All right. So, assuming all of that worked, I am now
live. Live doing something that I have
wanted to do for a long time. Ever since
CES 2016 when I got my first look at the
marvelous, the magnificent, the
majestic MSI
G65 Vortex gaming computer.
I'm going to be taking it apart. I'm going to be taking every single screw
out of it and I am going to be reducing it to its mirror components so we can
find out exactly what makes this thing tick with three camera angles. Yes, my
friends, I have a dedicated close-up cam. I took all the feedback you gave me
from my last live stream where I had like the world's shoddiest webcam as
like my close-up and I uh made it even better. So without any further ado,
let's get
started. Tunnel Bear is the easy to use
VPN service that lets you use the web as if you're in one of 20 different
countries. Learn more and try Tunnel Bear for free at the link in the video
description. Yeah, without any further ado, let's start opening this baby up.
Now, I actually have a full disassembly guide provided by MSI, which is funny
cuz last time they I they let me see this thing. They wouldn't let me take
the panels off of it even. But, I'm going to try to get away with not using
it to the greatest extent that I possibly can. So, here on the bottom,
actually, I'll get you guys a look at the close-up cam here. So, here on the
bottom, I've got not a whole lot of much of anything to speak of. Uh, no screws,
no nothing. just the power input down there. I actually really like the way
they did the power input and I'm hoping to find out exactly how they handled the
cable management. It's funny for my review of this device. Um, they actually
took it apart in my absence. I have never seen the inside of it yet, even
though our review actually has internal shots. So, uh, so there you go. So, I'm
looking forward to checking that out. Um, other than that, there's just IO.
There's six uh security torque screws on
the back. So, you will need something like an iFixit tool kit in order to take
this baby apart. And other than that, there's nothing. See, the top is just
just plain. Bottom's plain. Front just has these plastic panels. So, without
any further ado, let's uh let's get this baby started. So, I've got not one but
two iix it kits. This stream brought to you by iFixit. Actually, no. They
haven't sponsored anything with us in a long time. But it's like
realistically, well, like I lose track
of what camera I'm talking to. Hello. Uh, realistically, I What else am I
going to use? I mean, they they sent us their kits, um, which I used to augment
the kit of theirs that I already had and already used for everything. Actually,
speaking of, uh, speaking of I fix it and them not sponsoring this stream,
where is my Ah, yes. Here's my other
handy dandy thing from from those guys
which doesn't have the pen. Why can no one keep anything where
it's supposed to be? This is my uh this is my handy little little mat that I
have where I can label where all the screws came from that I took out. But uh
it's supposed to have one of those overhead projector pens for those of you
who are old enough to remember overhead projectors. And I don't see it. This is
a permanent marker. I do not want to use that. Uh perhaps a dry erase marker. Um
Brandon, could you obtain me a dry erase marker? Be a dear. There's one behind
you. Actually, very close to you. Yes, that would be perfect. And if that one
doesn't work very well, I may need a different one. Thank you, sir. All right. So, wow,
that really, really does not work very well. Um, but we're going to have to
we're going to have to go with it. So, this is a little magnetic mat that will
help me keep track of my screws so that I don't accidentally lose
them. Even better than a magnetic parts tray. I wish it was more magnetic.
That's sort of the one thing that I could that I could complain about, but
uh that's okay. So, I'll try and give you guys a good good view of what it is
that I'm doing here. Sorry. My my monitors for the stream are my laptop,
which is next to me on my right here, right actually under the camera you guys
are looking at, and then also the
computer that
is over over there. So, I'm going to be
kind of looking all over the place during the stream, but I'll do my best
to keep that as nondistracting as I possibly can. I am sort of new to this
whole u you know, multicamming it myself thing.
One thing I think I would like to adjust though is that camera's position above
me. I think it's a little bit too wide of a shot, but I really don't know if
there's much that I can do about that right
now. Okay. 1 2 3 4 5 and six. I hate
security torques. It's one of those things where
like it's bad enough you put a torque screw on it. Like I can't it's it's hard
for normal people who don't have a bunch of, you know, tools designed for taking
apart electric gizmos. Um like it's it's it's bad enough to
have Torx on it in the first place. Security Torx is just adding insult to injury. Okay, so there you go. Um first
piece is off. So that warranty sticker is already uh tampered as hell. So why
don't we tamper it some more? H take that MSI blah blah blah blah blah. Think
my warranty is void now. Anyway, um that that's from John
actually taking it apart for B-roll in the video. But this gives us a good look
at the first plastic piece that I've taken off here. So, actually this Oh, is
this one metal? No, it couldn't be, could
it? Interesting. I can't I actually can't
tell, which is pretty unusual for me. I
think it is. No, can't be. Wait. Oh, okay. So,
there's a couple of uh there's a couple strips here for the RGB lighting. So,
those are just kind of like transparent uh transparent strips here. And then um
yeah, or actually I don't even know if there's lighting in that part. Maybe.
Okay. Hard to say. Whatever. There. Now, we don't have that anymore. Okay. So,
let's see what else we got going on here. That gave us access to a couple of
more screws here. So, there's one here and here.
Let's tamper that warranty some more. Uh, yep. There we
go. Boom. Come on out, you magnetic
bastard. There we go. And this guy. So, this will take off
hopefully that uh MSI Dragon
logo. And I'm going to have to make sure that I do a Oh crap, I just dropped a
screw. Uh uh oh. Oh, there it is. Ha. All is
well. Yes, for now. Plenty of time to
screw that up later. So, I'm going to call this
next to
dragon. Dragon. Hopefully that someone
knows what that means. Okay, that didn't really seem to do a
whole lot though. I am not able to
really remove anything extra that I couldn't remove before. I've got a
couple screws right down here that I can
access now. But uh maybe we can just pry off maybe we can just pry off the cup.
