No, no, no. Our sponsor, Vernal, sent
over this beautiful solid walnut desktop. We can't be covering it with
some RGB monstrosity and these damned
cables, which is why we didn't. Inside the seemingly normal desk in front of me
is one of our coolest projects yet. A near invisible gaming setup. It features
a powerful AMD Ryzen CPU, desktop class
graphics, and a modular IO interface
powered by the one and only investment disclosure framework. And all it took to
get here was a little bit of vision. >> So, you want the motherboard in the
wood? How's that going to work, man? >> I don't know. I just have visions. Now,
if you excuse me, I have an important vision to have. Lionus out.
Is he coming back?
Vernal goes the extra mile and pre-installs threaded inserts, making it
easier to install the legs, keyboard trays, or other accessories without
damaging the desktop. That's going to help us modify this thing. You know,
once we figure out everything has to go into it, we'll start with the biggest
and therefore trickiest piece, our framework 16 laptop motherboard. It's
already got decent performance specs, so that's a plus. But it falls a little
short for gaming compared to the latest desktop GPUs. My first thought was to
get an extra powerful mobile GPU like a RTX 5080 on an MXM module that' be ample
performance, thin profile to integrate into our desktop. Unfortunately, from
what we've heard, NVIDIA mostly doesn't allow their partners to make these
anymore, which is probably what killed cool form factors like ASRock's old desk
Mini. I got distracted by external GPUs for a bit, but then I realized it'd be
cheaper and probably take up less space to just get a desktop GPU and adapt it
to the framework somehow. Maybe with one of the M.2 slots. Yes. After liberating
this from Jake's desk, a little bit of machine time, we're ready to build. All
we need is someone with the vision to Do I have to say this line?
Someone with the vision to bring it all together.
You rang. This actually looks really great, you
guys. I'm so excited to build. You did say the motherboard was the
trickiest part, right? >> Yeah. Why don't we start there? >> What a great place to start indeed. Now,
we could have designed a custom cooling solution for the motherboard, but we
thought, why would we do that when the Framework laptop, which by the way, you
can get replacement parts for from Framework's website, already has a
cooling solution that happens to be about the thickness that we would want
to integrate it directly into our desk. So, what we did was take this piece of
the bottom of the framework laptop, scan it using these tracking dupes and one of
our handheld scanners, then create a 3D printed motherboard tray that has
standoffs for both our motherboard as well as our cooling solution.
>> It actually turned out we didn't need to scan because Framework actually gives you CAD models.
>> How are they so cool? Anyway, that goes
aside for now while we talk about the motherboard we're going to be using, or
rather I should say motherboard and heat sink. It's got a sick vapor chamber
cooler, a couple of upgradeable SOD dim memory slots, ample M.2 storage, and a
bit of an elephant in the room. See, Framework uses this custom interface to
get double the bandwidth that you would normally have from an M.2 slot for the
theoretically upgradeable GPU in the Framework 16. It would have been great
if we could have used that for our graphics card. But unfortunately,
wink nudge nudge, even though framework makes the specs of this interface
available to the community, no one has as yet created an adapter from this to a
standard PCIe slot. So, instead, we're going to be using the uh M.2 adapter
that we got from Jake. This goes from
the M.2 a two slot, which is right here, to an Oculink port, which you might
actually be familiar with if you've looked at some of the really cool eGPU
solutions that there are for laptops that are still laptops instead of
literal desktops. I'm good to install this now then, right? >> Just about.
>> Oh, we'll need a power button. >> So, this part goes to the board.
>> Mhm. Oh, we just screw that onto the interface thing, and that's just what
holds it together. >> Yep. >> Nice. What's cool about this is that
theoretically this PCIe eBay is still
available. >> Yep. >> That's awesome. I mean, we'd have to do
some work to get access to it to actually install anything in it, but
>> Okay, >> nice and easy. >> Here we go. Dude, ever since they
announced the Framework 16, I have wanted to do something like this, like
use it to make an ultras slim computer of some sort. What I originally
envisioned was actually like um PS2 slim
like console though. >> Well, that'd be cool. >> Yeah, like console PC. Especially
because with AMD's onboard graphics being what they are, it's reasonably
powerful now. Dude, this is sick. >> The team spent a lot of time making this
happen. Turned out really well. >> Dude, this looks amazing. Really well is
underelling it. I love it. You guys haven't even seen the finishing touches
yet. All right, so there's our power button. Next up is our power supply,
which >> looks slightly modified to me.
>> Is slightly modified. See, under normal
circumstances, we would use these two modular connectors to plug into the 24
pin power connector on our motherboard. And the green and black cables, which in
this case are white and white, are what are used to short them, activate the
power supply, and turn on the computer. But there two small problems. One, our
motherboard doesn't have a 24 pin power connector. And two, even if it did,
>> we're not powering the motherboard from this thing. >> We sure aren't. This is just for the
GPU, meaning that we want power running all the time. So, what we did was we
took our green and black wires and we
just bridged them. So, anytime this is
on, it's on. Like, it's on. Dance off.
