Water Cooling vs. Asus Rog Matrix: Budget Build Challenge

Asus's Rog Matrix RTX 490, despite its high price, showcases advanced cooling but DIY water cooling offers more value and fun.

### Building a Custom Water Cooled RTX 4090 vs. Buying the ASUS ROG Matrix: A Cost and Performance Comparison
* 💸  The ASUS ROG Matrix RTX 4090 costs **$3,200**, which is **twice the price** of the Founders Edition card.
* 🔧  Linus Tech Tips' Adam decided to build his own custom water-cooled RTX 4090 system, allocating **$1,600 towards components and his labor**.
* 💻  Adam researched components from JayzTwoCents and Reddit, opting for **premium parts** like an **EK water block** and a **400mm radiator**.
* 🛠️  Linus critiqued some of Adam's choices, such as **overspending on the water block** and using **suboptimal tubing and fittings**.
* 🌡️  After a successful build, Adam's custom loop kept the GPU at **50°C under load** and the CPU at **70°C**, comparable to the ROG Matrix.
* 💰  The custom loop went slightly over budget, partly due to a surprise **$60 Corsair IQ Link Box** required for the pump.
* 🏆  Despite the cost and minor issues, Adam preferred the DIY approach for the **experience, potential resale value, and customization options**.
* 🔧  Linus concluded that while the ROG Matrix might be more cost-effective in the long run, the **DIY build was more enjoyable and educational**.

maybe you missed it, but several months ago, Asus released the best RTX 490 ever, the Rog Matrix. This represents the pinnacle of Asus's manufacturing capabilities, with higher clock speeds than any other 490, liquid metal on the GPU die for maximum cooling performance, and a 360 mm radiator all-in-one water cooler built right in. The only problem? It costs $3,200. That is twice the price of the Founders Edition card. Republic of Gamers? More like Republic of out of touch. I bet you could take that $1,600 premium and put it towards building your own custom loop. I mean, you could probably even pay yourself a fair wage for the research and building the darn thing. Oh, you're talking to me? Yeah, I bet you could buy a regular RTX 490 and all of that stuff and still have cash to spare. Uh, okay, but um, where will I get the money? Well, here, life can suck sometimes, but with the right attitude and tools, you can fix it. I'm talking about this poor laptop. Fix what you can. This back to school

season with our sponsor iFixit. You may fail your tests, but don't fail your laptop. On sale now at ifixit.com. Let's lay out some ground rules. Adam's budget has to go towards a 4090 of his choosing, planning and purchasing all components for a water cooling loop, and paying himself to assemble it. He's going to be paid the median wage of a Geek Squad repair agent, which according to Glassdoor is $21.63 per hour. Ready, go. I quickly got to researching using resources from J2 cents and Reddit, and I figured I have enough budget that I can splurge big time. So not only am I going to cool my GPU, I'm also going to cool my CPU and get an ultra-premium water block for both of them. And to deal with all that heat, I'm hoping a thick 400 mm rad will do the trick. I spent 90 minutes and a lot of money during my shopping spree, and I think I did a pretty good job, but let's see what Linus thinks. All right.

let me see. There's definitely some stuff that stands out immediately as not a great value. However, when you look at what we're comparing it to, I guess I can forgive it. Before we get into those details, though, I want to see if he outright missed anything that's going to cost him a penalty. Once he's assembling the system cooling blocks for a CPU and GPU, check check, a pump and reservoir to make it simpler to fill the loop and move fluid around, a big radiator with some fans to go on it. I don't know if these are the ones I would have chosen, but hey, at least he's got them, along with a high-performance phase change thermal pad from LTT store, and some tubing and some fittings, both of which raise a couple of questions about his research for me. For starters, this is his case, and while the Phanteks NV7 is both reasonably priced and attractive, what it isn't is small. And Adam has only purchased 9.8 ft of this XT softline mesh sleeved tubing from

Corsair, it should cover the distance between all of his plumbed-up components. But when you go with thin-walled tubing like this one, the loop layout matters a lot if you want to avoid kinks. And this length doesn't leave him a ton of room for error. As for his fittings, it's never a bad idea to buy ones that are explicitly compatible with the tubing that you bought from the exact same vendor. And these XF series compressions look pretty nice with recessed O-rings and a pretty pleasing overall finish. The only thing I'd critique here is that he could have saved probably 20 or $30 by going with fittings from someone like Bixy. He also paid a butt ton of money for this 4090 water block, probably about double what I would have spent. But who knows, maybe it's—oh, okay, it's very, very pretty. And in fairness to Adam, even these excess purchases above and beyond buying an RTX 490 have put him nowhere near the cost.

