- The Intel Ghost Canyon NUC was really sweet
'cause it was like a 5-liter chassis
with an i9, a 2070, it was...
We've never really seen something that compact
and that powerful.
But here today, we have something that's...
Well, it's bigger,
and it's also more expensive,
but it's also way more powerful.
They were able to get up to a 2080 Ti,
and I'm excited, this is the Simply NUC Vortex.
It's kind of like a Ghost Canyon NUC,
but it's also not, I don't know.
We'll see. Let's get into it.
People should do unboxing shipping crates
that are just absolutely loaded with tape.
Oh, they've already beat the $10,000 Maingear computer
by including a power cord, so that's great.
Cool.
Vortex product overview:
"Housed in ultra-compact, all-steel Cooler Master chassis,
the Vortex by Simply NUC," blah-blah-blah-blah-blah...
Okay, so what what do we have here? Ooh!
This thing's pretty loaded.
So we have a i9 processor, so what would be the 9980HK.
That's eight cores, up to 5 gigahertz, I believe.
It kinda depends on the chassis it's in.
Nvidia GeForce 2080 Ti,
64 gigabytes of RAM,
a 1-terabyte NVMe SSD...
I guess they preloaded "Overwatch". Sure.
I'm bad at "Overwatch" so we might not play that,
but we'll see.
And a 650-watt power supply.
So the Ghost Canyon NUC on only had 500 watts, which...
It's more than enough for pretty much everything,
but if you have a 2080 Ti,
the 650-watt you're gonna want.
"Warning: We strive for quality in everything we do.
We have added a foam insert
to safely ship your graphics card.
Please remove the foam insert before turning on.
Thank you, Simply NUC team."
All right, that's fair enough.
I've said this many times before, everyone here has:
horrible, terrible things can happen to your PC
while it's in shipping,
and anything that prevents it from arriving in pieces,
I quite like.
Except for when it arrives in a bunch of pieces
you get to build, that's kind of fun.
Ah, weird.
They have red USB ports on the front here.
I guess that's the sort of thing that's like...
Gamers want red USB ports, maybe?
I find it kinda weird.
It looks like one of those, back in the olden days,
you'd have USB 2 sort of like, weird stuff.
And also, just this Simply NUC sticker,
I think on a system that costs as much as this one does,
they coulda gone for something a bit more premium.
Then again, up here, this thing looks pretty cool.
I am quite glad that they included
that warning about the foam,
because I would've just turned this on
without looking on the inside
if I was a consumer, I'm pretty sure.
It does look like the have quite a bit
of a different layout than in the Ghost Canyon NUC.
So in the Ghost Canyon,
the power supply was kind of down in the basement
and it was like a thin, almost server-style power supply.
This one's up top, I'm guessing it's also
a weird form factor, but we'll see soon.
Why is this not coming off?
Ah.
There it is,
the RTX 2080 Ti, and that foam's really in there.
Oh, jeez.
We're manhandling.
Aw! Losing points immediately.
Cooler Master, why would you do this to us?
On the Ghost Canyon NUC,
they had this super cool thing
where you were able to slide off the top piece
and it just had these little contacts
that allowed for the fans to get power without any leads,
whereas right here, they've got leads.
Not that it actually matters,
it's just two fan connectors, pretty easy,
but at the same time, Intel did it better.
So they do have a normal power supply in here.
I was a bit confused at first because it looked like
up top was the power supply,
but it's just a extension that runs through the case
to a normal Cooler Master power supply that's up front here.
I'm guessing it's a SFX?
Yeah, just an SFX power supply like normal.
Okay, we're getting ahead of ourselves a tiny bit here.
So this is the Simply NUC Vortex,
and it's a 7.9-liter chassis
that's based on the Ghost Canyon NUC.
So you've got their Compute unit chummy up in here.
I'm finding it slightly harder to justify it
in a 7.9-liter-sized chassis
because that's the same basic size as the Loque Ghost.
I think that's right around there, 8.1, I believe.
DAN case is even smaller than that,
and in those you get to build your own whole computer,
assuming that, of course, there's supply
and you can get one.
I'm also just, in general,
not very happy with the cable management.
