Support GN's work on the store or via Patreon! store.gamersnexus.net/ to grab mouse mats, pads, shirts, modmats, and more, or patreon.com/gamersnexus for additional content (working on another behind-the-scenes video next week!) We also reviewed AMD’s most recent APUs, like R5 5600G here: th-cam.com/video/KycNI1FxIPc/w-d-xo.html Check out Intel Beast Canyon NUC review here: th-cam.com/video/uyuOxrPggAs/w-d-xo.html And our Phantom Canyon NUC review here: th-cam.com/video/aNK_VfUeBbQ/w-d-xo.html
you should review cyberpower they have the worst customer service ever and their warranty is terrible spent 3000 on a pc and less than a month and its a paperweight
This is hilarious. I'm just finishing exactly the same video with exactly the same outcome. The fact that they did the same to you with 1 unit containing LM spills, pretending they don't know what went wrong, claiming it's carbon fiber while it's not. This is just gold and shows how bad their marketing really is.
@@TheCrazyCanuck420 "You suprirse me.. Thank you chef, I've been giving my all and I'm glad you could see how hard I was trying ...surprise me at how shit you are." -Gordon Ramsay
Can someone help clue me in a bit, I'm having trouble understanding the whole fiasco. So there's drops of liquid metal all over, but they didn't use liquid metal between the HSF and CPU? Can anyone fathom a guess what happened? Did they try to use LM, realised its difficult or their process wasn't working, tried to clean it up (making a mess in the process) and then switch to using thermal paste?
@Ikari, G. Nah, they told me to put the QC sticker while applying the liquid metal...hey, at least I passed the QC test right? Only squirted liquid metal everywhere!
Minisforum published a video showing the final versions have liquid metal. I think you have been to hard on a small company. I've ordered a HX90 th-cam.com/video/LFHEmon-jZw/w-d-xo.html
@@HoaxTube You realize you just linked to a video from the company that is essentially an ad (most likely damage control) while telling us we're being too hard on them and to trust them under a video showing indisputably that said company is falsely advertising and an untrustworthy source. You're not the brightest knife in the jar are you?
@@n00bist723 I am just giving my opinion, like the rest of persons commenting here. If after receiving the mini pc I see something bad about it I will say it. I live in Spain and I have no connections with minisforum, in fact is my first product of this brand. There is no need to call me "stupid". I am a subscriber of this TH-cam channel and very often I like its content. Relax and be happy my friend.
well at least it got to experience you tearing into its back plate before realising you need to go in through the top I bet none of the other units went through that lol
"As if liquid metal was sprayed out of the rear end of a hippo at the chassis for this case." You are literally the most savage reviewer I've ever seen! This is the most informative/ hysterical channel I am currently aware of on TH-cam. Keep up the great work! XD Not to mention the Gigabyte callbacks never get old. Don't let that one die!
The sad part is, I'm pretty sure I know exactly which video clip the writer was thinking of when they came up with the description! It is both a disgusting, and hauntingly accurate comparison!
funnily enough der8auer said that the board in this looks very gigabyte. so maybe they added the liquid metal the expand their line of self destructing hardware.
If anyone is interested -- I purchased one of these units because finding an AMD SFF computer is already challenging -- especially one with a decent CPU inside. I purchased my unit rather recently and didn't see this video before purchasing the unit. I have opened my unit to upgrade the RAM and NVMe drive and I didn't notice any issues internally. I installed Ubuntu 22.04 flawlessly and all parts within the machine were working correctly from the USB installation drive. The computer itself seems to run fine! I've had no issues with reboots or problems with cooling (I have a fan pointed at it and I left it in the horizontal position since the vertical mount does block airflow. After running pt_linux benchmark (Passmark), the computer received a score of ~25,300. All in all, I am happy with the unit and it has been running for about a month with no issues whatsoever. I am using it as an Elasticsearch node and I am happy with the purchase. Would I buy it again? Maybe -- but knowing that internally it is just a standard mini-itx motherboard, I might be inclined to just build one myself. It is just aggravating that there are so few AMD nucs out there with decent CPUs.
@@exodyno "Our client insisted on switching over to 2 3090's even though we told them it would make no difference and cost more, but they insisted....because they're an asshole". And we wondered the whole time who was ordering the Pyramid PC and then all smacked ourselves in the forehead when it all made sense.
@@thetalesofdaneandco at first I thought it was some kind of mumble rapper who just wanted to hip. Then everything fell into perfect fit when you start to connect that it was DBrand the whole time. Hats off to those mofos. I've never bought anything from them since they're "expensive", at least when converted to my country's currency but they sure as hell know how to be... well be themselves I guess xD
@@exodyno When Linus started openly insulting the client, I knew it was someone in in the joke, so it had to be either another tech channel or a troll. DBrand never even crossed my mind, I was thinking iJustine or Marques or JayzTwoCents
Something about Steve's sponsor reads make me laugh. Its like he's questioning every claim by the sponsor, and there's a distinct tone of "I don't believe a single word of this" as he describes the product.
You've spent the last few months telling companies they need to learn from Gigabyte. Minisforum listened, they just didn't understand they were supposed to be learning how *not* to behave.
Using security screws on a device where the user is expected to add harware INSIDE, is already such a display of utter incompetence. Had you discovered that before testing that should/could have been the end of the story right there. That said, a 3 minute review by GN would be a strange thing.
