The MOST Compact Gaming PC - Titan X & 18 Core Xeon CPU in a Shoebox
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
3,140 words · ~15 min read
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so the objective today is as much power
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in as little space as possible it'll be
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a gaming rig sure and graphics card and
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CPU right we got an x99 motherboard that's ITX that's how this whole thing
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happened now I remember why we're doing
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this the cors our h 1200i power supply
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delivers 80 plus Platinum efficiency for quiet efficient power and Corsair link
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digital for advanced monitoring and control click to learn more so I guess
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let's do a quick run through of the parts we've got the highlight of the
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show is definitely the ASRock x99e ITX
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AC this is a surprisingly I guess I
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might as well just open it it's not like we're not going to do this this is a surprisingly fully featured um x99
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motherboard considering that it's it's an ITX board the socket actually takes
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up a significant portion of the total
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area of the board like check this out guys the x99 LGA 20113 socket is massive
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now one thing you might notice about it is that the socket actually has
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non-standard Moun holes so we are going to be a little bit Limited in terms of
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what cooler we can use although thankfully ASRock does include a cooler
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in the box so hopefully that'll fit in
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our case so we're going to be using a Silverstone Sugo sg13 this is a new case
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we're actually going to have a review coming probably based on our Impressions
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from this build log it's
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small yay uh for RAM we're going to be
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using not an entire quad Channel kit of ddr4 because the asck board only
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supports two memory slots so we're going
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to be running in dual Channel which means we're going to be limited in terms of both capacity and bandwidth however
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if you checked out our memory video which you can click on Luke's face or
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behind the whatever the picture over Luke's face now to learn about we
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determined going from Dual channel to quad Channel and ddr4 on even an extreme
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Edition processor doesn't make a difference these days finally we've got
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an ax760i power supply which I have no
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idea if we're actually going to be able to use because we haven't vetted the
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compatibility of this build at all yet we'll try it but this power supply would
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work with cable mod cables which look freaking awesome which is why we chose
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it so so we're going to try and use it hopefully it works who actually really
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knows for processor we have a 5960x because it's just kind of badass and
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we're trying to build a small badass rig so it just kind of works we have an
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Intel 730 series processor we can't use their 750 series because Yeah we
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actually don't know if it supports NVMe but I'm going to go with no I don't
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think so and then we have a Titan X because it's the fastest single GPU card
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at least for now we'll see when that new AMD stuff comes out but at cram it in
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there yeah yeah like in the the box it
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looks small and then you take it out and it looks even way smaller is the Titan X
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even going to fit in there I was wondering about that it seems kind of
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doomed from the outset doesn't it you know what we'll make it work I mean we
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could probably eyeball oh dear oh maybe it depends how
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they've laid out the inside guts there
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wow this thing is pretty bare yep well there's not a whole lot of
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room for anything but the parts I guess so there's that the way the Wi-Fi card
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installs in this thing is janky as all
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balls you just slide it into this slot little things no can we cut it wait
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yeah yeah look look there's a gap Brandon look look at the Gap look at the Gap yeah yeah I I think it can get in
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there I that is some tight business
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oh yeah that's in it works we're going to put a Titan X in here we are I have a
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surprise uh-oh the
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5960x was a throwaway or a red herring
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or a trojan horse or whatever it was a trick in my pocket oh I have something
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else entirely which will make this the most powerful miniitx gaming rig ever
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this is a 26.99 V3 18 core 36 thread
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processor it turbos up to 3.6 GHz so
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you're still going to get that gaming performance when you need single-threaded performance and it is
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able to run 18 cor sustained at
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something in the neighborhood I think it was 2.6 gigz or so so it absolutely
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cleans the clock of the 5960x both in
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terms terms of performance and in terms of actual physical size you wouldn't
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even look at them and think that they fit in the same socket would you look at
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that it actually overhangs the edge of the socket with extra heat spreader area
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because they got to put all those cores
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somewhere oh yeah does this look like it
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fits an H ADI it says specifically in
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the Box specific cooler types check this
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out it looks like as from thought of
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this so This plate does specifically fit
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on this this is an h100i because I don't think we're going
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to get an H ADI in here either way we're
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not using this stock thing at this point anymore or you know what we can try the
