Gadgetory

the k63 wireless mechanical gaming keyboard from corsair can connect your computer via ultra-fast one-millisecond 2.4 gigahertz wireless technology or low latency bluetooth and features perky blue leds 15 hours of gameplay on a single charge and genuine Cherry MX switches its lap board ready to so click the sponsor link in the description for more information welcome to pauls hardware I have been planning this video I say that with absolute confidence for a very long time over seven months now because I wanted to give it a quick experiment to let you guys know if you're looking for a bargain on a computer what parts can you get away with not even having today we're gonna experiment with not even using a freaking computer case and again completely planned well ahead and in advanced I have this system right here my htpc been asked about many times I've been promising an update on it that's what we're doing today I'm gonna show you guys what your computer would look like if you ran it without a case for again about seven months time I'm gonna show you guys how this is set up right now as well just to kind of give a once-over of my HTPC configuration and we're gonna see what it'll take to actually clean this off since it is now spring time and springing well that was also planned ahead this is a very well planned video so guys clearly my htpc livingroom area here is not in the best shape I left things dusty because I haven't dusted here and I wanted to leave the computer dusty as well as everything over here dusty as well now this HTPC is set up for HTPC duties which means that via the external HD home run over here with the cable card over the network it can access the three TV tuners that are in there so it can record I have several SSDs actually a couple SSDs and a big mechanical hard drive connected to that and it's been perfectly functional but it's also been pretty exposed over here in the corner now my focus for today's video apart from just getting this thing cleaned is going to be the difference between familis and fan enabled configurations so we have of course the big old fanless CPU cooler on the top here which I initially showed you guys in my video year when Rison launched I've also got a GTX 1080 over here which using EVGA s smart fan mode has been always spinning the Left fan but pretty much never spinning the right fan so I'll show you a difference in dust buildup between a fan that's been spinning all the time versus not at all over the past seven to eight months now I wish I could also say that the power supply has been the same power supply this whole time but it hasn't actually this was swapped out just about two weeks ago no about three weeks ago so this hasn't been running 24/7 although this is a slightly older power supply that does run the fan all the time so because of that I've noticed it gets super super caked with dust at least the old EVGA unit that I had here was very caked with dust so I will also be swapping that power supply out for this power supply today the inner max digi fanless 550 watts to further remove fans and also further remove potential dust buildup from the system now apart from the basic HTPC functions of recording TV and also being able to play games I have set up the controls for this to be controlled by this i/o gear keyboard I'll put links to this stuff in the description if you guys want to check them out I also have a logitech harmony 700 remotes so we can have a single remote for turning the TV on and everything and I'll put links to that stuff in the description if you guys want to check them out now I also have been playing games out here and for that I've got the xbox360 controller and it's a pair up with that we have the actual receiver everything's very dusty back here and then this is the actual receiver for the Microsoft media remote so those are both of my infrared s infrared and wireless receivers four controllers and the cool thing about like the Xbox 360 controller you can do this with the Xbox one controllers as well is this receiver allows you to connect up to four of these so if you want to play multi-player games or something like that you can beyond that we of course have a lovely assortment of soy candles and final fantasy guidebooks because we play it through Final Fantasy 10 and now my wife is playing Final Fantasy 7 because she's also further set up will definitely be required over here though these two bags contain all my HTC vive components so for you know playing VR stuff that's important and then also the intent further down the road I'm not going to be doing this today but the intent of course is to wall-mount this whole set up and to do that I need to get rid of this whole bookshelf so I'm probably not clear that stuff out - that really has nothing to do with whether or not you should have a case for your computer but for anyone who's considered role without a case let's proceed and show you guys what you might be in for so I've disconnected all the cables and let's give a quick assessment here of the htpc after about seven months and three weeks of use starting with the drives over here and I'm not sure how well you can see the dust on these things but you know it's definitely there especially back here you can see a lot drives aren't super susceptible to dust I mean the main connectors are going to be your SATA connectors back here and those are covered when they're plugged in so not a huge deal there and also most drives like this are actually sealed internally this one's actually a helium-filled six terabyte drive from HGST so drives don't necessarily need a lot of protection at least when it comes to dust but you do want electro electro static shock electrostatic discharge protection if possible so that's the main issue with keeping something like a hard driver in SSD outside of the case and as you could have seen back over there where I had this all set up these were literally just hanging off of the back of a subwoofer by their connectors pretty much which is more safe for SSDs and spinning mechanical hard drives now when it comes to our motherboard CPU memory and graphics card we can see a lot more dust buildup and part of this of course it's just because these have been sitting in a planar fashion just horizontally so dust falling down can just fall and collect wherever it needs to collect now the thing I've actually been most impressed with with this build when it comes to dust buildup has been the efficacy both cooling and minimal dust buildup of our no fan Sierra 95 see here which I first showed you guys in my can rise and be passively cooled video now just for the fact that there's no active airflow going over these for the most part means that there's really not that much dust buildup and in fact a quick dusting off with a feather duster or a little soft brush is probably all you're gonna need maybe if you you little hairs picking up here and there's all there's been now contrast that with our graphics card here and again the Left fan on this graphics card has been pretty much spinning 24/7 because this system is on 24/7 and the right fan has not because EVGA is intelligence this is a for the wind too icx version of the GT GT X 1080 which has intelligent thermal sensors placed around the card and it will only spend the fans that it determines needs to spin up now I would like to go in there and actually reduce the threshold on this so that neither of these fans spin for typical HTTP see duties there's really no need for these fans to spin up at all they should only be spinning up while I'm playing games so maybe I'll go