- I can't wait to show you guys this.
It's finally here, my diamond play button.
You're probably thinking to yourself,
"Gee, Linus, you have like 13,000,000 subscribers.
How did it take you so long
to make a video about your diamond play button?"
That is because this is a diamond play button
like no other diamond play button.
Guys, this is mother (beep) Linus Tech Tips.
This diamond play button is gonna have a PC in it.
Vincero wants to give you a chance
to buy stylish watches at affordable prices.
Use the link in the description to get up to 30% off
plus free shipping on your entire order
for Vincero's spring upgrade sale.
(dice clinking)
(upbeat music)
Step one of building your very own diamond play button PC
is, of course, getting a diamond play button.
The process is super simple.
All you have to do is get you,
9,999,999 of your friends,
to all subscribe to the same YouTube channel.
Then you request your reward from YouTube directly
and they send it in the mail.
By the way, guys, thanks for your help with that.
Step two, finding a PC that will fit
in a diamond play button.
The X Y dimensions, actually not that hard to deal with,
but the Z height is not that thick
by the time you factor in cooling.
So we went with this Intel NUC.
It's got support for an M.2 SSD,
up to two slots of SODIMM memory,
and this right here is a Core i7-10710U.
Now, going with 10th Gen,
we do give up Intel's Tiger Lake XE Graphics.
But, what we gain in return is six cores
and, with this particular model,
the ability to go real fast
if we can provide adequate cooling.
And, the reality of it is, guys,
is if we really wanted fast gaming performance
out of this thing,
we would use an external GPU with Thunderbolt anyway.
So this feels like a great choice.
Massive shout out, by the way,
to Simply NUC for sending this thing over to us.
They do sell this and many different models of NUCs.
Usually they look more like computers than this
so you'll have to check that out.
Man, the job they did on this thing is-
- [Alex] Oh yeah.
- It's beautiful.
Like, are these beveled edges?
- [Alex] Oh yeah. There's no sharp edges on there.
- [Linus] This is unreal craftsmanship.
But, we'll get more into that later.
For now, I wanna show you guys how the PC goes in here.
So you see these four standoffs right here?
It's just going to go a little something like that.
And the reason that we want to lift the PC up
off the bottom of the play button
is because that's gonna give us room
to kind of jam our cables down there,
and also give us enough clearance to run our cooling
over to this heat sink.
IL access is right there. See that?
- [Alex] Ooh, this is cool.
- [Linus] Pretty much everything I'm showing
you guys today, by the way, I am seeing for the first time
because Alex did this project almost entirely unsupervised.
So, this appears to be my CPU cold plate.
- [Alex] Yep.
- And then these are presumably...
wow, that's a snug boy fit isn't it?
I mean, that's good for, you know,
thermal transfer and all that.
But these are heat pipes.
(Linus exclaiming)
Okay, so I'm gonna screw this onto the CPU then, right?
- Well, first you need to put all the heat pipes in.
And you asked for us to solder them.
I don't know if you still want to do that, but we can.
- How much work is it to solder them?
The thing about solder
is that it needs to melt onto the surfaces
that you're trying to bond.
And the thing about heat pipes
is that it's designed to move heat away really fast.
So, heating up a heat pipe
enough at the point where you want to melt the solder
without heating up the entire thing so much
that it explodes,
is a bit of a tricky matter.
We've never really successfully done it before.
- Yeah, we should be able to do with that.
- OK, smooth flow solder paste.
- [Alex] It's low temp, may be possible.
- [Linus] Let's do it.
Before we actually put that in place though,
there's three more smaller heat pipes that we're going to
use just to spread the heat out within our heat sink here.
So the idea here is that we've got heat pipes
carrying the heat from the CPU, transferring it
to these heat pipes, which spread it out in this heat sink.
Now we probably could have gone fully passive
but we're going to add a fan too
so this thing is going to perform like pretty amazing.
We hope. It's never actually been fully assembled.
I've never soldered a heat pipe before.
- Basically just rough it up
with a little bit of scotch brite.
- [Linus] Is this kind of like
a less is more situation or do you even know?
- [Alex] I'm not totally sure
but you know that it flows at 138 degrees though.
- [Linus] And this is what people use
for soldering heat pipes.
I'm sure that I'm doing this completely wrong.
- [Alex] Is what I was told by the internet, yes.
- [Linus] Here we go.
So...
I mean hey, the good news is
it's kind of like lubey compared to before.
Well no, it goes in a little easier.
