for the past few years MSI has really been pushing the limits of how much
power can be crammed into a small case and cooled properly with their Trident
lineup now after making some truly small
systems MSI has given us the Trident x a
much larger version but also a darn
powerful one rocking a core I9 9900 K
and an RTX 2080 so let's crack it open
and see if the machine itself holds up to its impressive spec
sheet from a distance the Trident X is a good-look machine I appreciate the
smaller size although it is unfortunate that it can't be placed on its side like
previous Trident models for integration into a home theater setup after getting
closer to the tried next though things get a little less convincing like the
front USB ports and their lettering is in red but then moving around to the GPU
it has green accents come on you guys
how did you not just swap these stickers for red ones and moving over to the
other side things get even Grimmer now I appreciate that there is a tempered
glass panel here but how did this Gap
pass inspection and behind it isn't even
painted also the CPU airflow cutout is is kind of wobbly and then back over to
the front these two RGB lights don't match why is this light in the middle so
much brighter than the ones around it and why is the base such a different
color why does this power button feel so mediocre and why do I have to point all
of these things out now the tempered glass panel can be swapped out for a
metal one and this is actually how the triex comes out of the box so it solves
the Tesla esque panel Gap issue and also means that you won't have to worry about
your side panel getting shattered when you're going to to a land so the bottom
line is really this honestly the trid X is not a badl looking machine at all
everything that I complained about was a little icky picky detail it's just the
kind of thing that the Corsair 1 would have done right and I hope that MSI can
fix these problems in the future since none of them are particularly big ones
and there's a lot of good stuff here so back to the good stuff specs rocking an
NVIDIA RTX 2080 core I 99900 K 32 gigs
of RAM this thing is no slouch and
normally this is where I would say but can they keep it cool in a case this
small the thing is though honestly I'm not concerned because the design is
really solid first let's take a look at the graphics card well okay it's just
that it's a full-sized desktop graphics
card with a nice beefy cooler and lots
of access to Fresh Air this also means that upgrading the GPU you in the future
is relatively simple just take the side panel and top panel off undo a few more
screws which might be the hardest part since one of ours came Factory chowed
and you're good for the next gen as for CPU cooling once again before even
testing it there are no concerns here this heat sink is massive and breathes
in nice fresh air and the motherboard that's included is standard actually
before we even get to the performance I should talk about the insides a little
bit more I do wish that MSI had given the outside the same kind of attention
to detail that they did here despite cramming so much Hardware in MSI has
still somehow allowed all of it to be easily accessed upgraded repaired and
with great cable managing to boot need to upgrade the storage well there's two
2 and 1/2 in Bays right here and the second one even already has the power
cabling done for you making an upgrade pretty much trivial need to change out
the m.2 drive well just open the other side panel to reveal this easily
accessible and extremely high performance Samsung Drive the power
supply is also a standard modular Affair either in 650 watts in this version or
450 for the 2070 equipped model and
replacing it is entirely possible with the only real bummer for upgradeability
being the RAM which is underneath the CPU heat sync now this does have the
benefit of providing the RAM with a little bit of cooling but the real
reason they did this is probably just that the standard 120 mm fan fit best
this way and removing the cooler is actually still a pretty simple operation
it's just the only blemish that we could find on an otherwise really well fought
out internal layout so then performance
as expected under a full synthetic load our i99900k K8 core processor has no
trouble staying cool with temperatures peaking at just around
80° fantastic and it stays well above
base clock settling in around 4.3 GHz sustained that's even better than the
Corsair 1 and that one was liquid cooled the GPU also doesn't disappoint topping
out at 67° and boosting to a sustained
1875 MHz and that's after half an hour
of the 3D Mark Port Royal Benchmark these are really strong numbers and even
more impressively it does this while remaining very quiet like okay it isn't
quite Corsair one quiet that thing is really quiet even Under full load though
I was hard pressed to hear the tried NEX over the HVAC in our office and I doubt
it's going to be annoying to anyone even if it's sitting next to you on your desk
like this one's running a benchmark right now my mic is right
here so all this adds up to then the trick giving us well the expected
desktop levels of performance you want a game expect heaps of frames you want to
render a video well don't expect it to take very long basically you're getting
bombass Hardware in a smaller case and you don't have to worry about building
it yourself which I guess brings us to the make or break of any pre-built
computer the price since at the end of the day Hardware is hardware and there's
nothing particularly special about what's going on in here now our
recommended config comes in at $2500 which is a pretty good price
especially when you compare it to the Corsair 1 but it's still actually about
$500 is more expensive than building it
yourself which also gives you a little more flexibility and could result in you
ending up with a system that looks more to your liking so the answer is as usual
if you want to build a computer yourself yeah you should you should do that but
if you don't want to build a computer yourself maybe try anyway it's pretty
fun it's not actually that hard oh no no no this way ha ha and then if you're
still not convinced well we actually really like the MSI
Trident X this is a really good option speaking of great options our
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