I just want to say that I followed your guide to applying liquid metal years ago (onto both the die and heat spreader in a very thin film), with a 3d printed delidding tool, as a complete amateur, on my brand-new-at-the-time-7700k, and your guide worked like a charm. Still runs cool to this day. Cheers guys.
Same for me ! Thanks to GN I crossed the river and tried LM on my 3770K. Works like a charm : 4,5 GHz OCed with 60°C max temps in torture tests (equipped with a Noctua NH-D15) =)
Just wanted to share this here. I actually got a retail unit (no RAM or SSD) which I ordered on the 31st of August and received yesterday. A few things I noticed: - All I needed to open mine was a Philips head screwdriver. - The CPU backplate has "Disassembly Prohibited" printed on it. Either to protect the delicate LM job or to hide what they used otherwise. - The motherboard looks pretty clean to me, no LM mess.
GN's email: "WHAT THE SHIT DID YOU DO, THERE'S LIQUID METAL EVERYWHERE" Minisforum: "Well.. we did tell you it was in there. We just didn't say where."
In addition to all the bullcrap that you caught on, the sentence "As a high-performance and recyclable new material, carbon fiber is not only rich in texture and delicate in hand, but also has a very high strength, have good thermal conductivity and corrosion resistance." has 2 glaring flaws: 1) Carbon fiber is notoriously hard to recycle, like the majority of composite materials 2) The "good thermal conductivity" is extremely misleading. While the carbon fibers themselves have excellent thermal conductivity along the grain, the composite material colloquially known as "carbon fiber" is actually a polymer (plastic) reinforced with carbon fiber strands, and nearly always is an excellent insulator. It should also be noted that carbon fiber is not an isotropic material, i.e., the direction of the weave matters a lot.
The reference to the soldering iron melt test from AvE makes me feel good in the doobily doo. I love it when my favorite creators from very different genres reference each other.
It's a neat little trick, and it's definitely something I think a lot of people remember from AvE's teardowns as a back of the brain tool kit thing. One I remember from in was a way of using pencil lead as a potential divider if you need to charge an old phone battery from a car battery in an emergency.
They call it "composite", correctly. It's carbon fiber reinforced, likely only 15% - still, it's a lot more rigid. "PA6 CF30" would an excellent material, also it'd melt of course but its tensile strength is pretty much the same as Al. PC CF30 would be great too. Unfortunately, they didn't show the temperature of the soldering iron.
@@stanimir4197 but the carbonfiber wouldn't melt at normal soldering iron temps... the plastic yes... but you should still be able to see the carbon fibers
@@stanimir4197 Carbon fiber melts at a much higher temp and would spread the heat around more before melting making a much larger glob. the fact the melting was only isolated around the contact point shows that there is no carbonfiber inside.
@@LiLBitsDK the carbon fire is suspended in the plastic of the case like normal coloring material. Its not like they've added a layer of woven carbon fibre into the plastic. Its more like there are small strings of carbon fibre in the molten plastic thats used to cast the parts and spreads evenly in the whole part. So of course if you melt the plastic, these tiny strings will flow with the molten plastic, you dont have a organized mesh, its just a random arangement that improove the strengh
One thing to note is that there is Carbon Fiber reinforced plastic molding. I used to work at a plastic molding factory and we used to inject both carbon fiber plastics and glass fiber plastics in molds. It would look like normal plastic but be stronger. You actually need to cut the plastic to see if the material looks different on the cut. Not sure if this is the case here or not, Not trying to protect the company, I am not affiliated with them. You can also find transparent carbon fiber sheets which looks exactly like acrylic until you look at the edge which with normal acrylic looks transparent and with carbon looks black (the panel is completely transparent, just the edge is black when you look into it from the side)
Might have been interesting to see how it would perform with properly applied liquid metal. Chances are their design engineers came up with a good working solution but when it went into production they probably didn't train people properly to apply it and ended up using standard paste just so they could keep the production line rolling. A common issue especially when the bean counters get involved, as they are normally very short sighted.
I've eyed Minisforum a couple of times in the last few years for some of their cheap minipc offerings because they were one of the few who seemed to offer more unique part combinations and port offerings. Despite a lot of good reviews on a lot of their products, I never did buy one, because there was always that thing in the back of my mind telling me "this is still a slap-dash operation putting out some slightly sketchy hardware on some even sketchier marketing," and after seeing this, that feeling has redoubled.
Same. Their other mini computers were decent in performance and value according to reviewers such as Techtablets. They're great for office environments. I'm saddened and disappointed to see them mess up like this. They better get their act together fast.
@@yensteel I’ve ordered the Minisforum Elitemini HM80, it was rather expensive, I REALLY hope I didn’t waste my money as I suspect getting a refund from a company in Hong Kong could be very difficult
I bought a mini forums PC a year ago. The um 500, a Ryzen 2500u pro model. On paper is a perfect office PC with plenty of ports. In fact it's a thermal nightmares. The computer sit at 55C ideal and randomly spike to 63, just opening Words. Gaming on it is fine in theory. But the thermal limit the potential off the hardware, and it's jet engine noise all time. My SO use it for her work on the go, but that was a were of 400€...
