Don't put metal in your microwave, but how about an entire PC?

(Image credit: Jake Lucky)

Generally speaking, I have a rule about electronics in the microwave. I know it makes me a bit of a party-pooper, but this is my house, and in my house we keep things like metals outside of the electromagnetic radiation machine. However, it turns out that incredibly good and safety conscious rule has been holding me back, because building a PC inside of a Microwave sure is a choice some people are making.

Jack Lucky posted a video on Twitter showing off one such microwave PC build. He explains in the caption it was built by a man in Brazil in an effort to save money after losing his job due to the pandemic. Lucky also states the build cost around $900, but the video makes it a little tricky to see exactly which parts are powering the machine.

A man in Brazil who lost his job during COVID decided to make a microwave PC in order to save moneyHe built this fully operational for just $900 pic.twitter.com/UxRRtqgtclNovember 7, 2022

We also don't know when the build was originally made, but $900 doesn't exactly sound like a cash saving endeavour. Right now this Asus RTX 3060 gaming PC is on sale for $740, which is a great Black Friday deal. If you're really after those dielectric heating stylings, you can always gut the ROG Strix G10 and put it in an old microwave, if you like.

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Further down Lucky posts some additional pictures of the build where we can glean some more insight. It looks like we're seeing an Asus A320M-K motherboard, and one helluva heat sink on that CPU. Even with fans installed on the side of the microwave oven, we're guessing it still lives up to its name there. Temps may not be the easiest thing to control in something designed specifically to heat things up.

Chip chillers

CPU Coolers — (Image credit: Corsair, Noctua)

Best CPU cooler: keep your chip chilled in style
Best PC fans: super-silent and plastered in RGB
Best PC cases: big, little, and everything in-between.

It turns out Lucky's friend in Brazil isn't the only bright spark to have had this idea. Further down in the Twitter thread we're treated to the image of a build by Lucas Cavalcante. This Microwave PC is mounted above the work station, making it look a bit more like a normal microwave at first glance.

This immediately changes when you spot the RGB glow coming front the machine in blue and green hues. It's a nice looking ITX set up, but you can still see the heatsink towering towards the back. Still, a very cute idea, especially when it sits above the rest of the PC setup, kind of like a real microwave.

I dare you to build a microwave computer better than mine (with only R$1500,00) pic.twitter.com/mSHi3ggPEEJuly 30, 2020

You can find a few more microwave builds around the net, like this one by Neosalicious on PC part picker featuring an Nvidia 2080 Ti. This has since been superseded by their version 2 microwave machine sporting an RTX 3090 and a Ryzen 9 5900X, and water cooling.

The best part about all this is of course, the creativity. PC cases can and should be just about anything is definitely a rule I can get behind. Be it a microwave, giant dino sculpture, or even a chainsaw, please, put gaming PCs in everything.

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Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here. No, she’s not kidding.