The power cord is just loopin' around
and kinda goes wherever.
Like, they know how big this is going to be,
they don't need the extra bit there.
And what is this?
It's not bad, but it's pretty far from good. (laughs)
One thing I also just really don't understand
is if you look at the back here, there's a PCIe kind of...
It looks like you have an expansion port there.
But if you look on the inside, you can't add anything.
I guess it doesn't really matter,
because it is giving the Compute unit here a bit more air.
But at the same time, on the Intel one
it's drawing air directly from the outside,
whereas here it's drawing air from in beside the GP...
How do you even get air to there? Okay.
How do these fans work?
Okay, so the fans on the top are blowing out,
and there's nothing that's really
feeding air to the compute unit.
So that's this part right here.
Like, it would be blowing air out,
and so it's good that these are exhausting.
And I guess the bottom is pretty open
so it's going to draw air up through,
but I just find it weird that they decided
to do it this way instead of flipping it around
like they have on the Intel version
and just drawing air directly from the outside.
It's probably fine. Dunno, I guess we'll see.
One good thing about this layout is it's easier
to take the GPU out, I guess.
Wow. (hollow plastic clattering)
This has to be the most generic-ass 2080 Ti
I have ever seen. (laughs)
It's a plastic shroud,
it's got one big ol' blower fan,
which is probably fine, but I don't know,
the Founder's Edition has two.
The performance is going to be the same,
but you paid like $1,200 for this thing, and...
(hollow plastic clattering)
Ugh!
That's not what you get if you pay $1,200
for something that didn't come in this package.
So if you go for the bare-bones kit,
which I think starts at $1,700
if you already have your own GPU,
this right here is basically what you get.
So this does appear to be just the normal Compute unit
that you get in the Ghost Canyon NUC,
so if you wanna see what's inside here,
look at either the LTT video or Linus' ShortCircuit on it.
And the rest all looks pretty bog-standard.
So yeah, I guess at this point,
let's put it together.
Frickin' magic. Yeah, nailed it, wow.
Please don't screw that up, editor. Okay.
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Where's the power button?
- [Crew] Little higher.
- [Alex] Little higher?
- Higher. - Higher. Oh.
Is this it?
- Yeah. - Cool.
Ooh! That looks really fun with this table. (laughs)
Wait a second.
So it says on the spec sheet here
that we have 64 gigabytes of RAM,
but we actually have 32.
It is showing up as two 16-gigabyte SO-DIMMS,
so at least one of them isn't dead.
But at the same time, I was hoping for 64.
Our games are installed.
Let's jump into good ol' "Doom Eternal", and...
Well, it's gonna do good.
Even if this thing is horribly handicapped,
it's got a 2080 Ti in it, it's not gonna be slow.
It's so freakin' loud!
Like, the fan controls, just not good.
All right, so we're looking at like 200 FPS.
Unsurprisingly, it's working great.
Who would've ever thought that a $3,700 gaming computer
was good at being a gaming computer? (laughs)
What are our temps looking like after that little bit?
Ooh! She's hot.
It's not throttling though, so this is about the same
as what I was getting on the Ghost Canyon NUC,
90 watts continuous.
She's toasty, but it's not cooking.
For the GPU though, 83 degrees,
I'm not super happy with that.
I imagine if they went with the reference design
with the two fans right here drawing in air,
you'd be able to have much better temps than that.
It's also really loud. So I...(sighs)
I'm sorry, Simply NUC.
I just don't know what the conclusion is here.
You're paying $3,700 for a system that,
if you were to build it yourself,
you could make for about $2,700.
It's like a $1,000 premium for a Cooler Master case.
Just not great, like the details, like these rivets,
the cable management, the fans being really loud.
I wish I had better news than that.
Well, anyway, I'm sorry, Simply NUC.
Yeah, that's about it.
But you guys should get subscribed,
because we do have another project
that has to do with Simply NUC on LTT
that is going to absolutely blow your minds.
I can't actually tell you what it is,
but I just got a bill back
for reverse engineering for that project,
and it's very expensive.
So yeah, get subscribed, hit like, that's about it.
Have a great day. See ya later.