Gadgetory

by an unlocked Intel fourth gen core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of Rome 2 total war click now to learn more welcome to my unboxing and overview of the asrock n8 their tagline for it is unstoppable and while I might have agreed with that if they had made it out of something other than aluminum alloy I think you could stop an MIT X system made out of an aluminum alloy it just might be uncomfortable particularly if it hit you in the head alright let's have a look at the packaging so the first thing we find is a very healthy feeling accessory box followed by a yes awesome closed cell foam as Rock expects this unlike most computer cases to be shipped with a fair amount of weight to it because not only is it a very well-built chassis and Linus how are you saying all this stuff before you even opened it all I've seen it before so not only is it a very well-built chassis it also has a pretty significant amount of hardware in it and it can hold a significant amount more so the first thing we find opening it up is the usual do not eat of course please do not eat this put it away put it in the garbage keep it away from babies all of that good stuff and then we find the chassis itself this is the m8 it was designed in collaboration I have it upside down with BMW design works USA it uses oh man it's just absolutely gorgeous I mean we'll do some b-roll of this but I'll still try and show it to you guys a little bit so it can be configured either to stand up like this or you can lay it down on its side it actually has a G sensor a gravity sensor for the front OLED display that also has a little rubberized our soft touch knob around it so you can use that for a variety of different functionality you can use the knob to control things like volume as well as power management as a display that can show you a clock CPU usage CPU clock speed all kinds of cool stuff like that they have a little application in command yes a command so to me this baby really is about form and function so while I will spend a lot of time sort of getting Aldo right over the gorgeousness of the exterior as well as the industrial design here I would like to take a moment to show this to you guys it is also extremely robust you can actually use these cross braces here around the outside as handles for the unit you can move it around that way and you're not going to risk damaging it in any way so here in the front we have a slimline DVD rewriter that is actually included four USB 3.0 ports as well as a nice little stealthy I love this nice touch boom front headphone and microphone jacks as well as an SD card reader so this is hooked up via USB inside we also find just I really quite like this a stylized sort of maze-like pattern over over the ventilation holes so you can actually see there are two 60 millimeter fans in here the fans are arranged in a bit of an unusual 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 optimize it yourself for the best possible airflow you have more sort of airflow here you've also say ah yes this is a bare-bones folks so it actually has a motherboard included and asrock has done a great job of including a motherboard that isn't a piece of junk that you're going to have to remove and they've included a standard mini ITX board which means that when it becomes time to upgrade it you will actually be able to throw a standard component in there and upgrade the system fully big thumbs up to asrock for that one so you've also got a power in here so there's going to be an internal cable presumably somewhere inside running to a power supply then we move around to the bottom of the unit where we find two more fans so a couple more sixty millimeter fans so this one's intake that one's exhaust it's a very very strange configuration as well as a couple of rubber feet right here that keep it from slipping and sliding around all over the place depending on how you're using it on the left hand side where traditionally we would see all of the internal components we have some of the most gorgeous cable management that I've ever seen in a pre-done system I mean this is fantastic this is the kind of thing that Apple's philosophy I think really reminds me of and that is that things should look beautiful whether you can see them or not and if you're proud of it I guess you might as well show it off and put a window on it I like it and there's another sort of stylized window the other side here that allows you to actually see the components inside so this is where we can see the motherboard the PCI Express riser the power supply as well as some other stuff now I want to show you guys the accessories that are included very briefly here you've got six SATA cables why would you need six SATA cables you might ask well I might answer because you can actually install six SATA devices inside so there's the optical drive there's a two and a half inch SSD drive and then there's a three and a half inch drive bay that can also be converted to four SSDs should you so desire you have some included screws and included power cable included keys and included pen and included screwdriver so that's four that's like a hex screwdriver as well as little feet for mounting it horizontally so that you don't damage it so you can actually see there are little indentations here so you can put it down whichever way you want there on both sides and then this key right here which is going to allow us presumably to open up the chassis so these guys are held on magnetically so there are actually no screws that is completely tool-less magnets are basically magic I'm a big fan of them I think that everything should be magnetic actually the side panels feel quite robust you can see the the gauge of the aluminum is actually quite thick there so normally with an aluminum chassis it's going to have a bit more flex than a steel one but if you use thick enough