So I just received my HX90, nothing on the box or inside indicated liquid metal or carbon fiber or security screws. In fact it has standard phillips screws. No mess from any LM spills. Based on various reviews, I'm now sure there is no LM used but I'm not going to pull it apart to check, don't really care for what I'm using it for(not gaming). I ordered mine a month ago on a preorder, I didn't buy it to test or review, but it runs fine, looks fine, and was easy to get inside. I got it because I liked the design and the small size. I'm happy so far.
I have a feeling that they probably didn't apply it correctly (as evidenced from the amount on... fans and stuff), and the computer didn't pass QC because it just instantly thermal throttled. Whoever was supervising the factory that day said "ok, just put normal thermal paste on it today and get it out the door, we'll fix this tomorrow". Then the same shit happened tomorrow, and ... welp, now they probably have some explaining to do. (Probably: "hey, tell the big boss when you change the specs on the factory floor! marketing made that the primary selling point!" And I'm sure that the people assembling the computers and the people designing the marketing don't even work for the same company, and the manufacturing company probably does stuff like this all the time... so... someone learned a valuable lesson about quality control.) Fun stuff. For someone.
They must have started putting liquid metal on a lot of the units, only to later realize that it was leaking all over the motherboard. Rather than throw the contaminated parts out, they're apparently applying thermal paste instead and just shipping them out as if everything was fine. Small companies with poor fiancials tend to do this kind of shit all the time.
Best I can guess, they tried using liquid metal but misapplied it, so it failed thermal testing. Then they tried cleaning it off with compressed air and replaced with paste.
We know you guys want to bring us positive reviews. Please don't worry. What we want is honesty, and you have that in spades. That's what keeps us coming back. Thanks for doing the work you do.
I'm surprised LTT didn't even look into this. Also 6 years of injection molding checking in. Carbon fiber is actually a pretty common reinforcement used for high stress tolerant plastics. So stuff like plastic chain guides in motors and such. There's no need for it on a PC and it's a thermally not very conductive so it's actually kinda bad for small form factor PCs IMO
Amazing. I thought I was a 1-off when I purchased a H31g earlier this year, and a month after purchasing, the audio jack came clean off the board. Clearly a shitty solder job. Their tech support refused to fix it, so if you were wondering whether that was false advertising too, yeah. You're on your own if you purchase from Minisforum.
I recently (June 2022) returned a new HX90 mini, because of an electrical short that caused a ground loop when connected to AC powered studio monitor speakers. Static electricity could be heard through the speakers and also affected the USB mouse and HDMI display monitor. The same speaker set up did NOT create a ground loop with other PCs: two Mac Pros, one ASUS laptop, two Galaxy phones. Have you tested this device for electrical grounding? That begs the question... does liquid metal cause electrical grounding issues on all the PCs in which it is used, whether it is contained properly or not? Because on this HX90, it was contained and sealed in as der8auer suggested.
The phrase "Utter Incompetence" in the title of a GN video is all I needed to hit watch. That Liquid Metal is the subject matter is like icing on the cake.
Since Minisforum HX90G came out, I wonder if they learn from their wrongs at HX90 Liquid Metal mess and fake Carbon Fiber case. We need your full and honest review for Minisforum HX90G.
It's always been an astounding thing to me that a company sends something this terrible to a reviewer. It's almost as if they know they can't get it right, so they do it as wrong as possible in order to garner the bad publicity instead. Which... really doesn't work when your business model revolves around selling a product. Also, somnambulantly meandering is something I didn't expect to hear today, or maybe ever, but I love it.
They can get away with it. Check ETA PRIME, a channel with over 700k subs. Yet he never mentioned the LM being bad and actually avoided disassembling it (first video) because he didn't have LM at hand, yet he went to great lenghts to make a 2nd video just to pair it with a 3060 via m2 to pci adapter, obviously bottlenecked to just 2 third of the performance.
It's the same thing as when a videogame launches in a completely unfinished state. Some executive dickhead set an unrealistic set of goals and deadlines and doesn't listen to the engineers saying "it's not done yet" "we need to do more work" "please don't release this." etc. to no avail. This is the result of a company with completely dysfunctional leadership.
I'm pretty happy to have such warnings. Everyone makes mistakes but if they make them repeatedly with reviewers imagine how much they care about consumers that can't do anything about it anyway.
Actually... due to the hyper inflation we all live in in the first world countries... that's probably actually worth about 80-110$ in 1921's monetary value. Granted, 110$ was a lot of money back then in its own way... but it also wasn't. The kind of person who should be buying a computer back then (if it existed lol) is also the same person who should be buying one today. That is, people with skills and knowledge plus money. Want to know who shouldn't be buying them in either age? Almost anyone else. Computers are too cheap today, and it allows the extremely unintelligent to have too much privilege they did not earn or possibly even deserve to have in the first place.
@@sagegeas5198 I disagree, I feel like computers can have a positive impact even in "unintelligent people's" lives (sort of rude to be putting people in boxes like that though, thinking you are automatically entitled to more privileges just because of your 'intelligence' ). Computers and the internet tend to have lots of opportunities for learning and self improvement that might have a higher barrier to entry without access to computer resources. I think it's a positive thing for all walks of life to have access to more information, helps improve everyone.
