Tiny Liquid Cooled PC Un-build Log!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
5,431 words · ~27 min read
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okay Welcome Friends to another in my series of unbuild or tear Downs or
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whatever we call these live streams where I put stuff together and take
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stuff apart this time I was inspired to do one by a particularly unique little
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machine this is the Zotac Magnus en980
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it is actually smaller than the MSI
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Vortex that cylindrical PC that I took apart in the past although it only has a
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single GT X 980 inside of it instead of two but what's interesting about this
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guy is they managed to cram a
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full 120 mm liquid cooling system inside
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of it so I want to tear it apart and see just how it all
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ticks the Phoenix vitess features a lightweight design and an optical 3310
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sens check it out and enter for a chance to win down below so let's get to it
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then first things first let's run through the overall specs of this puppy
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it's got a core i5 6400 16 gigs of RAM I
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think actually configured it with 32 it's got a GTX 980 it has an m.2 slot a
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SATA slot and it has no power supply yes
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my friends one of the unique things about this particular system is that
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while they did manage to pull off an impressive ly tiny form factor here in
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terms of the PC itself they went and they did something that I've been saying
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more manufacturers should do for quite some time I've talked to Cooler Master
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about this I've talked to Silverstone about this they went and they took the
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power external so this is two what are
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these I think they're like about 180
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watt power bricks giving this puppy a total of about
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360 wats of total power delivery which
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might explain actually why the CPU is a
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core i5 rather than a core i7 you know 6700k
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or something along those lines because I think they might have run up against a
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power limit otherwise because that 980 graphics card is going to uh really suck
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up some juice unfortunately this isn't something that I was able to evaluate in
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my review of the thing because um Zotac
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basically went well it's not user serviceable and once it's a part it's
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not that easy to put back together so we would recommend you review it as a
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completed unit and I kind of went okay that's fine but you're not going to
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prevent me from taking it apart at some point so without further Ado here we go
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the bottom is pretty pretty simple all you do is undo the four thumb screws
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there pop it off
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and all right let's go ahead and get rid of that one thing I do need is one of my
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trusty magnetic Parts trays that'll help me keep track of all the screws and bits
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and bobles there we are uh the RAM and the
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SSD that you see in here this is stuff that I installed so I've got uh a couple
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of those freaking fantastic intelligent
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memory sodm that I'm so fond of these are
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ddr3l so that's one of the reasons that Skylake has support for both ddr3l and
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ddr4 is that it gives the manufacturers a little bit more flexibility to offer a
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lower cost ution to folks who don't want
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to invest in ddr4 it was more of an issue right at the beginning but um I
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have a feeling this product has been in development for quite some time given
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that it's running a GTX 980 when the GTX
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1080 is most definitely already a thing
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and if you're trying to set that up that is straight up not going to work because I am streaming from that computer I
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really like what a good job they've done of the bare bonness of this um I am
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going to use a tool because I tightened this with a tool so it's actually a
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little bit tight right now but you can do the entire uh memory SSD installation
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with no tools whatsoever out of the box because those bottom feet are thumb
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screws I thought that was really clever um one thing we've got a pretty good
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look at here I'm going to go ahead and switch to my now not broken closeup
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here we can get a good look at oh that's
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kind of an awkward angle unfortunately it's going to be hard for me to adjust
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but basically there's your 2 and 1/2 in SATA there there's your m.2 and so you
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can see they've got uh little standoffs
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here to accommodate a variety of different lengths here and then over
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here is where you've got your two dim slots and other than that you're basically not intended to touch this
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although what's interesting is for some
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reason they went and covered up the wireless module I'm not sure why that is
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but it's right back there and then the other thing that we can see here is a
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CPU back plate right there so we're going to have a we're going to have a
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better look at that once we've been able to take it apart a little bit more so
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step number two is going to be to remove a metric wack ton of screws all around I
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say step number two as though I have some kind of like pre-planned out
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step-by-step guide that I'm following along nope I will be making this up
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entirely as I go along I have had some
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of the uh this to the front and back panel I have had off already but I have
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not removed the side panels yet yet so you guys will be experiencing that with
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me for the very first time overall
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industrial design of this thing not not you know particularly Next Generation or
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anything like that um you know it feels like like quality but not like wow we
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did a massive amount of R&D to figure