of the Rog Matrix Platinum. I mean, he's still got 7 hours of budget left to pay himself to build it. Maybe he shouldn't have sprung for a $200 CPU block overall though. Not exactly how I would have done it. These Quantum surface radiators from Ek have a very dense fin arrangement, and I see nothing to indicate that these thermal take fans have particularly high static pressure to take advantage of that, but it should still offer good performance for both his GPU and his CPU. And I don't see any other things here that promised to be a major showstopper, and he passed one of the biggest stumbling blocks when he bought a block that was explicitly compatible with his exact model of GPU. Okay, go, go, go, go, go, go. So now we're going to mount our water block. I got this cool water block from Ek. I bought it 'cause it looked cool. I could have gotten something that was like literally half the price and still would have been a great performant water block, but I was so confident about my

budget that I felt that we could do this. Anyways, we got our PTM 7950. You know, there is a video on LTT store.com of the best way to put this stuff on, and I have not watched it. A water block on um. So, here is our tough gaming 4090. While the Rog Matrix Platinum is based on the stricks platform by Asus, I figure that if it only gets like an extra 6% performance, I might be able to squeeze an extra performance out of their tough series if I get lucky. But now I have to take off all of this cooler to put it into this, the Optimus water cooling. I don't know what the exact model is, but holy cow, it's heavy. These guys are from like Chicago or something. They're a pretty small company, and apparently, this is one of the best water blocks on the market. Do you know how I do you know how I know that? I Googled best 490 water block, and everyone said it was this. I was just thinking, wow, I wish I had a way

to organize my screws, but then I remembered that we have these handy-dandy mod mats that are going to be coming soon to LTT store.com that are the perfect thing for what I am doing. This is not going to worsen my budget, okay? I know I might look like the kind of guy you could take home to your mama, but I'm a bad boy. I avoid the warranty. Fun fact about these stickers: manufacturers put them on devices to intimidate you and make you feel like you're not allowed to tinker with devices you own, but these warranty void stickers are not enforceable by law anywhere in America. So, if a company's refusing to give you service, you can always, you know, complain to the FTC about it because it's complete BS. You bought the thing; you should be allowed to service it. For the case, we got this big old Phanteks NV7. It's massive. It's Shen. It's got support for a 480 mm rad because that's what I went with because it seemed like it was the best way to get a lot of

radiator for a little bit of budget, as well as it lowered the amount of fittings I needed, which at fittings, my God, they eat into your budget. But I am a little worried 'cause it looks like my motherboard might not fit. Yeah, so E-ATX motherboard is a problem. Let's see if we can take this little thing out, and maybe we will be saved. So, while this computer has this really cool set of LEDs that are actually totally cableless that line the motherboard tray, um, we might not be able to use at least one of them. But the good news is that I think that means our motherboard fits in. Hey, look at that. However, we do need to consider that our radiator is going here, I think, hm, or does this go along the top? Nope. One of these things is not like the other. One of these things is a lot bigger. It's so close. If it's, if we mounted it here, it fits. We doed an hour and change to compensate for the $15 extra dollar for the two radiators and

for the um Tri to the store and now it went from being like yeah we got enough time to being like okay this is going to be kind of tight let's figure out our pump mount. We got the xd5 RGB Elite LCD from Corsair. It's a pump res combo and uh that's just that was just to simplify the number of components. It's also got a cool scream but right now it kind of looks like it's screaming. I probably won't be spending a ton of time doing any cable management because uh boy howdy I don't have a ton of time. Yeah it's tubing time. We got both of our radiators mounted one at the top one at the bottom and I think we are going to be just peachy. I use soft tubing cuz I don't hate myself and I didn't want to do hard tubing and I needed this to be possible. Also the Rog Matrix it doesn't use hard tubing it uses soft tubing so yeah I'm pretty sure you just kind of like shove it on there and then these

