AIO DRN-STN - DIY All in One Gaming PC
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,243 words · ~11 min read
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one of the most unusual products that we have ever looked at this is the Drone
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Station high performance DIY a IO that
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is do-it-yourself allinone
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PC the Corsair flash Voyager go is the easy way to move photos music and videos
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between your Android device and your PC click now to learn more now given the
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weight this thing the packaging quite frankly doesn't really Inspire
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confidence it did arrive in one piece but with a full system built in it I'd
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be a little bit scared the exception here is the styrene like plate armor
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piece that goes in front of the LCD panel that is attached via a reusable
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strap to the rest of the system the monitor would likely be fine even if
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every single other part of it died in the shipping process now even though
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this is an AIO it's a product that really Embraces the do-it-yourself
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spirit so the first thing to do with it is build a standard ATX computer inside
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it with the parts of my choice the handles are very robust and ergonomic so
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even though it's large and very heavy it's got those so you can lift it and
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move it around to a table where you can work the user manual which I've
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misplaced but don't worry about it it's good trust me is
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uncharacteristically really good I mean this is where I usually expect a lesser
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known company like AIO to falter but the
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English in it is excellent It's got guidelines for component selection uh
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some best practices and a pretty complete stepbystep build guide A+ right
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there for the manual taking the Drone station apart Reveals All the interior
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uh wiring that passes through from the inside computer to the front or rear of
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the uh outer shell uh Ethernet and a single power connector that handles both
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the Monitor and the PC come out the back and then the front has two USB 2.0 ports
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two fan controllers monitor controls headphone and microphone jacks two USB
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3.0 ports and then finally power and reset switches topped off with a couple
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of 5 and a/4 in Bays that uh can be
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populated by actually screwing an optical drive or something else into the
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bottom of the chassis inside uh one quick note about the fan controller is
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that you can run the fans on the left and the right side at either 1/3 2/3 or
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full speed and they are control independently with those two switches
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now the inside chassis once removed is a
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fairly bog standard PC case with a couple of modifications so there's no
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Front plastic bezel because that would just take up unnecessary space inside
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there's some mesh over where the 5 and a/4 in Bay would be there's a hole cut
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in the back to interface with the outer shell and then a repositioned a tooless
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drive cage in the top for your 3 and 1/2 in bays and then finally a 2 and 1/2 in
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Bay cage that takes four drives in the bottom for ssds now the drive cages are
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functional but I don't think I would trust them in shipping or even if
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someone who isn't as careful as me with my PC were handling it they are not
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reinforced in any way which isn't a problem for the ssds but for hard drives
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can be a major concern because they're actually quite heavy the PCI slots in
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the back really took me you know back to the good old days of PC Building but
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unfortunately not really in a good way I had to pry them out something I've cut
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my hands doing enough times to be upset that I had to do it and their toolless
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design just isn't very good toolless PCI
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remains a bit of a holy grail of case design because most of them don't work
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and the Drone station is no exception they didn't work with my dual slot
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graphics card but it gets worse because unlike most of the ones I've encountered
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in the past the tooless hold Downs cannot be unscrewed and removed you
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would actually have to drill out the rivets so I had to force a screw into my
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graphics card from a weird angle in order to get it in there oh well the
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good news here is that the case easily accommodates a
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7990 graphics card which is about as big as a consumer graphics card can get and
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so now All That Remains is to find out if we can cool it the fans in the outer
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shell are controlled by those switches as I mentioned before but the included
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fans in the chassis so there's two in the top there need to be plugged into
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your motherboard fortunately they have such long leads that you could reach a
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suitable software controlled header on almost any motherboard overall the build
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process was painless enough I didn't end up cutting myself which was nice um and
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there's no real Cable Management to speak of but at least it has a CPU
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cutout for easier mounting and there wasn't really anything unexpected inside
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so we're not completely back to the Dark Ages or anything like that it was it was
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easy enough once the PC is assembled you hook up all the wires and slide it
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inside the the plastic outer shell it it's in there pretty snugly and uh you
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can see now how the cooling strategy is supposed to work so there are removable
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dust filters in place and then the left side is intake and the right side is
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exhaust the top is also exhaust all in all looking at this strategy whether
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you're running on low or high on those fans it should be able to handle almost