Alex, am I even sort of doing this
the way you're supposed to?
'Cause that would be really good to know.
Like, in the video where they told you to use this stuff
did they at all show you how to put it on?
- [Alex] They kind of just put it on
and put the heat pipes in.
- [Linus] Well, I definitely am doing that.
- [Alex] It didn't look like this.
(both laughing)
- [Linus] Okay, I think they're in.
So theoretically this will melt
and it will solder this to this.
Oh wow, look at it go.
Holy (bleep), I think it's working.
- [Alex] Oh yeah, damn.
- [Linus] I wish I had applied it a little more cleanly
but we won't really see it.
- [Alex] It shows on the flare
that it's above 130 degrees Celsius.
I guess it's high as this goes.
- [Linus] I mean, that looks pretty darn soldered to me.
- [Alex] If you want, we can also try soldering
in the other heat pipes since that seemed to work well
but I think that'll take way longer.
- [Linus] Yeah, I think it might be okay though.
- [Alex] Okay.
- [Linus] I think this is the coolest build
we've done in a long time.
It's the Linus ego build.
- [Alex] I think that was the gold controller.
- [Linus] I'm going to be like celery sticks, you know?
Kind of spreads like peanut butter too actually.
We're doing two things right now.
We're heating this up to melt our solder flux paste.
And then we're also heating it up so that we can push
out the plastic or whatever it's made of, "diamond".
- [Alex] Oh wait, we basically can't thermal image this.
- Oh, because it's too shiny.
- [Alex] Yeah it's way too shiny.
- You know what would be great is
if we put a piece of tape on it or something
'cause we really do kind of need to know how hot it is.
I think a little bit that I could see melted,
what's the temperature of the tape?
- [Alex] Tape's 106 degrees.
So yeah, you must be good.
Let's also pop out the button like very soon.
- [Linus] Don't touch this, hey?
- [Alex] Yeah.
- [Linus] It's a little toasty.
Okay.
Oh, it's out.
It is way deeper than I thought it was.
- [Alex] Yeah.
That's one of the reasons that it was so hard
to find a PC to fit in.
- [Linus] While I wait for this to cool down
I can go ahead and remove this electrical tape.
Oh, that's leaving a nasty residue.
Unfortunately we had no choice because in order
for our thermal camera to be able to read the temperature
of this reflective surface
we had to put something non-reflective on it
which actually leads into a really cool story.
How on earth did we CNC out a diamond play button
without a CAD model?
Well you can't.
So we had to get one.
Now the most obvious way to get one would be to
ask YouTube for it, I mean
they designed it so they should probably have it
and they do.
But unfortunately YouTube's lawyers would not
allow our contact to send it to us
for the purposes of modifying it to put a PC in.
So we had to 3D scan it, which
guys, is no mean feat because the way 3D scanners work
is they bounce light off of the object and then record it
in order to get all of its shapes and curves
and, oh no, this thing is a fricking mirror.
How do you 3D scan a curved mirror?
You give it to a professional.
So we enlisted the help of Laman Designs in North Vancouver
and Omid over there, I don't know how he did it,
but it fricking worked and, great job guys.
This is the raw scan file.
How... (laughs) I don't even.
This should be cooled down now
so we can test if these are in.
Oh! Ow it's still hot, but okay.
Oh balls, does it do aluminum?
Because it seems like it just didn't really
adhere to the aluminum.
After further research, it appears
that our NC191LT50 solder paste is not ideal
for aluminum and copper.
So we roughed up the aluminum again
put a little bit more of it on this time
and we're going to see if we've got a good join.
Otherwise we're going to have to go to thermal paste
or thermal epoxy.
Actually I think it, I think it-
- [Alex] Wow. - [Linus] ... bonded.
Oh, heck yeah.
Ha!
Woo!
- [Alex] While that cools,
there's two things that we can do.
We need to put IO in here.
This needs the chop. - [Linus] Yeah.
- [Alex] We're going to just steal this, epoxy it in here.
Oh, we need to solder the front panel connectors onto here.
- [Linus] Where the hell is the power button going to go?
- [Alex] Well, we kind of get to just put it
wherever we want because the hole isn't drilled yet
but I can go like here or here or here.
- [Linus] What do you want for colors?
I'm thinking I'll just do like a rainbow.
- [Alex] Sure.
Hey Linus. - [Linus] Yo.
- I just realized something.
The WiFi antennas are just hanging out in here.
Should we take those out and
put them in like a spot they might work?
