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 this is the first time we've ever done a system review on - tech tips and frankly I wasn't a hundred percent sure where to start well you might be thinking to yourself well - you could start by showing us the system rather than a monitor I would reply to that I am showing you the system this is heavy and it's the crate computer from crate computers and it is one heck of a unique high performance gaming system so let's kick things off with an overview of who exactly this is built for I mean I see this as the ultimate land machine or the all-in-one PC for people who think being limited in terms of performance and upgrades the way a traditional all-in-one would be is for chumps ok but the next question you might ask me is well why would I even want an all-in-one and you know what I don't have a solid answer because personally I'm good with my full tower I've got a whole house with three whole people living in it one of whom is a baby and I never ever move my computer but for the folks that are interested in all-in-ones I'd love to hear from you in the comment section tell me what is appealing about the all-in-one forum Factory you've got the PC and the monitor and they take up basically the same footprint as just a monitor I mean the way that I see it is on put in putting words in your mouth but this is for folks that want the flexibility to be able to pick up and move it wherever they need to go and the space savings to have their entire high performance gaming rig take up as much space as a monitor I mean I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if that's what you're trying to achieve the crate computer has a higher performance 2 footprint ratio than pretty much anything else on the market the system arrives extremely well packed the Box both the outer one and the accessory one has a spray-painted logo on it and the inside of the packaging uses those oh yeah you get a t-shirt well kind of like a nice side polo and then the inside you those bags that expand and fill in the gaps as the chemicals inside mix I'm really glad to see Crate be smart and use these they are really really expensive but they're the only real option for small companies who are serious about their computers arriving in one piece and are not shipping high enough volume to justify fully custom packaging so next up is a tour of the outside the front is a monitor that's sort of a derp moment there it's an all-in-one so it stands to reason you can actually pick your monitor on their website this particular one is a viewsonic 1080p 27 inch LED backlit one but they have a 24 inch there's also a 3d capable gaming monitor four masseuse and what's cool is that if you ever decide down the line to switch to something else the attachment system used here between the system and the monitor is a standard vase amount so you'll have the option to change to something else if you want that's a nice touch from a DIY ARS perspective the monitor stand is where things start to get interesting it's one of the heaviest most robust feeling hunks of solid metal that I've ever encountered on a computer I guess given that it's designed to hold a 27-inch screen and a full gaming computer means that that sort of makes sense but I was still in awe of it when I pulled it out of the box with much difficulty unfortunately it replaces the stock stand so you lose any tilt swivel height adjust or any other adjustments that you would normally be able to make to the monitor you'll pretty much put it down on your desk and short of an aftermarket riser to put it on top of something or something like that that is pretty much how you will use it on the top we don't find a whole lot there are a couple of decorative fasteners so hopefully you guys can see that okay then on the right side we find these stickers that matter including the windows KOA and a core i5 sticker as well as a single lone power switch the left side is full of ventilation holes but there are no fans installed WTF ah yes here on the back we find out that cooling is handled by four 120 millimeter fans all of them configured by default as intake which I'll touch on more later at the bottom we find a nice little short DVI cable that's already hooked up running between the monitor and the PC IO courtesy of an EVGA stinger mini ITX motherboard and to power input since this is kind of a DIY all-in-one and you'll have to run two separate power cords in order to get her fired up opening up the system it's actually quite simple just remove the eight knurled thumb screws on the back and you can pop it right off the first thing I noticed is that those fans that we saw from the outside those 120 millimeter fans are actually cougar fans the second thing I noticed is that the back has a nice decorative great computers logo on it but that's actually protective as well as being stylish so it separates the intakes of the fans from any obstructions that might be behind the computer by a little bit just so that no matter what there will be enough of a gap for you to get some airflow in there the third thing I noticed unfortunately was the use of a stock intel cooler ouch inside a small case like this I would have to at least initially question the wisdom of that but I will let the performance tests tell the whole story the system is compatible with two and a half inch drives only but you can use any thickness so while this one is configured with a single 500 gig Neutron SSD from corsair and create computers offers up to a one terabyte hard drive as an additional option because it's not light restricted you could even go after market and pick up a WD 15 millimeter thick 2 terabyte two and a half inch drive to go with your boot SSD for great performance and tons of storage wiring inside is handled very tightly with all the cable management done behind the motherboard tray although I've got a question the use of a very industrial looking power supply it's a 600 watt 80 plus bronze unit so that's all good so far but that tiny little fan actually two fans seemed like they would get unreasonably loud the manufacturer went with Patriot Viper series Ram actually 16 gigs in there and I'm not really particular about memories so as long as it runs well on this board I have no quarrels with that choice we also find ah yes here we go finally an E eg a GTX 780 with an AC X style cooler on a PCI Express extension their PCI Express extension solution is actually one of the most interesting things about the case design it positions the card right next to the external events on that left-hand side which is definitely a plus given that the card uses an open-air design cooler and it would be dumping heat all around it and it also seems to utilize some kind of like shock mount system that appears to have some flex to it rather than being firmly bolted in place this may seem like a pretty questionable thing to the casual observer but in my estimation this should actually give the card a better chance of making it to your door by acting as a bit of a shock absorber during shipping it did manage to arrive here in Canada on one piece at least and while that