Gadgetory

pint-sized pcs smaller than even typical mini ITX rigs have become something of a trend the last few years as manufacturers like ZOTAC and gigabyte have learned to do more with less space but today we've got a PC that's literally not much bigger than a pint and features high-end components and expandability that will make even some mid tower systems blush its Intel's new skull Canyon nook the latest in their line of small form factor computers but is this little machine decorated with a skull just an attempt at voodoo magic or can it really trade blows with an expensive desktop rig let's find out cooller masters master case maker five features they're freeform modular system allowing you to customize adjust and upgrade make it yours through the link in the video description down below so it surprised me that most right off the bat is how light this thing is despite its laundry list of primo components by my estimation this thing is roughly about the same weight as a Chipotle burrito so it's pretty freakin portable that way volume wise it takes up just about the same amount of space as a couple of soda cans or a fifth of vodka if that's your kind of thing but please don't try to figure that out yourself if you're underage anyways despite how small light this thing is there's no shortage of goodies under the hood you get a skylake core i7 6770 HQ with a 2.6 gigahertz base clock and a 3.5 gigahertz turbo with iris pro 580 graphics which is intel's current top and integrated GPU a pair of ddr4 so-dimm slots that support 32 gigs of memory 2 m dot 2 slots that support 80 millimeter SSDs and our full speed PCI Express capable slots dual band wireless AC and NFC header Bluetooth support to keep in mind this is a bare-bones kit however so you'll need to provide your own storage and RAM that's why we didn't say specs for those in particular moving to the outside there's a power button which is you know always useful and that's the XC card reader a pair of USB 3.0 ports including one optimized for charging a headphone jack and an IR sensor you can use if you have a you know compatible device or whatever around the back there's a power connector for the included 120 watt power brick an interesting combo 3.5 millimeter audio and Toslink jack so if you can get an adapter you can output digital 5.1 signal to a surround system and Gigabit Ethernet then there's two more USB 3.0 ports a mini DisplayPort Thunderbolt 3.0 for high-speed external storage or an external GPU enclosure like the Razer core and HDMI 2.0 for 4k at 60 Hertz although I wouldn't try to push those kind of frame rates while gaming on the I GPU however it is kind of useful for a feature if you're doing other things at 4k and want your general experience to look much smooth the exterior design features Intel's trademark skull keeping with the skull Canyon overall theme but if having bones all over your electronics isn't really your bag intel does thoughtfully include a top plate that's otherwise the same but sans the skull the screws that hold it on are captive which is a nice touch since they're quite small and would be otherwise easy to lose if you're lucky enough to own your own 3d printer Intel also provides files on their website that allow you to create a custom cover for the nook that will fit correctly and you also get vasa mounting hardware if you want to screw the nook to your monitor and create an hour SATs all-in-one once you turn it on you can get to the more comprehensive than expected intel visual bios which features a modern GUI and lots of interesting options even including adjustable settings for overclocking but more on that in a minute but is this little guy worthy of the extreme sounding skull canyon name let's turn to our benchmarking results to find out starting with the CPU bound 7-zip and Cinebench r15 or the next core i7 6770 HQ didn't quite touch our full fat desktop 6700 K but still managed some very solid scores and beat out our razor blade stealth 15 which contains the slightly lower performing but still very high-end 6700 HQ so intensive multi-threaded applications should be no problem for the Nook but what about gaming although there's some serious potential here if you hook up an external graphics card via Thunderbolt we unfortunately didn't have a razor core at the time we tested the Nook but that did give us a chance to see if the integrated iris pro 580 graphics solution could tread water both Star Wars Battlefront and the notoriously punishing Crysis 3 ran at 31 FPS at 1080p on medium settings yeah seriously totally playable frame weight with decent settings on a graphics processor strapped into a CPU wicked Grand Theft Auto 5 was also a positive experience coming in at 32 FPS at 1080p using the default settings and FXAA although we saw some dips into the low 20s at times the game is still perfectly playable Rises waiter was a little bit of a different story as we had to turn it down to hit even 25 SPS at 720p but overall as long as you keep your expectations reasonable you can still enjoy modern titles in a pinch at respectable frame rates but given that the Nook is such a small package could it manage heat adequately when putting such a load on the CPU and its integrated GPU well sort of the CPU heated up to 87 degrees Celsius during our 7-zip benchmark and 79 on our Crysis 3 skybox test and a whopping 100 throttling it down right when we stress test with i-264 so trying to overclock probably isn't a good idea even though the BIOS does let you tinker with clock speeds the ID 64 test caused the system through throttle like I mentioned but no such throttling was observed in our other benchmark so you probably won't have to worry about it too much when gaming or putting a reasonable load on the CPU not like a benchmark stress test thing despite the slightly too hot for comfort temperatures another positive is that even with said temperatures the top bezel only got 242 degrees Celsius at its warmest spot so there won't be any painful surprises if you need to handle the Nook during heavy use of course this kind of performance in a small form-factor comes at a cost 650 us to be exact we went on PC part picker to see what a similarly configured Mini ITX bare-bones system would cost and we came up with an estimate of about four hundred sixty-five dollars so a total difference of $185 and that's - the card reader Thunderbolt support and iris pro graphics so like not on the same level at all really but despite the Nook giving you these add-ons you are paying a premium to get everything shrunk down into an attractive lightweight device but this also means you're getting mostly uncompromised performance in the smallest package we've seen yet even on the eye GPU and with the capability to pair the nook with an external graphics card do have possibly the ultimate tiny gaming setup speaking of which I'll be doing just that in an upcoming video so stay tuned tiny little computer tons of performance including a skull canyon nook awesome Razer core thing ah I don't have a link for you because I've done it yet but it will happen so stay tuned I fix it calm is your complete Do It Yourself electronics repair solution from their 19,000 free step-by-step repair guides to their huge inventory of replacement parts and tools with lifetime warranties iFixit has got your repair needs covered today we're talking about their latest and greatest their all-new pro tech tool kit it's a completely reimagined design but just as rugged and portable as before it's easier to use with the tools that are more easy to access and includes a 64 bit driver kit which replaced their former 54 bit driver kit the more durable case also features magnets and you can even use the top of the driver case as like a parts tray which is wonderful the price of the pro Tech tool kit is now 69.95 by because it's awesome or don't and still have free access to all of their repair resources on ifixit.com if you're interested head over to ifixit.com slash Linus and use the code Linus at checkout to save five dollars on your next purchase of $10 or more like the video if you liked it dislike the video if you disliked it and you're like I don't like small computers screw you I don't want to watch videos about small computers if you want to watch videos about other computer stay subscribed these are Amazon affiliate code that helps us out a ton by a short video description down below check out the forum up there talk about tiny computers or full-size computers or computers on a wall or computers in oil or computers that are liquid cooled or whatever you want that has to do with computers I guess or whatever you want in the off-topic section as long as it's like within reason anyways watch this video it's on I don't know whoever edits this video is going to put their favorite Linus tech tips video or channel super fun video or tech quickie video up there so we'll see see you next time