Gadgetory

okay welcome friends to another in my series of unbilled or tear downs or whatever we call these live streams where I put stuff together and take stuff apart this time I was inspired to do one by a particularly unique little machine this is the zotac Magnus en 980 it is actually smaller than the MSI vortex that cylindrical PC that I took apart in the past although it only has a single GTX 980 inside of it instead of two but what's interesting about this guy is they managed to cram a full 120 millimeter liquid cooling system inside of it so I want to tear it apart and see just how it all ticks the Phoenix Vitesse features a lightweight design and an optical 3310 sensor check it out and enter for a chance to win down below so let's get to it then first things first let's run through the overall specs of this puppy it's got a Core i5 6400 and 16 gigs of ram I think actually configured it with 32 it's got a GTX 980 it has an m2 slot a SATA slot and it has no power supply yes my friends one of the unique things about this particular system is that while they did manage to pull off an impressively tiny form factor here in terms of the PC itself they went and they did something that I've been saying more manufacturers should do for quite some time I've talked to Coolermaster about this I've talked to silverstone about this they went and they took the power external so this is - what are these I think they're like about a hundred and eighty watt power bricks giving this puppy a total of about three hundred and sixty watts of total power delivery which might explain actually why the CPU is a core i5 rather than a core i7 you know 6700 K or something along those lines because I think they might have run up against a power limit otherwise because that 980 graphics card is going to really suck up some juice unfortunately this isn't something that I was able to evaluate in my review of the thing because ZOTAC basically went well not user serviceable and once it's apart it's not that easy to put back together so we would recommend you review it as a completed unit I kind of went okay that's fine but you're not going to prevent me from taking it apart at some point so without further ado here we go the bottom is pretty simple all you do is undo the four thumb screws there pop it off and OOP alright let's go ahead and get rid of that one thing I do need is one of my trusty magnetic parts trays that will help me keep track of all the screws and bits and boobles there we are ah the RAM and the SSD that you see in here this is that I installed so I've got a couple of those freaking fantastic intelligent memory sodium's that I'm so fond of these are ddr3l so that's one of the reasons that skylake has support for both ddr3l and ddr4 is that it gives the manufacturers a little bit more flexibility to offer a lower cost solution to folks who don't want to invest in ddr4 was more of an issue right at the beginning but I have a feeling this product has been in development for quite some time given that it's running a gtx 980 when the gtx 1080 is most definitely already a thing and if you're trying to set that up that is straight-up not going to work because i'm streaming from that computer I really like what a good job they've done of the bare-bones nests of this I am going to use a tool because I tightened this with a tool so it's actually a little bit tight right now but you can do the entire memory SSD installation with no tools whatsoever out of the box because those bottom feeder thumb screws I thought that was really clever one thing we've got a pretty good look at here I'm going to go ahead and switch to my now not broken close-up here you can get a good look at it's kind of an awkward angle unfortunately it's going to be hard for me to adjust but basically there's your two and a half inch SATA there's your MDOT two and so you can see they've got little standoffs here to accommodate a variety of different lengths here and then over here is where you've got your two DIMM slots and other than that you're basically not intended to touch this although what's interesting is for some reason they went and covered up the wireless module I'm not sure why that is but it's right back there and then the other thing that we can see here is a CPU backplate right there so we're going to have we're going to have a better look at that once we've been able to take it apart a little bit more so step number two is going to be to remove a metric whack ton of screws all around I say step number two as though I have some kind of like pre planned out step-by-step guide that I'm following along nope I will be making this up entirely as I go along I have had some of the the front and back panel I have had off already but I have not removed the side panels yet so you guys will be experiencing that with me for the very first time overall industrial design of this thing not not you know particularly next-generation or anything like that you know it feels like like quality but not like wow we did a massive amount of R&D to figure out how to assemble this thing like this because it's just basically an aluminum box but it's nice thick anodized aluminum that's got a pretty durable finish on it so I'm not going to criticize ZOTAC for it it just doesn't stand out as like like an amazing feat of art in addition to just being a functional and sturdy you know computer covering so this gives us a pretty good look at the front panel here so basically there is a little power PCB that plugs into four wires so that's going to be basically your front switch as well as your front power LED since the LED is actually built into the switch here everything else is just an aluminum cutout and then this is kind of interesting so this is a solid aluminum piece and then this this black part here is like a plastic insert that appears to be just kind of glued on to give it a give it an accented look at the front if I was going to have one of these in my living room I'd probably want to paint it like do some kind of a more performance looki finish to it because honestly that's one of the things that I think is really missing from this it is a $1600 u.s. bare-bones machine and then it's got like this weird thank you guys a closer look at it it's got like this weird powder blue color mesh on the top and then it's otherwise white and silver and black it doesn't have like a like a high-performance vibe like I get trying not to do the overdone gay Marie