are compression fittings. So what they do is that, uh, when you screw them on, they tighten the edge of, they have these little prongs, and then they tighten around that, and then that gets your tube nice and tight and sealed, and then it don't leak, hopefully. So that going to be too tight of a bend for this tubing. I guess I can go to the top one, and then that can go up, and that prevents the fear of kinking. Though I have no fears of kinks, my phone number is 60. This isn't exactly a precise way of measuring things, but I figure it's good enough, right? This got to go a little bit longer than that, so I'm going to go here, and that goes on right there. Maybe it won't matter when I fill it with water. I don't know, man. Damn, look at this beauty. What the heck is this tube? Did he decide to buy this? Oh, I thought this was like sleeving. Oh, oh God, this is terrible, dude. Look, feel this. Oh yeah, it's

actually awful, like, but like put your hand right here like she's done, but yeah, that's just not going to work, yeah, yeah. It's also an interesting mix and match of brands here. We got some EK, we got some Corsair, we got some Optimus. These blocks are super nice. That's a really expensive pump. That's the fanciest pump I've ever seen. But then why this tubing is this Corsair? These are Corsair fittings too. These are ugly. Like, I, these, everything about this build looks great except these fittings in tubes. Does he have any 90°? Oh, there's, there's not a chance that this fitting right here is going to work out in any way. Yeah, like he could make this CPU to GPU line work. It's just too long right now. But you know, you go like that and you're done. This box cost $40 and it's the worst tubing I've ever seen. All I got to say is good luck man because I don't have a lot of extra tubing. I need to make sure that every

time I make a cut. I can only go. This cut only needs to be shortened. So, I always want to have a little bit extra. Because if I screw up a cut and it's too short, I lose like this whole length. It's supposed to like maybe losing like centimeter or half an inch or something, you know. Oh, I need to change this. So, this top thing, this needs to go here. This is the outlet port. This needs to go to the inlet. One tiny little cut. Holy crap, I think we're done. Okay, now we just got to turn it on, make sure everything's working, and then we're going to start filling with water. This is amazing. An hour and 15 minutes to go. Little did Adam know his journey was far from over. I think we're screwed, boys. Turns out that this pump doesn't just use USB power. It also requires to be connected to a Corsair IQ Link Box that, of course, they don't include. Which means I have to make a trip to the store if I want this.

pump to work. It doesn't matter if you don't care about any of the smart features. You can't just run the pump off of the USB header. You have to connect it to a Corsair IQ link. I should have expected Corsair to pull this kind of. In my defense, Corsair does a great job of not telling you anywhere on the main page on their website. You actually have to go into the text specs, I believe, and then go. No, nothing here that says it's required. Um, if I go to guides, maybe. So, I'd have to look at. I'd have to review the manual. They also do a great job of not showing it to you on the box, except for this tiny little thing that says that IQ link is required. It costs $60. Are you kidding me? And it's not even like we can return something like we did with the radiator. I just have to spend $60 more. This is how much time I got. [Music] left. It's now counting upwards to demonstrate how much time I'm wasting.

and how much in debt I will be at the end of this. Okay, we have our funnel and our distilled water, and this is going to be a pain in the to pour, isn't it? This is kind of terrifying. Do you see any drips anywhere? So, what's wrong here? Like, why isn't basically what's happening is that there's air in the tubes already, and that would be preventing the water from going. So, maybe if I give it a little bit of a tip, it's flowing in a circle. You can see it coming down the inlet. Yeah, you see that? No drips, no drips. Let's do this. We're finally up and running, and I'm running Combuster and Cinebench at the same time, and I am actually blown away. I was expecting temperatures to not be as good as they are, but running Cinebench 2024, we're at like 70° on the CPU, 80° on the hottest core, and then on the GPU, we're running Combuster at 4K, 50° C. We have so much room to crank.