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anything in there without overheating with the PC in place you close the very
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DIY you know bought these at the hardware store feeling butterfly latches
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and you're pretty much ready to go on inspection though the latches aren't the
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only homemade looking thing about the outside of the Drone station the Finish
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is quite imperfect in some places and the window on the back doesn't make a
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whole lot of sense to me even with the LED lighting and even if I took off the
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side panel of the PC inside um I mean it's there but it seems very uh very
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optional maybe they have another option coming in the future where it'll make more s but yeah I don't want all of that
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stuff though to take away from the strength in the key areas like the
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handles and the fact that once it's closed up it doesn't feel like it's
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going to come apart or anything so while the fit and finish might not be perfect
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it's solid enough that I'd be confident having my PC inside when I first fired
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up the actual PC I immediately noticed that even though I didn't get the 120 HZ
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premium monitor option the screen has a surprising amount of color depth and
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very strong viewing angles for a TN panel I wish they'd offer an IPS option
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or even a VA option but if I'm going to be stuck with a TN monitor I'm glad it's
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at least a pretty strong one and all of this leads us to actually sitting in
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front of the thing using it in actual use the angle of the monitor which is
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slightly angled back is better in my
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estimation than the Crave computer high performance gaming aiio that we checked
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out recently but has the same disadvantage as the crate and that it's
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not adjustable at all so you would need to actually angle or elevate your entire
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PC to change it the 5 and 1/4 inch Bay are a nice touch even though I'm
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unlikely to want an optical drive it gives a lot of expansion flexibility um
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even if you're not sure if you're going to need it so uh you know you could put
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something like uh you know fan control I mean you've already got fan controls you
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fan controllers card readers stuff like that in there so I think that is a
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definite plus for it um in practice I
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didn't find it very appealing to plug my keyboard and mouse into the very front
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of my PC and unfortunately the Drone station doesn't have any side or rear
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ports at all other than that Ethernet port in the back and the power uh plug
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in the back but it does have one redeeming feature and that is if you
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don't mind routing the wires through a gap in the outer shell you can actually
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plug in stuff that you never want to remove internally to the back of the
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inner chassis and then leave those front ports open and then just have the wire
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snake out the only issue there is that if you ever need to pull that thing out
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for some reason you actually need to take the back off of your AIO in order
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to do it and if you have a mouse like my old one that used to from time to time
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just need to be unplugged and plugged back in that'll get real old real fast
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all right so I talked a lot about the cooling but I haven't talked
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temperatures yet now I intentionally loaded this thing up with a rad on HD
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7990 one mother of a hot graphics card
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and I was actually very pleased with the results at about 45% fan speed Max on
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that card we reached 80° and we were bouncing between 950 and 1,000 MHz on
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the cores in our stress testing staring into the fire in Far Cry 3 The Core i5
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CPU maxed out at around 80° with an aftermarket Cooler Master cooler on it
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also in that gaming scenario so all in all there isn't too much for me to say
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about the Drone station it performed very well in the areas where I expected
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it to and that is cooling it performed well in areas where I didn't expect it
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to like the LCD on the front and I understand where they're going with all
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of this I mean it's an all-in-one that's fully upgradeable easily capable of
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housing the latest gaming components and has you know rugged handles on it for
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Easy Transport but the overall product feels more like
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an interesting experiment rather than something that I would actually spend
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,000 on the inner chassis needs to be
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prop more properly integrated and more robustly built for that to happen you
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can see that putting the kind of pressure on the graphics card that might
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occur during transport flexes the motherboard tray and the rear panel of
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that case in a way that I found quite unsettling and the fit and finish of the
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outer shell needs to be better to command such a price tag for what is
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essentially a case and a monitor with
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nothing else really included I could be
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wrong though in all of this guys if you're looking at this going lonus
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totally doesn't get it I want to hear
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from you in the comments tell me what you'd use it for a PC with a 24in
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monitor integrated into it that you can put basically any hardware you want into
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I mean please go ahead and argue your case I want it I want to know if you
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guys think I'm totally wrong about this anyway guys thank you for watching my
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aiio drone station drn stn I'm assuming
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it's pronouned drone Station review like and share this video if you liked it
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to think of it we haven't done an unboxing in over 6 weeks and I don't think anyone noticed
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