Have you ever gotten a delivery you totally weren't expecting? Well, that
happens here, too. This was supposed to be a video about an unusual motherboard
that we ordered from China and had been eagerly tracking as it made its way
across the ocean. Imagine our surprise when instead of this, we got this.
Surely, this level of packaging makes no sense whatsoever for a motherboard. But
for a full system, where did this come from? What is inside it? Can it play
Doom? Can you get one of your very own? We're going to answer all these
questions and more after this word from our sponsor, Build Redux. Imagine
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Step one is to not slice myself open on this packing crate. This is freaking
dangerous. Actually, before we do that though, our first clue is on the lid.
This was sent to us by Siki, a maker and
Billy Billy creator who started his own design studio in China to make
mechanical keyboards back in 2019. Shiki was inspired by a small custom form
factor motherboard that another Billy Billy creator whose name translates to
something like Ancient Ape made in partnership with Maxon, which moves many
of the internal connections to the back of the motherboard. Kind of like we saw
with that concept from Gigabyte. That was cool in theory, but in practice left
a lot to be desired. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh yeah, it's going to pry off.
You can't tell me what to do. You're not my real dad. The main innovation here
then is that they sought to build a more cohesive version of that product. And
they're calling it DIY Ape. Because you see, on previous iterations, we'd seen
that even though the cables could no longer be seen, they would take up extra
space, whereas this
is amazing. Wo! This side panel has no side panel.
This is sick. This is the perfect marriage of an open air test bench style
case and a case. No way. Look at this.
They even have machining on the case itself that matches the machining on the
So, this is a completely custom motherboard. Then, what else is in here?
Uh, not a PC power cable I'm familiar with. I'm familiar with the connector.
We use it for our lights in the studio. I've just never seen it used for a
computer. The benefits of this are clear. Compared to the standard C13
power cable that we use, it has a lock, which means it'll never accidentally
become unplugged. But because the other end is uh for China, and because I don't
have studio lights at home, the odds of me actually having of this are zero.
Just kidding. I think we got this. But
before we plug it in, I want to talk a little bit more about how this came to
be because there are two things that make the motherboard in particular
different from others on the market. There's the fact that the connectors are on the back. We talked about that. But
what we haven't talked about is that this shape of motherboard is one you
have probably never seen before. It has the same number of PCIe slots, that's
one, as mini ITX, but it's as wide as a
full-sized ATX board, giving it a ton of room for well, what?
Let's find out, shall we? ltstore.com. A
calls this form factor YTX. And in the absence of any official explanation,
we've got two theories as to why that would be. First of all is why TX because
it's really weird and different. And second is that in opinion, Ape's name
apparently sounds like Yuan or something pretty close to Y. So it could just be
his name. Any whatever it is, I've got this open now, giving us a look at
what's going on inside. We've got two M.2 slots. One of which is populated
with a 1 TB SSD, I assume. And the second one, ooh, this is cool. Can
accommodate up to 110 mm M.2 drives. So
you could put an uh Optane drive in here or something, for example, if you really
wanted to. We've also got an M.2 for a Wi-Fi module. It's nice that you can
swap that out, even if it's only in the event of a failure. And that's about it.
I mean, it seems like the sort of thing that could have been put on the back of the board, unless the back of the board
is already full. We're going to have to keep going. Before we do that though, I
want to fire it up. Let's put this heat sink back on. Man, just everything about
this thing just feels so good. You know, it's small, but it's
it's thick. I like it, man. This thing is wild. To give you a proper idea of
how small it is, the entire back is taken up by just our power input. Love
that. Our GPU IO, and then our motherboard IO, which I would describe
as not extravagant, but certainly adequate. You've got five USB 2 ports,
one of which is USBC, DP HDMI, four USB
3s, two and a half gig LAN, nice Wi-Fi and audio. And I haven't even talked
about the front IO yet. We get another USBC, this time USB 3, more audio, two
more USB 2s, and two more USB 3 type AA's. Okay, ready?
This is really cool. Obviously, it's not cheap. Thermal right for the CPU cooler.
