Gadgetory

our first sleeper PC we nicknamed Danny Hubert rocked dual GTX 1080s and Intel Core i 9 processor and hardline liquid cooling crammed into a pretty old antic case so how do we one-up something like that haha meet Hubert's brother Dale sure Dale is a bit smaller and way older but don't let his outward appearance fool you because this build sponsored by Intel is about as fast as a gaming PC can be in 2017 we knew that for a small form-factor sleeper we needed a really unique case as a starting point and our good friends over at free geek Vancouver were able to provide just that they have everything there this Morrow designs md3 hails from 1982 making it older than literally everyone in our office and it has clearly seen better days with its dual floppy bass and 8-bit operating system this puppy would have cost about three thousand dollars back in its day but it hasn't worked in years and even if it did it is basically useless now cracking it open other than this massive dust bunny it's really not that bad though all things considered so with the internals removed it was time to do some test fitting now unfortunately a full sized high end GPU is just a bit too long to fit but ZOTAC had exactly the right medicine this mini GT X 1080 Ti with a water cooling block so I guess we'll have to water cool the system now then that's not going to be easy in such a small space and we're gonna be limited to a thick single radiator but we're hoping that that's going to be enough which brings us to the best part of every mod angle grinding from the factory there's mounting for literally no modern hardware so all of the cutouts for i/o and mounting had to be created from scratch for the motherboard here it was basically a case of cut a bunch out with the angle grinder then come in with the Dremel for a while and finally finish off with a hand file this one hole here actually took close to four hours since there was no going back if we slipped up now in 1982 120 mil fans for pcs were not a thing at all so we needed a new fan hole with some help from this cable management tie we cut it out using the cannibal and then at this stage we also drilled lots of holes for everything to mount on the bottom we decided to position the GPU above the motherboard this ended up be a bit tricky because originally we were going to use this 3d printed bracket but it was really ugly and not in like a cool vintage way so we opted to very slowly create mounting points for the backplate and holes for the i/o to fasten it directly to the back of the chassis instead bringing us to test fit time and it looks good now for the front of the floppy drives just to be sure and oh crap oh I guess that interferes with the radiator no worries though just a little bit of hole and viggen mint and Dale is off to get a fresh coat of paint but only on the inside on that topic let's talk about what's under the hood for the CPU we went with Intel's Core i7 8700 K making dáil as good as it gets for gaming for our motherboard we chose an Asus z3 70 I gaming with a Samsung nvme SSD underneath this sexy heatsink then to keep the CPU cool we're using an ek supremacy full nickel block we decided against an acrylic block since it'll actually have to help hold up the graphics card and also because you won't be able to see it anyway for our radiator we went with a 120 millimeter single rad from alpha cool that is a massive 60 millimeters thick and then for our pump we're using an ek SPC 60 with a built in cylindrical reservoir we went with these super sexy white fittings and black acrylic tube both provided by bits power for a sleek monochrome look the first Bend was one of the hardest since it needs to come around our PCI Express extender and then make a funky Bend too so we ended up just making a little steak out of black fittings in hopes that nobody would notice right here the bending wasn't finished yet though next this 90 degree from the pump to the res and after that a nice long tube from the GPU back to the radiator both of which were made the perfect length with a bit of help from the bench sander now we just need to do a bunch of little touch-ups to make it perfect like splicing together the led for the drives so they can be attached to the hard drive header soldering on the front panel connector that we borrowed from another case so that the og power button and LED would still work gently removing the print and modem ports massaging them with the sander before inserting them and then finally screwing and double-sided taping the Front's to the floppy drives back in their original positions the insides we finished off with this sweet purple cathode from bits power and unbelievable 800 watt 80-plus titanium SF XL modular power supply from silverstone and some cleanup from ivan the cable management king perfect now let's fill the loop making sure to use a secondary power supply so that in the unlikely event that we have a spill seriously you guys forgot a plug on the radiator oh man I mean it at least it wasn't out in the open I'm an idiot yes but now you're not alone my friend so my team of skilled boaters remove the rad added a plug and tightened everything down aha no I leaked it ed what are you guys even doing this time the tubing is full no veries though what you're looking at right now is a perfectly legitimate strategy for emptying a loop by the way yes perfectly legitimate totally not weird so after swapping out some of the fittings third time's a charm we were finally leak-free to see how Dale runs and performance wise oh it runs idle temps are in the 20s and then under full synthetic load on the CPU and GPU for half an hour with the lid closed Dale held steady at 80 degrees with the CPU still turbo Eng - 4 gigahertz on all six cores though it should be noted that he did get a little loud in this scenario as for games though here things got even more impressive Dale in spite of his looks can drag race with it any Challenger he is one of the fastest small form factor computers on the market with frames per second in the hundreds on ultra and even during heavy extended gaming sessions he stayed reasonably quiet with GPU temperatures maxing out at 53 degrees so let's bask then in the glory of Dale and look out for our next addition to the sleeper family Margaret so thanks for watching guys if you dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribe maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we've featured how about a core i7 processor even if you can't get this case to put it in at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has full shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join