As a engineer I love torx and would love to see it getting more widespread usage (not allowed to use it in my systems though, as alan key is the standard there and I'm not even sure there is torx M10+) But even my safety torx collection is by chance of them being included in a bit set I bought. From what I've learned with racing bikes (the shoes to be specific), is that you've got nylon, composite and carbon. Nylon and carbon speak for themselves, but carbon is a form of a composite material. My initial thought was composite is carbon, but it's actually a mixture of plastic and carbon... If you take the Shimano R7000 and r8000 pedals, the 7000 is composite and the 8000 is carbon, but by the looks they are rather similar, so it's a blurry line imo... The 8000 looks especially "strange", as there is no fiber weaving you can see (maybe internally). So if I have to give them any benefit of the doubt, I'd say they might be messing with the definition.... Though the rest of the video shows that that might be giving them too much credit already...
Have only seen praise for Minisforum for their regular boxes, looks like now they have great feedback so they can improve on their more challenging products.
Pre-ordered one of these a few weeks ago. Can't wait to see what's in store for me. I'm still hopeful as my PC requirements are modest compared to most in this crowd. Fingers crossed they just skip the LM on my model as I didn't really care about that anyway.
It's as though someone said "We can't ship these, we promised liquid metal!" so they were sent back to assembly where disgruntled workers were like "They want liquid metal? Let's give 'em liquid metal!" and squirted it right on the CPU fan... Then, when turned on, it created this spattered spectacle.
I'm reminded of the McLaren F1 in the early 90's that had carbon fiber and gold heat shields since carbon fiber is not a good conductor and doesn't react well with extreme heat. I know modern impregnated carbon fiber does much better in regards to heat, but it doesn't help conduct heat. It's quite a good barrier though!
There are two kinds of carbon fibers: turbostratic ones, and graphitic ones. They have about a 100-200x difference in thermal conductivity in the fiber's direction, and at the "200x" end, end up being twice as conductive as copper. The turbostratic ones stretch more and end up a little stronger, while the graphitic ones are much stiffer and fracture a little sooner. Regarding high-temperature stability: that's just an issue/effect of the matrix. If it's a generic epoxy, it'll strongly weaken around 150C. If it's pyrolitic graphite, it'll remain structurally sound at 3000C (if you keep it from burning, it's basically coal from that perspective). Edit: Carbon fiber, with a chemical barrier coating, can be literally used to hold vaporized iron as a pressure vessel. It's the highest-temperature structural material that isn't extremely exotic (there are a few materials, but there is no industry to turn any (but one) of them into large structural parts. The exception is Tungsten, but that's 10x as dense as the graphite-matrix carbon-fiber composite, and about equally as strong (at room temperature; I expect Tungsten to soften more rapidly).
@@namibjDerEchte That's interesting though, but I wouldn't expect to find that on the shell of a Chinese case (of that price), and of course we were let down again.
@@namibjDerEchte Buuut it wouldn't be oriented in the direction of the fibres. At least not for the case or any structual things. You *could* make a thermal pad of unidirecrional fibres but I don't see much use there either. There is still matrix material and it would need to be rather thick to not just crumble. Plus it wouldn't conform to surfaces thus making bad thermal contact.
@@TheYear2525 you could use in-plane graphitic fibers to distribute heat in-plane. For transfer normal to the plane, you'd use a metal/conductive-ceramic matrix or a lot of heat-conducting powder filler.
Just got my HX90. Glad to say that there is no liquid metal splatter and everything is running great after I installed the Nvme SSD, RAM, & SATA SSD x2 (I bought the barebones version). I'm running Linux (Manjaro) on it and it's very snappy! Need to tinker more but everything seems to be working as intended. Even the 2.5Gb ethernet is correctly recognized. No regrets so far!
@@hughjassstudios9688 I see why someone might want that but I like my components to run as cool as possible for max efficiency, lifespan and performance and for that liquid metal is perfect, it doesn't dry up either
a bit concerning when companies reach out for a bit of marketing, and what you'd think they would do with a crappy product, is make one good one that you send out to get reviewed, while you continue making a cheaper version for the public. but to send the consumer "version" to a GN in such a state can only mean theres even less effort put into the production model
I wonder how much of this is poor application, shipping, or a combination of both. The main cost of using liquid metal is by far developing a reliable application process that can be done in a factory setting and survive freight shipping. Sony spent a lot of R&D on that on the PS5 precisely to avoid this situation we see here. A lesson to be learned I suppose.
I would really like to see GN do a a proper liquid metal application on that, to see if it would make any difference, or if the power limit would make the liquid metal useless
Since you're already using an AvE testing method, perhaps embracing his "Sharp Knife Fiber Test" - Cut the material in question, and listen for the snapping of fibers. Carbon doesn't have the same obvious sound as glass fibers, but it's still obvious when it's there. Heat from the soldering iron likely just allows you to move any fibers by melting the substrate, assuming there are any.
The year is 2045, humanity has abused the earth to a wasteland and humans are on their last leg. GN still finds a way to sneak in a clip of a gigabyte PSU sacrificing itself in the name of OPP. I love it, back to you Steve.
The funniest part about security screws like that is that they aren't really secure, especially if one doesn't use a thread locking compound. I've popped lots of them loose with a small flat head driver. Kudos for the running of AvE's iron test -- I know it's a lot of work. 😁👍
@asdrubale bisanzio 'Tis a great country where you can face racism not only for the colour of your skin but also the language you speak. Does English Canada not have better things to do than Franco-bashing? Do you guys get sexual pleasure at disparaging French speaking people? Because this shit is getting old.
