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bu an unlocked Intel 4th gen core i7 or core i5 processor and get a free copy of

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Rome 2 Total War click now to learn more this is the first time we've ever done a

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system review on Linus Tech tips and frankly I wasn't 100% sure where to

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start and while you might be thinking to yourself well Linus you could start by

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showing us the system rather than a monitor I would reply to that I am

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showing you the system this is heavy and

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it's the crate computer from crate computers and it is one heck of a unique

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high performance gaming system so let's

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kick things off with an overview of who exactly this is built for I mean I see

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this as the ultimate Land Machine or the

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all-in-one PC for people who think being Limited in terms of performance and

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upgrades the way a traditional all-in-one would be is for chumps okay

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but the next question you might ask me is well why would I even want an

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all-in-one and you know what I don't have a solid answer because personally

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I'm good with my full tower I've got a whole house with three whole people

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living in it one of whom is a baby and I never ever remove my computer but for

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the folks that are interested in all-in ones I'd love to hear from you in the

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comment section tell me what is appealing about the all-in-one form

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factor where you've got the PC and the Monitor and they take up basically the

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same footprint as just a monitor I mean the way that I see it is I'm put putting

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words in your mouth but this is for folks that want the flexibility to be

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able to pick up and move it wherever they need to go and the space savings to

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have their entire high performance gaming rig take up as much space as a

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monitor I mean I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if that's what you're trying to achieve the crate

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computer has a higher performance to foot print ratio than pretty much

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anything else on the market the system arrives extrem

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extremely well packed the Box both the outer one and the accessory one has a

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spray painted logo on it and the inside

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of the packaging uses those oh yeah you get a t-shirt well kind of like a nice

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Polo and then the inside uses those bags

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that expand and fill in the gaps as the chemicals inside mix I'm really glad to

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see crate be smart and use these they are really really expensive but they're

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the only real option for small companies who are serious about their computers

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around driving in one piece and are not shipping high enough volume to justify

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fully custom packaging so next up is a

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tour of the outside the front is a monitor that's sort of a dur moment

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there it's an all-in-one so it stands to reason you can actually pick your

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monitor on their website this particular one is a vonic 1080p 27in LED back lit

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one but they have a 24in there's also a 3D capable gaming monitor from isus and

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what's cool is that if you ever decide down the line to switch to something

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else the attachment system used here between the system and the monitor is a

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standard vase amount so you'll have the option to change to something else if

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you want that's a nice touch from a diy's perspective the monitor stand is

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where things start to get interesting it's one of the heaviest most robust

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feeling hunks of solid metal that I've ever encountered on a computer I guess

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given that it's designed to hold a 27in screen and a full gaming computer means

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that that sort of makes sense but I was still in awe of it when I pulled it out

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of the box with much difficulty unfortunately it replaces the stock

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stand so you lose any tilt swivel height

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adjust or any other adjustments that you would normally be able to make to the

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monitor you'll pretty much put it down on your desk and short of an aftermarket

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riser to put it on top of something or something like that that is pretty much

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how you will use it on the top we don't

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find a whole lot there are a couple of decorative Fasteners so hopefully you

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guys can see that okay then on the right side we find the stickers that matter

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including the Windows Kaa and a core i5 sticker as well as a single lone power

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switch the left side is full of ventilation holes but there are no fans

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installed WTF ah yes here on the back we find out

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that cooling is handled by four 120 mm

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fans all of them configured by default as intake which I'll touch on more later

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at the bottom we find a nice little short DVI cable that's already hooked up

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running between the Monitor and the PC IO courtesy of an EVGA Stinger Mini ITX

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motherboard and two power inputs since this is kind of a DIY all-in-one and

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you'll have to run two separate power cords in order to get her fired up

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opening up the system is actually quite simple just remove the eight- old thumb

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screws on the back and you can pop it right off the first thing I noticed is

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that those fans that we saw from the outside those 120 mm fans are actually

