When Billet Labs began on this project, they faced an unexpected challenge: transforming a Victorian-era antique into a functional living room display. When fully loaded with water, the finished creation weighs a massive 99 kilograms (218 pounds), combining the elegance of ancient heating technology with some seriously modern components, and its background as a Victorian radiator just adds to its charm.
The empty radiator weighs only 50 kilos, but when coolant and other components are added, the weight rises to well over 100 kilograms. What’s really surprising is how well its large thermal mass works; 18 liters of water and a pile of iron simply soak up heat spikes, keeping the device going even when you leave the PC on for hours.
Now the team needed to figure out how to fit all of the components underneath the radiator in a custom base, so they 3D scanned the radiator’s bottom, created a custom tray in Blender and Fusion, and printed the whole thing. The best aspect is that you’d never know it was there; there are no visible brackets or evident attachments from the outside.
The system is powered by a Gigabyte Aorus Pro B850I motherboard and an AMD Ryzen 9 9800X3D processor, which is an amazing monster. The NVIDIA RTX 5080 graphics card is water-cooled using an Alphacool block. It also includes a solid 32GB of RAM and a 2TB HDD, while a compact 600W Flex ATX Platinum modular power supply powers it all. The cooling system uses a single loop around the radiator, with copper pipes connecting to brass rotary and compression connections, a DDC pump handling circulation, and three thin 120mm fans keeping things nice and cold. There is also a 0.1mm mesh filter and a magnetic one to trap any dust or rust particles that may get in the way.
Cleaning proved to be a challenge, as the crew discovered the hard way that rust particles may cause serious problems, clogging up the pump and creating air bubbles that refused to clear. So they decided to thoroughly clean everything with citric acid solutions, water, and detergent, followed by a rust inhibitor to keep everything safe. As a nice touch, the loop has separate valves and drain ports, allowing you to flush the radiator and computer portions separately without having to move the entire assembly, and there are even hoses for remote maintenance if you need to get below it without moving the heavy assembly.
A custom loom with silicon cables and good old-fashioned harness tape keeps the wiring neat and tidy. The pump is connected to a motherboard fan header, and they even found an old brass gear lever on eBay to use as the power button, which has a micro switch for a clean momentary action.
As for the cosmetic elements, the entire thing has been decked up with polished copper pipes, refinished fittings, a custom laser-cut back IO panel, and some lovely clean motherboard covers, since who doesn’t like a good old-fashioned analog gauge or two? They’ve even managed to squeeze in some tilt-mounted temperature and pressure gauges, making it simple to keep track of what’s happening.
In terms of performance, under stress, the CPU reaches a hot 80-98°C with some throttling kicking in at 95°C, while the GPU keeps a relatively cool 55-75°C at full load, for a total power usage of 520W. But what truly impresses is the low temperatures in games – in Halo 3 at 4K full settings, the power demand was only 170W, and the water was only 20°C higher than ambient. Spider-Man 2 achieved 350W at 10°C over, while Cyberpunk 2077 got 400W at a pleasant 12°C over. As for the fans, they’re usually silent at 10% or just turned off.
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