There are quite a few liquid cooled computers and server out there, but none of them is like the one made by a Scottish computer expert in his spare time.
John Lawson, owner of PC Doctor in Edinburgh, and his colleague spent a year building world’s first ‘Irn-Bru liquid cooling system’. The cooling system doesn’t actually use Irn-Bru, but instead uses a customised cooling liquid that looks almost like Irn-Bru. The reason they decided to use Irn-Bur bottle is that they drink it on a daily basis in their shop.
Using the 750ml glass bottle as a centrepiece of the whole computer, Lawson connected it to flowing tubes filled with a special orange liquid which is used to cool the machine and its circuits. The ‘Aye-Mac’ is currently on display at their repair shop.
Alan Taylor, 45, who works as a PC technician at PC Doctor, says that the cooling system is the result of their passion for computers and Irn-Bru.
Lawson, who is interested in developing novel cooling systems, says that they are ready for customised orders as anything is possible.
Lawson and Taylor took nearly a year to develop the system because they were looking for parts from as far as Ukraine. Though they have lots of computer parts lying around in their repair shop, they were not able to get hold of a few because of which they had to source them from as far as Ukraine.
Most cooling systems in computers are fan-assisted but many high-end machines use a water-based liquid as the main heat conductor. With liquid cooling systems being increasingly used in servers, there has been an increased interest in such systems from even the consumer market.
Companies that develop high-end graphics cards and processors have invested a lot in liquid cooling systems and there are desktop computers that are liquid cooled as well. One famous examples of such liquid-cooled system is Vibox that makes water cooled gaming PCs.
