of having it

be 13 plot so here's our power supply

that we're definitely not going to touch

or even get close to so my intention had

been to keep it 1u mountable though oh

okay

yeah but then just have like tubing out

like quick connects or something and

then like an external rad okay I mean

that's one option I'm not married to it

though

for whatever reason in my mind I was

picturing kind of like this goes on here

yeah and we just like cut two holes for

tubing and then mount a rat like right

here like full like like engine block

showing through the top of the hood

muscle car muscle switch then I guess if

you really wanted to we could put like

some tea connectors in there so you can

make it a one you have it go out the

side so it looks like every one of these

heat sinks is hard mountain so there's

screws going in from the bottom of the

PCB in this whole mainboard needs to

come out before we're gonna be able to

remove any of this now to be clear this

is not as expensive as a red camera but

this is still today what like an $800

Network switch or something like that I

have no clue yeah let's be careful with

it cuz I can't remember how much it

costs either it's not cheap though I

almost wonder if we could just get away

with putting little copper things on

here sort of like you said but then run

a heat pipe just straight across all of

them if we used a ball nose bit that was

the right size we could cut a channel

right in the top of it the right size

for the heat pipe yep and then just

solder it on

and and then we managed to spread the

heat out that way okay and that way

we've just got this big spreader that'll

carry the heat theoretically hopefully

towards our cooling yeah okay wait a

minute

what Oh soldered on there's no way how

could they possibly be that's gonna be a

pain in the butt should I go get the

soldering iron yeah all right what do

you think the chances are that they're

soldered on and then epoxy it underneath

I was just thinking well we do have a

way how hard do you think it is just

snip those Oh easy as pie

I should have been wearing eye

protection for that Brandon you're

wearing glasses right yeah I think we

can get in there and just give her like

a little snip you got to be kidding me

oh you you're doing it you actually did

it you actually did that works so well

everybody's got our production

everybody's going to be screaming so

much like they got so mad when I just

like hacked off the DVI connector and

that's like a bunch of pins that one

eight over there and the lens over there

this is so dumb what we do out yeah not

bad so you got a couple challenges these

look like they're up a little high so we

might end up having to kind of go around

them also not all these holes came clear

so we might have to either pop them back

out or actually desolder them properly

if we want mounting points for our block

yeah your copper slab to cover it is

probably the simplest way here's our

main CPU block and then we do a short

heat pipe here and a long heat pipe here

this is actually going to be pretty

difficult yeah I don't know why I wasn't

thinking it would be difficult but it's

going to be quite difficult

can we can we do this where I actually

here hold on hold on hold on can we can

we pretend that I had something to do

with this I'm like oh god what did you

do okay you can do it so what did you do

that over the last week or so he created

this fantastic well I mean what would

you call this model yeah just like a

little model today we have the switch

here all of the critical measurements

for our water cooling is in there and

you ended up buying new calipers for

that is that right yeah no it's the

Alex's calipers and these are really

fancy because there's very beautiful and

expensive we have problems in the past

where I would measure a bunch of things

and error would stack up so yes there

were a couple problems that we had to

solve here so the first is that I was

pretty concerned that having this many

heat sources on one heat pipe would

cause problems so we have this paper

here that sort of solved this for us

which is an investigation of thermal

characteristics on a center of wick heat

pipe with double heat sources basically

tells us you want your heat sources to

be as close to the condenser as possible

so our condenser is effectively this

segment of the heat pipe right here

where it will be thermal epoxy to this

copper plate which is going to be

water-cooled then I guess other things

Jonathan from a sentence ceiling

contacted us and we have a heck of a

range like he's just he's just been

raining over Ang's on us so so we have

better Oh rings this yeah

and also his card stock is amazing like

look at this it's quality yeah can we

get some of this no and yeah we have new

o-ring loop so basically nothing can go

yeah well things can go wrong but that's

what we're about to get to the hard part

though is that we have to actually

machine this so how do you machine a