- Yeah, I would like to have WiFi.
- For the IO, we didn't want to cut it
into the actual play button because
for one it's just difficult to cut in here.
And also, like, if you get it a little bit wrong
you're kind of just screwed.
So instead, sorry Simply NUC,
but the thing that you sent to us is about to die.
(tools scraping)
- And pencils down.
Are you done?
- [Alex] Yeah I'm just waiting for you at this point.
- Well, I did a really good job.
I don't even need shrink wrap.
- [Alex] I think you should still put it on there.
- Can you please appreciate that I did a good job
and I probably don't need it?
- You did a good job Linus, I'm proud of you.
Actually I just realized something.
We should probably add some like connectors or something
to this because otherwise we're going to have to
install this power button
and that board at the same time, it's going to suck.
- [Linus] Oh. - [Alex] I have an idea Linus.
We just take some of these male and female
little pluggy chummies,
solder them on to there and solder them on to this
so then when we want to put it together
we just...
- [Linus] So really I soldered the wrong wires here though.
So I'm doing completely unnecessary soldering
a wire to another wire.
- [Alex] Well, but now you can solder another wire
to that wire and it'll be not that hard.
- Yeah, just, I could have just cut off of those wires.
And then the connector would have already been on them.
- [Alex] Eh, details.
So we now have to properly decide where
this power button is going to go.
- [Linus] Oh, this is real final isn't it?
- [Alex] Yeah. - [Linus] Ooh!
That diamond cut out, that looks so cool.
- [Alex] Oh yeah, it looks so sick.
Especially with the fan underneath it.
Where exactly do we want this?
- [Linus] I dunno like here? - [Alex] Here?
You want it up here?
I thought we said it was going to go down here.
- [Linus] How about like here?
- [Alex] Here? - [Linus] Yeah sure.
(Alex hums)
- Dude why did you ask me to pick
and then tell me it's not a fricking option?
Put it wherever the hell you want,
I don't even care anymore.
(drill running) - [Alex] That sounds good.
I like this.
(drill running)
That's a nice hole.
- [Linus] Check this out.
We're fricking good to go boys.
Oh God.
Wow, that's really tight.
That is actually a really cool tool that I have
never seen before and I love it.
- [Alex] Wait you've never seen a deburring tool before?
- [Linus] Okay, that worked perfectly.
Is this it, do we assemble? - [Alex] LEDs.
This is what we're using. - [Linus] Wait, what?
Light up your wonderful life.
- [Linus] And then we're using this
and the fan's also being powered by this.
- [Linus] Wait, what? Why?
- [Alex] Because the NUC only does five volt for fans
and there wasn't a five volt fan that would fit
in here correctly.
Put it there, tape it or hot glue it.
You take the next one,
tape it or hot glue it. - [Linus] Oh my god,
that looks horrendous.
- Well we could also have done
a completely custom solution.
- This is faster.
- Yes.
- There's only one way to know for sure.
if these strips will bond to cyanoacrylate
and that's to use my finger and try and stick it to it.
- [David] Maybe you should double check with your hair too.
- But what about we use this moment to-
- Oh God that's a lot of CA.
I don't think CA sticks to aluminum.
Fortunately we have this bond aid epoxy putty stick
Alex wouldn't let me handle this with no gloves.
- It's not good for your skin.
- So I just mush this up then?
- [Alex] Yeah, should be a bit hot.
- While I'm working on that it's as good a time as any
to talk about the actual design of the PC itself.
So what I'm holding in my hand
as you can see is not made of metal.
This is a 3D printed mock-up so that we could do a test fit
and also just kind of a general sanity check.
It's all fine and good for Alex to create it
in SolidWorks based on that 3D scan that we got,
but it's another one entirely to double check,
make sure the scan was actually frigging accurate,
and make sure that our components are going to fit.
So because our printer bed isn't big enough
we printed it in two pieces and it was great.
So from there, Alex was able to send our file
along with our diamond play button to a bloke named Amish.
This kind of machining is very
out of our depth, at least for now,
but holy frig did Amish do a great job of it.
Using his DMG Mori DMU 65 monoBLOCK,
a five axis CNC machine
with a whopping 46 horsepower spindle,
it could have made very quick work of this
but believe it or not, Amish went out
of his way to make the tool paths complicated
so that the cutting would look extra sick
on camera for all of y'all.
One unfortunate thing we learned while cutting though
is that although the play button is made of aluminum,
and YouTube actually told me that it is solid
polished aluminum and nothing else,
it has actually been electroplated
in copper and then chrome.