Custom motherboard. This case has got to be worth a fortune, but it is so cool.
Few things are as universal as Windows updates showing up at the worst possible
time. Nope. All right, I missed it.
I guess I don't technically have to run Cinebench since you've already got scores here, but let's do it anyway. Uh
oh. Did we actually plug in the keyboard? Well, that explains why we
didn't manage to get into the BIOS. Okay, that's definitely audible. But the
good news is that these lowprofile coolers can handle modern CPUs as long
as you're not going for a top tier Core i9 or something like that. It's just
that they usually operate under such challenging conditions that they get
overwhelmed because they're in small form factor cases that are stuffy. In
this case, it's always drawing. In this
case, it's always drawing completely fresh, cool air from the room around it.
Just ow. Be careful not to do that.
12490F. What the devil is a 12490F?
You know what? Bing. Yeah, we're going to B. Oh,
Chinese Bing. Okay. A cherry chip. Blah
blah still suck more power than blah blah blah blah. Hybrid architecture blah
blah gaming chip. What is this thing?
Intel hasn't publicly announced this chip, but it is in their public facing
database now. Turbos to 4.6. six cores.
The 12490F has the same number of cores and threads as a 12400, but it turbos oh
substantially higher. It only boosts a little bit higher, but its base clock is
a lot higher. It also has additional level three cache, which is part of what
makes it a gaming chip. I guess it's still 12th gen Alder Lake, so 12,000
points in Cinebench is not going to be, you know, breaking any records. But in
actual games, what are we looking at? 3060 Ti. That's not bad. I don't know
why, but I kind of expected it to be something more modest, like a 1650 or
1660. It's so small. Oh, now we get to see our other fans kick in. This is
hilarious. I don't know why this is so cool to me, but just the GPU and CPU
fans being case fans just tickles me. I mean, why not, right? Oh, we should do a
duct mod. I can't believe we've never done a duct mod. That's where you use
ducting and you just take it and run it straight to like a either 3D printed or
just DIY duct taped shroud over top of
your GPU intake and you just run that to the front of the case. Do the same with
the CPU. That way you're bringing fresh air to everything. Duct mod. Yeah.
Subscribe. How surprising. A micro USB port failed.
Like the CPU cooler, the GPU cooler is
certainly audible. However, if I'm gaming at 1080p, I'm pretty stoked right
now. 250 FPS. I mean, it's only 1080p,
but still, wow. I take back one of the things I said earlier. Our CPU is
sitting at anywhere from 75 to 80% utilization in game. Now, this is with
OBS recording in the background, but that's not an entirely unrealistic use
case. It's possible that our CPU could thermal throttle under those conditions.
Well, we're not having any such issues in Doom, so that's good. But I do have
to say, sitting here gaming next to it, open air cases are one of those
categories of products that I love to love, but I don't think I would ever
daily drive. Because while the drawbacks of cases are pretty clear, I mean, they
suffocate all your heat generating components in this enclosure. What the heck, the benefits are also pretty clear
cuz they also suppress noise. Another thing that's unusual about it is how hot
it gets. A lot of the heat from these components seem to be sinking into the
giant aluminum block sitting around them. I think it's time for us to tear
it down and take a closer look. Oh, shoot. OBS. Ah, it's probably fine.
I guess we start on the GPU side. I cannot believe how tight they got the
tolerances on this case. I mean, it looks like this GPU was made for this
system. Another thing that I'm not sure how they did was get rid of the excess
heat from the GPU. Are these the only ventilation holes? Got this here
and this here. That's it. I guess that
would explain how the case itself managed to heat up so much. This does
not seem to come off without the front panel also being removed. Oh, wow.
Different head screws. That kind of makes sense, does it? I don't know,
actually. Wow.
Like this thing is wild.
Okay, how do Oh, wow. It's packed tight. First things
first, no, the GPU is not designed for this system. This is just an ASUS RTX
3060Ti Snow Leopard. And the main reason that it was chosen is apparently for the
orientation of the fin stack. It goes this way, which allows the heat to more
effectively be pushed out the back of the case and out this little vent here.
