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.
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