okay Welcome Friends to another in my series of unbuild or tear Downs or
whatever we call these live streams where I put stuff together and take
stuff apart this time I was inspired to do one by a particularly unique little
machine this is the Zotac Magnus en980
it is actually smaller than the MSI
Vortex that cylindrical PC that I took apart in the past although it only has a
single GT X 980 inside of it instead of two but what's interesting about this
guy is they managed to cram a
full 120 mm liquid cooling system inside
of it so I want to tear it apart and see just how it all
ticks the Phoenix vitess features a lightweight design and an optical 3310
sens check it out and enter for a chance to win down below so let's get to it
then first things first let's run through the overall specs of this puppy
it's got a core i5 6400 16 gigs of RAM I
think actually configured it with 32 it's got a GTX 980 it has an m.2 slot a
SATA slot and it has no power supply yes
my friends one of the unique things about this particular system is that
while they did manage to pull off an impressive ly tiny form factor here in
terms of the PC itself they went and they did something that I've been saying
more manufacturers should do for quite some time I've talked to Cooler Master
about this I've talked to Silverstone about this they went and they took the
power external so this is two what are
these I think they're like about 180
watt power bricks giving this puppy a total of about
360 wats of total power delivery which
might explain actually why the CPU is a
core i5 rather than a core i7 you know 6700k
or something along those lines because I think they might have run up against a
power limit otherwise because that 980 graphics card is going to uh really suck
up some juice unfortunately this isn't something that I was able to evaluate in
my review of the thing because um Zotac
basically went well it's not user serviceable and once it's a part it's
not that easy to put back together so we would recommend you review it as a
completed unit and I kind of went okay that's fine but you're not going to
prevent me from taking it apart at some point so without further Ado here we go
the bottom is pretty pretty simple all you do is undo the four thumb screws
there pop it off
and all right let's go ahead and get rid of that one thing I do need is one of my
trusty magnetic Parts trays that'll help me keep track of all the screws and bits
and bobles there we are uh the RAM and the
SSD that you see in here this is stuff that I installed so I've got uh a couple
of those freaking fantastic intelligent
memory sodm that I'm so fond of these are
ddr3l so that's one of the reasons that Skylake has support for both ddr3l and
ddr4 is that it gives the manufacturers a little bit more flexibility to offer a
lower cost ution to folks who don't want
to invest in ddr4 it was more of an issue right at the beginning but um I
have a feeling this product has been in development for quite some time given
that it's running a GTX 980 when the GTX
1080 is most definitely already a thing
and if you're trying to set that up that is straight up not going to work because I am streaming from that computer I
really like what a good job they've done of the bare bonness of this um I am
going to use a tool because I tightened this with a tool so it's actually a
little bit tight right now but you can do the entire uh memory SSD installation
with no tools whatsoever out of the box because those bottom feet are thumb
screws I thought that was really clever um one thing we've got a pretty good
look at here I'm going to go ahead and switch to my now not broken closeup
here we can get a good look at oh that's
kind of an awkward angle unfortunately it's going to be hard for me to adjust
but basically there's your 2 and 1/2 in SATA there there's your m.2 and so you
can see they've got uh little standoffs
here to accommodate a variety of different lengths here and then over
here is where you've got your two dim slots and other than that you're basically not intended to touch this
although what's interesting is for some
reason they went and covered up the wireless module I'm not sure why that is
but it's right back there and then the other thing that we can see here is a
CPU back plate right there so we're going to have a we're going to have a
better look at that once we've been able to take it apart a little bit more so
step number two is going to be to remove a metric wack ton of screws all around I
say step number two as though I have some kind of like pre-planned out
step-by-step guide that I'm following along nope I will be making this up
entirely as I go along I have had some
of the uh this to the front and back panel I have had off already but I have
not removed the side panels yet yet so you guys will be experiencing that with
me for the very first time overall
industrial design of this thing not not you know particularly Next Generation or
anything like that um you know it feels like like quality but not like wow we
