This SILENT PC is Crazy Fast! - Monsterlabo The First Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,641 words · ~8 min read
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here at LTT we're all about pushing boundaries
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far beyond what anybody asked for like when we brought you the pc made of
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radiators cooling insane hardware with zero fans
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but ever since then we've wondered what would it look like if some actually
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smart people tried to achieve the same thing well today we get to find out
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because the good people over at monster labo have done just that creating a case
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that supposedly is capable of cooling up to an Intel 8 core 9900k and an rtx 2070
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completely passively
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but don't pass by private internet access private internet access gives you
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a safe and protected ip and it's got loads of other features as well check it
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out at the link below
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with this being monster labo's first product actually it's even called the first we
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were naturally a little bit skeptical but now that we've built an entire
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system inside it there actually is some truth to their claims but
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more on that later starting on the outside the first has an understated
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look well i mean ours does have a custom paint job so
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it's visually a lot louder but normally it's painted in either black or white
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satin metal finish along with a metallic accent piece which kind of to me makes
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it look like a mini fridge but i'm not mad because with everything else these
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days trending towards rainbow barf i personally appreciate the more subdued
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look up top we get dual usb 3.0 audio
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and a pretty sh power button that frankly just loves to get stuck around
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back there is access to the psu and that's about it with the motherboard i o
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relying on pass-through cables limiting you to five ports max on this oddly
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unfinished backing piece it seems like this was kind of an afterthought
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especially since the included displayport pass-through doesn't have
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mounting holes and the HDMI pass-through didn't come with screws but enough of
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the boring stuff inside is where things get interesting after removing all three
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outer clam shells and they're accompanying 14 screws we finally get to
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get a glimpse of the internals and right about now it also starts to become
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apparent that this case isn't for first-time builders or even pretty
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experienced ones since we ourselves were kind of lost at this
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point but okay we're humble why not just consult the manual
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because there is no manual no monster labo instead opted for a series of
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assembly videos which are way more annoying to scrub through than a regular
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print manual but nevertheless they did help us find a few more screws that were
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hiding behind this weird fabric tape that we quickly introduced to the trash
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bin once it is opened up though man is it ever cool looking i mean literally
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look at that heckin heatsink it's massive and the heat pipes the heat
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pipes oh the heat pipes
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both the CPU and the GPU each get six of
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their own evenly spread throughout the heatsink now i'm starting to think their claims
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might actually have some merit alright so time to throw some hardware in it and
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boot it up right well because of the first totally non-standard mounting and
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form factor planning ahead is kind of a must thankfully monster labo has vetted
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a bunch of hardware already with compatible parts listed on their site
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including what motherboards and gpus work and what brackets or modifications
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are necessary in our case the triple fan rtx 2070 we chose was supposedly a
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non-issue all we should have to do is remove the cooler and strap on monster
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labo's provided vrm heatsink but it wasn't that easy the screws for the vrm
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cooler weren't long enough so we ended up having to use zip ties to hold it all
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together it is worth noting though that this accessory isn't yet available so
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hopefully they'll have all that ironed out by launch
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and then again maybe quirks like this are to be expected in this wacky realm
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of custom cooling as for our x-470
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motherboard it too called for some minor modifications but thankfully both went
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as described first it requires the use of their custom riser which is only
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included on the premium model so watch out for that and second the audio
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chipset had to be removed as on this board it's installed on a riser and
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would otherwise block the heat pipes this sucked so again plan ahead
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don't be like us we suck hopefully on monster labo's
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second case the heat pipes are positioned to better accommodate boards
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like this as daughter boards aren't uncommon on itx motherboards things did
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start to look up though when it finally came time to put all the pieces together
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that is until we went to mount the motherboard and found that there was no
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mention anywhere of which bracket to use for AMD's am4 socket fortunately though
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monster lava's customer service was pretty quick to respond and they
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informed us that am4 boards actually used two of the brackets in tandem which
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was easy enough after we figured it out once that was out of the way the rest of
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the assembly was pretty straightforward you might have to bend the heat type
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just a little bit and slide the motherboard and GPU mounts back and forth in order to make sure that
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everything lines up properly but that's apparently pretty normal installing
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Corsair's sf600 sfx power supply was a
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walk in the park and its fan doesn't even spin up at full load with this
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setup nice storage wise we opted for a samsung m.2 SSD but the first does
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advertise support for three two and a half inch drives along with one three
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and a half inch drive if that butters your biscuit just above the psu is where
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the included 140 millimeter fan can be mounted or it can be removed to
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accommodate full atx power supplies a nice touch but
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who cares about all that we want to know about performance and as you can imagine
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with a high-end setup like what we chose temperatures are simply not going to be
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as low as with a fan-cooled setup but for something that's entirely passive
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this is pretty impressive we did notice when running without the fan the 2700x
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loses some boost clock while hitting 84 degrees celsius under an eye to 64 CPU
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load but if you remove the top cover panel like they recommend it's really
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competent monster labo does mention that the actual passive TDP rating on the
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first is only 215 watts but you'd be hard-pressed to find an application that
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would actually load both parts to 100 power draw consistently hence why you
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could run a higher end config like we did once the fan is added into play
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temps are a lot more comfortable we set ours to run at 700 RPM which was
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inaudible even as close to a foot away from the case
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speaking of inaudible the coil wind from the GPU is not
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because of the way it's positioned the GPU's power distribution is right near
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the big fat opening on the top of the case and without the higher noise floor of a
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typical fan cooled build the video card's high pitched wine is
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surprisingly irritating even from a sitting distance
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it sucks and i guess that's kind of where the concept of these passive cases
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starts to fall apart for me coil wine imo is actually way more
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annoying than the low hum of a fan and frankly with a decent aio on your CPU
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and the gargantuan GPU coolers of today most regular rigs tend to be pretty
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inaudible anyway so if it were me i'd stick to the aforementioned fan setup
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but if you're not an audiophile or just hate hearing your pc you can find a GPU
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that doesn't suffer from much coil whine and if you don't mind your hardware
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running a little hotter than most this can be an awesome way to achieve a
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nearly silent pc as for the first itself
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for a 400 plus case it's kind of a hot
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mess but honestly i love it i i just like it i don't know
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that i'd recommend it full-on clearly one or two corners were cut but uh it's
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just so freaking cool it kind of looks like a like a build your own Corsair one
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