rounded groove so we have a ball nosed

and mill mm-hmm so that's just like it's

round on the end and you

kind of kinda just like that which was

this was like surprisingly hard to get

to work properly uh-huh

so big shout out to CJ from Autodesk he

really it's gonna be like half a sketchy

one because we can't go any lower than

seventy eight thousand rpm on our CNC

router so really we should be using a

mill for this we should be using a mill

for this we don't have a mill because

they're expensive yes when you're going

to cut metal you need to make sure that

every single time that the tooth comes

around you're actually like cutting out

a chunk of metal or it's just gonna rub

and it's gonna burn it out really fast

so since we can't make the tool spin

slower we need to run it faster being

safe right yeah I don't want people

yelling at us about our CNC

do you want to plug in the air

compressor yeah I'd love to

we do have actual mist cooling now so

everyone that's saying you should have

cooling we already have to believe well

you can definitely see the shmoo here so

is this just getting like more and more

legit every time we do a video yeah

basically this is leaking

yeah it got dropped so we're ready yep

can i press go

I like to feel like I'm helping and

that's the tool that we have so yeah go

that is not that clean-looking No

ah when we're done so what happened

there was the piece of copper that we're

trying to cut shifted which means that

the entire tool path that Alex laid out

is now offset by about three-quarters of

the centimeters so it's possible that we

would have ended up with something

usable but our thermal transfer is not

going to be great I mean if it had held

down we would have something here and

here anyway

I could that's really bad for the tool

and we have to make four of them and

we're back this time with a bit of a new

plan so now we have bolted our copper

plate down to the bed we have also made

some Canadian engineering repairs to our

reservoir down here it no longer leaks

thanks to some hand-mix epoxy and we

have done away with our plan to make

rounded grooves because we don't have a

mill we only have a router so why don't

we just let the work speak for itself

instead of telling them what's gonna

happen I can press go now right eh

let's see the finished product so this

is going to be the top of one of our

blocks this is going to be the top of

one of our other more different blocks

this is the block we made last time

which is still here again for some

reason we're using the bottom of it

oh we're just reusing yeah I mean why

dull your bits when you don't have to oh

is this it yeah so this is the moment of

truth right now Oh perfect

it really is actually yeah it's 0.1 of a

millimeter oversized

good work I'm happy with that um I guess

we just need to clean these off and tap

them look at that it just looks so good

underneath completely see-through we

didn't bother facing it this time that

should go there yeah that goes right and

then we'll have the three that go down

the middle here cool that's a lot of

copper now you told me Pro Mode was

gonna have the heat pipe on the bottom

so that we were like heat pipe direct

touch cooling yeah are we doing that

with this one no not with this one no

that's gonna be version two I mean

version two we need to get this done

because Ed's mad they don't have a

switch for their ingest crap but yeah

ingest crap we don't we don't need these

videos but yeah we're going to have to

redesign this guy an alpha cool is

coming up with those like the server

sized heat sinks so those are gonna like

go on the side and it's gonna look super

legit but until then we're just gonna

like have it lightest active style just

like below the in gestation these screws

not quite we don't have to widen the

holes in the PCB do we are you kidding

me

well it's potentially gonna be the

quietest and cool to switch on all right

like everywhere arguably a switch that

doesn't power on anymore is very quiet

and very cool this bit might actually be

too small that went super well nope

we're good

what that was it yep that's that's all

that we needed oh nice

we should probably give this a little

dusty here yeah something yeah this is

pretty bad yeah I was definitely one of

the worst ideas I've ever seen like am I

just going at it with this I like

legitimately straight-up forget how to

do it what about this time we just like

clamp it like this yeah off the table

yeah you can just kind of get this on

the side like like so and blammo blammo

okay there are a lot of people that were

really mad last time that we didn't use

the drill press to do this so it would

go down perfectly straight oh yeah that

would be smart wouldn't it yeah really

would nope No

but what the crap is this grabs what

this whole doesn't go all the way

straight through the drill press had an

issue yeah that's good okay this is the

really bad one I don't know about that