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cougar fans the second thing I noticed is that the back has a nice decorative

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crate computers logo on it but that's actually protective as well as being

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stylish so it separates the intakes of

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the fans from any obstructions that might be behind the computer by a little

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bit just so that no matter what there will be enough of a gap for you to get

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some air flow in there the third thing I noticed unfortunately was the use of a

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stock Intel cooler ouch inside a small

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case like this I would have to at least initially question the wisdom of that

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but I will let the performance tests tell the whole story the system is

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compatible with two and A2 in drives only but you can use any thickness so

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while this one is configured with a single 500 gig Neutron SSD from Corsair

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and crate computers offers up to a 1 tbyte hard drive as an additional option

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because it's not light restricted you could even go after market and pick up a

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wd 15 mm thick 2 terabyte 2 and a half

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inch Drive to go with your boot SSD for great performance and tons of storage

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wiring inside is handled very tidy with all the cable management done behind the

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motherboard tray although I've got to question the use of a very industriall

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looking power supply it's a 600 wat 80 plus bronze unit so that's all good so

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far but that tiny little fan actually two fans seem like they would get

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unreasonably loud the manufacturer went

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with Patriot Viper series RAM actually 16 gigs in there and uh I'm not really

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particular about memory so as long as it runs well on this board I have no

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quarrels with that choice we also find ah yes here we go finally an EVGA GTX

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780 with an ACX style cooler on a PCI

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Express extension their PCI Express

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extension solution is actually one of the most interesting things about the

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case design it positions the card right next to the external vents on that left

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hand side which is definitely plus given that the card uses an open a design

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cooler and it will be dumping heat all around it and it also seems to utilize

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some kind of like shock mount system that appears to have some Flex to it

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rather than being firmly bolted in place this may seem like a pretty questionable

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thing to the Casual Observer but in my estimation this should actually give the

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card a better chance of making it to your door by acting as a bit of a shock

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absorber during shipping it did manage to arrive here in Canada

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in one piece at least and while that is a small sample size it's at least proof

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that it's not guaranteed to cause problems the centerpiece internally is

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of course the EVGA Z87 miniitx

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motherboard that makes this whole creative unique and very interesting

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system possible now moving on to Performance

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the number one concern I have about any compact gaming machine is thermals we we

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saw this with the ASRock M8 which is actually a similar size although it

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doesn't strap to the back of a monitor um but that one uses 60 mm cooling fans

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which in their stock configuration will actually cause a GPU of this caliber to

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throttle even at stock frequency so I wanted to put the crate to the test the

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unreasonable unrealistic test that is

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mAh haa my opening Salvo was good old

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furmark it Rose to 80° on the GPU which is perfectly normal but what was

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impressive was the fact that it was still running at over 900 MHz boost

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clock which is the advertised average boost clock of a referenced GTX 780 so

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either evga's ACX cooler or the cooling in the chassis itself is doing its thing

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pretty effectively and Fir Mark ran just fine without any tweaks this is a very

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solid result and it means that heat is not an immediately limiting factor like

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it would be on many cases this size such as the aforementioned azrock M8 and I

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mean most cases this size won't even fit a GTX 780 in them never mind cooling it

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adequately my next test was for the CPU only so I ran Prime 95 with four threads

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on the 4670k which is enough to pretty much fully load it and we got a result

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of around 75° that's okay that's great that's fine but it wasn't until I loaded

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up furmark at the same time with an open

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air cooler on the GTX 780 in this tiny

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little case that I got really impressed cuz that is a T of heat to deal with in

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a very small space and the CPU only got to 83° on the hottest core I mean fan

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noise didn't even get unreasonable even that whiny looking power supply fan was

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surprisingly well behaved and didn't have any discernable whiny motor noise

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and of course due to the use of those high quality cougar fans on the side

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panel the overall system sounds like air whoosing as opposed to Motors whining so

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that is a very strong result cooling wise now the crate uses h a strong

