• YouTube TrashBench tried an extreme cooling solution
• He rigged up a custom ice machine to his Nvidia GPU
• The cooling solution worked — but only up to a point

If your part of the world is heading into summer and temperatures are soaring, you might be on the look-out for more creative ways to keep you and your PC kit cool: such as a custom graphics card chiller based around a customized ice machine.

This is the work of YouTuber TrashBench (via XDA Developers) who ran water from an ice machine past his Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU using a water pump. Right from the off, we should emphasize that you shouldn't try this at home — this is potentially very unsafe, as the YouTuber himself admits in the video.

A number of modification hacks were required to get this even close to working. The ice machine had to be taken apart and hooked up to a thermostat to make sure it always stayed on and kept cooling the water, rather than taking breaks as ice formed and was pushed out into the ice machine bucket.

Further DIY solutions were required for more cooling and drainage, but eventually TrashBench was able to get his rather barmy setup operational — at least for 10 minutes until he announced "everything is covered in water".

Some actual results

Condensation from the cooled water was building up around the pipes of the bespoke system, and forming on the GPU cooler itself. Obviously, water and electronics don't mix very well, so further protective steps were needed.

With a few final adjustments, TrashBench was able to get the water in his ice machine suitably cooled, and even managed to play a bit of Cyberpunk 2077. The graphics card was running at about 60C with the default air cooling in place, but was kept below 23C while playing Cyberpunk with the ice chiller.

At the hottest point of the RTX 3060, the temperature went down from 75C to 34C, testing showed. However, with the water temperature in the ice bucket continuing to climb, it's not clear how long the experiment lasted for — as the YouTuber himself acknowledges, you should not try and cool your GPU with an ice machine.

"This is not a tutorial. I am not an electrician. Everything here is stupid," says TrashBench in his video description, so take heed that this "cursed little GPU chiller" should remain nothing more than an entertaining and temporary distraction.

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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.