did a massive amount of R&D to figure
out how to assemble this thing like this um because it's just basically an
aluminum box but it's nice thick anodized aluminum that's got a a pretty
durable finish on on it so I'm not going to criticize Zotac for it it just
doesn't stand out as like like an amazing feat of of art um in addition to
just being a functional and sturdy you know computer
covering so this gives us a pretty good look at the front panel here so
basically there is a little power PCB that plugs into four
wires so that's going to be basically your front switch as well as your front
power LED since the LED is actually built into the switch here everything
else is just uh an aluminum cutout and then this is kind of interesting so this
is a solid aluminum piece and then this uh this black part here is like a a
plastic uh insert that appears to be just kind of glued on to give it a give
it an accented look at the front if I was going to have one of these in my
living room I'd probably want to paint it like do some kind of a more
performance lookie finish to it because honestly that's one of the things that I
think is really missing from this it is a
$1600 us barebones machine and then it's
got like this weird trying to give you guys a closer look at it it's got like
this weird powder blue color mesh on the
top and then it's otherwise white and silver and black it doesn't have like a
like a high performance Vibe like I get trying not to do the overdone
gamery oh it's red and black and those
are the only colors that exist for some reason because ASUS R OG said so like I
get that but um I don't know that powder
blue would have been the route I would have gone especially when you're zot and you already have kind of a a black and
orange color scheme that I personally think looks pretty good so I've taken
out all the screws around the outside
let's go ahead and pop off the rear panel that's one that I've already had
off before so again it's like a nice thick
very rigid piece of aluminum here um not
really a whole lot to say about that so let's go ahead and put it down there we
go then let's have a look at our side panels here see if we can oh there's
more screws well that explains why I couldn't get it off before Oh
okay the top completely fell away when I
went and tried to remove that piece oh it's very
shiny Mass drop is currently hosting a drop for the amazing Cher custom sa
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and inspired by the motion picture adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate
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the more people that buy something or commit to buying something the lower the
price will go even if the product you're buying is a chocolate keyc cap set you
can check this and other drops at the link NVIDIA description down
below one of Zac's biggest boasts about
this machine is how small it is and justifiably so it's however many liters
very few liters uh let's go ahead and take this off as well but they go and
they do things like cover the entire
outside in actually a surprisingly thick
outer shell when it the actual Hardware
inside is considerably smaller um I'll
give you guys a better look at that sort of baby blue color that I am not that
fond of you can't see it on camera through here very well for some reason
but it's quite visible in person it looks about like that very very strange
choice and I will also give you guys a
better look at the machine itself all
right so that's the top so that's a full 120 mm radiator that they managed to put
in there and not only that but while it's not a super thick one or anything
it's also by no means the SL one that
I've ever seen it's like a like a standard full-size PC radiator that
they've managed to cram into this tiny little space
here on the bottom it still looks
largely the same on this side we actually get our first look at the
custom GPU block so that's an mxm form
factor gtx980 the same kind that you would see used in those GTX 980 laptops
uh devices like the MSI Vortex all that
kind of stuff and then uh over
here yeah see this panel is solid for some reason not quite sure why uh but
the CPU block would be behind there there's a vibration dampening mount for
the pump right here oh I guess that's why this is I guess that's why this is
one solid piece because that's where they did all the mounts for there and then if we look at this side we get a
pretty good look at front IO which is on a little daughter board as well as the
fan for the radiator and you can kind of see the CPU block but this rear shot
gives us a bit of a better angle on it so there's the CPU block there's the
Dual DC powerin there's the I believe
this is for the graphics card I want to say yeah so there's the PCIe 8 Pin for
the graphics card and then here's all of our all of our IO and that stuff so
what's interesting about external power supplies to me is that the conversion
from DC to DC is a lot more efficient
than the conversion from AC to DC so
