Asrock M8 Compact PC Barebones Kit
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,429 words · ~12 min read
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bu and unlocked Intel fourth gen core i7 or core i5 processor and get a free copy
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of Rome 2 Total War click now to learn more welcome to my unboxing and overview
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of the ASRock M8 their tagline for it is
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Unstoppable and while I might have agreed with that if they had made it out
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of something other than aluminum alloy I think you could stop an mitx system made
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out of aluminum alloy it just might be uncomfortable particularly if it hits
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you in the head all right let's have a look at the packaging so the first thing we find is a very healthy feeling
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accessory box followed by ah yes awesome
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closed cell foam ASRock expects this
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unlike most computer cases to be shipped
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with a fair amount of weight to it because not only is it a very well-built
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chassis and lonus how are you saying all this stuff before you even opened it
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well I've seen it before so not only is it a very well built chassis it also has
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a pretty significant amount of Hardware in it and it can hold a significant
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amount more so the first thing we find opening it up is the usual do not eat of
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course please do not eat this put it away put it in the garbage keep it away
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from babies all of that good stuff and then we find the chassis itself this is
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the M8 it was designed in collaboration I have it upside down with BMW design
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Works USA it uses oh man it's just
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absolutely gorgeous I mean we'll do some b-roll of this but I'll still try and
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show it to you guys a little bit so it can be configured either to stand up
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like this or you can lay it down on its side it actually has a a g sensor a
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Gravity Sensor for the front OLED display that also has a little
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rubberized or soft touch knob around it so you can use that for a variety of
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different functionality you can use the knob to control things like uh volume as
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well as power management it has a display that can show you a clock CPU
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usage clock speed all kinds of cool stuff like that they have a little
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application a command yes a command so
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to me this baby really is about Form and
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Function so while I will spend a lot of time sort of getting all dyed over the
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gorgeousness of the exterior as well as the industrial design here I would like
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to take a moment to show this to you guys it is also extremely robust you can
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actually use these cross braces here around the outside as handles for the
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unit you can move it around that way and you're not going to risk damaging it in
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any way so here in the front we have a Slimline DVD rewriter that is actually
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included for USB 3.0 ports as well as a
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nice little stealthy I love this nice touch boom front headphone and
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microphone jacks as well as an SD card
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reader so this is hooked up via USB inside we also find just I really quite
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like this a stylized sort of maze likee
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pattern over uh over the ventilation holes so you can actually see there are
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two 60 mm fans in here the fans are arranged in a bit of an unusual
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configuration by default but what you're going to want to do is have a look at the kind of system you're installing and
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optimize it yourself for the best possible air flow you have more sort of
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air flow here you've also ah yes this is a Bare Bones folks so it actually has a
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motherboard included and a rock has done a great job of including a motherboard
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that isn't a piece of junk that you're going to have to remove and they have
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included a standard Mini ITX board which means that when it becomes time to
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upgrade it you will actually be able to throw a standard component in there and
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upgrade the system fully big thumbs up to azrock for that one so you've also
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got a power in here so there's going to be an internal cable presumably
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somewhere inside running to a power supply then we move around to the bottom
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of the unit where we find two more fans so a couple more 60mm fans so this one's
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intake that one's exhaust it's a very very strange configuration as well as a
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couple of rubber feet right here that keep it from slipping and sliding around
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all over the place depending on how you're using it on the left hand side
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where traditionally we would see all of the internal components we have some of
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the most gorgeous Cable Management that I've ever seen in a pre-done system I
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mean this is fantastic this is the kind of thing that uh Apple's philosophy I
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think really um reminds me of and that is that things should look beautiful
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whether you can see them or not and if you're proud of it I guess you might as
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well show it off and put a window on it I I like it and there's another sort of
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stylized window on the other side here that allows you to actually see the
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components inside so this is where we can see the motherboard the PCI Express
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Riser the power supply as well as some other stuff now I want to show you guys
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the accessories that are included very briefly here you've got six SATA cables
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why would you need six SATA cables you might ask well I might answer because
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you can actually install six SATA devices inside so there's the optical
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drive there's a 2 and 1 12 in SSD drive and then there's a 3 and 1/2 in Drive
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Bay that can also be converted to four ssds should you so desire you have some
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included screws an included power cable included keys and included pen and
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included screwdriver so that's for that's like a hex screwdriver as well as
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uh little feet for mounting it horizontally so that you don't damage it
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so you can actually see there are little indentations here so you can put it down
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whichever way you want they're on both sides and then this key right here which
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is going to allow us presumably to open up the chassis so these guys are held on
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magnetically so there are actually no screws it is completely toolless magnets
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are basically magic I'm a big fan of I think that everything should be magnetic
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actually the side panels feel quite robust you can see the the gauge of the
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aluminum is actually quite thick there so normally with an aluminum chassis