this thing up another notch. I'm really excited. I didn't think it would go this well. We also haven't even done our Heating and Cooling Cycles, which benefits PTM 7950, so it could get even better. We could get even cooler than what we have right now. You know what? I kind of get it. I kind of get why people water cool. This is so cool seeing people get it. It's so not worth the money. So not worth the money. And this look on his face right now, it goes the other way when it leaks. And you might look at the timer back there, and you'll notice that it's counting up. We went over budget. Oh no. But we were really, really close, and I'm mostly blaming Corsair. Tell me about that. So you buy their pump, right? You do a nice do. Yeah, I mean, I bought their pump, pretty expensive pump. It's very fancy. It doesn't run at all without also buying a sold separately IQ link Hub. I also saw the braided exterior tubing that you bought, and I

was like that seems like it'd be a really cool look, but I have concern about cutting it cleanly and then it's still looking good where you tighten the collars on the compress. Yeah, it looks like is when you go here looks great, but when you get right up to the compression fittings, you can see like this one I had to do a few times. I can see that, and it's already worn. The reason why these aren't on all these fans connect to these Pogo pins, and this fitting right here interferes with this getting a proper contact to actually send the signal. They should all run. I just have to flip. I just have turned them all the way over here. Yeah, why did you choose thermal take fans? Um, because I wanted RGB, okay, and I didn't want to spend too much money on RGB. I see. I got six of these for half the price of three course air fans. Yep, that's fair enough. Yeah, if you had both of these RADS actually running, you'd have plenty of radiator right now.

and you would be getting better temperatures. You can really tell whether your bottleneck is the thermal transfer between the CPU and the block, or whether your bottleneck is the dissipation of the heat to the surrounding air, by just touching the side of your radiator, or just here, touch the fins. Oh yeah, that's warm. You got to throw some more heat into the air here. Yeah, even your reservoir feels hot. Uh-oh, what's the coolant temp at? We can see 43. Oh, that's getting up there. Yeah, so eventually we're going to be getting saturated, right? And then it just keeps freezing, or what happens is the bigger the Delta, the bigger the difference in temperature between the surrounding air and the coolant, the more efficient the thermal transfer. So you reach a point of equilibrium where as the liquid heats up, the difference from the ambient air gets greater, and the heat transfer gets greater, so it flattens out. The jibu is still so far below its thermal limits. Okay, I can explain that. The regular form factor for GPUs is really not conducive.

to carrying heat away from them, having a fan blowing down onto a heat sink this thick with these super skinny low static pressure fans. FS sucks. We've done experiments in the past where we put a tower cooler onto a GPU, and they run flipping cool, even though the cooler itself weighs less than the gigantic coolers that we put on GPUs these days. GPUs are actually much easier to cool, even though they're 400 watts compared to, you know, 200 to 300 for a CPU, because the dyes are so big. You have so much surface area to carry that heat away compared to a CPU, like especially on Intel where the die is this big and it's 250 to 300 watts. GPU, you know, 400 watts, that big, no big deal. You spent so much money on your block. I had so much money to spend. Well, you could have made up for the budget overrun on that IQ controller and your time overrun if you had just gotten a reasonably priced block. That's true, but I think it's pretty realistic.

like when you did your first water cooling, did you get every single part correct? Well, maybe you did. No, I think that assumption is why people can feel afraid to try new things. No, I absolutely screwed up my first water cooling setup. It was a Thermal Take Big Water SE. It was a piece of sh—complete waste of money. I thought that what I was buying was an all-in-one setup that could be expanded in the future to, you know, go full custom. I didn't realize that everything about it was complete garbage. And I will say that the information that's out there to help people start water cooling is so much better. It's a lot better, really great. Like, uh, I was referring to a lot of Jay2Sense guides because his water cooling guides were awesome. They were great for somebody like me but also had depth that I wasn't even bothering to go into. Like, he's like, Here's how to hardline, and I was like, I'm not, not today, clearly not. So, what

you want is one of these. Oh, so this is a 3/8 in ID, 5/8 in OD. What you have is a 3/8 in ID, 1/4 in OD. So you can see how much skinnier than that wall is. So you want thick wall tubing. Yeah, this is the optimal size. But now we need to answer the question, does this beat the Rog Matrix? I don't think we can answer that question until we answer, did you have fun? You know, since it wasn't any of my own money, I had a grand old time. But how does my system compare to the incredible power of the Rog Matrix? It comes close, but not as close as I thought. Across the games I tested, I found the tough gaming GPU lagged behind about 5 to 10%. Not being satisfied, I decided to put on a quick and dirty overclock. I found that I was able to pretty much match the Rog Matrix. Not bad. Back to spending the money though, I think it doesn't really matter whose money it was because that wasn't the

point the point was we're going to spend this money. Do we spend it on a matrix Rog 49g, or do we spend it on ourselves? Do we spend it on learning something and water cooling components that we can carry forward to future builds and the experience of DIYing something? So, with that in mind, who do you think won? You know, I think it was a lot more fun to water cool, and the idea that the Rog Matrix could just crap out, and then I'm in the same spot I am now with a GPU that I would have to take apart and water cool anyways. I feel like I'm better. Yes, there's going to be maintenance that I have to do. I'm going to have to make sure that my loop doesn't get clogged, and there's a whole, like, maybe in the long run, if I keep paying myself at $21 an hour, the Rog Matrix might come out on top. But this is way more fun, way cooler, and I can also sell these if I go, Oh, I don't want to.