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out how to assemble this thing like this um because it's just basically an
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aluminum box but it's nice thick anodized aluminum that's got a a pretty
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durable finish on on it so I'm not going to criticize Zotac for it it just
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doesn't stand out as like like an amazing feat of of art um in addition to
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just being a functional and sturdy you know computer
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covering so this gives us a pretty good look at the front panel here so
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basically there is a little power PCB that plugs into four
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wires so that's going to be basically your front switch as well as your front
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power LED since the LED is actually built into the switch here everything
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else is just uh an aluminum cutout and then this is kind of interesting so this
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is a solid aluminum piece and then this uh this black part here is like a a
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plastic uh insert that appears to be just kind of glued on to give it a give
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it an accented look at the front if I was going to have one of these in my
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living room I'd probably want to paint it like do some kind of a more
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performance lookie finish to it because honestly that's one of the things that I
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think is really missing from this it is a
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$1600 us barebones machine and then it's
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got like this weird trying to give you guys a closer look at it it's got like
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this weird powder blue color mesh on the
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top and then it's otherwise white and silver and black it doesn't have like a
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like a high performance Vibe like I get trying not to do the overdone
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gamery oh it's red and black and those
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are the only colors that exist for some reason because ASUS R OG said so like I
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get that but um I don't know that powder
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blue would have been the route I would have gone especially when you're zot and you already have kind of a a black and
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orange color scheme that I personally think looks pretty good so I've taken
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out all the screws around the outside
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let's go ahead and pop off the rear panel that's one that I've already had
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off before so again it's like a nice thick
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very rigid piece of aluminum here um not
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really a whole lot to say about that so let's go ahead and put it down there we
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go then let's have a look at our side panels here see if we can oh there's
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more screws well that explains why I couldn't get it off before Oh
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okay the top completely fell away when I
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went and tried to remove that piece oh it's very
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shiny Mass drop is currently hosting a drop for the amazing Cher custom sa
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keycap set which is designed by zambumon
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and inspired by the motion picture adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate
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Factory the key caps are MX stem compatible and made in the USA if you
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guys don't know about Mast drop they're the site that facilitates group buys and
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the more people that buy something or commit to buying something the lower the
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price will go even if the product you're buying is a chocolate keyc cap set you
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can check this and other drops at the link NVIDIA description down
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below one of Zac's biggest boasts about
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this machine is how small it is and justifiably so it's however many liters
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very few liters uh let's go ahead and take this off as well but they go and
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they do things like cover the entire
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outside in actually a surprisingly thick
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outer shell when it the actual Hardware
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inside is considerably smaller um I'll
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give you guys a better look at that sort of baby blue color that I am not that
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fond of you can't see it on camera through here very well for some reason
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but it's quite visible in person it looks about like that very very strange
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choice and I will also give you guys a
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better look at the machine itself all
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right so that's the top so that's a full 120 mm radiator that they managed to put
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in there and not only that but while it's not a super thick one or anything
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it's also by no means the SL one that
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I've ever seen it's like a like a standard full-size PC radiator that
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they've managed to cram into this tiny little space
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here on the bottom it still looks
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largely the same on this side we actually get our first look at the
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custom GPU block so that's an mxm form
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factor gtx980 the same kind that you would see used in those GTX 980 laptops
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uh devices like the MSI Vortex all that
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kind of stuff and then uh over
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here yeah see this panel is solid for some reason not quite sure why uh but
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the CPU block would be behind there there's a vibration dampening mount for
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the pump right here oh I guess that's why this is I guess that's why this is
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one solid piece because that's where they did all the mounts for there and then if we look at this side we get a
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pretty good look at front IO which is on a little daughter board as well as the
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fan for the radiator and you can kind of see the CPU block but this rear shot
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gives us a bit of a better angle on it so there's the CPU block there's the
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Dual DC powerin there's the I believe
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this is for the graphics card I want to say yeah so there's the PCIe 8 Pin for
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the graphics card and then here's all of our all of our IO and that stuff so
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what's interesting about external power supplies to me is that the conversion
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from DC to DC is a lot more efficient
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than the conversion from AC to DC so
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what that means is even though unless you had like a very
