Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed today we're checking out the new asrock desk mini which is a little confusing because it is called the desk mini as i just said and that was the same name as the previous model and then the model before it so this is the third desk mini so you sort of have to pay attention to the numbers or letters that sort of go before or after it's just referred to as the desk mini but the first version was the desk mini 110 and it featured the H 110 chipset supporting sixth and seventh gen core processors in a tiny 1.9 to a liter case the desk mini 110 was so small in fact that it couldn't actually support a discrete graphics card so that basically made it an office type PC then we got the desk mini gt X /r x which featured a stretched-out micro SD X motherboard packing either the be 250 or Z 217 chipset and it also allowed for an MX M discrete mobile GPU to be installed this increased their capacity loaded 2.7 liters though admittedly it was still very compact now we have the new desk me GTX /rx yep the new 8th gen model has the same name so it's a bit confusing to get around this issue retailers are putting the chipset name in the tile to make it easier for consumers to work out which model they're actually buying this means the latest version is known as the desk mini z 370 and it comes with either an MX M form factor gtx 1060 or gtx 980 pre-installed alternatively though you can buy it without a discrete graphics card installed but be aware buying these MXM graphics cards is really next to impossible as they're not sold at retail generally speaking you can only buy them from salvaged laptops and that makes them extremely rare currently there doesn't actually appear to be any desk minis and 370 models on sale but as Rock says the MSRP for the 1060 model we have here is 850 dollars us the previous generation be 250 models are on sale and the GTX 10-6 version costs a cool $800 us and then with the GT X 1080 you can expect to pay something like 1500 us so that makes the new Zed 370 models slightly more expensive but overall a $50 increase for the GTX 1060 model seems very reasonable still eight hundred and fifty dollars us for this little PC it's pretty expensive so what else you get with the desk minis at 370 included in the package along with the tiny 2.7 liter case is a 220 watt external power brick which I should note is very large with a volume of 0.7 liters so that's 26 percent of the desk minis total size along with the case and power supply you also get a customs at 370 m STX MXM motherboard that's 2 inches longer than your typical micro STX motherboard and this extra real estate has been used to squeeze in an M X M slots supporting up to type B+ cards at 113 millimeters long because we have the GTX 1060 model as naturally came with a GTX 1060 MXM graphics card pre-installed in order to get up and running you'll need to bring your own coffee like CPU sodium ddr4 memory and of course storage assuming with a core i5 8400 they're about $180 us a 16 gigabytes of ddr4 2400 memory you can expect to pay about 170 dollars us for that and say a 512 gigabyte Samsung 960 pro there are about $300 then you'd be looking at pitching in probably about six hundred and fifty dollars us to complete this system and that would bring the total bill for the desk mini gtx 1060 model to about fourteen hundred and fifty dollars u.s. that's probably not that bad or not does sound very expensive but you can expect to pay about $400 us alone for a gtx 1066 gigabyte graphics cards so overall might not be too bad in terms of value but I will discuss the value aspect of the desk Mini at GTX 1060 is 370 towards the end of the review for now we'll take a look around the unit and then a bit of a look at the hardware and so before getting on to some benchmarks externally it looks sleek the all-black case features a brushed aluminum front with clean lines the circular power button blends in nicely as does the front IO which includes two 3.5 millimeter audio jacks along with the type a and type C USB 3.1 gen the back you get four USB 3.1 type-a ports HDMI output which is connected to the integrated GP within the Intel CPU and a Gigabit LAN connection also connected to the GTX 1060 is a display port a mini DisplayPort and HDMI output then on the side or I suppose the top depending on how you orient the case our another two USB ports though these are older 2.0 ports still they are handy for connecting things such as your keyboard and mouse for example removing the top panel grants you access to the CPU socket which sits directly next to the pre-installed MXM graphics card then the motherboard tray slides out of the case and once you remove the front IO cables you can completely remove the tray and install your storage devices on the backside of the motherboard he'll also find the Zed 370 chipset which is cooled via a very small silver heatsink and the CMOS battery as well however the interesting stuff includes three and I repeat three MDOT to ultra ports there are all pcie 3.0 times for cable and