GeForce RTX 4090 Liquid Cooled With An Air Conditioner Stays At 20C, Is The 5090 Next?

Is it possible to adapt data center server cooling solutions for personal use? A Chinese techtuber has taken the question to task by adapting a 12,000 BTU (British Thermal Unit) air conditioner compressor to a gaming PC equipped with an Intel i9-13900K CPU and GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. As wild as this home-based creation is, the cooling system was so effective that a 40-minute torture test kept the GPU at 20° Celsius (68° Fahrenheit)—outdoors, no less.

A techtuber (on Chinese video platform Bilibili) called Electrolytic Sodium Carbonate—a literal translation from 电解碳酸钠—has content that ranges from your standard phone, gaming, and PC reviews. The channel, however, has apparently been experimenting with cooling gaming PCs with A/C units . Its latest exploit is most interesting: could connecting an A/C compressor directly to a cooling block for a gaming PC be viable and effective?

In the video, the host introduces viewers to a Xiaomi KFR-35GW air conditioning compressor (recognizable to U.S. readers as a heat pump compressor, or mini split unit compressor in other parts of the world). The video states that the compressor runs at 1.2kW and manages 12,000 BTUs; a label with NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel branding hides the Xiaomi logo. (This video in question doesn't test any AMD components, although this could point to a future test with a Radeon RX card or something.)


With some elbow grease and pipe finagling, the creators were able to neatly fit a liquid cooler reservoir within the compressor casing. The compressor was then connected to the demo PC with appropriate fittings—the workmanship is impressively good, actually. For the PC, it was fitted with an  Intel i9-13900K CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, so while not a GeForce RTX 5090, the setup would still be demanding. 

From a 40-minute stress test using FurMark and AIDA System Stability Test tools, the host states that the CPU cores were impressively only 36° F warmer than before the test began. The compressor was then placed outdoors, the GPU was noted to be 36° F at idle with a 54° F hotspot. After the same stress test, the GPU was settling at 68° F and 97° F respectively. Not bad at all, although realistically, the big power consumption difference between the compressor versus your average PC cooling system would be the kicker here.

Photo credits: ESC via Bilibili