water cool anymore. I can anything but the radiator pump and Reservoir is not worth much. Okay, you can't sell tubing blocks, hold like a quarter of their value if you're lucky on a CPU, and basically nothing for GPU. With all that in mind then, would you do it again? Yeah, it sounds about right, but would you tell the people about our sponsor? I fix it. Back to school is coming, and instead of buying a new laptop, repair and upgrade your old one with I fix it. Their high-quality drivers are assembled with the tinkerer in mind, and right now you can get 15% off their Manta, Mahi, Moo, Minnow, and Mor bit sets. That's a whole lot of bits for your every need. Maybe you want to start reusing that old Mac laptop that's just collecting dust. Now's the perfect time as I fix it is also offering 15% off Mac laptop parts. With I fix it, laptop surgery doesn't require a doctorate degree, just their handy guides and high-quality tools. Go check out iix it at the

link in the description. Save some money this back-to-school season. If you guys enjoyed this video, you might enjoy the time that Elijah tried his first Hardline tubing experience. Yeah, I'm not that brave.

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Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.


Linus Tech Tips

Asus's RTX 490 Rog Matrix: A Pricey Powerhouse

Asus released the Rog Matrix, the most powerful RTX 490, with advanced cooling features and a $3,200 price tag.

The high cost has led to criticism, suggesting that the premium could be better spent on a custom build.

Adam is using his budget to plan and purchase components for a water cooling loop, aiming to cool both the GPU and CPU while paying himself for the assembly.

The builder is using thin-walled tubing, making the loop layout crucial to avoid kinks.

He opted for XF series compression fittings, which are compatible with the tubing vendor, but could have saved money by choosing a different brand.

The 4090 water block was a costly choice, but its impressive design and compatibility with the GPU model may justify the expense.

The speaker plans to use mod mats from the LTT store to organize screws and avoid budget issues.

They express frustration with warranty void stickers and share that they are not enforceable by law in the U.

The speaker is building a PC with a massive Phanteks NV7 case, a 480 mm radiator, and a pump res combo from Corsair, while dealing with tight timelines and soft tubing for easier installation.

Compression fittings are used to seal tubing and prevent leaks, but the current setup has a challenging bend.

The mix of brands and poor-quality tubing raises concerns about the build's effectiveness.

The pump's power requirements are complicated, leading to an unexpected trip to the store for a missing Corsair IQ Link Box.

The Frustrations of Setting Up a Corsair Pump

The Corsair pump requires a separate IQ link for operation, which is not clearly stated on the website or the product packaging.

The unexpected $60 cost of the IQ link adds to the frustration, leading to a budget overrun.

Despite the challenges, the water cooling setup ultimately delivers impressive temperatures, making the effort feel somewhat worthwhile.

The speaker is worried about the clean cut and proper contact of compression fittings on fans, which are essential for sending signals.

They chose Thermal Take fans for their RGB lighting at a lower cost.

The discussion highlights the importance of radiator placement and temperature difference for efficient thermal transfer, as well as the challenges of cooling GPUs compared to CPUs.

The Challenges and Rewards of Water Cooling

The speaker's first water cooling setup was a Thermal Take Big Water SE, which turned out to be a complete waste of money.

They found valuable guidance from Jay2Sense's water cooling tutorials, which offered depth and options for different setups.

Ultimately, the speaker enjoyed the DIY experience of water cooling, finding it more fun and rewarding than simply buying a high-end GPU, while also gaining transferable skills for future builds.

Water cooling components have minimal resale value, with tubing and blocks offering just a fraction of their original worth.

The radiator pump and reservoir are not worth much either.

The speaker reflects on their experience with water cooling and promotes I Fix It's repair and upgrade services for laptops, offering 15% off on various tool sets and Mac laptop parts.