- Three, two, one.
So you might be wondering why I'm throwing a PC
off the roof.
Well, when my buddy, Mr. Yeester, came by
and wanted to test some TikTok tech hacks,
things escalated quickly.
But before that, I would like to test
some of my own theories and suspicions about gaming PCs,
and specifically if they gonna die on me or not.
The first test is a very simple one.
If you are, say, a first time gaming PC builder,
you may not remember to put your CPU cooler on.
Now, that's a bad thing, but exactly how bad is it?
I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
So, right now the system is up and running
and you'll see our CPU with the stock cooler
is sitting at 29 degrees.
Normally, the way this works
is that this is attached to your CPU,
the heat is pulled through that thermal paste
into the actual aluminum or copper heat sink,
and then the fans will blow it away, right?
But without it, you can see we've quickly spiked
from 33 to 50 degrees Celsius.
Now, technically, this is actually still with spec.
Mind you, not for very long.
But what will happen is that as soon as it starts to hit
toward the max temperature of the CPU,
typically around 100 degrees Celsius,
it will throttle back, and if that doesn't work,
the CPU will just shut itself off,
or the motherboard will tell the CPU to turn off.
I will say there's a little CPU LED which has come on,
which is red now.
I don't think that was there before.
The motherboard knows things are not good.
Wait a minute, it's leveling out.
No.
It's stabilized!
What!
This shouldn't be the way this works.
We may actually need to boot the Windows.
Now, mind you, as soon as I fire up Windows,
I'm gonna assume that this is gonna collapse,
but also, who knows.
(Austin claps)
We have Windows with no CPU cooler whatsoever.
Oh, I wanna see what my clock speeds are.
Clearly, this is not gonna last
but for a minute or something.
We're at two gigahertz.
What!
There's no cooler!
Core Temp is showing that we are pulling
eight, nine watts on the CPU and the actual CPU cores
are sitting at 83 to 100 degrees,
based on how I'm actually doing it.
This might not die.
Like this might just throttle itself down
to the point where it's fine with zero cooler whatsoever.
I think I need to Prime95 it.
This will load up your CPU 100%.
Usually I use this for stress testing
and we're gonna stress test all right.
1.4 gigahertz, so it's throttling.
But what you're seeing right here, right,
is this working exactly as intended.
If your temperatures hit a certain point,
the only thing the CPU can do is turn down the voltage
and turn down the clock speed, right?
Which, it's exactly what it's doing.
We're down to 1.3, 1.4 gigahertz.
It's much better to just slow things down
than to just throw the switch and call it a day, right?
This will, I hope at some point,
crash and turn itself off, right?
Like that's the final fail-safe.
Temperature's too high, you can't bring voltage down,
it just needs to turn itself off.
But with zero CPU cooler,
it is able to sustain 12-13 watts of load.
Mind you, it might be at 100 degrees Celsius
and at 1.4, 1.5 gigahertz, but it's working.
All right, the only thing I can think of
is I'm gonna start unplugging fans now
and just see if I can get this thing to overheat.
So now there is no airflow in this whatsoever.
Now, mind you, I don't think the fans
before were doing that much,
but now they're especially not doing anything.
We're at 1.3 gigahertz,
so it is definitely throttling, but it's still working.
So I guess the myth of do you need a CPU cooler
apparently is busted.
CPU coolers are optional.
Go out and buy yourself a Core i9, a Ryzen 9 7950X,
don't put a cooler on it.
Totally fine.
The purpose of a heat sink
is to pull heat away from the CPU,
enabling better performance and for it to not die,
so I'm going to give it a heat blow.
A heat gun.
I'm gonna heat gun the CPU.
All right, we're at max temperature.
Is everyone ready?
(heat gun whirring)
Very warm, all right,
I'm going to now heat gun the CPU until it dies.
Oh, it immediately dropped.
Whoa, look, look, look.
Immediately dropped to 0.2 gigahertz,
but it didn't turn off!
I'm not giving up.
This is going to turn off.
Come on, little guy.
Just go to sleep.
Yes!
It finally turned off!
That is one of the most insane experiments
I've ever done with a PC.
