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What just happened? PC builder Billet Labs has just unveiled “The Boiler” – a miniature copper- and water-cooled rig that looks like something straight out of a 19th-century factory. If you’re into ultra-compact and unique gaming PCs, you’ll want to check it out.
We get our first glimpse of this machine in a teaser video posted to TikTok. The cylindrical pipes, valves, and fittings give it the appearance of a “steam engine,” as its creator describes it. But we’d argue it bears an uncanny resemblance to a miniature distillery, with its intricate copper apparatus.
Despite its compact size, the PC packs surprisingly beefy specs. It features an Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition GPU, an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor (we described it as the “gaming CPU king”), 64GB of RAM, and a whopping 12TB of SSD storage. There’s even a polished Noctua fan tucked into the top.
The real magic, though, is in that hand-soldered copper piping connected to a water pump for cooling the components with liquid. Copper is prized for its excellent thermal conductivity, so this unorthodox setup should allow for impressive cooling performance for such a small form factor.
The TikTok clip is only a first glimpse – the crew stated that they hadn’t actually fired it up yet when that video was filmed. But just days later, they followed up on Instagram confirming that The Boiler was up and running smoothly. A detailed build breakdown is slated to hit their YouTube channel this Wednesday, which should be a fascinating watch.
Of course, a build like The Boiler doesn’t come cheap. Once completed, it will be auctioned off for charity with the proceeds going to a good cause. If you miss out on that auction, Billet Labs does offer commissioned builds – like last year’s “Toaster PC” that packed top-shelf components into a toaster oven-inspired chassis (and cost over $6,000 in parts alone).
Just be warned: these rigs are as much works of art as they are gaming machines. There’s no telling how upgradable they are, so you’ll probably want relatively future-proof parts from the start.
Billet Labs also sells fittings made of both brass and copper if you want to try your hand at a similar build.
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