I remember the first time Intel showed me something kind of like this it wasn't
the same as what the Nook nine extreme
kit ended up being but it was sort of
like a modular computing concept that I
think probably led us eventually to here so this is my first hands-on with this
thing they actually showed off some designs using the compute unit back at
CES of this year but I didn't go and I
am very excited to take a look at it assuming I can figure out how to get the
bloody box open ah there's a seal these
guys can be very very good at packaging
when they want to be metal clips and
after peeling off all those layers we are left with a full-fledged gaming
machine that is not much bigger than a
graphics card enclosure in fact most of the external Thunderbolt GPU enclosures
that I've used are actually smaller than this truly impressive isn't it what else
is in here power cable and Intel flashlights oh
okay there's a backlight mode if you
need to find where your cat peed or whatever now this is just the unboxing
you're gonna find the full review over on the Linus tech tips channel so I have
done zero research leading into it which means I'm just gonna read off the box
for you it's got a core I $9.99 a thk processor it's got two memory slots so
you can put ddr4 memory up to 64 gigs in
here it actually supports up to 3 m dot
two drives so you could run a bunch of like raid zeroed high-speed SSDs in this
thing if you really wanted to it's got Intel Wireless 2 Gigabit LAN ports
that's interesting it's got dual Thunderbolt ports the power supply input
is right down here at the bottom so it's got what looks like one of those more
server type slim long power supplies and
then over at the front a SD card reader and a couple more USB Taipei's so that
a total of six take that MacBook Pro
enough chitchat let's crack this thing open I monitor my own audio at home
unbox and stuff oh okay so there's my
cooling module for the top so that looks like two slightly low profile not super
slim but slightly low profile eighty millimeter fans this one's got a little
protective grille over top of it I wonder why that oh yes
okay that's because right underneath that there's a power supply connection
into the graphics card so just in case it works oh I don't know come up or
whatever else it might get jammed in the fans that'll keep that out of out of the
way and then this is cool there's these nice little contacts over here that
handle power for the fans just like a little splitter PCB right here so that
way the fans get plugged in simply by sliding this cooling module forward very
cool they got him oh wow this is actually a
surprisingly painless disassembly process so you just pop this up that
gives us access to the graphics card so I'm not sure what's in here it's an RT X
of some sort based on the size of the card I'm gonna guess like a 2060 or
something like that but we're gonna get that popped out anyway now let's pop up this side AE also
simple and that right there is the
compute module so part of the stick behind these compute module based
products like this gaming Newark is that
with almost no tools or expertise whatsoever you could actually upgrade
the graphics card or the entire like
piece enos of it really cuz there's a 500 watt power supply down there and
then that's it the rest of it is just a
case so everything else about it that makes it a computer is actually just
pre-installed on this little board here
so let's see how simple it is to get up
so I'm gonna release this this PCI Express Bowie connection right here and
then theoretically it's just like
hello-o so I will need one more tool I
will need a little pokey pry eating well
there we go that's out that's out okay so we can go
ahead and remove the PCI Express power connector and then in theory this is
just gonna slide out for me all right as you can see my USB three front panel
connector got a little bit in the way there but not too too bad
womp hey there we go
okay that was that was pretty simple wow this is a twenty seventy it weighs next
to nothing no offense to a soos but that was one cheapo feeling twenty seventy
right there they cut themselves there there's my graphics card and this is the
compute module will do dad I'm sure there's an easier way to do this but I'm
just gonna force it a bit there we go alright so there's what is probably our
front panel connectors things like front audio front USB all that good stuff what
actually even is that so we've got this large heat sink down at the bottom that
seems to be over an MDOT two slot now
the thing about MDOT - is that yes it's for SSDs but also it just happens to be
just a PCI Express by 4 interface so
there's no real reason why you couldn't put anything you want in it so let's see
what's in there Oh SEC this is a 380 gig octane 905 P that
would explain why it needs this beefy AF
freaking heatsink on it because that is not your mom's SSD so then what do we
got we've got a PCIe 16x interface presumably some kind of PCI Express
splitting logic built into this board or
something because we've got a 16 X slot for the GPU that's got to be only like 8
X we've got a 4 X slot and then we've got another 4x lot for that m dot - so I
would guess that that is electrically 8 X 80 plus Platinum power supply from FSP
alright so let's set aside that for now and focus our attention on
this guy should I take the cooler off it yeah I guess I might as well take the
cooler off it right yeah let's do it okay who am I talking to nobody you're
just gonna come apart for me there but wow this config that they send to the
reviewers is loaded for a freaking bear here so you've got a single blower
cooler on this thing that's because the CPU that it's using you've actually
based on one of their mobile chips now there's mobile chips these days can suck
back power pretty good you've seen them well over they're rated 45 watt TDP s
but they are still more efficient pound-for-pound than the desktop chips
so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise but I mean here it is there's
just this one blower fan and then this
small what looks like a vapor chamber with an aluminum heatsink on it to
handle cooling for the CPU and then you're gonna have some incidental
airflow from this blower fan that's gonna provide some cooling to here's a
populated m2 slop so it's a one terabyte Kingston Casey mm and then there's
another m2 slot right here and then we've got a couple of sodium slots that
have 16 gigs of RAM each in the in the
reviewers can say anyway which we are gonna take advantage of there will be a
full review on the Linus tech tips channel in the next little bit but this
is just kind of the unboxing and first impressions but one thing I did want to
cover before I leave you guys is just how incredibly small this thing is so
this is an ARS external GPU gaming box
that they released I don't know must have been a year ago or something along
those lines it's got a gtx 1080 in it so pretty darn impressive little machine
and it connects to a laptop via Thunderbolt 3 now back when this was
first released this was real impressive cramming a power supply a Thunderbolt
interface with the associated chipsets
that are required for that and a graphics card into a box this size but
let's take a look at the outer enclosure actually here we look at the inner
enclosures for the Nook and this now
this is smaller but it also contains only a graphics card check this out
they're actually not that dissimilar
in terms of their width we can cool now thermals and acoustics that's a question
for the full review bottom line the idea here is that you've got a complete
computer that not only can have the graphics card quickly and easily
upgraded but can even have the entire computer Ness quickly and easily
upgraded on a PCI Express 16x interface so that as new GPUs come out you could
replace that and as new CPUs come out or new platforms come out with new features
that you care about you could go ahead and replace that it's not like some
fixed i/o because the front is sort of you know prefab like there's nothing you
can really do to replace that but the rear is all totally modular so whatever
they could put on a dual slot PCI backplate they could theoretically put
in the nook hopefully you guys enjoyed this unboxing your first look make sure
you subscribe to ShortCircuit and also make sure you check out Linus tech tips
for the full review