Oh, all right. Well, that was easy. Oh,
easy up until now. This is the thing I just I just hate about it's like I don't
have an answer for them cuz as far as I can tell it's the only way to do like a
clean seamless outer shell. But
like these uh Oh wow. I think I just popped that right off. But these uh
these screwless designs, they have to use all these really flimsy plastic
clips, you know. I think I managed to not break any though so far. These ones
all look intact. Uh that might have chipped.
Actually hard to tell. These ones all look intact. Not bad. All right. Go T
minus. Uh here we've got a little cable managed. Um looks like it looks like an
RGB LED. So I think this actually has to
sit under here. And that might have been
uh that might have been popped off as
sort of a derp when we were taking it apart and reassembling it. I'm actually
not entirely sure about that. Oh, maybe you know what? No, I think I'm wrong. I
think it just sits down here. Uh, well, like I think I said
earlier in the stream, I don't actually plan to put this back together. I'm just
going to send it to MSI in pieces so they can make sure that it's done
exactly correctly. Uh, the other thing in here is power for that LED. So, you
can see there's a little lead right here that plugs into a
uh there you go into a little spot on
the highly custom uh PCB that they've
got going on right here. I mean, look at this
thing. You've got uh what appears to be
an MXM slot. So, that would be for one of
the GTX 980s. Remember, these are 980s,
not 980M. Then you've got um an M.2
slot. Then you've got whatever the devil this is. Looks like some kind of a
support brace. And then you've got like, you know, an RGB LED thing. H more
warranty stickers. Oh, I am totally totally taking that off. All right. So,
let's see if we can get the other side open
here. H. The other one popped off kind
of from the back. So, where did the I where did the IO even go? Oh, there it
is. Thought I I thought I lost the USB port.
Mercy.
Um. Oh. Okay. All right. Well, this will
give us a look at the other side here then. So, uh, a lot of a lot of very
similar. So, we've got another
MXM graphics card or another MXM slot on
another custom PCB. Uh, this one does not have an M.2 drive slot on it,
though. So, you can see this one is just pure graphics card. Is it using the same
heat sink or have they actually created two separate heat
sinks? It appears to use Yes, it uses
exactly the same cooler module. So they
did manage to reuse that aspect of the design. So that's that's a good thing I
suppose. And then the other thing that we get access to for the first time over
here is the four sodium memory slots
that are actually on a separate PCB yet again. So it looks like because PCBs are
flat and not round, uh we're ending up
with very similar to the um well the
only other trash can shaped computer. you're ending up with kind of an arrangement on the inside of these flat
surfaces with actually surprisingly little wasted space in this case uh due
to the curvature of the exterior. So check this out. You can actually see if
I show it to you from this angle and and they actually didn't go quite straight
round either. They actually kind of angled it a little bit in the places
where they could in order to um take advantage of things like the flat tops
of heat sinks like uh like this one for example. See that? So right here at the
at the widest points you're going to find the corners of PCBs in all
likelihood. Let's see if that uh holds true. So over here actually no. Okay. So
you've got the RAM sticking up in that case. And then I think we've got one
more of those where yes, you are finding the uh ends of both of the GPU PCBs
right here at the front. So the graphics cards then here, just giving you guys a
better look at it now that we've stripped off all the outer shell. The graphics cards are in the
front with uh the CPU junk and RAM junk
and IO junk in the trunk, so to speak. So there's your CPU heat sink, which I
don't think I had specifically pointed out before. And here's the first uh the
first hint at the nightmare that is to come. I mean, even compared to a laptop,
this thing is going to be horrendous to uh take apart and put back together.
There's one of those like awful ribbon cables that if you've ever disassembled,
you know, your cell phone or your tablet or or a particularly compact laptop, I'm
sure you've encountered. Um they are they are very fragile and can be can be
a bit of a pain to deal with. So, now
we've got all those stripped off. I need to find more screws to take
apart. It looks to me as though there's got to be ways to
strip off more of the outer
chassis before we start pulling out
PCBs. So, I'm going to try I'm not sure
if this is going to work, but I'm going to try to take off this front piece
right here.
There we go. Oh, there's another one of
those uh there's another one of those little ribbon connectors. It's actually
got a black tape over it in this case.
Whoops. Okay. So, let's put those babies right there. I'm going to find out if
these ones on the bottom are the same and then I can label them all the same. I may even run out of label slots on a
project like this. couple down here. Are they the same?
Yes, they are. Very nice. Okay. I always appreciate that. That's something that
just baffles me when I see it where
you'll have a single product and it'll have like for no
apparent reason, it'll just have, you know, five different screw head types on
it, for example. So, you need all these different screwdrivers to take it apart. And I just kind of
go, why? Like, isn't this more work for
you, too? Every screw, every little tiny oop,
there it goes. Every little tiny widget is a skew for you. You have to inventory
it all separately. So, why are you going out of your way to make my life and
yours more difficult? All right. So, right here we've got the power button.
So, that was plugged in with that little um that little sleeved ribbon cable
there. Um yeah, it lights up. It does power. It's uh it slices. It dices. Uh
some plastic piece. Okay. So, we can put that aside for now. I'm also going to
label these puppies. So, uh let's see.