>> Oh god. for mounting. We've got this nice little aluminum bracket that Justin
cooked up with our metal brake. 75% of the screws align with the holes on the
back. I consider that a B. >> We just save money on screws. That's
all. >> Yeah, exactly. It's fine. >> Besides, Justin's got his priorities straight. Who cares if you can fit all
four screws in your mounting bracket if your SATA cable isn't long enough?
Extendo chang.
>> I think that's for our fans. >> Fans and PCI bracket. Why don't we throw
the GPU in and then we can nail this down.
>> Screw it down. Screw it down. We would never nail in a GPU.
>> You could use nails. >> It' be funny. >> It's a wood. >> For our GPU, we've gone with a Radeon
7800 XT because we had some compatibility issues with NVIDIA cards
that frankly we can't explain at this time. Also,
AMD, the competitor, please survive.
We've got all the cable management sorted out there, so I guess yeah, we'll
attach it to the adapter. Arfet. And then this just basically
>> clips in here first, I think. >> Oo, I likey. She slides in at the back
and it hooks onto the shroud. And then we just put it under this block here and
we can screw it in from this side. >> Perfect. >> Dang. That's actually like
not going to fall off the bottom of the desk, which is all we need.
>> Will it cut the top of your knees off >> this? No. No. Your knees should be more
like here. And if you look, the profile of this is actually about the same as
the profile of the desk leg um like cross brace already. This is going to be
sick, dude. >> Let's plug in our fans. >> Basically, the fans from the laptop blow
out the sides. >> Yeah. >> So, >> we need to get some back. I'll do power
for the fan with this Noctuous speed controller we hooked up to a SATA adapter.
>> And meanwhile, I can do power for the GPU, which probably would have been
easier to do before we screwed it in. >> Why don't you unscrew it with your screwdriver from ltstore.com? very
clever uh merch,
>> but I think I can do it without it. >> Next, we need a couple of USB cables.
>> A couple, you say? >> To run to our modular inputs.
>> Ah, yes. The well-known brand Chenlanic,
>> my favorite. >> I can't wait till we have our LT store cables coming in a while. You'll be able
to actually believe what we say on them. It'll be great. It is worth noting that
the USB specification does not actually include provisions for extensions. So,
even if this doesn't work perfectly, we're not going to blame Chen Lenick.
Anyway, we're going to be running these from our five remaining available USBC
ports on our Framework 16 motherboard. One of them is dedicated for power to
our modular interface here at the front. And this is another example of how cool
it is that Framework makes all of the drawings available for their modular
interface cards as well as the slots that they go into. Justin was able to
create these 3D printed adapters that will allow us to take these other
cables, take the female end, put it into here, and Bob's your uncle. Yay! Look at
that. Then we just need to screw down the holder that keeps these female
adapters in place. And with any luck, this will work. We're using couplers. Oh
boy. >> Only on the male males.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Good luck, everybody. Now, this is a fun little uh design quirk, we
could call it. I I wouldn't say oversight. I'd say quirk. Both of our
little bays here were made to accommodate three cards, which is a
total of six, which is too many. But that's okay because the framework
community is ever creative, and someone made this cup holder. It's going to not
hold much of a cup. E, >> you know, you might have just a little bit of thirst.
>> I'm just going to hook up the display output, and I've already hooked up the
power for the motherboard. They're going to come out through a little channel
here. >> We love Justin. He's great.
>> Cable management is not his strong point. >> See, you know what the hilarious thing
is? I did the cable management photos on the website.
>> Okay. So, cable management is a strong point of his. He just didn't do it
today. We kind of had to source the cables that we had. And so, things are
going to be a little bit tight in here. Yeah. We'll just get this as flat as we can because as much as we'd love to just
leave these fans exposed and leave the back of this board exposed, we wouldn't
love that. We're going to be installing a cover. >> Justin, bring it in, buddy.
>> Whoa. Let's go.
Sick, boys. We need a very exciting
cover. Let's go.
Sick. Wait, before we screw this in, should we maybe clean the underside of
it? Yeah, we probably >> Okay, sorry. I got to remove all of these then. >> That's fine. We got threaded inserts in
there >> built into the desk. We're just using the the locations.
>> They're already in there. >> Okay,
actually kind of cool. Vernal really did give us an excellent starting point with
their premium materials and construction like the beautiful walnut top and of
course the legs, which they've tested for 20,000 lift cycles. So, they can
confidently claim that their desk will lift and lower up to 125 kg for years
without impacting the lifespan of the motors. Vernal backs that claim up with
a 15-year warranty. You can see all of their options on their website,
including different sizes of desks, different tops, including three
beautiful solid wood options like the one we've got here. And while you're there, you can check out their matching
accessories, which we'll show off some of our favorites later. Laminated desks
start at just >> $649. >> And you can check out the description
for an additional discount. Now, let's get back to building. There we go.
Beauty and the beast. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Oh, these are too long. No, they went through the top. Oh my god.
>> They didn't go all the way through. >> Ah, they went through a bit,
>> but it did go through a bit. >> Oh no.
>> Are there supposed to be washers? No, I think these screws are just too long.