oh it's red and black and those are the only colors that exist for some reason because asus rog said so like i get that but I don't know that powder-blue would have been the route I would have gone especially when your ZOTAC and you already have kind of a black and orange color scheme that I personally think looks pretty good so I've taken out all the screws around the outside let's go ahead and pop off the rear panel that's one that I've already had off before so again it's like a nice thick very rigid piece of aluminum here not really a whole lot to say about that so let's go ahead and put it down there we go then let's have a look at our side panels here let's see if we can oh there's more screws well that explains why I couldn't get it off before okay the top completely fell away when I went and tried to remove that piece it's very shiny mass drop is currently hosting a drop for the amazing chocolatier custom si key cap set which is designed by Sam boom on and inspired by the motion picture adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the key caps are n X stem compatible and made in the USA if you guys don't know about mash drop they have a site that facilitates group buys and the more people that buy something or commit to buying something the lower the price will go even if the product you're buying is a chocolate key cap set you can check this and other drops at the link in video description down below one of ZOTAC biggest boasts about this machine is how small it is and justifiably so it's however many leaders pretty few leaders let's go ahead and take this off as well but they go when they do things like cover the entire outside in actually a surprisingly thick outer shell when it the actual hardware inside is considerably smaller I'll give you guys a better look at that sort of baby blue color that I am NOT that fond of you can't see it on camera through here very well for some reason but it's quite visible in person it looks about like that very very strange choice and I will also give you guys a better look at the machine itself all right so that's the top so that's a full one hundred and twenty millimeter radiator that they managed to put in there and not only that but while it's not a super thick one or anything it's also by no means the slimmest one that I've ever seen it's like at like a standard full-size PC radiator that they've managed to cram into this tiny little space here on the bottom it still looks largely the same on this side we actually get our first look at the custom GPU block so that's an NX M form factor gtx 980 the same kind that you would see used in those gtx 980 laptops devices like the msi vortex all that kind of stuff and then over here ya see this panel is solid for some reason not quite sure why but the cpu block would be behind there there's a vibration dampening mount for the pump right here i guess that's why this is I guess that's why this is one solid piece because that's where they did all the mounts for there and then if we look at this side we get a pretty good look at front i/o which is on a little daughter board as well as the fan for the radiator and you can kind of see the CPU block but this our rear shot gives us a bit of a better angle on it so there's a CPU block there's the dual DC power ends there's the I believe this is for the graphics card oh I see yeah so there's the PCIe eight pin for the graphics card and then here's all of our all of our I oh and that stuff so what's interesting about external power supplies to me is that the conversion from DC to DC is a lot more efficient than the conversion from AC to DC so what that means is even though unless you had like a very complex power brick you can only feed one voltage in so in the case of these ones it's probably nineteen and a half would be my guess yeah nineteen and a half volts converting that to 12 volt 5 volt 3.3 volt all the different voltages that you need for a computer doesn't generate a ton of heat and so can and can be done very very efficiently so and it doesn't take up a lot of space so remember those Pico psus actually not remember I'm sure they're probably still around but Pico PSU is basically take an external power brick and they do all that splitting out and it sound like it's on a PCB that's probably about like this size like it's very very small so that's effectively what they're doing is they've created a completely custom motherboard here that includes all of the power conversion circuitry that's needed to take that 19 and a half volts and turned it into what all of the other components inside need so this bottom plate here just pops right off just a couple screws there it's actually really easy to disassemble compared to the MSI vortex even though the size is very similar I guess because they went with a more traditional square shape so the only thing that that really reveals is a better look at the CPU backplate here as well as a look at our wireless card so that could quite easily be swapped out if we really wanted to let's just go ahead and switch to our close up here so that could be swapped out quite easily as an end user if we wanted to but it should be noted I think actually no I don't think we have broken any warranty void if removed seals yet so you're in good shape as long as you don't start taking out the motherboard it looks like that's where you start to get into trouble that's okay we'll be voiding that warranty before this video is over top the wireless card off 3165 ngw in case anyone on earth okay so there's some debate about the GTX 980 card that is inside the system we've got some people saying that it performs on par with a 980 M do - it's probably due to its MXM form factor and then we've got others among you saying that it does not it actually performs the same as a desktop 980 which is the correct answer it performs identically to a desktop gtx 980 it's just mounted on a much more compact PCB and it requires there's probably some binning involved in making sure that it'll operate within the thermal and power limits but no it performs exactly the same as long as it doesn't thermal throttle so wow there you have it that's actually a whole thing just kind of comes out like that so there's the other main piece of the chassis let's go ahead switch to our close-up camera here let's see if I can get you guys a bit of a better look at this so there's our anti vibration 'el pad on the bottom of another black aluminum plate here