Front
fascia. Sure.
Okay. Rock on. So, let's see what we're going to do next then.
I'd love to remove more of this back piece, but I'm not actually
sure how that's going to
work. Let's see. So, there's some screws
down here. There's one, two right there.
Uh oh. Oh, look at that. This has already got some flex to it. So, maybe
that is just a matter of popping out those screws down there. Let's find out.
Uh, people are asking why I'm taking note of where the screws go if I don't
plan on reassembling it. Well, um, I
don't know. I mean, Cliff from MSI, he
might get all like mad and threaten to
threaten to brutally harm me if uh if I
don't put it back together. So, I'm going to see if I can get away with not putting it back together because I
mostly just don't feel like it because once I'm done with this stream, I'm done
with it. I'm sending it back to them. Um, but if they make me put it back
together, then I will. I try to be a nice guy, you know, except when I'm not.
Uh, all right. Let's have a look
here. So, this is definitely looser now.
See, you can see we've got uh we've got a lot of play in the bottom now, and
we've still got that play in the top, but it's also not quite ready to let go,
you know? You know, like all the kids but
the youngest one are moved out of the house. And you know, mama's like,
"Little Johnny, little Johnny, stay home. Just live with us
forever. I'm not ready to let go."
And little Johnny's like,
"Mom, I don't know why we have the same voice, but I got a girlfriend now, and
she really wants me to move out with her." And mama says, "Johnny, you can
bring your girlfriend here. I don't mind if she's a if she's an ugly skank and
she hates my waffles. I'll put up with her for you, Johnny. Just stay,
Johnny." Um, I think this is still attached.
So, let's go ahead and see if we can see
if we can remove maybe the top fan will come off
next. H. So, we've got this little screw here.
It's actually surprisingly few screw. Whoa, that just that just wanted to jump
right off. It's like excited here, you
know.
And it turns out I was totally
misinformed. Nick tells me iFixit is
indeed the sponsor for today's video. So, let me tell you about them. From
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the allnew ProTek Tool Kit. It's a completely re-imagined design, which
isn't to say that it's made of flubber or something. It's, you know, still
metal bits and all that stuff as before and like useful prying tools. It's just
better. So, it's got the new 64-bit driver kit, which has 10 more bits than
the 54-bit driver kit I'm using in this video. It's got a more durable case.
It's held together by freaking magnets instead of like a strap, which is
actually a huge improvement. It's the one that I use at home. It's longer
lasting. It's easier to use and just generally faster when you like have to
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$69.95, but it is backed by iFixit's lifetime warranty. And if you head over
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you can save five bucks off of your purchase. So, uh, that should help you
out a little bit. I mean, this kit pays for itself after you pay one person to
repair one thing. So, totally worth it. I love
it. Two
screws. Hey. Hey. Just like that, ladies and gentlemen.
Who am I kidding? There's no ladies watching. Um, all right. So, there's a
couple things I'm gonna have to do before I can properly remove
this. So, this
um Ah, dang it. I need a flathead. I
need a flathead. There we go. Okay, so
this and wireless antenna needs to pop off as does this one. So, it looks like
MSI has
um put their antenna. Oh, interesting. Oh, there's
another thing I'm going to have to remove over here. Hold on. Sorry, guys.
It's kind of hard to It's kind of hard to grab onto now without mashing
something important. So, uh there's another little fragile connector over
here that I've got to remove. So, they've put their antennas
in the in the in the roof here. And then
we actually also get to have a look at where the fan for the top. So this is
the one fan that cools the whole thing. So we can have a look at where that fan
is plugged in as well. This uh right right there. Hoping I'm getting you guys
a good look at it. But uh sometimes I just have to kind of hope for the Oh.
Oh, interesting. Okay. What we also have here Wow, there's like four leads to
this thing. Jeez. What we also have here is the power for that MSI Dragon logo
that they're so uh so fond of putting on things. So, hold on. Where's my
flathead? There we go. Come on. Come on,
baby. Come on, baby. There you go, baby.
Just Just get off there. Okay. Perfect. All right. So, we've got Jeez,
no. There's even more than I thought. Okay. All right. Let's have a closer
look at this bad boy. So, we've got what
looks like uh four wires for the PWM fan
custom connector. We've got one wire for antenna. There's actually a metal metal
housing around this thing. They are they are serious about this fan here. Holy
crap. Okay, we've got another wireless antenna over on the other side. They've
got those nice and separated. We've got whatever the crap this is. That's
another four pin. What is that
for? I will confess to you that I do not
know because I don't see anything else up here. There's just the fan and the
other side of the fan. So, we've got power for the LED. We've got Oh, hold on
a second. No, I see what it's for. So, this is just a cable management. This is
just running over to that um that duad
that we connected from the side panel if I recall correctly. All right. So, that
that takes care of of everything that that is. All right. So, let's go ahead and catch up on my uh catch up on my
labeling here. So, this was Oh, crap.
What was this from? Um, okay. Top
fan. Top fan.
Uh. Um. Uh. Bottom IO. There we
go. I assure you that when I'm not broadcasting live, I am much more
organized about this type of thing. As you guys can probably imagine, it is a
lot of things to focus on to be disassembling a computer, broadcasting a
live stream, and trying to keep track of uh you know, all of the strange
creatures that are inhabiting your building that you that you work in every
day. All right, so the next thing we see here is that yes, I was indeed correct.