what that means is even though unless you had like a very
complex uh power brick you can only feed
one voltage in so in the case of these ones it's probably 19 A2 would be my
guess yeah 19 1 12 volts converting that
to 12vt 5vt 3.3 volt all the different
voltages that you need for a computer doesn't generate a ton of heat and so
can and can be done very very efficiently so and it doesn't take up a
lot of space so remember those Pico psus
actually not remember I'm sure they're probably still around but Pico psus
basically take an external power brick and they do all that splitting out and it's on like it's on a PCB that's
probably about like this size like it's very very small so that's effectively
what they're doing is they've created a completely custom motherboard here that
includes all the power conversion circuitry that's needed to take that 192
volts and turn it into what all of the other components inside need so this
bottom plate here just pops right off just a couple screws there it's actually
really easy to disassemble compared to the MSI Vortex even though the size is
very similar I guess because they went with a more traditional square shape so
the only thing that that really reveals is a better look at the CPU back plate
here as well as a look at our wireless
card so that could quite easily be swapped out if we really wanted to let's
just go ahead and uh switch to our closeup here so that could be swapped
out quite easily as an end user if we wanted to but it should be noted I think
actually no I don't think we have broken
any warranty void if removed seals yet so you're in good shape as long as you
don't start taking out the motherboard it looks like that's where you start to
get into trouble that's okay we'll be voiding that warranty before this video
is over Pop the wireless card off 3165
ngw in case anyone on Earth car okay so there's some debate about the GTX 980
card that is inside this system we've got some people saying that it performs
on par with a 980m due to its probably
due to its mxm form factor and then we've got others among you saying that
it does not it actually performs the same as a desktop 980 which is the
correct answer it performs identically to a desktop
gtx980 it's just mounted on a much more
compact PCB and requires there's
probably some binning involved in making sure that it'll operate within the
thermal and power limits but um no it
performs exactly the same as long as it doesn't thermal throttle so wow there
you have it that's actually uh whole thing just kind of comes out like that
so there's the other main piece of the chassis let's go ahead and switch to our close-up camera here see if I can get
you guys a bit of a better look at this
so there's our anti vibrational pad on
the bottom of another black aluminum plate here there we go that's bit of a
better angle for you guys mounted on that this I thought was just such a
weird weird implementation of this system
so yeah that is so just so bizarre so
the pump is here and then they've actually got a tube coming out to a
completely separate Standalone Reservoir and then they've got another tube coming
out to the radiator the radiator bone
is connected to the GPU bone right over here the GPU bone is connected to the
CPU bone oh no wait yes yep so GPU is
connected to CPU and then CPU comes back to the pump most of the time with a
compact water cooling system the reservoir gets combined with some other
component um either the radiator or if
you want to deal with asex legal team with the CPU block so it's very strange
to me that they went and they it's like it's such a weird little part here it's
this tiny little Reservoir but I guess
for some reason that was easier for them to do or cheaper or or something either
way I mean they didn't compromise on the compactness of the system so I can't
really fault them for it one thing's for sure though this
disassembly is about to get a little bit more complicated so let's go ahead and I
think I'm just going to try and remove the water cooling system system as one
piece here so we can get a better look at it cuz that will have to come off if
I want to swap out the
CPU okay yeah with all these tubes kind of
zip tied and cable managed together it's actually kind of hard to get at anything
I guess this is what they were warning me
about it's hard with this overhead shot for you guys to see anything with this
radiator constantly in the way so here are my options I can either
remove one two 3 four five screws uh
here I'll point with something that's a little bit easier for you guys to follow along with so I can either remove this
one and one two 3 four around this
fitting here or I can try and remove one
two three and see if the whole video card
will come off so I'm going to try that what a cool little
machine there it goes all right let's give you guys a better angle of this so
now CPU is
free
GPU seems like I can just tilt it
up along with this whole assembly and pop it
out okay now being very very careful
with that let's go ahead and switch angles
