A PC That Perks While It Works

We all know the stereotypes about hardcore software engineers — an unkempt bunch wearing hoodies and shorts with a wide selection of energy drinks at the ready at all times. As with most stereotypes, this description is more fiction than fact. But the caffeine component of it is oh so very real. Staying laser-focused on the minute details of a large codebase is only possible for just so long. So for extended coding sessions, caffeination is a necessary ritual.

The close association between computing and caffeine has led a small but dedicated group of hardware hackers to combine the two. We have seen, for instance, this computer with a fully-automated coffee maker (bean grinder and all) integrated into it. Inspired by projects such as this, Doug MacDowell has built the Coffeematic PC. As the name indicates, it is a coffee maker/PC combo, but it also has a few additional touches not seen in past designs.

The Coffeematic PC may be a lot of things, but it is not much to look at. It is built around a 1980s GE Coffeematic Coffee Maker with an old (but not old enough to be retro-cool) AMD Athlon II X4 640 CPU-based computer that is pretty much just stuck to every available surface of the coffee maker. The motherboard, disk, GPU — everything is exposed and just waiting for water to be spilled on it as the coffee maker is refilled.

Since water is already being pumped around the coffee maker, MacDowell decided to add some additional pumps and tubing to use the freshly brewed coffee to “cool” the CPU. But wait, isn’t coffee hot? Of course it is — it comes out of the machine at nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Won’t that fry the CPU, you ask? Very nearly, but not quite. The hot brew travels through a series of radiators to cool it, and before long it helps to maintain a comfortable CPU temperature of about 91 degrees, as long as the computer can handle the initial onslaught.

This does mean that the coffee is quickly cooled to a lukewarm mixture that is better for the computer, but that makes it less appealing for the human. But if you are drinking this mixture, that should be the least of your worries. The tubing and pumps the coffee passes through are not meant for use with anything intended for human consumption, so you should avoid drinking it. And anyway, it won’t be too long before it all fills up with mold and other nastiness.

MacDowell admits that the Coffeematic PC is not actually very useful. The coffee is not fit for human consumption, and a 15-year-old computer is not exactly fit for use as a daily driver. But this project is not about utility. It is about building a coffee-cooled PC just because you can. What other reason than that does a hacker ever need to build anything? Be sure to check out the project write-up for more details. Perhaps you could be the sixth person in the world to build a coffee maker PC.