Uh this back piece right here is being held on by this uh looks Yeah, it's a
metal brace that is securing it to a few
different things. So there's the power
supply. Uh here let me get that centered in the frame for you guys. So there's
the power supply, there's the GPU heat sinks, CPU heat sink, and then this
looks like the main like motherboard. I
mean main board is also a word for motherboard. Don't stress. So, but this
Yeah, it's not actually secured to that. So, the power supply is secured to the
main board. And then this rear daughter board is secured to the power supply as
are the others. So, there's these L brackets that kind of go like this and
like that. So, the first thing I'll need to do is remove this one. Hi, can I help
you? Are you streaming this? Yeah. Well, you didn't tweet out that you're live. I
didn't? No. Oh. Uh, can you do that?
Thank you. Oh crap. I left my
screwdriver at home, my orange ones. So, I'm actually a little bit
ill equipped.
Okay. Wow, those are really tight. Let's go ahead and pull that
out. Okay, there we
go. I see someone saying shoes are optional in the Atlantis Media Group
office. Actually, that's not true. Uh, shoes are required to be taken off
unless you have your indoor shoes here. So, some people leave indoor shoes at
the office and other people just don't wear shoes, which is their their choice.
Personally, I'm not into the whole no shoe thing because there's only one type
of footwear I need. Okay, so this baby
has looks like three ribbon cables, each
of which are are cleverly labeled, which is helpful, I guess. Let me see if I can
get you guys a better look at that. There you go. So, you got your L, you got your R, you got your
the
K1C_1026026_H39, whatever the devil that's supposed to mean. So, let's go
ahead and flip these up.
Flippity. That one's not a flip up one. Hold on. Where's my flathead?
Technically, I should be using a plastic flathead for this. It's okay. Don't worry. I'm a professional. Okay. And
then this one right here is not actually the same type. This is one of those one
of those push down on it ones. So I'm gonna have to lift
lift. Oh crap. It is one of those. Well, hopefully it's only a
little broken. How the crap. Oh, okay. Yeah,
seems fine. Cool. All right. So, let's give
you guys a good look at this. So, back here you've got actually a lot of a lot
of action going on. Like there's a mini PCIe card over here.
which would be fairly baffling to me if
I wasn't looking at their again very handily and cleverly labeled ribbon
cables here. So, this one says PCH. So,
that's for the platform controller hub. That means that the the south bridge,
the traditional south bridge is actually on this
daughterboard. So, this is really clever for a number of reasons. Uh, number one
is that it means that they don't have to
they don't have to try and use extensions for all of this high-speed IO
back here. Like we've got four USB 3 ports, 2 GB Ethernet, two HDMIs, um, oh,
it looks like all the display stuff is down there. Okay, so that's B and and
audio. So that's basically what we've got back there. So, instead of having
all that stuff, instead of having the Southbridge, which handles all of those
things, let me think, not HDMI, unless
it's using Intel's onboard video in some way. Don't quote me on that. Do not
quote me on that. I'm actually not sure why those HDMI ports are there, but all
that other stuff would be handled by the PCH. So, by just having what would
effectively be traces inside the PCB of
a motherboard just be done through a ribbon cable like this, MSI has removed
all of that stuff and they were able to make use of a tiny little bit of space
inside the chassis. So, you can see here it's just this this bit of space right
here that lives over top of the CPU heat sink that they otherwise would not have
been able to or they would have had to run extensions which could have interfered with that high-speed IO. So
really very cool. Um, let's continue our let's
continue our look at this baby. So what else do we got going on here? Oh yeah,
there's a 2 and a half inch hard drive in here. That's another thing that would
also be on the PCH. So that's where your SATA ports come off of. So again,
instead of running a SATA cable internally, they've actually just got
this guy. Uh, is that just like hardline
plugged in? Where is the port? What the hell?
What is going on
here? Oh, is it this? Shut
up. Oh, very cool. So, what they've
actually done here, and I guess we might as well Yeah, I did. I did say I was
going to take this thing apart, so let's take it apart. I'll I'll show you guys exactly what they did here.
Um, again, more more clever more. Wow,
that's that's this one's this one's really cool. Haven't actually seen this
before. Even in laptops, uh, you'll typically just have like a like a
standard a standard SATA cable plugged into a plugged into the back of a
standard SATA drive. And and when we dig deep enough, that is what we're very
likely to find
here, but with a twist.
Okay, so the hard drives Hitachi 1 TBTE
7200 RPM SATA 6 GB and uh am I going to
need to remove a whole another set of screws in order to get it this bad boy?
What do we got here? Yep. Okay, there they are. More hard drive screws. Don't
worry though, guys. For you, I will take this as far as I need to.
Messiah is not going to tell me I can't take apart their computer. Freaking
guys. Okay. See if we can slide this
off. Yeah, there we go. So, this slides out now, which gives us a look at this
actually very clever little system that they've got here. So, they have
converted all of the uh Hold on. I'm just going to check my focus. There we
go. So, they have converted the standard SATA power and data interface into this
connector. This is that connector that I didn't recognize is actually for the
hard drive. Very cool. All right, so we've extracted that at this point.
Let's label my hard drive screws. H
D. Boom. Oh crap. What were these? Ah,
yes. L bracket. I'm sure someone will be able
to read that at some point. Okay.
So, that leaves us pretty much done here. Oh, yeah. No, no, we're not. Okay,
this is cool, too. So, the other thing on the PCH, this is so clever. I like
it. Uh, the other thing on the PCH is four PCI Express lanes that are handled
by the Southbridge. So, there's the uh the DMI whatever something media
interface. So, that's that's the traditional that's replacement for the
um for crap, I forget what they used to call the link between the north bridge
and the south bridge. Uh was it FSB?