support 20 to 60 or 20 to 80 cards there's also an m2 Wi-Fi port as well and this can take advantage of the included Wi-Fi card though be away you do have to install this yourself along with the plethora of m2 reports you can also squeeze in a pair of two and a half inch SATA 6 gigabits per second drives in the underside of the disk many pretty incredible then on the front side of the mother while we get there real tech a LC 233 codec with the Intel I 219 V Gigabit Ethernet controller delivering power to the CPU is a 5 plus 1 phase verum which is surprisingly capable though asrock has limited support for processors with a 65 watt TDP rating the vrm heat sinks are very tiny though I found in my testing they do a surprisingly good job and with the IR gun I never measured temperatures over 40 degrees evenly pushing everything into its limits for testing we've installed a core i7 8,700 processor a pair of team groups ddr4 24 hundred eight gigabyte memory and for storage to a data xpg gamax s10 nvme SSDs bit of a mouthful there sadly though I only have the 128 gigabyte models for these SSDs and I don't recommend you purchase those models they're actually quite poor value we in terms of cost per gigabyte and the performance they offer I recommend you get the 256 gigabyte versions as they are significantly better value anyway installing all this hardware was relatively quick and easy by default you'll be forced to use the Intel Box cooler which is a bit of a shame there is a limited Headroom there so I'm not sure if there aftermarket options such as the cryo rig c7 that'll fit I'll have to get my hands on one of those and check shortly when I find out I'll let you guys know in the comment section below I have one on order although I did test with the core i7 8700 I also tried with the core i5 8400 honestly I feel this is a better pairing for most users in this unit it runs cooler and therefore quieter and with the Box cooler you can also get the most out of the CPU although it still runs within the Intel spec the 8700 does enjoy a decent performance bump with a better cooler at first I thought it was actually a power delivery issue but as it turns out even the core i7 8700 K does run perfectly fine with an aftermarket cooler installed I had to use a large tower style cooler which of course doesn't fit inside the desk Mini case so I had to do my testing with the top panel removed but I just wanted to see if we were thermal or Power Limited here and it turns out where thermal limited by default the desk Mini is configured with a maximum sustained boost turbo power draw of just 65 watts with a one second turbo boost short power peak of 81 watts as Rock hasn't done this to save their teeny-tiny verum but instead limit thermal output to stop the Intel Box cooler sounding like a jet engine this limitation means that the 8700 can only produce a Cinebench r15 score of about eleven hundred and forty points which is around 20% lower than what you might expect to see in a desktop system with a $10 aftermarket cooler if you don't care about operating volume then you can increase these limits though it only boosted the Cinebench r15 score by about 5% while the operating volume increased significantly as the fan speed picked up from 2100 rpm to 3200 rpm went under load after an hour-long stress test the 8700 held a clock frequency of 3.5 gigahertz whereas the 8400 with the same box cooler could maintain a 3.8 gigahertz operating frequency so again I'd recommend the 8400 over the 8700 for use in the asrock desk mini when it came to gaming of benchmarked half a dozen titles but before we get to the graphs here's a quick look at some gameplay with on-screen statistics stock the desk minis gtx 1060 hovered around 1550 to 1600 megahertz and peaked at 72 degrees which has had been on the warm side the cpu really isn't heavily utilized in this test so I was able to maintain an operating frequency of 4.3 gigahertz though the temps were often very high getting up around 82 degrees at times now when I overclocked or well overclocked probably isn't the right term to use here since this is a locked CPU the GPU is overclocked but the CPU was really tweaked or tuned to remove some of the limits that the asrock motherboard imposes so anyway with those limits removed and then the GPU overclocked we pushed the core up to about 1.7 gigahertz at maintained and the memory was at 8.8 gigabits per second up from 8-year bits per second we saw the CPU hit 82 degrees at times but mostly sat around 70 degrees as did the GPU as you might have expected the Destiny was quite loud when overclocked slash tuned and probably not worth the extra 5% bump in performance seen in this stress test anyway moving on to some game benchmarks and first up we have battlefield 1 and here the desk mini had no trouble delivering highly playable performance at Tony pair using the ultra quality preset as expected it was a bit slower than a desktop PC sporting the founders edition model the 1% low figure was 12 percent lower though the average frame rate was just 4% low and the