I Built a Janky Computer for William Osman!

I Built a Janky Computer for William Osman is a playful, chaotic tech build episode that blends Linus Tech Tips’ big-budget hardware chops with William Osman’s signature offbeat humor. The video centers on designing, fabricating, and assembling an anywhere-storage server, nicknamed AS or “ass,” inside a rugged Pelican case. The team experiments with high-capacity NVMe drives, a server-grade motherboard, and a compact yet powerful power supply to keep the system portable while still capable of handling video footage from Open Sauce. Throughout the build, there are running gags about the awkwardness of makeshift cooling, the absurd cost of select components, and running jokes about the reliability of the improvised solution. The crew also teases Open Sauce as a sister event to the channel, while packing in sponsorship plugs in a lighthearted way. By the end, they have a working prototype that can connect to a 10 GbE switch, with cooling brackets printed or adapted on the fly, and they set the stage for future improvements or a second, more refined iteration. The first major phase focuses on scoping the NAS concept as portable, robust, and high-capacity. They emphasize the need for portability beyond a traditional NAS, aiming for a device that can be carried to shoots and Open Sauce events. The team selects four data-center NVMe drives at 15.36 TB each, intended to provide massive raw capacity in a compact form factor. Early dialogue centers on balancing performance with cost, including debates over backplanes, external cabling versus printed circuit board approaches, and the feasibility of a mixed cooling strategy. The atmosphere remains light and joking, yet there are clear engineering considerations about thermal management, airflow, and structural integrity, especially given the jury-rigged nature of some components. The crew also debates the merits of server-class versus consumer hardware, highlighting remote-management features that matter in data-center contexts. In the mid portion, attention shifts to hardware integration and on-site fabrication. They mount components in a Minis Forum MSA2 as the main computing node for the NAS, and discuss using a VM-style RAID configuration with 16 drives to achieve redundancy. There is a recurring theme of improvisation, including adapting a PCIe bracket, trimming plastic, and using Loctite fasteners in less-than-ideal conditions. The dialogue covers cooling strategies for SSDs, with a bracket printed by a helper to hold a fan and direct airflow over the drives. The build includes a mix of precision work and casual mistakes, such as misaligned holes and a few off-kilter cuts, which are humorously acknowledged and iterated on, underscoring the “janky but functional” spirit of the project. Toward the final stretch, the team validates the NAS concept and demonstrates a working system, albeit with caveats. They confirm the eight-drive capability of the chosen server switch, the ability to ignore a missing dedicated power button by powering on with a screwdriver, and the successful installation of a 96 GB DDR5 RAM cache layer to accelerate data access. They discuss ZFS features like native compression to optimize space usage, and plan to offload primary data to SSDs to maintain a responsive user experience. The episode closes with a nod to collaboration and sponsorships, plus a tease of more Open Sauce content, while noting that some elements may be trimmed for the final cut. Overall, the video blends enthusiastic tinkering, practical hardware challenges, and entertaining banter into a memorable build log. The video also serves as a showcase for collaboration between Linus Tech Tips and William Osman, along with community-centric jokes about the “ass” branding, the Open Sauce event, and the behind-the-scenes process. Viewers get a sense of the team’s problem-solving approach, how to balance portability with performance, and why some of the more ambitious ideas require iterative testing and risk-taking. The result is a highly watchable, gadget-heavy project that leans into both educational hardware detail and the unpredictable nature of a team trying to assemble a portable, multi-user storage solution in a workshop environment.

Topics · Technology · Science & Technology · Build Video · CollaborativeProject · Open Source · Hardware · Storage · Video Production