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it's going to have a bit more Flex than a steel one but if you use thick enough
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aluminum then it's not an issue at all so we're going to start on that side
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that had the cable management on it again this is just absolutely beautiful
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aluminum no plastic so this is all red anodized aluminum this piece right here
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is plastic but that's about it other than that we've just got nice sleeved
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power supply cables running from where they need to go to where they came from
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all right let's shift her around to the other side and have a look at the layout
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of the internals so first of all there is our DVD CD rewritable drive over
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there so that could be removed and replaced with a different Slimline slot
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loading opticle should you so desire here is our standard sfx power supply
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that is a 450 watt power supply so that will be
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able to handle even something like a 4770k and something like a GTX 780 to go
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along with it however that will be quite tight it's not going to you're not going
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to be able to run much more than that we can also have a look at the custom
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motherboard that ack does include once again okay I don't mean Custom Custom uh
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form factor I mean custom it's designed for this machine but of course you could
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put a different M ITX board in here so this is the Z87 M8 and it includes AC
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Wireless as well as Bluetooth 4.0 it includes sound core 3D audio which is
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something unique about this is the fact that it can handle head phones that have
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up to 250 ohm impedance so it actually has a decent headphone amp on the front
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panel audio that's very unusual often even good onboard Audio Solutions skimp
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on the front panel audio implementation it has a PCI Express 16x slot that leads
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up to this Riser right here so the graphics card actually goes I grabbed a
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graphics card this is a GTX Titan so the graphics card actually goes a little bit
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under there you can see that a 10 and 1/2 in card like that is going to fit
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just just nicely just barely one unusual
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thing is that it does use sodium slots you can see what azrock was doing here
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though is they wanted to give you the options to install all six of the SATA
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devices that you can potentially have in here so they include all the SATA cables
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you need all the SATA ports you need and in order to do that well they have to
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use sodiums the good news is that sodiums really don't cost anymore
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anymore they cost about the same as a standard dim uh We've also got Intel
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gigabit land so that's a really nice thing to see I don't think we went over the in detail here so on the back
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there's four USB 2.0 ports EAD a DisplayPort HDMI Intel gigabit L 4 USB 3.0
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ports that's a total of eight of those as well as that 7.1 audio out including
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optical audio out so here's a look at
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the giser card which is all like gisen
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something I don't know what I'm talking about anyway so that's just a straight
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Pinto pin PCI Express Riser card so that came out of the slot right here then the
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next thing you have to do is move those giant hex screws up here and
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then you can pull off the top of the unit so you can actually see how they're using a fan splitter to power those two
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fans and you can actually see as well that you can unscrew those fans you can
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undo this cage and you can swap around the orientation as needed which is
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important because the stock orientation is a little bit funny with this as an
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exhaust and this as an intake which um will work that is just bizarre that's
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just not a very good idea because the graphics card even a blower design
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graphics card is going to then go in like this so you would want the fresh
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air coming in this way and the exhaust coming out away from this so like no
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matter how you slice that that just that's not the greatest thing ever but
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the good the good news is once we get around behind here we find the 3 and 1/2
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in or 4X 2 and 1/2 in hard drive sled as
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well as the way to actually get the graphics card in there so you just go
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ahead and remove this piece right here undo the two screws and install the
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graphics card the way that you normally would so what I would probably do is go
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uh two intakes here um get some positive air pressure going on in here I'd
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probably go intakes at the bottom as well just because there's so much
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General ventilation on this case that the air is not really going to have anywhere to go except out the back for
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the most part so I think that pretty much wraps it up guys if you're looking
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for something that is mostly pre-done for you although a little bit tricky to
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uh a little bit tricky to put together if you're not willing to look at a
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manual you will definitely need the instr manual which fortunately is quite
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clear and outlines each of the steps in Exquisite detail um so if you're looking
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for something that's a little bit I don't know I can't call it easier for a
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first di DIY computer or anything like that but at least the hardware selection
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is easier because it comes with pretty much everything you need so you're going to want to add storage you can put in
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pretty much whatever you want there I'd probably just throw in an SSD and a hard
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drive and call it a day you're going to need a CPU so any LGA 1150 CPU is going
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to do you just fine you'll use the stock cooler or a very low profile cooler from
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the likes of Silverstone or Noctua would be quite appropriate you'll need sodum
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RAM so just DDR 3600 anything like that along those lines and you are pretty
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much ready to rock once you get an operating system installed and you throw
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an optional graphics card and you don't have to run it with a graphics card
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because you do have those HDMI and DisplayPort ports on the back thank you
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for checking out this unboxing and overview of the azrock M8 don't forget to subscribe fance tchs from unboxings
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reviews and other computer videos like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it and leave a comment and
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let me know would you you go barebones
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at this point if it meant that you could have a very compact well-engineered case
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that's designed to fit together versus diying something that might not be quite
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as space efficient