one of the unforeseen consequences of self-isolation has been that my kids
can't go to school and they can't go to their friends houses so
ever since it started my dining room table has been covered in kids school
assignments and virtual play dates over discord in minecraft so
in my usual fashion i'm going to be solving both of these problems with
technology we're going to finally put a work desk into my kids room and in order
to make it as compact as possible we are actually going to build the minecraft
gaming machine right into the desk so this malm
desk from ikea was selected for its actually very similar to a computer case
pricing and the rest of the components were actually chosen uh well half by us
and half by MSI who sponsored this video
unfortunately with all the time people have been missing at work
this one is not in such an organized
state so wish me luck here ladies and gentlemen
because this is what i've got to work with
got some instructions for the desk got a partially built up test bench so
we've got an MSI 5700 xt graphics card dual fan four heat
pipe cooler with back plate three DisplayPort outputs factory overclock
and lots of performance for minecraft got a test bench with a black nhd15 some
CPU i actually don't know what's in there and an MSI extreme gaming x570 ace
so the main features of this one are that you've got four gen four m.2 slots
active cooling on the chipset an infinity mirror here lots and lots of
RGB lighting and of course very robust vrms for overclocking tx850 80 plus
titanium power supply gaming keyboard mouse and headset from MSI some white
delrin oh this is good labels front back
mid vertical GPU mounting kit some 3600
megahertz cl 12 trident zrgb cooling
fans power cables commander pro for RGB RGB strips for
commander pro wi-fi antenna velcro strips and then a variety of fan
filters power cables usb splitters and
oh i guess i'll go get the desk now we'll just start throwing it all in and see
what happens do you need help
uh no it's better this way because at least
there's a camera rolling if i fall down the stairs and die
i swear it's genius
yes please tell me there are no obstacles on
the stairs oh my legs are gonna get trapped it smells like
cat pee on the carpet here one of the objectives for this project was for it
to be something that could be easily reproduced at home with minimal tools
and know-how so the modifications to the desk are actually pretty minor we've got
an RGB strip that's already in place here on the back so we're going to hook
that up a little bit later and then basically on the bottom cabinet here
where there's going to be a oh here you go there's going to be a door on the front
we've basically just got a couple of 120 millimeter intakes so that's just a hole
saw and then a regular drill bit we've got a square hole that was cut with a
jigsaw and this little uh like
comb style cable management piece and then around
back a single hole for a power cable to
go to one of our power bars as well as a
millimeter exhaust other than that
it's just a matter of a few holes in here and some computer hardware in there
and we should be pretty much good to go there's no manual but
power supply first is as good a bet as any we're gonna go ahead and leave
hybrid mode on i do want this to be as quiet as possible because this is a room
where people sleep so i think it goes there
i think this one goes right here
and this one goes here another way to mount the motherboard if
we don't care about getting it lifted up off the bottom of the table is to
actually just put little 632
um like inset things into the wood itself we
actually showed this when i did a build on the bottom of a desk way back in the
day but what's nice about this is it lifts up the motherboard so that we can
cable manage underneath it and all of that good stuff i will say this about
cases that are intended to be cases they're a little more ergonomic to work
in now you guys might decide to do yours
slightly differently but we will put the plans for any pieces that we created for
this build in the video description this is one of the last times we're going to
have access to the motherboard so actually the m.2 boot drive is already
installed in the top slot over here but now is a good time for me to throw in my
memory as well so this is a 16 gig kit
is that lined up now oh shoot i missed
figured it out the tolerances are a little eh um but if we loosen the screws
going into the desk we can screw the motherboard into the mounts and then put the mounts into the desk after the fact
wow we got that one at the back that motherboard is down
so now we're just going to tighten this back down but not too much
have you used the drill before
okay perfect you're going to use it again so here's what you're going to do
these bolts need to go through this fan filter through this hole and then i'm
going to hold the fan on the other side this is going to be our exhaust fan
yup just just press it just a little bit and then it'll grab on to the right spot
if i were to go back and have this care package redesigned i would probably ask
for a slightly different power supply mount i'm a little bit fussy about my
power supply mounts just because they are so heavy but the way that this one's
intended to be used is we've got a hook and loop fastener pair here and then it's kind of
friction mounted against the motherboard i had my mic turned off but putting in
the front power button was a bit of a chore so because the desk is so thick i