aluminium then it's not an issue at all so we're going to start on that side that had the cable management on it again this is just absolutely beautiful aluminium no plastic so this is all red anodized aluminum this piece right here is plastic but that's about it other than that we've just got nice sleeved power supply cables running from where they need to go to where they came from all right let's shifter around to the other side and have a look at the layout of the internals so first of all there is our DVD CD rewritable Drive over there so that could be removed and replaced with a different slimline slot loading optical should you so desire here is our standard SFX power supply that is a 450 watt power supply so that will be able to handle even something like a 4770k and something like a GTX 780 to go along with it however that will be quite tight it's not going to you're not going to be able to run much more than that we can also have a look at the custom motherboard that asrock does include once again okay I don't mean cust and custom form factor I mean custom it's designed for this machine but of course you could put a different mei TX board in here so this is the CAG seven and eight and it includes AC wireless as well as Bluetooth 4.0 it includes sound core 3d audio which is something unique about this is the fact that it can handle headphones that have up to 250 ohm impedance so it actually has a decent headphone amp on the front panel audio that's very unusual often even good onboard audio solutions skimp on the front panel audio implementation it has a PCI Express 16x slot that leads up to this riser right here so the graphics card actually goes I grabbed a graphics card this is a GTX Titan so the graphics card actually goes a little bit under there you can see that a ten and a half inch card like that is going to fit just nicely just barely one unusual thing is that it does use sodium slots you can see what asrock was doing here those they wanted to give you the options to install all six of the SATA devices that you can potentially have in here so they include all the SATA cables you need all the SATA ports you need and in order to do that well the app to use sodium's the good news is that sodium's really don't cost any more anymore they cost about the same as a standard dim we've also got intel gigabit lan so that's a really nice thing to see I don't think we went over the i/o in detail here so on the back there's four USB 2.0 port eSATA DisplayPort HDMI Intel Gigabit LAN four USB 3.0 ports that's a total of eight of those as well as that 7.1 audio out including optical audio out so here's a look at the G riser card which is all eight G reisen something I don't know what I'm talking about anyway so that's just a straight pin to pin PCI Express riser card so that came out of the slot right here then the next thing you have to do is remove those giant hex screws up here and 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 fans and you can actually see as well that you can unscrew those fans you can undo this cage and you can swap around the orientation as needed which is important because the stock orientation is a little bit funny with this as an exhaust and this is an intake which will work that is just bizarre that's just not a very good idea because the graphics card even a blower design graphics card is going to then go in like this so you would want the fresh air coming in this way and the exhaust coming out away from this so like no matter how you slice that that just that's not the greatest thing ever but the good news is once we get around behind here we find the three and a half inch or four by two and a half inch hard drive sled as well as the way to actually get the graphics card in there so you just go ahead and remove this piece right here undo the two screws and install the graphics card the way that you normally would so what I would probably do is go up to intakes here get some positive air pressure going on in here I'd probably go intakes at the bottom as well just because there's so much general ventilation on this case that the air is not really going to have anywhere to go except out the back for the most part so I think that pretty much wraps it up guys if you're looking for something that is mostly pre done for you although a little bit tricky to a little bit tricky to put together if you're not willing to look at a manual you will definitely need the instruction manual which fortunately is quite clear and outlines each of the steps in exquisite detail so if you're looking for something that's a little bit I don't know I can't call it easier for a first DIY DIY computer anything like that but at least the hardware selection is easier because it comes with pretty much everything you need so you're going to want to add storage you can put in pretty much whatever you want there I'd probably just throw in an SSD and a hard drive and call it a day you're going to need a CPU so any LGA 1150 CPU is going to do just fine you'll use the stock cooler or a very low-profile cooler from the likes of Silverstone or Noctua would be quite appropriate you'll need sodium Ram sojust ddr3 1600 anything like that along those lines and you are pretty much ready to rock once you get an operating system installed and you throw an optional graphics card and you don't have to run it with a graphics card because you do have those HDMI and DisplayPort ports on the back thank you for checking out this unboxing and overview of the asrock m8 don't forget to subscribe - tech tips from unboxings reviews another computer videos like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it and leave a comment let me know would you go bare-bones at this point if it meant that you could have a very compact well engineered case that's designed to fit together versus DIY something that might not be quite as space-efficient you