Can't remember. Anyway, um so most of the PCIe lanes in a modern Intel CPU run
off of the CPU itself, but it's also got the DMI interface to the chipset that
has four PCIe lanes effectively running off of it. So that's how we were able to
have a mini PCIe Wi-Fi card sitting over
here on this daughterboard. So everything that's on here is stuff that
runs off the PCH. And I'm not expecting then to find anything that runs off of
the PCH anywhere else inside the system.
Uh oh, I never did figure out what that So, one of them, yeah, one of them is
labeled uh PCH and the other one is labeled PC. No, they're both labeled
PCH, actually. Very cool. I love
that. Hopefully, I didn't completely misinterpret what they did here, but I I
don't I don't think so. All right, now we are really getting
somewhere. So, the first thing I'm going to do is remove the rest of these uh
these brackets here. Don't want them. I don't need
them. I go,
girlfriend. Wow. Lot of lot more screws than I had sort of anticipated. That's
okay. I will change the angle to mix things up for you guys. I'm just showing
off at this point. I love this three camera setup actually. This makes it so
much easier for me to just work as opposed to trying to tinker around with
stupid stuff like uh oh well let me grab my webcam and oh now I only have one
hand to actually do things while I'm trying to show you guys something
stupid. Um one thing I don't like about
this setup that you guys actually I don't think can see in any of the angles
um actually maybe you can see it in this one. Let me see. Yeah, this uh this
wireless Bluetooth keyboard that I'm using to change scenes, it's broken in
the weirdest way. Um something about the power delivery is
broken on it. So, we even tried replacing the battery. That didn't fix it at all. So, it won't hold a charge.
It won't operate um it won't operate on
on battery at all. Even with a brand new one, even with one charged in our other
identical unit, like if the battery is charged up, that doesn't help. And get this, and people are going to call BS on
this, and I don't blame you because I would too. It only works if it's plugged
into the wall. I cannot plug it into a battery bank. Not even a good battery
bank. Not even a 2 amp battery bank. Doesn't matter. I must plug it into the
wall in order for it to operate at all.
And that's actually one delayed the stream by another 5 minutes or so
because I accidentally unplugged it, which unpairs it, and then it kind of
flakes out. So, I had to I had to completely restart everything. Re-plug
in the Bluetooth dongle, re undo the Anyway, um yeah, so I have to like I
that's why the the connector is taped in there. Um it would be really nice if I
was able to have a wireless one like I use for the main set, but that one's paired to our our camera, so I I have
not done that. Okay, so all those brackets are off, but that doesn't seem
to help us much. Maybe I'll leave it to
you guys. Do you want to see Do you guys want to see Yeah,
everyone's calling BS on me. I don't even care. Um, do you guys want to see
the CPU off first or the GPU off? No. You know what? I don't think I'm going
to get the CPU off first. So, forget it. It's a lie. Fine. Let's stick with this.
The right side or the left side? Come
on, guys. Right side. Left side. Right
side. Left side. Right side. Left side.
Which one you want? Right or left? Damn, I hate this uh stream delay.
Everyone's asking for the CPU. Damn, I hate Twitch chat. I'm just going to pick
one. You guys are so useless sometimes.
Um I love you dearly, but man, are you guys useless sometimes.
Uh such trolls. Such trolls. So, let's
go ahead. I'm going to start removing GPU screws here.
Everyone calling for the bottom. Free the bottom. Wow. Was that
it? Hold on a second. Where? Which screws hold this
in? It's actually very hard for me to tell. Okay, so this is interesting.
Ouch. I'm going to cut myself on one of these heat sinks for sure. So, aside
from the screw holding it in, I don't know how well you guys can see this. And you know what? I could zoom this
actually.Oop boop. Yeah. Oh man, I love
this setup. Okay. So, there we go. Get
that focus. Come on, baby. Come on,
baby. Nice. So, there's the screw I just
removed uh right there with the uh the copper visible around it. Right next to
it is a little tab that actually keeps you from sliding the GPU out, even if
you do have the screw removed. So, I'm going to be have to be really careful with this to make sure that I get not
only all of the screws, but also all of
the little tabs that go with them.
H sorry guys, I'm going to have to stall for time because I'm the most stumped
that I have been so
far. Which doesn't mean stumped to be very clear. That does not mean stumped.
You know what? I think what I actually need to do here is remove this
entire black PCB in order to get at the
module that holds the MXM, the green MXM uh graphics
card. So, let's have a look
here. Mhm.
That looks pretty loose. Let's go ahead and try popping it
off. Nothing to really brace myself on,
unfortunately. Okay, not stressful at
all. I mean, it's only a what, $4,000 computer? No big deal. One more screw.
Oops. Didn't see that one. Her derp.
Okay. Come on, baby.
Don't tease me like that. Oh, I've got a ribbon cable here.
Oh, shoot. What is that connected to? Oh, we got some ribbon cable action. So,
oh. Oh, it's an SLI bridge. Interesting.
Okay. Well, that makes sense. I mean,
that was bound to be in there. I really thought NVIDIA was going to drop the
whole SLI bridge pretense at some point here.