reason for this I believe is that lower clocked ddr4 2400 memory while the desktop system uses a core i7 8700 K which has clocked at 5 gigahertz with ddr4 3,200 memory so keeping that in mind the decimate does actually do very well and with a little tweaking is able to roughly match the desktop rig which was great to see of course custom board partner models such as the gigabyte or s gtx 1066 gigabyte is a bit faster again but overall the desk mini does do well the dirt fall performance is very similar again pairing the desk Mini with faster ddr4 memory really helped boost the 1% low figure and with a little extra tinkering we were getting full-blown desktop gaming PC performance here we see when testing with Ghost Recon wildlands that stock the desk Mini does struggle quite a bit here it was 12% slower than the GTX 1060 foundation car which was tested in our test system that said faster memory and a little tweaking to the settings reduced that margin to just 5% moving on a Mass Effect Andromeda here we see that the desk mini did trail by a small margin even when overclocked or rather tweaked with faster memory and a more aggressive power profile it was a similar story when testing with prey as well that said though with over 60 fps at all times using the highest quality settings at 1080p it was hard to complain with the results out of the box the desk mini looked quite weak and titanfall - it has to be said and I know that memory speed really helps with this title so that ddr4 2400 memory would have been limiting performance here as a result we saw a rather large 12% uplift for the 1% low result we're moving from 2,400 to 3,200 memory now a big advantage of the asrock desk mini is power consumption that low output power brick really enables low power consumption at idle just 30 watts in fact under low consumption do creep up there a bit and it wasn't really that far from the power bricks 220 watt maximum output that said it did consume 20% less power than our test system using the GTX 1060 founders Edition model ok so we've taken a good look in and around the asrock desk mini gtx ten 60s and seventy and we've gotten a taste for how it performs in games when it comes to non-gaming tasks it's really going to be very capable of course depending on what CPU you end up putting in there but given how much this bear going costs anything slower or say cheaper than a Core i5 8400 really would be a poor choice in my opinion the core i7 8,700 offers loads of performance but to get the most out of it you will need to upgrade the cooler though I suspect your options will be very limited for most the difference between the core i5 8400 and core i7 8700 and the DES mini are going to be minimal therefore I recommend going with the cheaper Core i5 model asrock says they're targeting LAN party goers eSports gamers and content creators with this new des mini series the tiny 2.7 liter capacity coupled with the GTX 1060 does make the des mini ideal for gamers on the move though these days I'd say that's probably a very niche market eSports games are obviously very popular but generally speaking competitive gamers seek out the sort of maximum bang for their buck and that makes the desk mini somewhat of a tough sell this they really would be the perfect fit for a content creator looking for a super compact editing rig and really whatever the use case the zed 370 desk mini is very capable and really I love pretty much everything about it the build quality is excellent the feature set is great and it's really one of the most capable small form factor computers money can buy right now the only real issue is the price $850 u.s. it's certainly not for everyone granted graphics card pricing is ridiculous at the moment but even so you can regularly snag a GTX 1066 gigabyte or about $400 u.s. then a mini ITX said 370 board cost about 140 dollars u.s. quality Mini ITX cases that can support full sized graphics cards start at about $50 us and sfx power supplies also start at around $50 u.s. so you're paying around $200 u.s. extra for the desk minis ultra compact design that's a hefty price premium but overall the said 370 desk mini gtx 1060 is an impressive little computer capable of just about anything it's really the ultimate compact PC in my opinion that said it really only makes sense if you want the smallest possible PC with a discrete graphics card though with gtx 1060 enabled laptops sporting a quad core Core i7 77 rh-q processor starting at around $1000 to me that probably makes more sense you basically get a 15.6 inch screen and a UPS thrown in for free because remember laptops do have batteries so yeah keep that in mind and I'm going to end this one here if you have any questions about the review or the testimony then feel free to drop them below and I'll be sure to answer them if you enjoyed the video then be sure to hit the like button for us subscribe for more content if you appreciate the testing we do here at Harbor unbox then consider supporting us on patreon thanks for watching I'm your host Steve and I'll see you next time