@asdrubale bisanzio Racism applies to ethnic groups and culture, to say that French Canada has the same culture as France is like saying that the US has the same culture as the British. Also, why do you hate French culture? French culture is far more than Parisian culture, you know? To say that you hate a whole country's culture make you sound extremely bigoted.
I recently bought a Flow X13, I had to clear C-mos when I got it. I was surprised to find a similar problem. Not as bad as what you are showing but there was a line of liquid metal on one of the ribbon cables, and a drop on the motherboard itself. I carefully cleaned it off as best I could. I haven't had any problems with the laptop after i cleared C-mos.
@9:28 Seriously, you could have saved me 10 mins buy saying this at the start. A system described as "Upgrade Friendly" using special security screws just to open the lid is just beyond ridiculous.
"As if liquid metal was sprayed out of the rear end of a hippo at the chassis for this case." Brutal, and utterly hilarious. Sadly I was drinking my morning coffee as Steve said that. I now need to wipe down and clean the coffee table, the carpet and the walls!
yeah I bet they spun up the fan and then squirted it on there at full blast so the case got well covered (guess they didn't read the manual for liq met)
Just FYI. I bought a little Minisforum windows 10 mini PC on Amazon that was dead on arrival. Or rather it worked perfectly except the screen being black 8 out of every ten seconds on both display outputs. Really a shame, it was amazing value for money but...broken. Did get my money back in week though.
The way I read their description of the material is that it's carbon fibre reinforced plastic with a carbon sheet look. It's injection molded, so that means they can't use sheets. But essentially all carbon or glass fiber products are different levels of plastic and fibre combination. If you use sheets you have a lot of the fibres and typically use epoxy (which is plastic), if you injection mold it you typically use shorter pieces of fibers and something like ABS plastic that can be injection molded. It's not bad in any way, except that it gives marketing teams a way to mislead customers. But nearly all high strength plastics (for tools and such) uses these materials. It should say how much fibre is in it though.
I swear half the companies seem engaged in a race to the bottom here. It's good they're competitive at least? Shame they're being competitive at being awful.
Minisforum still might have issues with their liquid metal application. I got a used HX99G (supposedly LM for CPU and GPU) and was surprised that my fan ramps up quite a bit under heavy load (Cinebench R23 or multiple simultaneous compression and decompression jobs). Checking with HWiNFO, the core temps are all over the place. A run of R23 had following max temps, while average temps were also at similar levels core to core: core 0 - 84.8C, core 1 - 64.8, core 2 - 91.7, core 3 - 74.2, core 4 82.2, core 5 - 79.2, core 6 - 66.6 and core 7 - 63.7. Running multiple compressing and decompression jobs, core 2 went up to 99.2, while core 7 only reached 61.4, while the CPU was at 100% load and all cores were at around 4 GHz.
Quick question: If I put my GTX 1080, Ryzen 5 3600, B450, RAM, harddrives, case, etc into a "Powerbrick" could I make the worlds smallest gaming PC which consists of a USB C connector in a plastic shroud?
Probably safe to assume this will be the last sample minisforum sends to GN 😂 Bet they seen gamer in the name and figured you would just run a couple benchmarks and praise it, not tear it down and test their marketing too 😎
To test if carbon fibre is in there the easiest way to test would probably to break a piece of. the high e-module of carbon fibre comes with very low elongation at fracture and it tends to splinter with sharp edges. Granted, some plastics will show a similar behaviour to the eye, but those would be rarely used in that type of application. You could also just burn it, the carbon fibres themselves don't burn up even with a torch burner placed directly under them (temperature >1100°C) and remain after the matrix plastic has burned away. Please be careful with the toxic fumes of the plastic burning if you do that. Anyway, this really doesn't look like carbon fibre reinforced plastic. Fraudulent marketing
Hmm in my experience when doing burn test the carbon fibres will only stay there when the content is at least 30% or higher otherwise they will be carried away with the flame which will definetly be visible though. tiny specks of light will be in the flame if it is reinforced.
I love how in depth and thurly you go thru this product. And i like how you dont care about the maker and tell the truth about the product. Keep up the excelent work.
Not sure if it's new, but the gradient background in the GN chart does not compress very nicely, causing gradient banding other artifacts. Conclusion: Use static color background for all charts (or increase the gradient range)
Another POS E-waste box, thanks for the heads-up! Not that I would have use for a NUC of any type anyway, I run a full sized box for all the NON-NUC reasons. Great video.
Imagine sending this to GN. The TH-cam channel famous for it's in depth, technical criticism of tech they review. GN is not going to play hunky-dory and be like "wow cool". They will look for every chance they have to reveal the cracks in the marketing a design, (as they should). If you want to send something to GN, you better have your shit fully together lol.
Support GN's work on the store or via Patreon! store.gamersnexus.net/ to grab mouse mats, pads, shirts, modmats, and more, or patreon.com/gamersnexus for additional content (working on another behind-the-scenes video next week!)
We also reviewed AMD’s most recent APUs, like R5 5600G here: th-cam.com/video/KycNI1FxIPc/w-d-xo.html
Check out Intel Beast Canyon NUC review here: th-cam.com/video/uyuOxrPggAs/w-d-xo.html
And our Phantom Canyon NUC review here: th-cam.com/video/aNK_VfUeBbQ/w-d-xo.html
hi
@Gamers Nexus Are you by any chance planning to make a red version of the mouse mat similar to the red mouse pad?