They still claim that there's some high-speed communication that they do
over it, but that interface is really not very fast by modern standards. Um, I
mean, we're talking SLI bridge came about back in the PCI Express
1.0A or whatever days, back in the back
in the age of the dinosaur when I was a computer
enthusiast. All right? because, you know, the internet would
have you believe that I am no longer an enthusiast. I've lost my touch, you
know. Whoops. Oh, I'm sorry about that. If people get motion sick, I'm sure
they're motion sick now. Okay, so let's try and pop this other PCB off. See if
we can remove both graphics cards at the same time, which is funny because that's what some of the trolls in Twitch chat
were telling me to do. I hate it when they're right. That's the worst. Hold
on. I need a plastic prying tool. I'm actually going to do this one properly
because um I'm a little bit worried about what I'm prying on
here. Shoot. There we go. All
right. Okay. Okay. So, let's pull those
graphics cards off. Oh, there we go. Oh, thing of
beauty. Wonderful. So, let's put the base aside for a
second here. Just going to put this over here. Oh, they fell. Okay. Um Okay,
let's investigate.
Ah. Mhm. Damn it. They scratched my
laptop.
Well, things I do for you guys. All
right, so I really don't know if I'm going to go
to the trouble to remove that SLI bridge.
Um, I mean, unless you guys peer pressured me into it, then we'll then we
would we would see. But let's have a look at first the more boring of the
two actually. Oh, what the hey. Let's just let's just keep tearing, shall we?
Okay, so first I need to label these screws I took out. So, um, these are for
the GPU daughter
boards. All right. All right. All right. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Shut up,
Twitch chat. Okay. Where do we start?
Let's start with the simpler one. So, I'll start with the one that does not
have um additional stuff on it. This one
appears to be just straight MXM
module. So, let's pull the heat sink off the GPU. That's a big beefy heat sink on
here, man. I mean, compared to what you would
normally see in a laptop, but then, you know, with how quiet the fan is, I
suspect it's not getting like a whole ton of air flow. So, let's have a look
at uh let's have a look at that heat sink, then, shall we? Check this out.
So, we've got a total of three heat pipes. It's using what appears to be a
vapor chamber down here. So, that spreads out the heat from the GPU so
that each heat pipe sort of gets an equal amount of it to disperse. Then two
of the heat pipes are connected simply to this um this thinner part of the heat
sink assembly right here with a third one dedicated to bringing heat out to
what is actually probably about I'd say
40% of the overall mass of the heat sink. Remember removing heat is
basically surface area and yeah
basically surface area. So that's probably given the identical thickness
of the material, more mass equals more surface area in this case.
Um, interesting. And you've got a little pad here for keeping the mounting
pressure even, I guess, because you got a lot of I don't know, weight here. Anyway, okay. So, that gives us a better
look at the MXM module, which unfortunately is kind of hard for me to
lift right now because they're attached by the SLI bridge, but you can see
there's your uh Oh, and I'm going to screw this up.
GM204 if I recall correctly. I can never
remember the code names. Whatever. It's a GTX 980 right there. And then around
it is actually 8 gigs of GDDDR5 memory.
So, I'm going to see if pulling off this heat spreader gives us a bit of a better
look at
that. Oh, there's another warranty void to remove sticker. Ha. Eat it.
Hey, Luke. You look stressed.
Oh, I was hoping that he wasn't stressed and that he just looked
stressed, but he was. H. So, that's not popping off very
easily. I hope I'm not going to need like a heat gun or anything. Oh, no.
There it goes. Boom. Okay. So, let's get
you guys a good look at that. So, you go. There's all your There's all your
thermal pads. Pretty much this entire
aluminum heat spreader is covered in thermal pad
material. Um, you can see what it's for. So, what
would normally be a massive, you know, 10 and 1/2 in graphics card with a
cooler this thick on it is now this tiny
thing. So, I'm not sure if the memory
modules are double-sided. We're going to pull this off and we're going to find out later. But there's some of your
DDDR5 memory. There's the GPU I showed you before. And this is the VRM. So
that's the power delivery. Now,
normally, huh, that's interesting. Yeah. Normally in a desktop computer, it looks
like I'm going to need a special tool for this socket
tool. No, I need a bigger one.
Normally in a desktop computer, a GTX 980 class card would have um an external
PCI Express power connector, but here everything seems to
come from the MXM slot. I don't know much about MXM, like
I don't know if it has additional power pins or anything like that. Um but here,
so I'll try and give you guys as good a look at this as possible. There you
go. There you go. The SLI connector is
free, which gives us a great look at uh
I'm going to bore you guys first. So, here here's the MXM
slot. Here is what appears to be a PCI
Express 16X slot that is leading over to
the uh the bottom PCB, which we'll get to later in the main uh in the main sort
of well bottom of the chassis. Okay, so this is this is the daughterboard that
has one job and that is you can actually see there's no traces here really like
there's almost nothing going on here. Um, so it has pretty much one job to
take PCI Express 16X and turn it into pretty much PCI Express 16X. So this
card, uh, here I'm just going to spread these
out. So this card has to be much more power efficient than a desktop GTX 980
would be. All right, let's have a look at the
back. Yes, this Wow, this is a really I mean I know some of the weight is this
heat spreader that's still on the back, but this is a very heavy
um heavy PCB. There's a lot of lot of
copper. You'll never catch me
copper. All
right, there is no way I'm going to be able to put this back together. I'm not
paying close enough attention.
Oh well, it is what it is. So, more thermal
pads. There we are. More heat spreader.
And it turns out that yes, indeed you
do. There is more memory on the
back. Oh, more VRM junk, too.