So what that meant was that no matter how much
we polished the aluminum back panel we made,
it could never have the same super shiny surface finish
as the rest of the play button.
I do think that the cutout diamond looks
absolutely sick though. - [Alex] Oh yeah, so good.
- Crap, even this epoxy came off.
Nothing sticks to these stupid things.
Look, it's not that we wanted to use double-sided tape.
- [Alex] So we wanted to use double-sided tape
and tuck tape.
- [Linus] We didn't ask for this.
(Linus gasping)
How frickin' awesome does that look?
We don't actually need this much
of this adhesive to keep the diamond in place.
But what we're doing is trying to ensure
that we have a consistent look
to this shiny piece that goes under it.
So we're covering the entire thing.
(Bleep) it, I see what you mean about it
being hard to get it like center.
(grunts)
- [Alex] Ugh, jeez Linus.
- [Linus] You know what?
We're rolling with it, Alex.
- [Alex] So this is going to go here.
- [Linus] We could like spend an hour cable managing this
but I really don't think it serves much purpose.
And you're sure this USB port has enough power
for everything that I've plugged into it?
- [Alex] Uh, pretty sure.
- [Linus] I guess that's only six LEDs and a fan.
That should be fine. Yeah, okay.
Honestly, I think we can just pressure fit that.
- [Alex] I'm down.
- [Linus] Yeah, like that's awesome.
- [Alex] That's not going anywhere.
- In a perfect world I wouldn't use thermal pads
for where we're crossing our heat pipes here, but
the truth is we don't know how well this is going to work.
So at least this allows us to run the machine
and validate the concept.
This thing's sick.
32 gigs RAM.
Well, it's not perfect by any stretch.
I mean, for extra credit, we could have soldered
to these little tiny USB headers and put
like an RGB controller in it and stuff like that.
But honestly, I am super happy
with what I think is about to be the result.
Are we ready to close it up?
- [Alex] I think so, yeah. (Linus giggles excitedly)
- [Linus] Fan's in.
Computer's in, the IO looks amazing.
Oh my God, that looks so sick.
Man, been planning this build
since before we even had 10 million subscribers.
This is freaking incredible.
Check out that IO, David.
Is that clean or what?
Alex, you did a great job of that.
- [Alex] That is custom built.
(smooth funky music)
Let's get hardware and fill up here.
Get Cinebench up.
Oh my God.
This is so freaking cool.
My computer is a play button
and my play button is a computer.
Okay. We ready?
Minimum test duration, test for thermal throttling
CPU multi-core here we go.
Are you rolling on this right now?
Because our load temps are like 60, 65 degrees.
Mind you, you know, we're maxing out at like 2.85 gigahertz
because this is a U-class processor, but still come on.
It's a play button.
How quiet is it though?
Oh, it's whisper-quiet.
Oh my God, this thing is so far beyond cool.
Alex, you did an amazing job on this.
This is nucking futs.
Get it, get it.
I don't even care that the jewel has a crack in it.
That just adds character at this point.
What I want to know is how much it'll turbo.
Okay, CPU single core.
Man, you could game on this puppy fine, just fine.
We are getting four flipping gigahertz on it.
Hold on a second.
No no, hold on, hold on.
Don't turn that off yet.
We were hitting like 4.3, 4.44...
We touched 4.5 for a second there.
I think there were some background
app updates that were hitting multiple cores,
man when this thing's gaming
with like external GPU or something
it's gonna be a freaking beast.
I love it.
And you know what else I love.
I was going to segue to our sponsor, but first you guys
I know it took a while for us to get this project done,
but thank you very much.
10 million subscribers is an absolutely unbelievable
accomplishment that we achieved a long time ago.
And we really appreciate everything that you
guys do to make this possible.
And we also appreciate our sponsor.
The Drop ENTR keyboard is a new keyboard from drop.com
made, of course, with high-grade enthusiast-class materials.
It's got an aluminum top plate with white LEDs
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It's got double shot PBT key caps
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It's available in three colors
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So don't wait, buy it today
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I feel like normally when people do their
10 million subscriber videos
there's a lot of like soul searching and you know
heartfelt talking at their audience.
But the truth is, I think I already did enough
of that for like four YouTubers plus their apology videos.
So you guys can go watch that,
to see how I feel about all of that.
Today is just about being (bleep) cool.
Like that's a computer. Ooh it's warm, it's a warm boy.