Now that it's all still very, very toasty and warm,
why don't we move on to what I was originally gonna do,
which is to cool it through an alternative method.
My friends, have you heard the word?
All the cool kids, they don't use air cooling.
They don't use liquid cooling.
They use dry ice.
(ice crackling) (buzzer beeping)
So, if you wanna go cold,
one of the best ways to do that is with some dry ice.
Again, do not try this at home, but let's see
how well using dry ice works to keep my CPU cool.
We have reset everything.
Prime95 is back up and running
and CPU is exactly where it was,
which is about 100 degrees Celsius,
throttled, but functioning.
Now, let's add some dry ice
and see if it actually improves our performance.
I think it might.
All right, we're just gonna put this on.
Everyone ready?
(dry ice squeaking)
That's the noise of the ice when I press it down.
(dry ice screeching)
is it working?
Yo!
My CPU got up to like 2.7 gigahertz!
Okay, I got a big chunk now.
How's that helped my performance?
It's working!
We've gone up to full 100% CPU and we're down to 82 degrees.
We've solved it!
I don't know what we solved, but we solved something.
We have dry ice successfully cooling my CPU right now.
We've got max clock speed, 3.7 gigahertz,
which is as high as this will go.
We're down to 50 degrees Celsius, pulling 47 watts.
Basically the absolute max the CPU can push out
is being dissipated through this dry ice right now.
What is going on? This is so cool!
So what's funny about when you're just using a chunk
of dry ice like this, it melts like a hole,
like a square shape in the ice,
so the ice is now like frozen down to it
but it's actually not making contact,
so my temperatures have gone back up,
but it's literally like frozen on here now.
Can you see that?
So it's literally a square shape on my chunk of ice.
So the only thing I can think of now
is to just gently cool off my dry ice.
(dry ice clunks)
(Austin evil laughs)
(fly buzzes)
(Austin coughs)
(Austin evil laughs)
Now of course, not everyone has an unlimited supply
of dry ice that will need to be replaced
every two to five minutes.
Instead, may I offer a different solution?
So it's clearly, we've established that coolers are a scam,
fake and not necessary.
So instead, what if we cool our CPU
with nothing but thermal paste?
Anyone thirsty?
So now, oh no!
Whatever will we do?
My CPU temperatures are going through the roof.
Well, why don't we take some thermal paste
and see if that will solve our problems.
So let's just, let's go have some fun.
Don't try this at home.
Okay, so that's one tube.
How are my temperatures?
Is it worse now?
So if you were wondering if you can just put thermal paste
on your CPU, that won't help,
but if you're wondering
if too much thermal paste will cause a problem,
I don't think so.
I think I have applied slightly too much thermal paste,
but that's fine 'cause you know what?
(thermal paste squishes)
What could possibly go wrong?
So we're just gonna just plug our CPU fan back in.
All right, let's see if it works.
Wait, it's actually working.
I mean, I knew that, of course it's gonna work.
I am an expert here.
Actually, you know what I will say?
Even with a slightly large amount of thermal paste,
it actually didn't really make a huge mess.
Like I can't actually see any of it around the cooler.
And you've seen it immediately works.
Our CPU's gone straight back to 100%
and we're coming down in temperature slowly.
Now, what does it look like once we've actually done this?
Oh. - Oh!
- Ew.
Will thermal paste hold my dry ice in place?
Actually, look, it immediately spiked.
It immediately spiked. It works!
That was what I was doing wrong all along.
I should have used thermal paste, then my dry ice,
not dry ice on my own.
Man, what a dummy.
So the other day I got this text for my buddy, Mr. Yeester,
the TikTok Tech Tinkerer.
Do you guys have roof access at your office?
Coming from him, this is mildly concerning.
What do we have here?
- I need you to take a look at my PC.
- Okay.
- Might be dinged up a little bit, but-
- Sure, sure, need a little bit of troubleshooting advice?
- Yeah, maybe if you can figure out what's wrong with it,
that'd be really helpful for me.
- Okay, sure, no problem, man.
- You know, when you ship PCs,
you never know what's gonna get moved around.
- Oh you know what, your graphics card
may have gotten a little loose inside.
That's probably it.