Interesting. Brandon, you ever seen a GTX 980 this big? Oh, that is really
small. Yeah. That's what she said. Impressive. Small,
but powerful and impressive.
All right. So, let's put that baby over there. And do you guys really want to
see me take apart the other one? I mean, do I really have to do two of the
basically the same thing or can I just show you the differences on this one? I
think I should just show you the differences and then we'll uh Oh, sorry. I'm talking to the wrong camera. I think
I'm just going to show you the differences on this one and then move on because there's not a whole lot more a
whole lot more to it as far as I can tell. I'm just going to kind of sneak a
peek under there and see if maybe there's like some kind of a some kind of
a PCI Express hub or some kind of thing like
that that's going on, but it really doesn't look like it. Like what I do
suspect is that since this is a
Z170based system, each of these GPUs is
only running at PCIe 8X speed anyway. So
what I suspect has happened since you guys may or may not have noticed that
this one actually has two M.2
slots. There you go. So those are for PCI Express SSDs. What I suspect that
MSI has done is they have played some clever games with this not being a real
PCIe16x um electrically slot and they've just
kind of gone, okay, well, we're going to reuse a slot that we have lots of in
inventory anyway and we're going to completely rewire everything and um
we're going to have our we're going to have our PCI Express hub or our PCI
Express switch or whatever else it is that we have over somewhere else. Um,
and that is how they're able to get the bandwidth that they need to run two of
these PCI Express SSDs. Incidentally, these are what are they? Model MZ
VPV1280. Oh, S SM951. So, these are
Samsung's older NVMe drive, not the 950
Pro, the new flagship. All right, so let's go ahead
and put that aside for now. Oh, we are running out of
space. And let's get back to the main
kahuna. Let's get my fan over here. This
heat sink over here, this one over here, and this one over here. All
right, so now this doesn't have a lot of
This doesn't have a lot of structural rigidity to it, does it? I wonder if I
can just like pull the whole thing right off.
I mean, if I could, that would probably be a terrible idea, but um hey, hey, it
wouldn't be the first time I did something that was a terrible idea. All right, so let's remove the CPU heat sink
first, I
guess. Oh, good. Captive thumb screws.
Love it. Or not thumb screw, captive screws. Wow. Whoever put this thing
together really uh gave it a beating around the screw holes
here. Doesn't really seem necessary. There's a lot of There's a There's a big
opening there. Unless they had like a powered screwdriver or something that had a really short bit on it and they
were kind of trying to mash it in there. That's probably what happened
actually. Okay, so there you
go. We are There's not a whole lot of surface area to this. You can see
actually, and this is true of the GPU heat sinks as well, you can see that MSI
intends to keep the air flow going through the system quite uh quite low.
So, they're counting on keeping the RPM of the fan low, but the overall air flow
high enough to to cool these things very quietly. If you have a heat sink that's
optimized for high RPM, high static pressure fans, it's going to have a much
more dense fin arrangement than this one. So, um, yeah, MSI is just kind of
going for gold here with what for a a 6700K is actually a very, um, small heat
sink. So, they're they're really counting on that fan to be very, very
efficient. Um, also here, so we've got
the 6700 K that I just mentioned. I'm not going to take that out. You guys
have seen me take out a CPU a million times. I'm not going to not going to
bother risking damaging any of the pins or anything. Uh, but you can see here
we've got the VRM for the motherboard. We've got, um, I'm going to have to
figure out where power goes in at some point. Here we've got what looks like
another physical PCI Express 16x slot
right here. We've got Oh, cool. So,
we've got the other end of that PCH ribbon cable right here. So, that's what
is taking the Yep. So, you can actually see the traces here. It looks like Oh,
hold on. Maybe not.
Shoot. Sorry, I'm not sure. I thought this was the DMI interface coming off
the CPU and coming down to here, but I could be wrong. Don't quote me on that.
So, what's interesting here though is anything mounted on this board would
have to be attached directly to the CPU. So, the CPU has the U memory controller.
So that's why your four sodium memory modules, in this case they're each 8
gigs, giving us a total of 32 gigs, are going to be uh connected directly to the
CPU. And then the other thing is the PCI Express controller. So that's where that
comes in down there. Then DMI. So yeah,
there's pretty much actually nothing nothing on there because the PCH is what
has all your USB, your SATA, your Ethernet, and all that kind of nonsense.
Cool. I hope this is as interesting for you guys as it is for me because I'm
having a blast. Actually, this is what I wanted to do back at CES and they
wouldn't let me. The bastards. Um, oh
crap. Oh, this was bound to happen eventually. Where are these screws from?
Oh, they're from the GPU. So, let's label that
MX M. Boom. All right. So top down view
is actually probably good for you guys right now because it gives us some idea of what's going on with this. So this
looks like a support brace for the power supply and no it's it's no no that's the
support brace for those other two. Ah I see uh for those other two daughter
boards that have the GPUs on them. So I think we actually have to take it
apart in order to pull them off and then they should slide out for us.
Oh, two
screws. Where's all the green stuff you promised? Hey, this computer has NVIDIA
graphics cards in it. I'm staying true to my
word. All right, so there's those guys giving us a
really good look at the power supply. So, chickeny power technology
uh DC output 457 watt. Huh. Just like
that. Eh, 37.5 amps on the 12vt
rail. But how do you plug
in? Well, let's find
out. This explains why the power connector is on in the middle of the
bottom like it is though, which is
interesting because that's where the power supply is. It's right up the
middle of the
unit. Poor MSI. I am definitely not putting this
back together. Far too many
screws. Oh, okay. Okay, we just got to look at the uh there's the ground for
the
chassis. So, that's going to be connected to the uh the ground prong of
the power plug that we will eventually
find. Someone in the chat just spelled a wrong. Can we ban that guy? Just like
that. A like like capital A. It's
spelled eh actually. All right. Sorry. I'll cut back to the angle that shows us
anything cool here. Um,
okay.
