ASUS left us unsupervised with their water cooled graphics card...
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,302 words · ~11 min read
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rces 2019 coverage is brought to you by the dbrand grip super grippy case and
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dbrand's prism screen protectors we're here in the ASUS rog component
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suite which also clearly is not fully
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set up yet but we found some really cool stuff in here so they've got this demo
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system that's not running yet oh my god that's heavy
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i am not going to mess with that too much but it's clearly water cooled it's
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clearly got a motherboard that we have never seen in person before oh let's
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just open it up look at that um so this is their dominus extreme i'll show you
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that in a little bit more detail later and they've got the first ever
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water-cooled video card that doesn't have like an external
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radiator with tubing to it that you gotta like put over here anyway that's
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that system's not actually running yet but that doesn't matter because i've got
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the key components over here so this i was actually thinking of doing a
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dedicated video called Intel your desperation is showing or something like
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that this is going to run their upcoming 28 core overclockable CPU but the reason
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we didn't end up doing a dedicated video even though this thing is nuts look at
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this four eight pin CPU power connectors
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three pci express power connectors
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and two 24 pin connectors like the
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entire top of the board is just vrm this
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entire thing is just power delivery um the reason we didn't end up doing a
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video is because we don't really know anything about it six channel memory
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yeah just like the xeon platinums for pci express slots um
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we don't know pricing of the board we don't know pricing of the CPU we don't
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know what realistic overclocking results are Intel showed five gigahertz but that
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was on like very very chilled liquid so it just it's kind of like a it's like a
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showpiece right now it's all it really is but
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now i'm not going to help ASUS with too much of their booth setup here but i did
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find this power brick that is trailing out the
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back of this thing that wasn't plugged in that seems to fire up the fans on the
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card and there's a usb cable back here that i'm going to go ahead and plug into
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my hey my portable power battery bank
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hey look at that see i'm helping i am helping i mean i'm not gonna leave my
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battery bank here but that that's not the point also i'm gonna unplug this because
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guess what i got i got my tool kit
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so we're gonna have a look at what exactly
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a water-cooled graphics card like this yes
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oh man hopefully this even like
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can be pulled off because i've sort of committed to it now
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no it's fine guys chill i'm not gonna break it
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no that's fine look if they didn't want
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a bull running around in their china shop
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they shouldn't have had
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him on the guest list okay so
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the crazy thing about this is that from the front
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from the bottom from the back from the side everything about it looks
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fairly normal to the uninitiated
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and you know even to the fairly initiated i would say so i think this
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shiny piece here has to come off yeah okay i thought there might be a screw
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under there i no longer believe that there's a screw under there anyway
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one hint as to what we're about to see though is
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this so that is like more of a uh like a a water
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block style cold plate down there and then it appears as though they're using
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the same kind of pump and water block combo unit that
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we've seen in aio coolers and then if we look closely instead of just heat pipes
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running to uh aluminum fins we've got a radiator here
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it's just bolted to the front of the card now i want to get a better look at
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it i'm having a really hard time figuring out where the additional screws
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are
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you know what i'm doubling down
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i'm doubling down on my the screws are under here theory
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i have more than one of these here right yep okay
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i don't know if they have another one to put back on their little demo stand
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though i mean this adhesive seemed to go back on pretty well
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i just want to see the radiator i tried to stop it
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okay so there were three screws on the bottom we got those up i haven't taken
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it apart you haven't taken it apart so so you're okay
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so it it seems more dominoes
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okay so it seems like there's something holding it over here
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yeah gary mentioned you wanted to take it apart something along here i just want to be able to show the radiator and
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the block like kind of show how it goes together this adhesive i've had it up and down
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once already it seems to be holding together pretty well
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in case you were curious you know what
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i think i might know what's going on here i think i might not have the right
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screwdriver for this there's three screws that are just
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barely accessible through the back here yeah
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and this is all i have and i can't get to them
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you know the ifixit kit yeah i even thought about grabbing my like more
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traditional jewelers screwdrivers but they look so much like a weapon i didn't
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want to put them in my luggage i am look like the right screws though
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really annoyed yeah so i can put this plate back
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on um that sucks
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sorry whoa whoa hold on okay no no i was just putting the card
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back together i had given up i found the screws
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so they're uh they're back there but i left my my like traditional jewelers
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screwdrivers at home but then this was sitting down here
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and it was like that kind of looks like a tool kit but
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why does it have this on it apparently
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to make sure that no one will open it
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because that's exactly what i need
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okay so let's try this
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this is gonna be really really hard to put back together
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i legitimately don't know if i'm going to be able to put these screws back in
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and but they're already out now so since the ship has sailed
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we might as well just proceed