>> I thought the acrylic was cracking a little bit, so I kept looking at it. I
was like, "Oh, no. It seems okay." It was the wood.
No. >> Oh boy.
>> I'm sorry, Jordan. I didn't know. >> Me neither. It's okay. It happens.
>> You're sure these are the right length now? >> Yeah. I just double checked. Okay.
That's okay. No one will notice. Not like they'll have seen us do this on
camera. >> We need to install like a walk-in freezer so we have somewhere to go cry.
>> Hey Justin, that should be your next project. A crying booth. >> Making a DIY DIY crying booth.
>> Buy a DIY. Here we go. >> I think I'd have to buy you guys a
crying booth. I mean, that would just make you want to cry more if I was too
cheap to get you one. >> That's pretty fair. >> Yeah, like make it yourself. Really?
Come on. I'm not heartless. But think of the reward after we build it. We get to
cry in it when we're done. >> All right. Before we can flip it over
and assess the damage, let's go ahead and get our leg controller installed.
Justin said I wouldn't be able to put these in without the pilot holes, so I
challenged myself to have it done by the time he gets back with a drill. >> I mean, he's back. Technically, I think
you won. >> We'll call it a draw. >> Done. Here's another fun bit. Their
interface has anti- accidental touch. So, if you just like bump it, then it's
good, I guess. I don't know. I haven't tried it yet. We'll show it to you later, dude.
This looks kind of sick. I mean, it's no DIY perks, but like, hey, that's never
what we aspired to be. >> Yeah, >> this is much faster and easier. You
could potentially do this. Okay, here we go. One, two, three, up. Oh, wow. It's
actually really heavy. Okay. Oh, don't
look at that. Could be worse. >> It could be in a worse position, too. We
can probably cover that with the monitor. >> Don't look for it. Don't look for it. If
you don't look for it, it's not there. >> Honestly, you can barely even tell. >> Yeah, exactly. We're sorry, Vernal.
>> This is sick. So, here's our modular interface. I put a couple USBC's and a
USBA at the front. Then over here at the side, I was like, I don't know, maybe I
want an HDMI so that I could plug in like a secondary display sometimes if I
want another USBC. Oh, and of course, my cup holder. Okay, so first I'm going to
try to accidentally press it. Uh uh uh.
Okay, now I'm going to try to intentionally press it. All right, dude.
This is sick. Like, how low would I have
to go to realize that there is a flipping computer in this desk? Okay,
from where I am. Still can't see it.
Okay, now I can see it. I would have to be this far under the desk to be able to
see the acrylic and the grill for the power supply and the and the GPU and
stuff like this. Freaking awesome. I got my fingerprint sensor, power button down
here. It's all stealthy. Oh, can I press it now? >> It's on already. Are we Oh,
>> I think >> uh am I supposed to output? Oh, the monitor's on.
>> There it is. >> Dude, we're about to game, aren't we?
Going to try out my modular IO here.
Boop. This is freaking clean. It's like it's just floating there. Display
settings. Okay, what kind of hertz can we get?
60. Um, did did we did we connect the antenna?
>> Yeah, I just had that thought about 30 seconds ago.
But wait, it's framework. Need Ethernet?
There's a module for that. Dude, this is
flipping awesome.
Check this out. Okay, here. Let's fire up Doom: The Dark Ages. Like, it's so
clean. It is literally exactly the thickness of a desk. Are there some
things about this that I would probably want to do differently second time
around? Like plugging in our Wi-Fi antennas and or not using USB couplers
and extensions. Um, some of the USB ports not uh not too worky. But
now we've learned that for you.
What kind of performance are we going to get out of this thing? She's running a
little warm. She's at 78°, but she's
also running a little fast. like four
gigahertz right now. Got 32 gigs of RAM. What's that running at? 5600 mega
transfer per second. Hey, our GPU kicked in. That means my game must be launched
in the background here. Let's go. Okay, settings. I want to be somewhat
reasonable. So, why don't we go 1440p
native motion blur off and ultra preset?
I've seen gaming desks for sale. But are they really gaming desks if you can't
game on them? this Desk Games.
This is freaking awesome. I'm getting like 60 FPS in Doom: The Dark Ages,
which okay, isn't running at the highest settings or anything, but I'm at 1440p
ultra. It's running butter smooth. So,
that's another thing we'd probably want to take a closer look at second time around. But the overall result is
shockingly well aligned with what I had wanted to achieve with the Framework 16
ever since I first laid eyes on it. basically turn it into the slimmest of
slimmest gaming form factors. I think with a little bit more creativity on the
power supply side of things too, we probably could have made it even slightly slimmer with like a DC toDC
thing and some bricks that we just like embedded in the legs or something. But
hey, you you got to you got to leave something for V2, right? This is
freaking awesome. Like to see your desk do this. Vernal's standing desk is 3 S's
for stable, solid, and sturdy, even when it's raised up to its full height, which
also gives us easy access to install accessories. Here are some of our
favorites that they offer. If you guys enjoyed this project, why not go check
out the first time that I tried to build a PC into the bottom of a desk. It used
all desktop components and it was clunkier.