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complex uh power brick you can only feed
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one voltage in so in the case of these ones it's probably 19 A2 would be my
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guess yeah 19 1 12 volts converting that
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to 12vt 5vt 3.3 volt all the different
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voltages that you need for a computer doesn't generate a ton of heat and so
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can and can be done very very efficiently so and it doesn't take up a
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lot of space so remember those Pico psus
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actually not remember I'm sure they're probably still around but Pico psus
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basically take an external power brick and they do all that splitting out and it's on like it's on a PCB that's
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probably about like this size like it's very very small so that's effectively
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what they're doing is they've created a completely custom motherboard here that
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includes all the power conversion circuitry that's needed to take that 192
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volts and turn it into what all of the other components inside need so this
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bottom plate here just pops right off just a couple screws there it's actually
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really easy to disassemble compared to the MSI Vortex even though the size is
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very similar I guess because they went with a more traditional square shape so
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the only thing that that really reveals is a better look at the CPU back plate
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here as well as a look at our wireless
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card so that could quite easily be swapped out if we really wanted to let's
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just go ahead and uh switch to our closeup here so that could be swapped
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out quite easily as an end user if we wanted to but it should be noted I think
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actually no I don't think we have broken
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any warranty void if removed seals yet so you're in good shape as long as you
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don't start taking out the motherboard it looks like that's where you start to
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get into trouble that's okay we'll be voiding that warranty before this video
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is over Pop the wireless card off 3165
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ngw in case anyone on Earth car okay so there's some debate about the GTX 980
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card that is inside this system we've got some people saying that it performs
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on par with a 980m due to its probably
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due to its mxm form factor and then we've got others among you saying that
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it does not it actually performs the same as a desktop 980 which is the
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correct answer it performs identically to a desktop
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gtx980 it's just mounted on a much more
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compact PCB and requires there's
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probably some binning involved in making sure that it'll operate within the
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thermal and power limits but um no it
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performs exactly the same as long as it doesn't thermal throttle so wow there
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you have it that's actually uh whole thing just kind of comes out like that
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so there's the other main piece of the chassis let's go ahead and switch to our close-up camera here see if I can get
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you guys a bit of a better look at this
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so there's our anti vibrational pad on
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the bottom of another black aluminum plate here there we go that's bit of a
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better angle for you guys mounted on that this I thought was just such a
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weird weird implementation of this system
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so yeah that is so just so bizarre so
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the pump is here and then they've actually got a tube coming out to a
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completely separate Standalone Reservoir and then they've got another tube coming
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out to the radiator the radiator bone
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is connected to the GPU bone right over here the GPU bone is connected to the
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CPU bone oh no wait yes yep so GPU is
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connected to CPU and then CPU comes back to the pump most of the time with a
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compact water cooling system the reservoir gets combined with some other
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component um either the radiator or if
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you want to deal with asex legal team with the CPU block so it's very strange
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to me that they went and they it's like it's such a weird little part here it's
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this tiny little Reservoir but I guess
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for some reason that was easier for them to do or cheaper or or something either
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way I mean they didn't compromise on the compactness of the system so I can't
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really fault them for it one thing's for sure though this
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disassembly is about to get a little bit more complicated so let's go ahead and I
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think I'm just going to try and remove the water cooling system system as one
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piece here so we can get a better look at it cuz that will have to come off if
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I want to swap out the
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CPU okay yeah with all these tubes kind of
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zip tied and cable managed together it's actually kind of hard to get at anything
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I guess this is what they were warning me
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about it's hard with this overhead shot for you guys to see anything with this
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radiator constantly in the way so here are my options I can either
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remove one two 3 four five screws uh
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here I'll point with something that's a little bit easier for you guys to follow along with so I can either remove this
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one and one two 3 four around this
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fitting here or I can try and remove one
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two three and see if the whole video card
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will come off so I'm going to try that what a cool little
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machine there it goes all right let's give you guys a better angle of this so
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now CPU is
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free
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GPU seems like I can just tilt it
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up along with this whole assembly and pop it
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out okay now being very very careful
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with that let's go ahead and switch angles
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here the whole thing should