there we go that's a bit of a better angle for you guys mounted on that this I thought was just such a weird weird implementation of this system so yeah that is so just so bizarre so the pump is here and then they've actually got a tube coming out to a completely separate standalone reservoir and then they've got another tube coming out to the radiator the radiator bone is connected to the GPU bone right over here the GPU bone is connected to the CPU bone or no wait yes yep so GPU is connected to CPU and then CPU comes back to the pump most of the time with a compact water cooling system the reservoir gets combined with some other component either the radiator or if you want to deal with a so tax legal team with the CPU block so it's very strange to me that they went and they it's like it's such a weird little part here it's this tiny little reservoir but I guess for some reason that was easier for them to do or cheaper or or something either way I mean they didn't compromise on the compactness of the system so I can't really fault them for it one thing's for sure though this disassembly is about to get a little bit more complicated so let's go ahead and I think I'm just going to try and remove the water cooling system as one piece here so we can get a better look at it because that will have to come off if I want to swap out the CPU okay yeah with all these tubes kind of zip tied and cable managed together it's actually kind of hard to get it anything I guess this is what they were warning me about it's hard with this overhead shot for you guys see anything with this radiator constantly in the way so here are my options I can either remove one two three four five screws here I'll point with something that's a little bit easier for you guys to follow along with so I can either remove this one and one two three four around this fitting here or I can try and remove one two three and see if the whole video card will come off so I'm going to try that what a cool little machine there it goes alright let's give you guys a better angle of this so now CPU is free GPU seems like I can just tilt it up Oh along with this whole assembly and pop it out okay now being very very careful with that let's go ahead and switch angles here the whole thing should basically peel away let's pop that off pop that off and whoa okay um sure awesome so let's have a look at the water cooling stuff first wow that is a lot of thermal compound cheese otech like what the heck is going on here the good news is it didn't leave a whole lot of goop on the actual CPU so I can deal with that relatively easily this is cool though so they've actually opted to make the completely their own custom block I do have to wonder about the wisdom of using aluminum and copper within the same block design if Swift tech couldn't do it I don't know how much faith that I have Enzo Tech's ability to pull this off without corrosion given Swift Tech's vastly superior experience in water cooling the apogee GT zet GTX I want to say total total disaster for them but this is cool by designing their own block and machining their own block they were able to have the vrm so the actual voltage regulation modules on the motherboard cooled by this block as well so that's kind of the other component on a motherboard that's going to run quite hot and might be a concern in a system that doesn't have a lot of air flow something that I actually was a little bit worried about when I did my review of this thing which will be up later but I have filmed it already because pretty much the only exhaust is at the top here so the exhaust is all here and then the only intake that I could find was actually above the i/o in the back panel here I mean yes there are intakes in the very bottom here and the SSD down there did actually manage to stay pretty cool but what's interesting about those is that they basically sit here an hour are pretty much here if I can give you guys a better look at this they are pretty much cut off see they're covered by the by these plates here like they're only only a little bit of it is exposed and even then it's kind of closed in by the by that by the way that this shell sits here so I don't know it was something I was a little concerned about and I'm really glad you see that the vrm is being taken care of by a water block there because that means that will definitely be okay alright let's go ahead and pull the GPU block off here looks like it should be just four screws this is the first time that I have ever laid hands on a water-cooled MXM card there's a first time for everything right water-cooled MXN theoretically I could use this block to jury-rig some kind of like water-cooled video cards on sense although there would be no need because they soos has already kind of been there and done that GX 700 or something I think they call it okay has this unscrewed yet how how long do you have to turn these for cheese I can't even tell if they're still coming out screws in the bottom going into it alright let's see if I can get you guys a good look at this as it comes apart well okay that's the whole mom no okay there we go here we go look okay off it comes there so here here is our MXM gtx 980 there's your power delivery here's the eight pin power in just like that it looks like I I don't remember you know what I haven't looked that closely but I can't imagine that most notebooks are using an eight pin PCIe connector like that so I would imagine that's something slightly custom that they've done here remembers Oh Tech is an actual manufacturer of graphics cards so it wouldn't be that big of a deal for them to do something like that there's the GPU itself and then there is your either four or eight gigs of ram depending on your gtx 980 so this one has four gigs of ram okay and then here we've got pretty much every part of that graphics card is cooled by the water block through the use of thermal pads or this copper slug in the middle so again they've gone with mixed metals for their block design here it's such a rookie mistake you know like if you guys have been following along with a Seuss's rampage series of motherboards over the years or is it maximus whatever I don't know the one that's had water cooling integrated on to the Northbridge for years and years and years now they went from what was the first one like like tiny little barbed fittings and aluminum to like I think they did mixed metals at some point they included these weird