Man they slacking hard… great video!
Poor Patricks’….
you should review cyberpower they have the worst customer service ever and their warranty is terrible spent 3000 on a pc and less than a month and its a paperweight
This is hilarious. I'm just finishing exactly the same video with exactly the same outcome. The fact that they did the same to you with 1 unit containing LM spills, pretending they don't know what went wrong, claiming it's carbon fiber while it's not. This is just gold and shows how bad their marketing really is.
At least they are consistent.... consistently bad.
Its like a social experiment where kids were encouraged to run a company
@@TheCrazyCanuck420 "You suprirse me..
Thank you chef, I've been giving my all and I'm glad you could see how hard I was trying
...surprise me at how shit you are."
-Gordon Ramsay
nice xD
oooh another roast? can't wait to see that lol :D
GN:"Is there liquid metal in this PC?"
Minisforum:"Well it depends. Did you ever hear about Schrödinger's cat?"
Gotta love a QC sticker on the PCB will all the liquid metal drops. Now thats a class process right there!
QC, Questionable Content (great comic BTW).
...more of a class action process 😆
the assembled pcb probably will pass a qc way before they mess it up by adding the cooler and stuff
Can someone help clue me in a bit, I'm having trouble understanding the whole fiasco. So there's drops of liquid metal all over, but they didn't use liquid metal between the HSF and CPU?
Can anyone fathom a guess what happened? Did they try to use LM, realised its difficult or their process wasn't working, tried to clean it up (making a mess in the process) and then switch to using thermal paste?
@Ikari, G. Nah, they told me to put the QC sticker while applying the liquid metal...hey, at least I passed the QC test right? Only squirted liquid metal everywhere!
The company is solid, they said liquid metal was inside but they didn't say where so they aren't in the wrong! 🤣
Minisforum published a video showing the final versions have liquid metal. I think you have been to hard on a small company. I've ordered a HX90
th-cam.com/video/LFHEmon-jZw/w-d-xo.html
@@HoaxTube You are not fooling anyone, minisforum ceo!
@@josephgoebbels1605 well if you say so...
@@HoaxTube You realize you just linked to a video from the company that is essentially an ad (most likely damage control) while telling us we're being too hard on them and to trust them under a video showing indisputably that said company is falsely advertising and an untrustworthy source. You're not the brightest knife in the jar are you?
@@n00bist723 I am just giving my opinion, like the rest of persons commenting here. If after receiving the mini pc I see something bad about it I will say it. I live in Spain and I have no connections with minisforum, in fact is my first product of this brand. There is no need to call me "stupid". I am a subscriber of this TH-cam channel and very often I like its content. Relax and be happy my friend.
Oh Dayum! The one they sent me didn't get to experience the Liquid Metal Bukkake. I am sure it felt left out at the factory.
I just saw your video and came here to see if you were here. Loved your video on it!
lol :-)
I thought that pc looks familiar lol
🤣🤣🤣🤣
well at least it got to experience you tearing into its back plate before realising you need to go in through the top
I bet none of the other units went through that lol
"As if liquid metal was sprayed out of the rear end of a hippo at the chassis for this case." You are literally the most savage reviewer I've ever seen! This is the most informative/ hysterical channel I am currently aware of on TH-cam. Keep up the great work! XD
Not to mention the Gigabyte callbacks never get old. Don't let that one die!
The sad part is, I'm pretty sure I know exactly which video clip the writer was thinking of when they came up with the description! It is both a disgusting, and hauntingly accurate comparison!
funnily enough der8auer said that the board in this looks very gigabyte. so maybe they added the liquid metal the expand their line of self destructing hardware.
@@sadlerbw9I think I remember that scene, like "a powerful one"
"Liquid Metal Murder Scene" sounds like the title of a Terminator 2 themed power metal song.
Hahaha, mentioned T2 in the video!
Great band name as well.
Power metal master genre
@@GamersNexus And that was 30 years ago ?
@@GamersNexus T-1000 intensifies
I love how much mileage you're getting out of the Gigabyte power supply explosions
Thanks Steve
Back to you Steve
more mileage than the owners of the power supply gets.
"Liquid metal is good at conducting.......and conducting" -Steve Burke 2021
Instructions unclear, orchestra is not playing.
I'm conducting an investigation.
@@bartivbl Duh its for trains.
It's also very good at making solder joints extremely brittle. You could just brush contaminated capacitors right off the board afterwards...
@@bartivbl I just imagined a a death metal orchestra that would awesome.
If anyone is interested -- I purchased one of these units because finding an AMD SFF computer is already challenging -- especially one with a decent CPU inside. I purchased my unit rather recently and didn't see this video before purchasing the unit.
I have opened my unit to upgrade the RAM and NVMe drive and I didn't notice any issues internally. I installed Ubuntu 22.04 flawlessly and all parts within the machine were working correctly from the USB installation drive.
The computer itself seems to run fine! I've had no issues with reboots or problems with cooling (I have a fan pointed at it and I left it in the horizontal position since the vertical mount does block airflow. After running pt_linux benchmark (Passmark), the computer received a score of ~25,300.
All in all, I am happy with the unit and it has been running for about a month with no issues whatsoever. I am using it as an Elasticsearch node and I am happy with the purchase. Would I buy it again? Maybe -- but knowing that internally it is just a standard mini-itx motherboard, I might be inclined to just build one myself. It is just aggravating that there are so few AMD nucs out there with decent CPUs.