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basically peel away so let's pop that off pop that
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off
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and okay um
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sure
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awesome so let's have a look at the water cooling stuff
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first wow that is a lot of thermal
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compound jeez
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zotek like what the heck is going on
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here the good news is it didn't leave a whole lot of goop on the actual CPU so I
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can deal with that relatively easily this is cool though so they've actually
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opted to make the completely their own custom block I do have to wonder about
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the wisdom of using aluminum and copper within the same block design um if
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swifttech couldn't do it I don't know how much faith that I have in Zotac
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ability to pull this off without corrosion given Swift Tech's um vastly
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Superior experience in water cooling the apple G gtz GTX I want to say which is
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total total disaster for them um but this is cool by designing their own
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block and machining their own block they were able to have the vrm so the actual
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uh voltage regulation modules on the motherboard cooled by this block as well
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so that's kind of the other component on
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a motherboard that's going to run quite hot and might be a concern in a system
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that doesn't have a lot of air flow something that I actually was a little
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bit worried about when I did my review of this thing which will be up later but
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I have filmed it already because pretty much the only exhaust is out the top
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here so the exhaust is all here and then
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the only intake that I could find was actually above the
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io in the back panel here I mean yes
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there are intakes in the very bottom here and the SSD down there did actually
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manage to stay pretty cool but what's interesting about those is that they
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basically sit here and are are pretty
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much here if I can give you guys a better look at this they are pretty much
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cut off see they're
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covered by the by these plates here like
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they're only only a little bit of it is exposed and even then it's kind of
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closed in by the um by the by the way
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that this shell sits here so I don't know it was something I was a little
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concerned about and I'm really glad to see that the vrm is being taken care of
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by a water block there because that means that will definitely be
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okay all right let's go ahead and pull
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the GPU block off here
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looks like it should be just four screws this is the first time that I have ever
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laid hands on a water cooled mxm
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card there's a first time for everything
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right water cooled
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mxm theoretically I could use this block to
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jury rig some kind of like water cool video card
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nonsense although there would be no need because ASUS is already kind of been
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there there and done that gx700 or something I think they call
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it okay has this unscrewed yet how how long
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do you have to turn these for
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jeez I can't even tell if they're still coming
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out no screws in the bottom going into it all right let's see if I can get you
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guys a good look at this as it comes
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apart
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okay is that still holding on no okay there we
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go here we
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go okay off it comes
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there so
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here here is our mxm
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gtx980 so there's your power delivery
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here's the 8 Pin power in just like that
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it looks like I I don't
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remember you know what I haven't looked that closely but I can't imagine that
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most notebooks are using an 8 pin PCIe
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connector like that so I would imagine that's something slightly custom that
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they've done here remember Zotac is an actual manufacturer of graphics cards so
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it wouldn't be um that big of a deal for them to do something like
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that there's the GPU itself and then
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there is your either four or 8 gigs of RAM depending ing on your GTX 980 so
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this one has 4 gigs of RAM okay and then
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here we've got pretty much every part of
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that graphics card is cooled by the water block through the use of thermal
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pads or this copper slug in the middle so again they've gone with mixed medals
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for their block design here it's such a rookie mistake um you know like if you
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guys have been following along with ASUS's Rampage series of motherboards
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over the years or is it Maximus whatever I don't know the one that's had water
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cooling integrated onto the North Bridge for years and years and years now they
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went from what was the first one like like
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tiny little Barb fittings and aluminum to like I think they did mixed Metals at
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some point to they included these weird adapters to get the barbs to different
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sizes and like there's all this like stupid stuff and it's very simple water
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blocks are made of copper and they use
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G1 qu threads now in this case I can
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forgive not using an industry standard
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threading um that that's fine because you don't intend for anyone to actually
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use these outside of this one system but
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water blocks are made of copper yes it costs more yes it is more difficult to
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machine but the benefit of your system not corroding and having the block fall
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apart is a pretty compelling one all