adapters to get the barbs to different sizes and like there's all this like stupid stuff and it's very simple water blocks are made of copper and they use G 1/4 threads now in this case I can forgive not using an industry standard threading that that's fine because you don't intend for anyone to actually use these outside of this one system but water blocks are made of copper yes it costs more yes it is more difficult to machine the benefit of your system not corroding and having the block fall apart is a pretty compelling one alright so let's go ahead and have a quick look at this guy from overhead so now that we've got the video card out there's our mxm slot there's our DC power in there's where that 8 pin is going over to the graphics card over here here is our vrm for the cpu actually over here as well huh that's interesting ok ah there's our chipset so wow that's a kind of a funny layout so I'll have is here which means that this is communicating with this and then pretty much everything here is going to be using another layer of the PCB to go all the way back over here where the USB ports and at least oh no Ethernet is probably using yeah that's a there's a here I'm going to go ahead and switch to my other angle that I didn't have for a bit there again I need to see that that's ok um so we've got where did it go Ethernet oh yeah ok so there's a real tech chipset right there so that should be handling this ah we've got yeah basically just USB then I guess running off of that because the two HDMI ports and two DisplayPort ports should be running off of the gtx 980m so i guess that's why they put that there because those are much higher bandwidth connections than really anything else on the back here which is just a wireless module which is running off PCI Express which is over here around on the back right there and then power in that's it so I guess that does actually make a fair amount of sense so right here is for the CPU fan so that's running the fan for the radiator as well as oh there's a ok this is interesting so this is something Luke actually told me while I was working on my review of the en 980 there is another version that's very similar to this that's actually air fooled and ZOTAC was using as like a vr backpack thing so that would explain why there's not one but actually two fan headers here so one of these is for the mxm fan and one is for CPU fan so that would be if they are air cooling this monster very interesting this says motor pete motor power so that's going to be for the pump and then other than that there's really not a ton of connectors here this is just for the front LED and power button and let's go ahead and I can let you guys have a look at the back again now that my camera angle is actually a little bit better good work Brandon yeah oh well this is kind of neat why don't we have a one we have a quick look at this one that's it oh that's weird okay okay no no no things are things are about to get kind of interesting here so this daughter board right here is plugging into an N dot two slot for some reason why would they do it that way so oh well if you ever had to pull your CMOS battery on this puppy you would be basically doing a full disassembly so that's kind of a pain in the ass way to go so tech you can think of a fair number of reasons why doing that might be convenient Wow so interesting there's an m dot two slot here that appears at least on the surface to just be a normal normal m dot two slot yeah it's keyed the same as the one on the front so it's not a mini PCIe 4x slot which it could have easily been depending on what they were doing on here and then it looks like oh yes okay so basically they are using it though as just unlike just a small PCI Express connection because they've gone and they've put in as media chipset to handle the front USB connections so that would be that USB I believe these are USB 3.1 but don't quote me on that I'm just going to go ahead and pull an old Linus trick and consult the packaging when I can't remember something look Baba bah yep so there you go that's why they did it that way it's a USB 3.1 controller for mass media so that those front ports can be USB 3.1 this drives me crazy though the industry cannot decide what to do it's supposed to be as far as I can tell white or black on the inside for USB 2 blue 4 USB 3.0 is what we used to call it but now it's called 3.1 Gen 1 so five gigabit and then it's supposed to be pale blue or like like this green 4 USB 3.1 as we used to call it or USB 3.1 gen2 10 gigabit and then you got Razer who's running around putting like green plastic on all of their USB ports so no one knows what the heck is going on I blame Razer for this there let's go with that the last thing that's really left here then is to go ahead and pull out the CPU so it's a completely standard desktop LGA 1150 socket covered in thermal goop of course thank you for that there you go that gives us a nice look at that and that is our mountain of thermal paste on the CPU that I just pulled out see if I can get you guys a good look at that so that was actually surprisingly straightforward so tax claims that this thing is not user serviceable and very difficult to reassemble once it's taken apart okay I haven't actually tried to reassembly that it could be very very difficult still but I don't think it is their claims seem to be pretty much baseless I think I'll be able to put this together and maybe I'll like I have no idea in what context I would do this in a video but I would really like to try 6700 K in here and see if it can handle the extra power that's required for that I'm very very interested so I guess that pretty much wraps it up thank you guys for watching if you just like this video hit the dislike buttons obviously not applicable to our live viewers if you like the video though hit the like button get subscribed maybe even consider checking out where to buy the products that we featured today so we've got a ZOTAC Magnus Ian 980 you know Samsung SSD I don't know whatever else at our link on Amazon we'll have that in the video description or maybe check out where to buy cool t-shirts like this one also linked in the video description or join our forum where you can talk shop with other tech enthusiasts pretty much all day and all night if you so desire when you're done doing all that stuff and you're probably wondering gee what should i watch next go 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