Thanks a lot. I was about to purchase 3 of these and now I got really worried due to this video.
"You'd be better off with dbrand, and at least when they insult you it's part of the experience"
Holy crap, this writing is fire as usual 🤣
well, they literally abuse the hell out of Linus, their largest sponsored media company, on every way possible they can hahaha
@@exodyno "Our client insisted on switching over to 2 3090's even though we told them it would make no difference and cost more, but they insisted....because they're an asshole". And we wondered the whole time who was ordering the Pyramid PC and then all smacked ourselves in the forehead when it all made sense.
@@thetalesofdaneandco at first I thought it was some kind of mumble rapper who just wanted to hip. Then everything fell into perfect fit when you start to connect that it was DBrand the whole time. Hats off to those mofos. I've never bought anything from them since they're "expensive", at least when converted to my country's currency but they sure as hell know how to be... well be themselves I guess xD
@@exodyno When Linus started openly insulting the client, I knew it was someone in in the joke, so it had to be either another tech channel or a troll. DBrand never even crossed my mind, I was thinking iJustine or Marques or JayzTwoCents
Something about Steve's sponsor reads make me laugh. Its like he's questioning every claim by the sponsor, and there's a distinct tone of "I don't believe a single word of this" as he describes the product.
My favorite is the careful scripting and slightly weird emphasis in "offering a...unique...feature for keyboards."
And he always says it "claims to"
Like he doesn't believe what they say lmao
@@user-ke1gn3ql1g Which I appreciate. If he has not tested it, it's better that he refers to the marked numbers as "claimes to".
Edit: spelling
The Steve sponsor read translator:
"Abundant" = unnecessary
"Unique" = pointless
"Claims" = doesn't actually have
@@Phyrre56 More like claims = might or might not but we didn't check
You've spent the last few months telling companies they need to learn from Gigabyte. Minisforum listened, they just didn't understand they were supposed to be learning how *not* to behave.
Using security screws on a device where the user is expected to add harware INSIDE, is already such a display of utter incompetence. Had you discovered that before testing that should/could have been the end of the story right there. That said, a 3 minute review by GN would be a strange thing.
I'm imagining the guys at the factory shooting the liquid metal everywhere like the gasoline fight on Zoolander
Wham started playing in my head after reading this.
this got an audible laugh out of me.
Never seen the movie before, so naturally I had to go look up the scene. Oh ok, I get it now, ha.
love this comment lol!
And then they give the computer to Steve and said, "back to you, Steve!"
The fact that Minisforum asked for this review and got destroyed is hilarious
I just want to say that I followed your guide to applying liquid metal years ago (onto both the die and heat spreader in a very thin film), with a 3d printed delidding tool, as a complete amateur, on my brand-new-at-the-time-7700k, and your guide worked like a charm. Still runs cool to this day. Cheers guys.
That's awesome! Glad to hear that!
Brave legend.
Same for me ! Thanks to GN I crossed the river and tried LM on my 3770K. Works like a charm : 4,5 GHz OCed with 60°C max temps in torture tests (equipped with a Noctua NH-D15) =)
@@GamersNexus Your still using this pc I saw it in your Chamber build log or something or not. Like huh? That's hypocritical
Just wanted to share this here.
I actually got a retail unit (no RAM or SSD) which I ordered on the 31st of August and received yesterday. A few things I noticed:
- All I needed to open mine was a Philips head screwdriver.
- The CPU backplate has "Disassembly Prohibited" printed on it. Either to protect the delicate LM job or to hide what they used otherwise.
- The motherboard looks pretty clean to me, no LM mess.
"You're the worst mini PC system integrator I've heard of!"
"But you have heard of me."
This comment is gold
I have old TV Box X7 from that company just a shame support on software, just Stay away from that company, is money for nothing....
Only because they sent him an evaluation unit.
xkcd reference :p
too bad they're not as good as jack sparrow
I will upvote every single time you guys manage to "sneak" in a gigabyte psu "exploding" in a cohesive way.
GN's email: "WHAT THE SHIT DID YOU DO, THERE'S LIQUID METAL EVERYWHERE"
Minisforum: "Well.. we did tell you it was in there. We just didn't say where."
LOL
Minisforum spells kind of like misinformation.
@@CaveyMoth That’s exactly how I read it too when I first seen it lol.
@@CaveyMoth "misinform u"
@@drspod Holy crap
In addition to all the bullcrap that you caught on, the sentence "As a high-performance and recyclable new material, carbon fiber is not only rich in texture and delicate in hand, but also has a very high strength, have good thermal conductivity and corrosion resistance." has 2 glaring flaws:
1) Carbon fiber is notoriously hard to recycle, like the majority of composite materials
2) The "good thermal conductivity" is extremely misleading. While the carbon fibers themselves have excellent thermal conductivity along the grain, the composite material colloquially known as "carbon fiber" is actually a polymer (plastic) reinforced with carbon fiber strands, and nearly always is an excellent insulator. It should also be noted that carbon fiber is not an isotropic material, i.e., the direction of the weave matters a lot.
Minisforum or Misinform?
Clever!
BaDumTiss!
Noice. For a more complete anagram; Minisforum / Misinform U
Misinform is what my eyes saw too!
Literally how I read it when it was on the screen originally lol
It's not false advertising since liquid metal was technically used. Loving to see all the new ways companies are scamming away at consumers.