well you'll build us up from the bottom

oh jeez what did you just do that is

that's pure carnage right there Oh God

that's a lot of acrylic on the floor

yeah these don't quite line up well like

do you want to tap those holes again

okay so you're just kind of doing the

same thing as last time then yep

acrylate me extra cyano on the side and

theoretically it will seal we're asking

for a lot of tight tolerances to line up

here yep we're gonna put that through a

plastic washer okay so that goes there

then we do another plastic washer I'm

assuming um yep okay can we do a nut yep

nothing there so I've realized something

really unfortunate where this right here

screws in I thought that it was just

like nuts on the back that came up yeah

but it's actually screwed right into the

chassis yeah I don't know if these can

come off Oh

I can't believe that you got all these

holes to mostly sort of line up I

measured it are you guys as excited as

we are to see if this thing is still

gonna work I am I'm am assuming that we

didn't kill it it's gonna work pretty

well I mean we didn't do anything that

bad to it not really we're not gonna

actually power on the switch we're just

gonna power this pump and then make sure

that nothing leaks did you fart

yeah but like a couple of minutes ago

it's really lingering no I'm sorry about

that it's awkward

all right well given that our system

here has passed our exhaustive

three-minute stress test would you say

we're ready to power it on yeah there's

a light David oh it's green identify

it's green that means 10 giggling oh

yeah test and there it goes

indeed boom okay so now what nope

yeah we we actually get to put it

together yeah I guess so okay

damn I have screencap going so you don't

need to take them over here

there is one more test though it's

possible that we're not making good

contact with anything like we actually

don't know that just because it's

working that means it's working well I

love that our fans just say failure

stand up and I'll plugged in question

for you though yeah did you get new like

quieter 40-millimeter fans to replace

these well yes if it's just open can we

just stick like a 140 on top or

something yes yes we can all right

yeah so what we can do is we can take

this puppy put it on do a 140 millimeter

cutout mount the radiator to that so

that nothing could slip through put the

fan on top and put a fangirl on

disassemble this yeah and put it in and

I'll get a hole in here sure cool are

you gonna measure where the hole goes

yep so I think we're almost done here

okay speak for yourself because we need

to power the pump oh I think what we

have to do is plug in the power supply

and start probing

some panic mode and I put it in the air

meter oh all right well let's see if

anything still works bull bolts yay Wow

it's a Christmas friggin miracle okay so

that is

ground and 12-volt so ground is the

far-left 12-volt is the third

theoretically orange is ground what the

black is positive 12 volt and yes Jake

it matters okay I have good news though

look what I found

what in the balls is the huh this is a 6

pin PCI Express adapter see these two

pins it's a six to eight pin adapter we

can use these two wires to find our 12

volt power and then splice that on to

the power connector for the pump then as

long as we get the right two pins then

we're good okay so what did I say orange

was ground black was 12 volt yep neat

theoretically when I plug in the switch

it will turn on with no sparks

power LEDs lit ah and theoretically okay

more sanity check time I have 12 volts

here Paul huzzah

what a nightmare and I just need to get

to connect to this yeah other than the

whole in beginning this is actually

surprisingly like sort of properly done

yeah like sort of properly I mean

there's no proper way to do something

this stupid yeah like I guess we could

get a couple zip ties in there like yeah

100% pro-ltte cable ties get that

shilling in there oh yeah mmm

bit concerned about putting us on okay

we have to kind of go over the tubes and

just not splice them well what can you

get your hand in there when it's like

that uh yeah I have small hands here if

you let go here I can help you align

this side you might as how well have

these ones kind of come up with

similarly you know okay the best part is

that like it looks so good on the inside

like it's pretty like pro like all

machine and stuff and on the outside

it's just like straight like ghetto like

not even same color too hot rotted like

it's not very space-efficient it's very

heat efficient yeah no it's a lot

quieter yeah did you see how quiet it is

thing I ever actually heard it it was

like yeah it was pretty luck it's still

working

temperatures are actually lower yeah

well we have a fan running on the

radiator now so that's an improvement

now we're looking at 27 and 28 degrees

compared to like 51 and 42 you folks are

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