couldn't really get access to the ring at the back but basically with a
screwdriver i was able to kind of hold it in place and now that it's screwed in this is a good
time for us to go ahead and route the power switch because the more stuff we
install on the bottom here like you know graphics card and all that the less
access we're gonna have to the motherboard modding and pc power button
is pretty simple you can just salvage these from any broken case and then just
extend them using wires so we all we need is a power switch and then power
led that's built into our power switch up here MSI actually has not only
12 volt RGB they have 5 volt addressable RGB and then they even have one of
Corsair's stupid proprietary connector
uh ones built right into their motherboard that's pretty sick we're
still going to need a commander pro because i'm going to have separate zones for the strips and the
fans but that's still sick now is as good a time
as i need to put in our RGB and fan controller so the one trick is we need
to make sure it's below this shelf the idea is that this shelf and this drawer
are both still completely accessible and the computer is just built into the
bottom here so we're gonna go ahead and put it
there with a little hook and loop fastener the usb plug goes into the
bottom of the motherboard down here and the only other plug that needs is a SATA
power connector that i'm going to go ahead and run
all the way under the motherboard now we just run another one of these short
cable mod cables and plug that in
i haven't spent this much time on my back since i was in college
hey just kidding we all know i didn't get laid in college
i'm not sure if it's your intent but it makes that kind of thing more awkward
when you don't reply my kids are all downstairs watching wild kratts now so i
guess i'll have to put this in myself but here's a tech tip for you guys free
of charge it is really really important for these
fans to have filters on them because they are intakes and they are going to
be right next to this carpeted floor right here carpet can be just an
absolutely nasty dust trap and if we have an intake next to carpet it pretty
much must be filtered or your computer is going to be disgusting just a little
cat hair dead skin cells all that kind of nasty stuff another nice side effect
of these is that it makes these holes look so much better these are from
silverstone they're actually magnetic now we're at the point where it's time to wire up our RGB strips but
unfortunately there's no hole at the back so i'm gonna have to put a new one
i don't want sawdust all over the motherboard uh
can you grab a vacuum you suck i'll drill okay
did you catch it all i didn't suck at all no
wait what really oh yeah i can see it from through here
that's pretty bad oops there we go and i've got the RGB
and the front power switch through that
now i can bring those down real nice and tidy
good job now i've got all the led strips on the
bottom of this shelf there you go oh i almost forgot the most
important part the graphics card so we're using this aluminum rod see it's
threaded on this end i've got a washer here so i'm just going
to run this through the entire desk
it's got to be nice and strong
there it is then we're going to tip the whole thing
then we throw a washer and a nut down here tighten that up and that's it
that's the graphics card mount nice
door's on
it's got power ready
fans are all spinning and we've got a post
for the keyboard MSI sent over the vigor gk50 with low profile mechanical
switches and as you can see full individual key RGB backlighting
so if i want to plug in the wi-fi or what have you
you just throw that in there and then on the underside there's actually a little
cable management shelf so
i can chuck my wi-fi junk up there for the mouse they sent over their
clutch gm50 mouse this has a pmw 3330
optical sensor it's super lightweight it's got RGB lighting and
it's got 20 million click rated omron switches the immerse 50 headphones were
provided for their durable metal construction 40 millimeter neodymium
drivers detachable microphone and of course
RGB lighting oh yeah and there's inline volume and mute controls and all that
good stuff and finally the cherry on top is their optics mag 272 cqr so this is a
curved gaming display with a 165 hertz refresh rate it's 2560 by 1440
resolution it's rated at one millisecond response times it's got freesync
and what else do you want oh yeah it's got RGB lighting of course
now that we've been in game for a while we're ready to take a look at our thermals it's running super quiet even
with the door closed i've got my mic right on me and you can
barely hear this thing in the quiet profile we are boosted up to
4.35 gigahertz 60 degrees no 53 as for
our GPU with all that fresh air coming in right next to its intake it actually
hasn't gone over 60. minecraft is mind you a pretty light
game but that's all this machine was designed to do and it looks like it's
gonna do it just nicely well hey it's running so mission accomplished
right so thank you to MSI for sponsoring this video thank you to you guys for
coming along for the journey i think it actually worked out like shockingly well
this is clean and speaking of clean well
MSI sponsored this video so i don't have like another sponsor to talk to you
about but maybe you could check out one of my previous desk pc builds where i
strap the whole computer to the underside that was pretty cool too