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NVMe setup okay this is ready but I'm not actually going to install it yet
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just so it isn't in the
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way I wanted to see if we could fit this thing in super juny in like some crazy
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angle or something but it's not going to work yeah uh do you want to figure out
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if the power supply is going to fit I think it will um but will it fit with a
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thick rad cuz if I could just use an H AI then that would make my life a little
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bit easier sure I'll check that there's a white 860i in the in the uh Subzero
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build the build where the storage CPU
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and power supply all changed within like 20 minutes cooling don't forget cooling
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also cooling hey we're good on the power
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Supply okay I found it in your office
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cool and I found an H
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AI you must be 3.1 man that's
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crazy I don't think this is going to happen actually maybe maybe maybe so if
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we went tubing this side take this back out here hold on no no put put it back
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in actually yeah um and then if I have a
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fan so if we can fit the 24 pin probably
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fine where is it at the bottom it's at the top okay hold on new idea for RAM I
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was saving this surprise for later but to go along with my xon CPU I also have
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16 gig sticks of Kingston
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DDR ECC memory oh my God so we're going
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to put 32 gigs of RAM in here look at all those chips the module
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layout I thought you just line up the RAM I was like that's your job I'm not
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sure yeah I don't think we're going to make
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it yeah no it's not going to fit the threads on this rad are no good so I was
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going to pull the block off this one and put it onto a single red we have we have
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single
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Reds they're like horribly Tangled so I
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wanted to use one say the power cable
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and it almost fits no see it's pulling
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it out of this
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one oh that will actually be doable I think
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okay my hold down actually can go on any
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orientation that I want which is
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nice so the only ones that are really going to be hard is
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audio okay so Rad's on remember the fan has to be here the
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power suppes
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here we're going to cover up a fair number of the connectors on the power
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supply but we still need a
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fan okay so the 24 pin is going this
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way okay so we don't need to do the ghetto mon yeah yeah wow okay I think it
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can make it all right then let's get the power supply out here and try to more properly Mount some stuff yeah if I can
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find something threaded correctly that I can just screw into the back plate do
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you think you have anything like that I have no idea
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okay so here's the random screw we
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found in a bin yes it totally works do you have
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four no but it doesn't matter all the rest are fine good call I think cooling
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is going to be a a trick in a system like this let's put on some nice fresh
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uh fresh goop a
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wow okay oh where' the map
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go uh save cables I can't find the
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washer we just use a nut in each
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corner and that can go all the way down
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now oh there's two other side of ports if they're easy yep okay front
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audio um hard drive LED is bottom left power LED is top left okay cool okay so
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that's ready now we're graphics card oh oh this is going the wrong way why
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because there's no Grill that's
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good you know what I'm actually going to put all four in it's probably not a bad
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idea yeah so let me get this in real
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quick it's not great but like there's
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this but I think it's going work it's not going to Kink exactly okay you know
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we're going to discover something the whole thing apart right wait are you're
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going in backwards no derp there we go good call
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I was not paying attention to the power at all just looking at the cables that I
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am not privy too and it's Fantastical
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not a small power spy at
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all try some
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more uh um that doesn't work two D I
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think we should do two drives can they fit on the top of the power supply there
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might just be a little bulge there might be a little bulge but we're doing it
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yeah let's just do it vro wait uh oh that is going to add additional
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thickness a lot of it you know what um my super low profile double-sided tape
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strips that I collected a bazillion years ago so we'll go just like
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that oh I'm happy we have these cables
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yeah they shouldn't affect air flow at all in actually any of the places nope
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there that's pretty clean I like braided it could we bring these further back and
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make it work okay these ones right
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y well I don't yeah there we go thing
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you were coming up with by the
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people I have to try and get this front panel in
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somehow why wouldn't go on uh no I just I have to get all the wires like in
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there as opposed to to around the edges there you go there's screws that
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that front panel needs to got it what an