Interesting.
So, yeah, I'm going to need uh I'm going
to need some clever cleverness here, which is unfortunate because I don't
have a lot of that. So, I gota I've got
to hit this clip. Hopefully, I can give you guys a better look at this. Let's have a Let's see if we can. Okay. So, in
there, I've got kind of like a like a computer power supply type connector.
Hopefully, you guys can see that. So, I've got to press this clip while pulling on it to get
the Oh, well, that was easy. Okay. So,
there. So, these are the There's the AC
power in. So that's just wired up directly to that plug in the middle. And
then there's the third prong. So that's uh that's the ground wire going to the
chassis. Just like that. All
right. Then this is interesting. the whole
power supply. And this like I'm sure the
electrical engineers watching this are going to be,
you know, snickering at me or whatever, but this blows me
away. Uh, hold on. You know, no, I'm going to I'm going to do one more thing
before I talk about it, though, because it looks like it is actually finally
time to take
off the main board. So, I'm just going to pull out this PCH connector here.
And oh no, I got to undo that
ground. Oh, shoot. And I gota actually I should do a round of labeling, too. What
the hell is all this stuff? Um, PSU PSU as far as I can
remember. Uh, ground
Okay. So, back to that angle. Oh. Oh,
ball sack. Okay. Well, now there's another thing I have to undo. I got to
do these two screws right here, I think. Although, I may only have to loosen
them. I might even have to take those out. It looks like they just prevent it
from sliding forward. Nope. No. I'll just pull them
out. Okay. Oh, no. Those weren't from the
power supply. These were from the
PSU. Whoops.
Bracket. Boom. And then these are from
the motherboard
support base.
Okay. Okay. For real this time. Here we
go. So, there it is. That is the closest
thing that this device has to a mainboard. So, it's got a skeleton
uh back plate thing here that's actually attached to the main board with the uh
the socket hold down screws. So, that's these screws right here that actually
keep the the socket cover on. I have never seen that before. So, that's
different. A lot of stuff about this thing that's different. Um, these are
the hinges that those two uh they make a
triangle here. So, they they come out like this that the two support braces
for the GPUs attach to. And then uh there's that PCH connector that I was
trying to show you guys before, but it's kind of hard with it attached to the base. And uh yeah, very cool. And
there's that. See, it looks just like a standard graphics card connector PCI
Express 16x. But of course, you know, a connector is just a physical connector.
A wire is just a wire. So, they can rewire it for whatever they want if
they're going to if they're going to go full custom on something like this.
Okay, which leads us to the thing that blew my mind a second ago when I was
talking about the power supply. And this this runs sort of, you know, everyone's
trying to sell us on, you know, um like
PCI Express 8pin connectors have always been something that have kind of baffled
me because I'm looking at it going, "Okay, so it's rated for I forget what
the numbers are, but it's like 275 watts now versus 150 watts TDP or
whatever the numbers are. It's like significantly more. Like a PCIe 8 pin is
rated to deliver significantly more power than a six pin." I'm looking at it going, all you've done is add two
grounds. You didn't actually add another
12vt wire. And I mean, my understanding
of the capacity of a connection to carry
DC current is that it pretty much comes down to the gauge of the wire and how
many of them there are. Um, and so in the desktop, we're trying to be
convinced all over the place that we need these like massive power supplies
and like the all these like massive wires and all these connections. And then I'm sitting here looking at this
going like, are you kidding me? This is the only connection between
the 457 watt power
supply. That's it. This is the only connection and the entire rest of the
system. this connector. This I'm going to zoom in so
you guys can grasp the full the full amaze ballsness of what I'm showing you
right now.
This if I could focus on it that would be great. Thanks camera. I hate
you. Um well maybe if I zoom out a little bit
more. Sometimes it has trouble focusing.
Can you focus? I'm trying to make a point here. There we go. This powers the
entire system. Everything. 12volt rail, 5vt rail, 3.3
volt rail, all the grounds, all the GPUs, the CPU,
everything. Does the whole thing. How is that? How is that even
possible? So, there you go.
which leaves us finally with the base.
Um, and this pretty much just acts as like a as like a traffic traffic control
station. Uh, so you can see we've got
the the power just comes through there.
Okay. Power goes in here. So this is what routes power to this PCIe 16x
physical interface, this 16x physical interface, and this 16x physical
interface. This goes off to the CPU and then this goes off to the two GPUs. One
of them goes to that M.2 slot. Um, and then you've got all these little ribbon
connectors that go to a bunch of places that I forget now because it's been a
long time since I started doing this. Uh, which I guess kind of concludes our
stream. So, thank you for tuning in to
this complete tearown of the MSI Vortex
G65. I hope you guys enjoyed it. But if you didn't, of course, you can dislike
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things there. And now I've kind of lost track of what I was talking about. I have a standard outro and I Right. Yes,
we have other videos you can watch. Maybe check out our last live machine
disassembly where I did the seven gamers one CPU machine which we will hopefully
have linked up there on the YouTubes. Thanks for watching guys and I will see
you again next time. See if this hotkey
works.