Gadgetory

The industry has been simultaneously moving in two very interesting directions this year. On the one side, core i9 and threadripper showed us the performance that can be accomplished if you don't sweat minor details like power consumption and heat output. But on the other side of things Nvidia has tweaked the efficiency of of their Pascal GPUs to the point Where this pint-sized PC (well, 5.7 pints to be precise) harbors a full GTX 1080. **Intense music** The DeskMini is a really good looking little machine At 2.7 Liters it is surprisingly compact like the whole product including the large external power brick is the same size as the box of a mini ITX motherboard and despite its gaming pedigree the black brushed aluminum and powder-coated steel design is understated and professional-looking. it won't be a centerpiece in your RGB'd-out gaming den but it will blend seamlessly into basically any environment. Now, being a bare-bones kit, We've got to open it up to install a few things before we even think about booting it up. And what are we greeted by? This- is the secret sauce! An entirely new motherboard standard developed by ASRock called micro-STX. It features a pretty good assortment of standardized I/O including one 3.1 type C port three of the type A variety, plus audio out, audio in, and ethernet, and our board has an LGA 1151 socket, room for a couple of SODIMM slots that we populated with 32 gigs of DDR4 memory from Apacer, and the most interesting part: the MXM slot. For the uninitiated, MXM is a PCI express X16 standard For the super low-profile graphics cards that are generally used in high-end laptops. So our DeskMini came with none other than a fully-featured, desktop grade GTX 1080 installed. Man, that's impressive, considering how small this thing is. The backside of the motherboard tray is dedicated to storage, we went with a single Samsung 960 Pro M.2 SSD but you could actually install up to three high-speed NVME drives and two 2.5" drives for slower bulk storage. Oh, and there's also a 2 by 2 Intel wireless card back here. So now the plan was to pair our GTX 1080 with the best consumer gaming CPU: an intel core i7 7700K, with Noctua's slim high-performance NHL9I heatsink, but this is where we hit our first snag with the DeskMini- cooler compatability. Unfortunately, the DC-in jack housing interferes with any square cooler. So while we did briefly try out the 7700K using Intel's anemic stock cooler, it thermal-throttled to the point where we wouldn't recommend it. So we swapped it out for a regular i7 7700 Even after that change though, our cooling woes weren't quite over. With the fan curve set to it's default of 'silent', the CPU was getting up to a toasty 75 degrees doing basic things like installing programs. Not that comfortable. A quick trip back to the BIOS did fix this problem, but it introduced another. Now we aren't blaming ASRock for Intel's lame-o stock cooler, but since we don't have great after-market options, it kinda doesn't matter who's to blame when we're stuck with a system that's annoyingly loud. especially while gaming when the GPU fan joins the chorus. And join the chorus it did! Gaming-wise this thing is an amazing little beast. It performs (almost-ish) pretty much like a full-sized desktop with a full sized GTX 1080. The GPU didn't reach its full boost potential compared to a founder's edition running in the same 24 degree office, but it's safe to say that this machine is capable of handily driving modern AAA games maxed out at 1080p., those same games at 1440p with some details turned down, and in some titles, 4K gaming is even achievable. I mean, check this out! Butter smooth! Unfortunately, at $1600 US dollars for the barebones GTX 1080 kit, The DeskMini is far from cheap. To put that into context, That's $300 more than the slightly faster (not to mention water cooled and overclockable) Corsair One, And more than $500 more than a similarly spec'd DIY PC. SO WHY!?!?! Well, it seems to be due to business decisions at Nvidia, NOT ASRock price-gauging. At this time, MXM card are only available to notebook system integraters, or through shady sellers on eBay. But, we were able to find enough listings to confirm that it's the video card being priced at double its desktop equivalent that's making STX gaming machines unaffordable right now. I would like to see this change in the future. (Cuz dis iz cool) But i'm not sure if I want to get my hopes up because it's actually rumored that Nvidia is planning to end support for MXM all-together, something that would seriously hurt this exciting new form factor. So, hey guys, Maybe let them know if you're with me and you don't want to see that happen. For now, the more sensible models are the 1060 and 1070 ones, which should have the added benefit of running cooler and quieter while they deliver top-tier gaming performance without ruining the aesthetic of your room, or, (these ones really caught Alex's eye) The upcoming Quadro models that should chew through CAD or 3D modeling tasks without ruining the professional look of your office. Ting is the mobile carrier that is focused on customer service and satisfaction. When you call Ting, you actually do not speak to a robot you get put through directly to a person, and they do this without having bloated contracts. 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