WEBVTT

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my first exposure to the aesti barebones

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gaming desktop from MSI was through this article on Tom's

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Hardware and I'm not sure why but I

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thought for some reason that it was a compact SLI gaming desktop so when it

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arrived in a box the size of a small car

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the only thing I could think was well I

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hope MSI has packed a lot of innovation

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in there because if the computer itself is that big this thing is gonna be

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pretty hard to

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recommend cooler Masters masterc case maker 5 features their freeform modular

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system allowing you to customize adjust and upgrade make it yours at the link in

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the video description let's start with the good

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news the hsti is very well packed inside

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that enormous box so while it's not really any smaller than I'd expect a

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typical matx computer to be it's also not larger to the point where I feel

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like the engineering effort that went into creating its non-standard internals

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was a complete waste of time maybe we'll see and I suppose that there are

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aesthetic reasons for it too whether you generally like the Gamer look or not

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you're likely to agree that the aesti is striking the front along with its solid

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IO mix including a DVD drive two USB 3 10 GB ports one type c and one type A a

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USB 3 5 GB Port audio jacks and an HDMI

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pass through for VR rocks an RGB lit

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aggressively postured design whose helmet inspired grills Windows and

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emblems work together shockingly well the top and sides are no different with

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ample cooling vents a GPU window that shows off the MSI GTX 1070 gaming X

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cards that I installed in SLI and a solid metal carrying handle being the

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standout features of the box that sits on top of the bottom pedestal that

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contains the included 850 wat 80 plus Platinum power supply and two 3 and 1/2

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in hard drive Bays with pre-wired SATA power and data cables in terms of rear

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IO we've got a pretty bog standard layout here with the PS2 Port being a

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welcome inclusion let's go inside because from out here it's hard to say

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much about why MSI felt the need to do anything to the standard natx layout in

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order to fit two graphics cards into a machine this size and because my unit is

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a barebone so we won't be doing anything else with it until we open it up and

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install a CPU RAM drives video cards and

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an operating system so it turns out the answer to why

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they needed to do that is not ease of use for a bare bones with a custom

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chassis and motherboard this thing is is

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really not very easy to build in some stuff is handled well two of the dim

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slots and the two m.2 SSD slots are

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crazy easy to access from the side the hard drives in the bottom foot have the

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cables pre-run and the single 2 and 1 12 in SSD on the side though it annoys me

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that they didn't include hardware for the two others can be installed in less

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than a minute but the other third and

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fourth dim slots are on the other side of the motherboard making them awkward

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to reach with the CPU Cooler radiator installed though that's honestly the

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least of my concerns because you'll need to remove this entire bracket which

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interestingly seems to have enough room for a dual rad if you wanted to install

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your CPU anyway so poor cable management

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and a lot of things needing to be moved out of the way is my biggest complaint

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down here which leads us then to the video cards they look simple Slide the

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video card in this way and oh hm wait a second those aren't thumb screws how how

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do I get a screwdriver in here

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oh so I have to undo these two screws

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for the top fascia undo another five screws to open up this hinge with the

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fan attached to it then I can slide the

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optical drive forward to make room to put the graphics cards in finally

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install them plug in the again poorly cable managed cables for PCI Express

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power plug in the SLI Bridges and then

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Jam the optical drive back into place and close it all up again I just don't

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think that any of that would be very intuitive for a new system builder and

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in some ways I think it would be even more difficult than building a standard

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system from scratch it's little things like the inclusion of these ridiculously

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long SLI Bridges instead of a proper high bandwidth hard Bridge that's

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already at the right spacing with MSI's

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own video cards installed I'm forced to

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either have them stick up and mash against that top grill or go down and

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catch in the fan stuff that doesn't look

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like it should go together can be very confusing for the target audience that I

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would think MSI is trying to hit with a barebone system and the bottom line here

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is that 11 screws is too many to swap

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out the graphics cards compare that to razer's core which is toolless though it

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should be noted my thumb screw was too tight to remove by hand out of the box I

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ended up needing to get a screwdriver and this feels like a design from yester

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Year from a user friendliness perspective and while we're at it then I

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might have suggested straight HDMI connectors for that VR pass through

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thing firing up the BIOS more lack of

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Polish I remember seeing MSI p67 boards

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that had a more elegant UEFI interface than this one the worst offender is is

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the Legacy boot mode being grayed out and not working at all in my shipping

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BIOS without doing some configuration gymnastics and I sincerely hope to see

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some improvement here in the future with that said with the actual

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assembly complete the story gets quite a bit better cooling performance is

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wonderful and this system with its 4 120

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mm fans is really quiet CPU die temps in

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the neighborhood of 70° even in a toasty Warehouse on a hot day with the 400 mahz

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Factory overclock enabled by that big dragon button on the front is nothing to

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sneeze at and the way that MSI has separated my open air cool GTX 1070s

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from the rest of the components means that GPU boost speeds averaging over

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1,800 MHz in real world applications

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were easily achievable so I was running Crisis 3 at 4K in SLI for the the

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duration of this test which I guess leads us well into performance then if

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you've seen a slightly overclocked 6700k with GTX 1070 SLI none of this is going

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to surprise you much but I think the bigger conversation here is about

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whether SLI makes sense at all right now with the GTX 1080 capable of handling

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pretty well anything you can throw at it and the future of multi-GPU pretty

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clouded right now with the implementation being largely up to game

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developers as they switch over to directx12 and Vulcan which you can learn

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more about here but I guess that's the tactic here

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from MSI if the customer wants tiny gaming and is willing to settle for

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single GPU they've got that covered but if they want no compromises they offer

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that too and at a much more palatable price premium compared to some of the

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Bare Bones that we've checked out recently like Zotac Magnus n980 for

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$1600 and MSI own vortex for that matter

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so the hsti is 650 bucks for a well

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ventilated RGB lit case a decent 850 W

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power supply a z170 motherboard and a

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liquid cooler actually not bad at

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right where I check out a $40,000 computer