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the industry has been simultaneously moving in two very interesting

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directions this year on the one side core i9 and threadripper showed us the

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performance that can be accomplished if you don't sweat minor details like power

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consumption and heat output but on the other side of things NVIDIA

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has tweaked the efficiency of their pascal gpus to the point where this

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pint-sized pc well 5.7 pints to be precise harbors a

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full gtx 1080.

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the desk mini is a really good looking little machine at 2.7 liters it is

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surprisingly compact like the whole

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product including the large external power brick is the same size as the box

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of a mini itx motherboard and despite

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its gaming pedigree the black brushed aluminum and powder coated steel design

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is understated and professional looking it won't be a centerpiece in your RGB

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doubt gaming den but it will blend seamlessly into basically any

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environment now being a bare bones kit we've got to open it up to install a few

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things before we even think about booting it up and what are we greeted by

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this is the secret sauce an entirely new

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motherboard standard developed by asrock called micro stx

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it features a pretty good assortment of standardized i o including one 3.1 type

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c port free of the type a variety plus

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audio out audio in and Ethernet and our

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board has an lga 1151 socket room for a

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couple of sodium slots that we populated with 32 gigs of ddr4 memory from a pacer

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and the most interesting part the mxm

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slot for the uninitiated mxm is a pci express

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x16 standard for the super low profile

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graphics cards that are generally used in high-end laptops

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so our desk mini came with none other than a fully featured desktop grade gtx

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1080 installed man that's impressive considering how

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small this thing is the back side of the motherboard tray is

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dedicated to storage we went with a single samsung 960 pro m.2 SSD but you

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could actually install up to three high-speed NVMe drives and two two and a

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half inch drives for slower bulk storage oh and there's also a 2x2 Intel wireless

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card back here so now the plan was to pair our gtx 1080 with the best consumer

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gaming CPU an Intel core i7 7700k

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with knock to us slim high performance nhl9i heatsink

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but this is where we hit our first snag with the desk mini

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cooler compatibility unfortunately the dc in jack housing

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interferes with any square cooler so

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while we did briefly try out the 7700k

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using Intel's anemic stock cooler it thermal throttled to the point that we

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wouldn't recommend it so we swapped it out for a regular i7 7700

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even after that change though our cooling woes weren't quite over with the

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fan curve set to its default of silent the CPU was getting up to a toasty 75

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degrees doing basic things like installing programs

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not that comfortable a quick trip back to the BIOS did fix

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this problem but it introduced another

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now we aren't blaming asrock for Intel's lame-o stock cooler but since we don't

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have great aftermarket options it kind

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of doesn't matter who's to blame when we're stuck with a system that's

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annoyingly loud especially while gaming when the GPU fan joins the chorus and

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join the chorus it did gaming wise this

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thing is an amazing little beast it

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performs almost ish pretty much like a full-sized desktop

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with a full-sized gtx 1080. the GPU

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didn't reach its full boost potential compared to a founder's edition running

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in the same 24 degree office but it's

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safe to say that this machine is capable of handily driving modern aaa games

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maxed out at 1080p those same games at

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1440p with some details turned down and

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in some titles 4k gaming is even achievable i mean check this out

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butter smooth unfortunately at

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1600 us dollars for the bare bones gtx

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1080 kit the desk mini is far from cheap

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to put that into context that's three hundred dollars more than a slightly

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faster not to mention water cooled and overclockable Corsair one and over five

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hundred dollars more than a similarly spec'd diy pc

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so why well it seems to be due to business decisions at NVIDIA

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not asrock price gouging at this time

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mxm cards are only available to notebook

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system integrators or through shady sellers on ebay but we were able to find

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enough listings to confirm that it's the video card being priced at double its

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desktop equivalent that's making stx gaming machines unaffordable right now i

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would like to see this change in the future this is cool but i'm not sure if

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i want to get my hopes up because it's actually rumored that NVIDIA is planning

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to end support for mxm altogether

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something that would seriously hurt this exciting new form factor so hey guys

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maybe let them know if you're with me and you don't want to see that happen

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for now the more sensible models are the 1060 and 1070 ones which should have the

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added benefit of running cooler and quieter while they deliver top tier

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gaming performance without ruining the aesthetic of your room or

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these ones really caught alex's eye the upcoming quadro models that should chew

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through cad or 3d modeling tasks without ruining the professional look of your

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office ting is the mobile carrier that's

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focused on customer service and satisfaction when you call ting you

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and for a limited time activate two or more lines with ting or add a line to

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gigs of free data so thanks for watching guys if you

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disliked you can hit that button but if you like the video hit the like button get subscribed maybe consider checking

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also down there we have our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should

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totally join