in there mess with that once I get this thing reconfigured moving over here to the other side of the graphics card we can see of course more more dusty build up on our chip said fan cooler and everything I'm gonna dust all the stuff off in just a second and I'm not gonna use an air duster for it I'm gonna use a makeup brush and it's awesome rememory here fortunately again not much active airflow over these so we have a little bit of dust going over here on the edges but not too much beyond that now all the plugs I want to point out on the board the ones that have been plugged in there's no way for any dust or anything like that to get in them but something that you might be concerned about again especially if you're using a configuration like I have where you have no case no dust filters or anything like that is dust that might get into unused plugs Asus has actually come up with a solution for this in the past like with their tough series where they have plastic pieces and stuff that you can put inside unused plugs to keep dust from collecting in there this hasn't really been an issue for me in the past even with used boards or boards that have set out for a while but it is something to reality check if you're about to plug say a graphics card into a PCI Express slot that hasn't been used for a while just you check that there's no dust bunnies hanging out in there whatever and maybe consider a can of compressed air or otherwise to dust those out before you go ahead and connect up your overpriced graphics card to it and there's really not a whole lot more to be seen visually here just more dust buildup here and there so I'm going to take this outside so I don't redistribute the dust here in my living room and we'll go ahead and get this thing cleaned off so now that we have relocated into the harsh late March Sun of the outdoors we can get a closer look at this and also look at some of the closer to the PCB parts that maybe weren't visible as I was showing you guys everything inside I didn't want to point out though down here where the graphics card was by the way and the graphics card is in the lower slot here to provide clearance for the CR 95 see there's tons and tons of dust buildup right under here this is a very typical place for dust to build up in a computer build so this is a good reason why if you're doing some spring cleaning if you're disassembling a computer and getting in there to clean it out definitely consider pulling the graphics card and getting underneath there because getting that dust out of there is a good idea also lots of dust buildup around the actual CPU socket here as well I am going to engage the duster here this is just one of my wife's old makeup brushes nice and soft and get to Dustin so at this point we have decided to move back inside because it's very bright outside there's wild animals and other dangerous that we're not sure about I am just finishing up some dusting of the motherboard using these convenient smaller brushes that my wife also said hey you can use these because I don't use them anymore if you don't have makeup brushes I don't know what to tell you of course you can use compressed or canned air as well to clean components that's a good option though they are disposable so that's the trade-off you can use an air compressor as well just be sure that you have the actual air pressure turned down as low as it can go on those because the air pressure can sometimes blast surface mounting components off of a PCB also as Jo just pointed out air compressors can sometimes get condensation built up in them so they can sometimes output some liquid as well and you definitely don't want that going onto your motherboard but this video is supposed to be more about should you use a computer case and less about the cleaning process so let's get back to that and I've got a couple more thoughts when it comes to the prospect of using your computer out in the open and this is probably a little bit more unique to my situation here at home but my living room here is adjacent to our kitchen and in our kitchen for one thing we don't have an overhead range hood to suck up the stuff as we are cooking our fry and stuff and we like to fry food from time to time lugia was a great example so I have noticed on several of the metal parts of this motherboard because from time to time we get some oil particles in the air they are attracted to stuff like metal and they can leave stains on it so again that's not a huge concern it's more of an aesthetic thing but it is something that you might get a little bit more protection from if you had a case particularly that case had an air filter to filter out some of the stuff in the air you also might have noticed this large dog behind me and that's definitely something to be concerned about as well dogs may be slightly less so but also small children and I would be crazy if I had kids right now to leave a computer sitting on top of a subwoofer like I have done for the past seven or eight months I've been lucky enough that the dogs as large and cumbersome as this one might be from time to time he's a little clumsy from time to time but he hasn't managed to knock anything over but physical access to the heart where of course is something that's a concern especially when you have a graphics card that you're sitting in they're hanging without anything really holding it up all that being said though what lessons can we learn from my video here which I've clearly been planning for a very long time the first is that if you're building a traditional system it's probably a good idea to go with a case it's just gonna be easier to get everything together and it's gonna be easier to keep things clean and it's gonna be easier to keep things protected however what's my next steps since this is my HTPC which I have promised as with many many months ago then I would be doing a follow up on and giving you guys more feedback well first I'm not gonna be putting this in a case so I guess I've learned nothing from today's video that was your job not mine but I am going to take this corner over here which is currently full of old DVDs and games and stuff like that I'm gonna clear that out because that's part of the initial process and I'm gonna get the old piece of wood that I was initially planning on mounting this all up to get it over here in the corner and that will get me primed I think for the next step which I'll follow up on in another video so I'm gonna leave you guys with that in the meantime of course if you enjoyed this video hit the thumbs up button if you did and I'll put links to the parts I'm using here as well as some other relevant stuff down in the video's description and of course subscribe to my youtube channel if you want to see more videos like this in the future for now I'm getting back to work we'll see you guys in the next one so happy to say that the HTPC is back up and running and thanks to all you guys who stuck with me all the way through here to the end I just wanted to give you a quick final look the Digi fameless' is installed fanless fanless I saw the single fan on the graphics card but don't worry about that later the drives are hanging precariously off of the edge of the subwoofer but this is how it's going to be for the time being and also just to get a better idea of how it's gonna look I did bring the slab of walnuts over to set it up against the wall ideally I'm going to mount it you know just a little bit higher and stain it and sand it and all that stuff too but for now guys that's all for this one again thanks watching and we'll see you next time