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right so let's go ahead and have a quick look at this guy from overhead so now
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that we've got the video card out there's our mxm slot there's our DC
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power in there's where that eight pin is going over to the graphics card over
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here here is our vrrm for the
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CPU actually over here as well oh that's
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interesting okay uh there's our
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chipet so wow that's a Kind of a Funny
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layout so ioab is here which means that this is
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communicating with this and then pretty much everything here is going to be
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using another layer of the PCB to go all all the way back over here where the USB
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ports um and at least no Ethernet is
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probably using yeah that's a there's a here I'm going to go ahead and switch to
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my other angle that I didn't have for a bit there
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again I need to see that that's okay um so we've got where
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did it go Ethernet yeah okay so there's a real Tech chipset right there so that
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should be handling this uh we've got
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yeah basically just USB then I guess running off of that because the two HDMI
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ports and two DisplayPort ports should be running off of the gtx980m so I guess
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that's why they put that there because those are much higher bandwidth
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connections than really anything else on the back here which is just a wireless
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module which is running off PCI Express
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which is over here around on the back right
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there and and then power in that's it so
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I guess that does actually make a fair amount of sense so right here is for the
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CPU fan so that's running the fan for the radiator as well as oh there's
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a okay this is interesting so this is something Luke actually told me while I
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was working on my review of the en980
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there is another version that's very
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similar to this that's actually air cooled and Zotac was using as like a VR
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backpack thing so that would explain why there's not one but actually two fan
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headers here so one of these is for the mxm fan and one is for CPU fan so that
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would be if they are air cooling this monster very interesting this says motor
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P motor power so that's going to be for the pump and then other than that
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there's really not a ton of connectors here this is just for the front LED and
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power button and let's go ahead and uh I
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can let you guys have a look at the back again now that my camera angle is
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actually a little bit better good work Brandon um yeah oh well this is kind of
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neat why don't we have a why don't we have a quick look at this one that's oh that's weird okay okay no no no things
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are things are about to get kind of interesting here so this daughter board
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right here is plugging into an m.2 slot
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for some reason why would they do it that
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way so oh huh well if you ever had to pull your seos
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battery on this puppy you would be basically doing a full disassembly so
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that's kind of a pain in the ass way to go
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Zotac can think of a fair number of reasons why doing that might be
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convenient um
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wow so interesting there's an m.2 slot
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here that appears at least on the
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surface to just be a normal normal m.2
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slot yeah it's keyed the same as the one on the
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front so it's not a mini PCIe forx slot
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which it could have easily been depending on what they were doing on
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here and then it looks like oh yes okay
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so basically they are using it though as
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just a like just a small PCI Express connection because they've gone and
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they've put an asmia chipset to handle the front USB connection
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so that would be that USB um I believe
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these are USB 31 but don't quote me on that I'm just
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going to go ahead and pull an old Linus trick here and consult the packaging
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when I can't remember something who uh blah blah blah yep so there you
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go that's why they did it that way it's a USB 3.1 controller from as media so
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that those front ports can be USB 3.1 this drives me crazy though the industry
28:27
cannot decide what to do it's supposed to be as far as I can tell white or
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black on the inside for USB 2 blue for
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USB 3.0 is what we used to call it but
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now it's called 3.1 gen 1 so 5 gabit and
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then it's supposed to be pale blue or like like this green for USB 3.1 as we
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used to call it or USB 3.1 Gen 2 10
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gigabit and then you got Razer who's running around putting like green
28:56
plastic on all of their USB ports so no one knows what the heck is going on I
28:59
blame Razer for this there let's go with that the last thing that's really left
29:04
here then is to go ahead and pull out the CPU so it's a completely standard
29:09
desktop LGA 1150 socket covered in thermal goop of course
29:14
thank you for
29:17
that there you go that gives us a nice
29:20
look at that and that is our mountain of
29:23
thermal paste on the CPU that I just pulled out see if I can get you guys a
29:27
good look at
29:36
that so that was actually surprisingly
29:39
straightforward zot tax claims that this thing is not user serviceable and very
29:45
difficult to reassemble once it's taken apart okay I haven't actually tried to
29:49
reassemble it yet it could be very very difficult still but I don't think it is
29:53
their claims seem to be pretty much baseless I think I'll be able to put
29:57
this together and uh maybe I'll like I have no idea in what context I would do
30:03
this in a video but I would really like to try a 6700k in here and see if it can
30:08
handle the extra power that's required for that I'm very very
30:15
interested so I guess that pretty much wraps it up thank you guys for watching
30:18
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30:22
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30:25
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got a Zotac Magnus en980 you know
30:33
Samsung SSD I don't know whatever else at our link on Amazon we'll have that in
30:36
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30:40
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