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positive pressure concept to control airf flow and keep it intaking in the

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back and then exhausting only out the left and then of course a little bit

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goes out from that active fan on the power supply and this system works with

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everything running full blast this vent right here on the side in spite of the

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fact that it doesn't have its own fans feels like a space heater there's like

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there's like air like coming out of it like that I mean I suspect that by reor

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orienting the fans on the side panel you might be able to achieve slightly better

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temperatures on one component or another

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but I don't think it would have the same overall effect that crate computers is

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going for of dispensing the heat um from

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the GPU with getting rid of it immediately and pushing it out the side

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panel rather than allowing it to affect the other components in fact I believe

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that that's a big part of why the CPU temperatures only went up about 8° from

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turning on fur Mar at the same time as Prime 95 so great thinking on their part

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there so I've talked up their cooling approach a fair bit here but um you know

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that's is that really enough torture let's torture it some more this time I

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want to go with a more realistic use case scenario actual gaming but to bring

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on the pain I'm going to be overclocking the graphics card so I fired up EVGA

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precision and dialed in a quick and dirty overclock of plus 200 MHz on the

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core and plus 250 MHz on the video r

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I then cranked the maximum voltage and cranked the power limit and thermal

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limit to their absolute maximums and fired up Batman Arkham Origins Color Me

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impressed with the game max out it was playable which is great at 1080p but

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this isn't exactly news to anyone who's ever seen GTX 780 benchmarks before more

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importantly the GPU never went over 80°

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even in this scenario and sat between 11

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60 MHz and 12200 MHz a very healthy real

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world frequency for an aircool GTX 780

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at the best of times never mind when it's in a tiny little enclosure like

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this one all right lonus so we get it

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performance is a strong point but um you know what about the bad stuff well I

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don't know guys I mean the stock cooler on the CPU didn't impress me that much

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uh although I plan to because it's very modular and you can Tinker around with

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it if you want I plan to experiment with removing the necessary side panel fans

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to allow me enough clearance to put a non-reference cooler on the CPU I think

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other than that the system is pretty much ideal but I mean being able to

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achieve slightly better overall performance by throwing a a few more

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gigahertz on the core couldn't be a bad thing um ergonomics could probably use

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some improvement in a generation 2 product the base is solid and feels

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really good and in my opinion actually has a like a rugged Industrial Beauty to

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it but not everyone will feel the same way about not having tilt height adjust

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Etc on their monitor and not to mention accessing the io on the bottom of the

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system is not the easiest thing in the world another thing I'd like to see

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added to a generation 2 product would be um some front USB 3 on the side or maybe

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monitor selections that include a USB 3 Hub so that we have easy access to that

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and then with a nice little cable like they've done with the DVI one

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pre-connected that would be a great way to deal with that um I guess the last

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thing I'd like to see a better implementation of out of the box is dynamic fan control for the case fans

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the system is not unreasonably loud especially under load where it's very

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reasonable but at idle it could easily

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be quieter with just one small tweak so

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evga's BIOS has a really cool smart fan option that lets you set up a custom

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curve for your CPU fan that is controlled via pwm swifttech has a pwm

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splitter that would be a low costway to have all four case fans powered off the

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power supply yet controlled by that one pwm s signal so that would be a great

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way to handle them that other than that it's a cool Innovative product and I'm

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really excited to see more it's basically a clean non- bloatware

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infected customizable and upgradeable Boutique system that is small enough to

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fit on your desk in the same space as just a monitor so you can check out

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create computers's configurator in the link below the video and it would I

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would definitely recommend that you do they're not the cheapest systems in the

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world and they're not perfect but if you are looking for the answer to what is

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the smallest footprint into which I can fit a full powered gaming rig on my desk

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this is the best answer that I have yet encountered thanks for watching guys

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like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment

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and let me know I think I asked for a comment earlier in the video it was something to do with um let me know what

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you think about you know who would need an allinone and as always don't forget

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to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer

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videos