And I guess also into our power supply,
which is what is this? A flex ATX. Yep.
These are typically found in oneu rack mount machines, so servers, but I have
seen them in small form factors before. Usually not this tightly packed. No way.
It's screwed into the case through the screws that originally attached the PCI
back plate. With the power plug here, one piece of
which appears to be 3D printed.
Oh, whoops. There goes my CPU fan. Uh,
one moment, please. Uh oh. Oh, and this side piece came off,
too. Okay, that makes sense cuz I took off the front panel. Things are wo
things are really happening now. See, the thing about small form factor is 25%
of the job is engineering a case that can fit all your stuff. The other 75% is
figuring out how you will get all the stuff in there. What is the build
process for this thing? You know, is this the top panel or the bottom pan? This is the top panel.
The PCIe riser. Okay. I was looking I'm
trying to pull on this so that I can get this GPU out of the riser so I can get a
better look at this. But the riser
itself is stretched so tight from the PCIe slot on the motherboard over here
that I cannot remove this pedal. Um, one
moment please. Hey, there we go. No way.
This power supply is modular because of
course it is. Not a lot of points for upgradability of the system, but
absolutely ingenious the way everything is packed in here. Look at how tight
this is. I believe it now. There is no room on the back to put your M.2s or
whatever. And you wouldn't even want them there because how on earth would you get at them? But there's all your
IO. 24 pin power for the motherboard. 8 pin power for the CPU is way over. Oh
yeah, that's the top. Okay. Yeah, there's our front USB. SATA other front
USB. Third front USB. Front power
connectors. Yeah, there's some RGB headers, none of which are used because,
you know, this is like tasteful and classy, right? What do you need RGB for?
Front audio connector is here, which makes sense because the audio chip on
this board would probably be right near the back panel and it would be right
here. Let's see if we can get it a little more disassembled for you guys.
All right. Oh, there we go. It's all
coming apart. Apparently, he's only made about a hundred of these things. So,
it's not quite oneoff, but it's certainly not mass production. The
amount of work that went into it to make so few units is just you got to admire
it, you know. Oh, yeah. This looks extremely challenging to massproduce.
Even just the fact that you have to be locked into one and only one model of
GPU really tough because GPU manufacturers
just on a whim, they discontinue this stuff. They bring out a new one that's
like.1 mm bigger because that saved them whatever, won't fit anymore. Now, I
don't know how much deeper we need to go here. We've got all the pieces of the case apart. We can see our 80 plus
platinum enhanced power supply. But I'm sure you guys want a better look at this
board. Wait a second. The board isn't
screwed in. There's It just screwed in.
Screwed to what? Nothing. How is it in
here? Oh, shut up. It's just slotted in. Or is
there like one screw? Two screws in the riser. Oh, I see. Well, how on earth am I
supposed to take that out? Oh, I see. I see. I see. I see. I got this.
Yeah. I mean, if upside down's good enough for the computer, it's good enough for me. Shut up.
It just slots in here. It's not screwed
in at all. Oh, the lock for the eight pin power connector had to go. That's
been melted off. There it is. YTx. The
power supply isn't screwed in either. No way. Okay, I have to ask. How much does
this nightmare of an upgradability system cost?
The case MSRP is about 350 US.
350 US for the case. You know what? That's high, but lower than I thought
given the just I mean this thing is
beautiful. This looks like it's machined out of a single block of aluminum here.
Wasteful, but very beautiful given the
shape of small form factor machines. Anyway, how they're typically longer in
order to accommodate GPUs,
why not just extend the motherboard this way instead of doing what some
manufacturers have been doing these days and, you know, piling up these wild
towers of M.2s and audio chipsets and stuff like that. It kind of makes sense.
I'm no longer asking why TX. I'm asking
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If you enjoyed this video, you might enjoy the time that we replicated a
super cool water cooled build also from a Chinese YouTuber that had I think it
was four radiators in a small form factor.