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impressive little case better than either of our computers
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and like less than a fifth of the size of
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either of our computers we're done that was fun and it
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and like despite the incredible amount of things that we oh no no that's from
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me popping out the things a little bit yeah it's going to have a little bit of
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Bulge on the top but it's not bad it's not very noticeable and considering how
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much Hardware is in here I don't know if
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Silverstone could have made it any more
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dense it's basically like I love the case I don't mean this in a bad way but
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it's basically a frame yeah it's a shoe
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box and it's it's a it's a nicely logically laid out frame but it's yeah
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it's a shoe box with holes and uh we filled those holes yeah so now all
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that's is to find out does it actually work so
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uh what all I mean what else should we test we got to throw we got to find out power consumption yeah we'll do power
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consumption we'll do a bunch of games I'll throw some synthetics at the CPU
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cuz that's fun we got to see temps on on everything just know I mean it should be
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fine like if you guys look it's intake on the side for the graphics card
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exhaust right out the rear with some supplementary exhaust at the top here
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right there spot thermal testing fig out where some
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zones are the entire front of the case is mesh so that's going to take care of
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cooling your CPU which is going to be liquid cooled and then the power supply
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itself is going to take heat away from the motherboard area and push it out the
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back we should actually have reasonably balanced airf flow I'm really curious to
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see just how loud this sucker is as well
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yeah I don't think it's going to be that loud if we were smarter we wouldn't have
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had to put ssds on the top an m.2 SSD would have made a lot of and then we
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just we could have also there's enough space here that we might have even been able to just stack them right there
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right on the side instead of them being on the top what what I think it looks
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really cool it looks cool on the top yeah so uh yeah well here you go all
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right wow that weighs a lot more than you
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expect performance time all right so let's start with thermals as that's
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always an important question with a small powerful contained system like
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this one I mean loads of people buy full tower cases just for the juicy airflow
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and we have a lot of power under the hood including a Titan X which is a hot
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running card the Titan X performed pretty much just as expected in terms of
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thermals which was really hot the titanex is normally quite hot and not
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much changed here to be completely honest as it was able to breathe fairly
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easily through the side of the case but the CPU on the other hand was a little
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more surprising yeah we already knew it was pretty low temperature running
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processor but it really didn't have the card stacked in its favor over clocked a
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bit and with next to no air to breathe due to the confined space the fact that
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it went under a full-size power supply and cables running freaking everywhere
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Etc I honestly wasn't expecting much but it pulled through at a very low
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temperature underload which was damn impressive and made me believe in this
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setup just that much more speaking of overclocks our Titan X had its core
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cranked up to about 1375 which is about the same as we had
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it when we reviewed it if you want to see our actual review of this card click
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here the processor had a base clock increase of 3 MHz and no voltage
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increases across the board this little black box of awesome crushed our 4K
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gaming benchmarks for Crisis 3 BioShock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto 5 running
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all of them without a hitch and getting well over 60 frames per second despite
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the 4K setting and never having any of the presets below High pretty badass for
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a machine that you could easily fit in a backpack but this didn't really Flex the
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muscles of the CPU I mean even has to
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try the CPU's utilization throughout these tests was pretty crazy low so
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let's take it for a spin first up we've got cinebench R15 a good standard for
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CPU benchmarks and as always I'd like to give a shout out to the awesome cine
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bench community on the alliance Tech tips Forum our 36 thread Powerhouse was
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very fun to watch as I've never seen that many little yellow squares racing
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around the picture anyways as expected it crushed but it wasn't done there W
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prime a multi-threaded benchmark that calculate super crazy numbers that take
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a long time to calculate the idea here was to show the difference between the
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ever popular four thread CPU and a 36
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thread Insanity CPU so I set W Prime to
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four threads and 36 threads obviously the 36 thread processor smashed Through
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The Benchmark and I know you're probably not going to be sitting there all day
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trying to calculate crazy numbers with your processor so it probably doesn't
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matter to you unless your name is wher 99 or happen to be a member of the best
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Stam folding team in the world on the line of tech Forum anyways guys I hope
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you enjoyed this crazy build log let me know what you guys think in the comments
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contributes directly to us anyways guys thanks for watching and I'll see you
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next time