here the whole thing should
basically peel away so let's pop that off pop that
off
and okay um
sure
awesome so let's have a look at the water cooling stuff
first wow that is a lot of thermal
compound jeez
zotek like what the heck is going on
here the good news is it didn't leave a whole lot of goop on the actual CPU so I
can deal with that relatively easily this is cool though so they've actually
opted to make the completely their own custom block I do have to wonder about
the wisdom of using aluminum and copper within the same block design um if
swifttech couldn't do it I don't know how much faith that I have in Zotac
ability to pull this off without corrosion given Swift Tech's um vastly
Superior experience in water cooling the apple G gtz GTX I want to say which is
total total disaster for them um but this is cool by designing their own
block and machining their own block they were able to have the vrm so the actual
uh voltage regulation modules on the motherboard cooled by this block as well
so that's kind of the other component on
a motherboard that's going to run quite hot and might be a concern in a system
that doesn't have a lot of air flow something that I actually was a little
bit worried about when I did my review of this thing which will be up later but
I have filmed it already because pretty much the only exhaust is out the top
here so the exhaust is all here and then
the only intake that I could find was actually above the
io in the back panel here I mean yes
there are intakes in the very bottom here and the SSD down there did actually
manage to stay pretty cool but what's interesting about those is that they
basically sit here and are are pretty
much here if I can give you guys a better look at this they are pretty much
cut off see they're
covered by the by these plates here like
they're only only a little bit of it is exposed and even then it's kind of
closed in by the um by the by the way
that this shell sits here so I don't know it was something I was a little
concerned about and I'm really glad to see that the vrm is being taken care of
by a water block there because that means that will definitely be
okay all right let's go ahead and pull
the GPU block off here
looks like it should be just four screws this is the first time that I have ever
laid hands on a water cooled mxm
card there's a first time for everything
right water cooled
mxm theoretically I could use this block to
jury rig some kind of like water cool video card
nonsense although there would be no need because ASUS is already kind of been
there there and done that gx700 or something I think they call
it okay has this unscrewed yet how how long
do you have to turn these for
jeez I can't even tell if they're still coming
out no screws in the bottom going into it all right let's see if I can get you
guys a good look at this as it comes
apart
okay is that still holding on no okay there we
go here we
go okay off it comes
there so
here here is our mxm
gtx980 so there's your power delivery
here's the 8 Pin power in just like that
it looks like I I don't
remember you know what I haven't looked that closely but I can't imagine that
most notebooks are using an 8 pin PCIe
connector like that so I would imagine that's something slightly custom that
they've done here remember Zotac is an actual manufacturer of graphics cards so
it wouldn't be um that big of a deal for them to do something like
that there's the GPU itself and then
there is your either four or 8 gigs of RAM depending ing on your GTX 980 so
this one has 4 gigs of RAM okay and then
here we've got pretty much every part of
that graphics card is cooled by the water block through the use of thermal
pads or this copper slug in the middle so again they've gone with mixed medals
for their block design here it's such a rookie mistake um you know like if you
guys have been following along with ASUS's Rampage series of motherboards
over the years or is it Maximus whatever I don't know the one that's had water
cooling integrated onto the North Bridge for years and years and years now they
went from what was the first one like like
tiny little Barb fittings and aluminum to like I think they did mixed Metals at
some point to they included these weird adapters to get the barbs to different
sizes and like there's all this like stupid stuff and it's very simple water
blocks are made of copper and they use
G1 qu threads now in this case I can
forgive not using an industry standard
threading um that that's fine because you don't intend for anyone to actually
use these outside of this one system but
water blocks are made of copper yes it costs more yes it is more difficult to
machine but the benefit of your system not corroding and having the block fall
apart is a pretty compelling one all
right so let's go ahead and have a quick look at this guy from overhead so now
that we've got the video card out there's our mxm slot there's our DC
power in there's where that eight pin is going over to the graphics card over
here here is our vrrm for the
