♫Charles' rendition of 2001 a space odyssey♫
This is my new computer.
There's really not that much interesting about it.
It's got some wifis, and well some of the really nice stuff is on the motherboard here.
It's got a bunch of USB and it's got dual ethernet nics.
And it's got a GTX970 and all that.
But, uuh.
The neat thing, I think has more to do with this case.
And it's pretty sturdy, easy to get to everything inside and well, it's I'd like to think it's
kinda pretty.
And it's pretty small.
Umm.
Don't really know.
I guess I need a banana for scale or something.
At any rate let's get the top off.
It can be done by unscrewing the nine standoffs here and then we'll take a look inside.
So, here is the inside.
As you can see the top just kinda comes off and can be pushed aside pretty easily.
Umm, you can see that I have the uuh right there.
Still plugged into the motherboard.
The motherboard header thing, which is just an IDC connector, a rectangular connector
hooked up to this sweet little light right here.
Some of the neater features is that it does have a picopsu right there.
And that may seem a little bit unusual but the reason behind it is that uuh it actually
all operates off of this right here.
This is just a regular LED power supply.
They're really cheap.
I think this one was twenty four bucks.
It's just absolutely insane.
It's rated 600 watts.
Who knows what that actually is, but it's really cheap compared to the TFX supplies
and other things that will fit into this really small form factor here.
So I really think this works out well.
This is definitely working out really well for me where you can have an LED power supply
and you can wire that straight into the bus here.
The PCI-E power.
And, even directly into the processor power.
All that can be wired into the 12V.
And it can remain on all the time.
And the computer barely uses any power at all until you power it on.
Then the PicoPSU cuts on and everything else is fine.
I wanted a really small computer.
I wanted something that would be portable, something I could use it with the vive.
And I was able to find that I found this really oddball ASRock microITX motherboard that had
just about everything.
It only had one PCI-E 16 line.
But it does have dual ethernet and it's got a bunch of USB 3, including internal USB 3.
Which is one of the things I was really looking for.
Because I can have internal USB ports.
And I've got a couple more coming out on this side.
Originally I was going to poke the USB through the front panel, but that just didn't work
out.
So, I gave up on it rather quickly and everything was fine.
Again, just 3 mounted hard drives.
Mounted vertically.
They seem perfectly happy like that.
I don't know - it's a pretty basic computer with a GTX970.
One of the funny things though is "why are you running this up on top like that?"
It's really weird.
If you try running this down underneat, it won't work at all.
And with this PCI extension thing, the highest speed I can get is PCI 1, which is well, half
or less than half of the speed of normal PCI express x16.
Like PCI-3.0 So, that's unfortunate.
But I dunno.
I'd much rather have a compact case which wouldn't work as fast as it would, otherwise
then have a top-notch gaming computer that I can't really carry around easily.
And one more thing so you guys can see it.
The way that ColorChord works is that those LEDs there that are mounted along the top.
Those are wired here into this AVR.
The little AVR is wired in here by USB into the internal USB port.
And all of this stuff works together to make a reasonably good gaming rig.
I can play all the VR games I like without any lag or anything else.
I think it makes sense to look at the back, how it's mounted.
It's really just a bunch of standoffs.
Standoffs on the hard drives, which are just mounted through holes in the acrylic back
here.
Regular old screws hold them in and these big beefy standoffs are held in by washers
and screws on the back.
They're #10 screws so, they're quite substantial.
And the neat thing is they all kinda work together and keep it very rigid.
So, I was worried initially about structural stability.
And maybe damaging the stuff inside, but this is sturdier than most aluminium cases I've
used.
Ok, now I guess I'll get into how I put it together.
♫Indescript machine sounds♫
♫Sweet peeling sounds♫
Charles: Oh.
Round 2 Adam: See that's what I'm talking about.
It's annoying to peel.
I would have left the otherside unpealed, Charles.
Adam: Just until you're done assemblying it because you're going to scratch it up.
Charles: No.
Adam: Because that's the outside he's peeling now.
Charles: I know.
Adam: Alright.
♫More peeling sounds♫
♫Crinkling sounds♫
♫Spray bottle sound♫
♫Smooth squeeking♫
♫Louder Squeeking♫
♫Water flowing♫
Let's watch this almost disaster.
And uuhhh.
Well, if you guys liked this video, let me know.
It was really easy to edit and put together.
And, don't forget to watch the colorchord video that was teasing this one.
Thanks.