Billet Labs turns a cast-iron Victorian radiator into a fully fledged gaming PC with a giant liquid-cooling loop. See the steampunk build, components and design
© Billet Labs
Engineers at the British company Billet Labs have unveiled an unusual project: a fully fledged gaming PC built into a hefty cast-iron radiator from the Victorian era. The assembly weighs around 50 kg, and the radiator itself effectively becomes part of the PC’s cooling system. The concept comes across as both playful and purposeful—an art piece that actually earns its keep.
As a foundation, the team used an antique cast-iron radiator, apparently taken from a Victorian-era home. Beneath its heavy shell, the engineers fitted all the key components of a modern computer—motherboard, graphics card, power supply, and cooling hardware. From the outside, the structure passes for a decorative interior piece: curved feet, embossed fins, and that distinctive profile lend it an antique character. Inside, though, sits a contemporary, high-performance core.
At this stage of the build, Billet Labs is routing copper tubing and shaping a complex liquid-cooling loop. With more than 10 liters of internal volume, the radiator serves as a giant heat exchanger. Judging by their demonstration, all output ports—graphics card, motherboard, and power supply—are positioned at the back. The team joked that the surface might end up covered in copper piping and that the look would be strange yet beautiful.
The creators are not disclosing exact specs, but the choices clearly point to flagship components—a powerful CPU and GPU built to shed plenty of heat. That, in turn, makes the cast-iron radiator more than a design flourish; it functions as a working part of the cooling system, where form follows function more than it seems at first glance.
The project is already being described as a showcase of steampunk-style engineering—a marriage of eras where modern hardware lives inside a shell from another century. Billet Labs has not finished the build yet but plans to keep showing the process. Judging by the audience response, this eccentric PC has already become one of the year’s most memorable custom projects.