CPU actually over here as well oh that's
interesting okay uh there's our
chipet so wow that's a Kind of a Funny
layout so ioab is here which means that this is
communicating with this and then pretty much everything here is going to be
using another layer of the PCB to go all all the way back over here where the USB
ports um and at least no Ethernet is
probably using yeah that's a there's a here I'm going to go ahead and switch to
my other angle that I didn't have for a bit there
again I need to see that that's okay um so we've got where
did it go Ethernet yeah okay so there's a real Tech chipset right there so that
should be handling this uh we've got
yeah basically just USB then I guess running off of that because the two HDMI
ports and two DisplayPort ports should be running off of the gtx980m so I guess
that's why they put that there because those are much higher bandwidth
connections than really anything else on the back here which is just a wireless
module which is running off PCI Express
which is over here around on the back right
there and and then power in that's it so
I guess that does actually make a fair amount of sense so right here is for the
CPU fan so that's running the fan for the radiator as well as oh there's
a okay this is interesting so this is something Luke actually told me while I
was working on my review of the en980
there is another version that's very
similar to this that's actually air cooled and Zotac was using as like a VR
backpack thing so that would explain why there's not one but actually two fan
headers here so one of these is for the mxm fan and one is for CPU fan so that
would be if they are air cooling this monster very interesting this says motor
P motor power so that's going to be for the pump and then other than that
there's really not a ton of connectors here this is just for the front LED and
power button and let's go ahead and uh I
can let you guys have a look at the back again now that my camera angle is
actually a little bit better good work Brandon um yeah oh well this is kind of
neat why don't we have a why don't we have a quick look at this one that's oh that's weird okay okay no no no things
are things are about to get kind of interesting here so this daughter board
right here is plugging into an m.2 slot
for some reason why would they do it that
way so oh huh well if you ever had to pull your seos
battery on this puppy you would be basically doing a full disassembly so
that's kind of a pain in the ass way to go
Zotac can think of a fair number of reasons why doing that might be
convenient um
wow so interesting there's an m.2 slot
here that appears at least on the
surface to just be a normal normal m.2
slot yeah it's keyed the same as the one on the
front so it's not a mini PCIe forx slot
which it could have easily been depending on what they were doing on
here and then it looks like oh yes okay
so basically they are using it though as
just a like just a small PCI Express connection because they've gone and
they've put an asmia chipset to handle the front USB connection
so that would be that USB um I believe
these are USB 31 but don't quote me on that I'm just
going to go ahead and pull an old Linus trick here and consult the packaging
when I can't remember something who uh blah blah blah yep so there you
go that's why they did it that way it's a USB 3.1 controller from as media so
that those front ports can be USB 3.1 this drives me crazy though the industry
cannot decide what to do it's supposed to be as far as I can tell white or
black on the inside for USB 2 blue for
USB 3.0 is what we used to call it but
now it's called 3.1 gen 1 so 5 gabit and
then it's supposed to be pale blue or like like this green for USB 3.1 as we
used to call it or USB 3.1 Gen 2 10
gigabit and then you got Razer who's running around putting like green
plastic on all of their USB ports so no one knows what the heck is going on I
blame Razer for this there let's go with that the last thing that's really left
here then is to go ahead and pull out the CPU so it's a completely standard
desktop LGA 1150 socket covered in thermal goop of course
thank you for
that there you go that gives us a nice
look at that and that is our mountain of
thermal paste on the CPU that I just pulled out see if I can get you guys a
good look at
that so that was actually surprisingly
straightforward zot tax claims that this thing is not user serviceable and very
difficult to reassemble once it's taken apart okay I haven't actually tried to
reassemble it yet it could be very very difficult still but I don't think it is
their claims seem to be pretty much baseless I think I'll be able to put
this together and uh maybe I'll like I have no idea in what context I would do
this in a video but I would really like to try a 6700k in here and see if it can
handle the extra power that's required for that I'm very very
interested so I guess that pretty much wraps it up thank you guys for watching
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