Billet Labs’s Victorian radiator gaming PC
Weighs only 50kg.
Billet Labs is showing off a new prototype build that uses a century-old cast-iron home radiator as the core of a PC cooling loop. The radiator alone weighs about 110 pounds (50 kg), and the idea is to rely on its heat capacity and surface area to keep the system quiet.
The team says the radiator can hold a bit over 10 liters of liquid. That is a lot of thermal mass for a PC loop, but it still needs time and surface area to dump heat into the room. They still need custom fittings to connect the radiator’s inlet and outlet to standard tubing, and the radiator needs a serious flush after decades of use.
Source: Billet Labs
Technically fanless, but not pumpless
With no fans pushing air through fins, the radiator can only dissipate so much heat. This system is not noise-free, while there are no fans, there is still a pump moving all that water around. I didn’t see the spec list, but it looks to be based on the AMD B850I motherboard from AORUS. The GPU is equipped with an Alphacool waterblock.
This project also fits Billet Labs’ usual style. Their builds often lean into copper-heavy, industrial visuals that read as steampunk, and this one looks to be heading the same way as they add copper piping and heatsinks around the radiator body.
Here is their Wally-Y project, a steampunk wall mounted gaming PC:
Source: Billet Labs
It’s worth adding that some readers may also remember Billet Labs from the Linus Tech Tips controversy in 2022, when a Billet Labs prototype water block loaned for review was later auctioned at LTX without permission.
Source: Billet Labs (Instagram)