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like if you're already going to hell you know
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why stop i think i got it
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there we go those three screws released this
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nice okay where's my screwdriver
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get off there off she goes
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there it is
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so that is how they're doing it and i'm glad that i got this popped off because
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there's already at least one thing that i got wrong here
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um so i was telling you guys that it
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looked like they had used a pump CPU block combo here but what they've
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actually done is they've used this
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compact pump right here so this allows
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ASUS to avoid any issues with the acetech patent that prevents
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third parties from using unlicensed
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block pump combo units and
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it still manages to be small enough to
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install directly on top of a graphics card now in terms of the cooling
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capacity here crazily enough they actually haven't
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compromised much there so as far as i can tell this plate right
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here is just a protective piece
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so naturally we'll be removing it um no it looks like i'm not going to be
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able to get that off that easily so this is a protective piece for the tubing
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there's no reservoir so just like a typical closed-loop cooler it's just
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pre-filled at the factory and then
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it wait what
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now hold on a minute
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maybe you can help me with this so we've got the inlet on the pump
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then we've got the outlet right here going to the GPU block power comes off
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the board right here this is a super small pump by the way
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then so we've got our cold plate down there which presumably is covering both the
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GPU and the hbm memory modules is that correct uh i don't know that for a fact
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i mean i can't imagine the vga
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that they didn't do that i don't see anything else down here
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uh it looks big enough to where it would be yeah it's hard to it's hard to go any
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further than this unfortunately you guys we've got vrm over here which is handled
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just with downdraft cooling from the fans up here and then this is weird
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see this here so unlike a normal radiator there's kind
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of uh the end tank is in the middle and
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i don't know how the flow path works but out from the GPU block comes in the
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underside right here on a normal radiator it goes in the one
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side on the end tank down then you have a smaller end tank on the
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other end it goes over and then through these thin tubes right here but it's
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coming right up here and then it's coming out
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here so i can only imagine that they've done
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some kind of routing you know what i think i know what they did i think this is how it works so it goes in the bottom
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here and then there's a divider here
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it goes it fills this tank goes over here
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through the skinny end tank and then out here then it's a parallel flow path i think
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it goes in here down this side of this one
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through this skinny end tank and then up here and then the cooled water comes
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together back through the pump over to the GPU again
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now i don't have verification of this but i
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can't imagine that it would work any other way because it couldn't just go
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straight from here to here you wouldn't get any cooling out of it
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that is something i did not expect to see
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here so while i put this back together
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let's talk about what kind of performance you could expect from a 2080
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ti that is water cooled
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well a lot but
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maybe not quite as much as you'd hope because of the way that NVIDIA has
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restricted their partners abilities to overvolt their gpus
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you're probably only looking at a couple percent faster than a well air cooled
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2080 ti now with that said what ASUS claims is that like other liquid cooled
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graphics cards which have existed in the past but with a separate radiator this one
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will run much cooler and that'll mean
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that the card will be able to maintain its maximum power state more
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consistently and more stably and another
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thing to consider is that while many benchmarkers run their tests in a
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room temperature room your room might not be that temperature
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so if you're from somewhere that's particularly hot or you don't have air conditioning or whatever the case may be
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then something like this might be necessary in order to get the maximum
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performance out of your card
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this was stressful and there we go
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the card is reassembled all that remains
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is to oh wow the box that was being used as a stand for this one's pretty beat up
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hopefully they have another plan for that all that remains is to see if their
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demo still works
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yeah hey
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do the fans still spin
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hey
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and we're done so thanks to ASUS for being
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really good sports about all of this and thanks to you guys for watching and
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thanks to dbrand for sponsoring us here at ces 2019 their dbrand grip cases
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which i will be doing plenty of drop tests
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with are super grippy their impact
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resistant and they're built with the same precision
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you'd expect from dbrand with nice accurate cutouts for your camera your
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touch sensor anything else you might have like say for example a headphone jack or stylus
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did i just break my stylus the stylus popped out is
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oh nope never mind still good
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that's good and they've got super clicky buttons but the really new thing is
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they're prism screen protectors when they told me the demo i'd be doing with
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this thing i thought they were freaking nuts not only did they have me hammer a
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nail into a piece of wood using the screen of a phone only to have it not
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damaged they had me hit the front of the screen with the hammer to demonstrate
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just how impact resistant it is and it comes with this really cool little piece
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that goes into the bottom of your phone and helps you align it perfectly every
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time so check out the dbrand grip and dbrand prism in the link below to cover
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