All right, so, all nicely padded.
You used a good foam.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Um....
(crew laughing)
Did you drop this PC, by chance?
- I think the question is how many times did I drop it,
if I'm being honest.
- What kind of heights did you drop this computer from?
- Well, started with two inches.
- Okay.
- And then four inches.
- Okay, that's funny. - And then eight inches.
- That's too much, I wouldn't do that.
- 16
- Stop.
- And then 128 inches, and then 256 inches.
- And it survived?
- It survived.
- I'm afraid, is it?
(crew laughing)
Whoa!
What?
- [Ken] I'm surprised this made it through UPS.
(all laughing)
- [Mr. Yeester] Believe it not, this PC still functions.
- Well, maybe with some reassembly.
- If we define function as if we can get into the BIOS.
- Okay, that counts.
- The part that is potentially the-
- Aah!
- Okay.
- Look at the back!
Look at the back!
That's not the angle graphics card should be in.
- Well, speaking of angles that graphics card shouldn't be,
this GPU kind of-
- Aah! - Ooh hoo.
- Do not do that to me!
- It is in its own element at this point.
- As long as the board physically stays intact.
'Cause obviously the board starts cracking,
traces are all gonna be gone.
It's gonna be a wrap.
- If the CPU stays intact with the motherboard-
- Which it would 'cause that's not gonna be that practical.
It's not going anywhere.
- [Mr. Yeester] And as long as one stick of RAM
stays in place. - Yeah, yeah.
- And I guess the power supply doesn't explode,
then you're gonna be fine.
- Let's take this to the roof
and see if it will survive the final test.
- Let's do it.
- Don't try this at home.
(Mr. Yeester laughing)
So I don't actually know how high this roof is.
I'm gonna say somewhere between 25 and 30 feet
is probably accurate.
- [Mr. Yeester] It feels very high.
It feels very high when you look down.
- We'll just say this straight up.
We are trained professionals.
Do not try this at home.
Okay, just gonna be very clear.
Do not try this at home.
Do you think it's gonna survive?
- My money is that this will still work.
What do you think?
- I'm gonna say it's gonna die.
Here goes nothing, are you ready?
- [Mr. Yeester] I'm ready, let's drop this PC.
- Three, two, one.
(metal clanks)
I don't think that survived.
I don't know about this one.
Oh my God.
So, CPU power's in. - Powers in.
Motherboard powers in.
- It's fine, dude.
I mean, okay, fine is a relative term.
I don't know, though.
Look at this edge.
So here's the edge of the board.
- [Mr. Yeester] That is true.
- [Austin] It is like-
- [Mr. Yeester] This board is warped.
- So literally without touching it,
(bell dings)
we're going to grab power for it and see if it will fire up.
There's no way a board which is bent like this could work.
There's no shot.
- [Mr. Yeester] Hey, well, we'll find out.
- Have we mentioned do not try this at home?
- We are trained professionals.
All right, let's power this PC on.
So power is connected.
You can see the motherboard LED is flashing.
- [Austin] Oh my God.
Okay, so power supply's working.
- [Mr. Yeester] Power supply is working, man.
- So if this fan spins, we know we're in business.
But if it doesn't, we might be out of luck.
- A few things are concerning.
Motherboard being bent, not ideal.
- [Austin] Yeah.
- [Mr. Yeester] Power supply having bits
of power supply chunks flowing around.
(power supply rattling)
- Power supply should not make this noise.
- No, it should not.
- But I mean there's about 100 reasons
why this shouldn't work,
so if any part of it works, I'm impressed.
So let's see if we can use a screwdriver
to jumpstart the board.
Here we go.
I think it's dead.
- The PC is no more. (somber violin music)
- So if you've ever wondered if a PC will survive
a 30 foot drop, the answer is apparently, surprisingly, no.
- Which means the limit of a PC surviving a fall
is somewhere in between a 20 foot and a 30 foot drop.
That is what we have proven here.
- Dude.
- That was awesome.
- I am very...
The fact that this survived as far as it is, is incredible.
- Yeah, now we gotta find a place to bury it here.
Do you have a hole pre-dug?
(Mr. Yeester laughs)