is a small sample size it's at least proof that it's not guaranteed to cause problems the centerpiece internally is of course the EVGA z87 mini ITX motherboard that makes this whole creative unique and very interesting system possible now moving on to performance the number one concern I have about any compact gaming machine is thermals we saw this with the ass rock m8 which is actually a similar size although it doesn't strap to the back of a monitor but that one uses 60 millimeter cooling fans which in their stock configuration will actually cause a GPU of this calibre to throttle even at stock frequency so I wanted to put the crate to the test the unreasonable unrealistic test that is wha-ha-ha my opening salvo was good old fir mark it rose to 80 degrees on the GPU which is perfectly normal but what was impressive was the fact that it was still running at over 900 megahertz boost clock which is the advertised average boost clock of a reference GTX 780 so either EVGA ACX cooler or the cooling in the chassis itself is doing its thing pretty effectively and fir mark ran just fine without any tweaks this is a very solid result and it means that heat is not an immediately being factored like it would be on many cases this size such as the aforementioned asrock m8 and I mean most cases the size won't even fit a GTX 780 and them never mind cooling it adequately my next test was for the CPU only so I ran prime95 with 4 threads on the 4670 k which is enough to pretty much fully load it and we got a result of around 75 degrees that's okay that's great that's fine but it wasn't until I loaded up fir mark at the same time with an open-air cooler on the GTX 780 in this tiny little case that I got really impressed because that is a ton of heat to deal with in a very small space and the CPU only got 283 degrees on the hottest core I mean fan noise didn't even get unreasonable even that whiney looking power supply fan was surprisingly well behaved and didn't have any discernible whiny motor noise and of course due to go use of those high quality cougar fans on the side panel the overall system sounds like air whooshing as opposed to motors whining so that is a very strong result cooling wise now the Krait uses a strong positive pressure concept to control air flow and keep it in taking in the back and then exhausting only out the left and then of course a little bit goes out from that active fan on the power supply and this system works with everything running full blast this vent right here on the side in spite of the fact that it doesn't have its own fans feels like a space heater there's like there's like air like coming out of it like that I mean I suspect that by reordan orienting the fans on the side panel you might be able to achieve slightly better temperatures on one component or another but I don't think it would have the same overall effect that create computers is going for of dispensing the heat from the GPU with getting rid of it immediately and pushing it out the side panel rather than allowing it to affect the other components in fact I believe that that's a big part of why the CPU temperatures only went up about 8 degrees from turning on fur mark at the same time as prime95 so great thinking on their part there so I've talked up their cooling approach a fair here but you know that's not really enough torture let's torture it some more this time I want to go with a more realistic use case scenario actual gaming but to bring on the pain I'm going to be overclocking the graphics card so I fired up EVGA precision and dialed in a quick and dirty overclock of plus 200 megahertz on the core and plus 250 megahertz on the video ram I then crank the maximum voltage and crank the power limit and thermal limit to their absolute maximums and fire it up Batman Arkham origins color me impressed with the game max doubt it was playable which is great at 1080p but this isn't exactly news to anyone who's ever seen GTX 780 benchmarks before more importantly the GPU never went over 80s degrees even in this scenario and sat between eleven sixty megahertz and twelve hundred megahertz a very healthy real-world frequency for an air-cooled GTX 780 at the best of times never mind when it's in a tiny little enclosure like this one alright Linus so we get it performance is a strong point but you know what about the bad stuff well I don't know guys I mean the stock cooler on the CPU didn't impress me that much although I plan to because it's very modular and you can tinker around with it if you want I plan to experiment with removing the necessary side panel fans to allow me enough clearance to put a non-reference cooler on the CPU I think other than that the system is pretty much ideal but I mean being able to achieve slightly better overall performance by throwing a few more gigahertz on the core couldn't be a bad thing ergonomics could probably use some improvement in a generation to product the base is solid and feels really good and in my opinion actually has a like a rugged industrial beauty to it but not everyone will feel the same way about not having tilt height adjust etc on their monitor and not to mention accessing the i/o on the bottom of the system is not the easiest thing in the world another thing I'd like to see added to a generation 2 product would be some front USB 3 on the side or maybe monitor selections that include to be freehub so that we have easy access to that and then with a nice little cable like they've done with the DVI one pre connected that would be a great way to deal with that um well I guess the last thing I'd like to see a better implementation of out of the box is dynamic fan control for the case fans the system is not unreasonably loud especially under load where it's very reasonable but at idle it could easily be quieter with just one small tweak so EVGA x' bios has a really cool smart fan option that lets you set up a custom curve for your cpu fan that is controlled via PWM swift tech has a PWM splitter that would be a low-cost way to have all four case fans powered off the power supply yet controlled by that one PWM signal so that would be a great way to handle them that other than that it's a cool innovative product and I'm really excited to see more it's basically a clean non blower infected customizable and upgradeable boutique system that is small enough to fit on your desk in the same space as just a monitor so you can check out crate computers as configurator in the link below the video and it would I would definitely recommend that you do they're not the cheapest systems in the world and they're not perfect but if you are looking for the answer to what is the smallest footprint into which I can fit a full powered gaming rig on my desk this is the best answer that I have yet encountered thanks for watching guys like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment and let me know I think I asked for a comment earlier in the video with something to do with let me know what you think about you know who would need an all-in-one and as always don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from unboxings reviews and other computer videos