The terms "big fun" and "much convenience" sound like something you'd read on a doge meme...
much wow
Much gaming
much cringe
Very conduct
MUCH PROFIT YUGE RETURN
The reference to the soldering iron melt test from AvE makes me feel good in the doobily doo. I love it when my favorite creators from very different genres reference each other.
It's a neat little trick, and it's definitely something I think a lot of people remember from AvE's teardowns as a back of the brain tool kit thing.
One I remember from in was a way of using pencil lead as a potential divider if you need to charge an old phone battery from a car battery in an emergency.
The soldering iron burning right through the “carbon fiber” that marketing also talked up was just sad.
They call it "composite", correctly. It's carbon fiber reinforced, likely only 15% - still, it's a lot more rigid. "PA6 CF30" would an excellent material, also it'd melt of course but its tensile strength is pretty much the same as Al. PC CF30 would be great too. Unfortunately, they didn't show the temperature of the soldering iron.
@@stanimir4197 but the carbonfiber wouldn't melt at normal soldering iron temps... the plastic yes... but you should still be able to see the carbon fibers
@@stanimir4197 Carbon fiber melts at a much higher temp and would spread the heat around more before melting making a much larger glob. the fact the melting was only isolated around the contact point shows that there is no carbonfiber inside.
@@LiLBitsDK the carbon fire is suspended in the plastic of the case like normal coloring material. Its not like they've added a layer of woven carbon fibre into the plastic. Its more like there are small strings of carbon fibre in the molten plastic thats used to cast the parts and spreads evenly in the whole part. So of course if you melt the plastic, these tiny strings will flow with the molten plastic, you dont have a organized mesh, its just a random arangement that improove the strengh
@@Aliceintraining i think my last answer could be intresting for you too^^
One thing to note is that there is Carbon Fiber reinforced plastic molding.
I used to work at a plastic molding factory and we used to inject both carbon fiber plastics and glass fiber plastics in molds. It would look like normal plastic but be stronger.
You actually need to cut the plastic to see if the material looks different on the cut.
Not sure if this is the case here or not, Not trying to protect the company, I am not affiliated with them.
You can also find transparent carbon fiber sheets which looks exactly like acrylic until you look at the edge which with normal acrylic looks transparent and with carbon looks black (the panel is completely transparent, just the edge is black when you look into it from the side)
"Liquid Metal Murder Scene" is the name of my Prog-Ska band.
Liquidmetalman is the name of my Gold Finger coverband
Don't know why I never expected to hear an AvE reference here. Love those soldering iron tests lol.
Lol is there really that little overlap that only 6 people have upvoted this?
"Sprayed out of the rear end of a hippo" - gold!!
Do a youtube search on that.
I guess they just turned the fan on.. and hosed it down with L.Metal.
Nah, it's liquid metal
"Open the windway" indeed!
I grew up on a farm. Piss from a hippo prolly like a heifer? Better back up, cuz its gonna be a gusher.
Might have been interesting to see how it would perform with properly applied liquid metal. Chances are their design engineers came up with a good working solution but when it went into production they probably didn't train people properly to apply it and ended up using standard paste just so they could keep the production line rolling. A common issue especially when the bean counters get involved, as they are normally very short sighted.
I've eyed Minisforum a couple of times in the last few years for some of their cheap minipc offerings because they were one of the few who seemed to offer more unique part combinations and port offerings. Despite a lot of good reviews on a lot of their products, I never did buy one, because there was always that thing in the back of my mind telling me "this is still a slap-dash operation putting out some slightly sketchy hardware on some even sketchier marketing," and after seeing this, that feeling has redoubled.
Same. Their other mini computers were decent in performance and value according to reviewers such as Techtablets. They're great for office environments. I'm saddened and disappointed to see them mess up like this. They better get their act together fast.
@@yensteel I’ve ordered the Minisforum Elitemini HM80, it was rather expensive, I REALLY hope I didn’t waste my money as I suspect getting a refund from a company in Hong Kong could be very difficult
I bought a mini forums PC a year ago. The um 500, a Ryzen 2500u pro model.
On paper is a perfect office PC with plenty of ports.
In fact it's a thermal nightmares.
The computer sit at 55C ideal and randomly spike to 63, just opening Words.
Gaming on it is fine in theory. But the thermal limit the potential off the hardware, and it's jet engine noise all time.
My SO use it for her work on the go, but that was a were of 400€...
I only heard of them last year, and the AMD based minis were actually pretty solid. It does suck to see a big step back like this though
I kinda thought the slap-dashiness was appealing. Like supporting the underdog. I wanted to like these guys.
So I just received my HX90, nothing on the box or inside indicated liquid metal or carbon fiber or security screws. In fact it has standard phillips screws. No mess from any LM spills. Based on various reviews, I'm now sure there is no LM used but I'm not going to pull it apart to check, don't really care for what I'm using it for(not gaming). I ordered mine a month ago on a preorder, I didn't buy it to test or review, but it runs fine, looks fine, and was easy to get inside. I got it because I liked the design and the small size. I'm happy so far.
But wait, how did the liquid metal get on the other parts if it wasn't used on the CPU? It's just a condiment?
This is what is boggling my mind. How did it even get there? If it's there, why isn't it on the CPU? What the actual fuck?
Icing on the motherboard cake
I have a feeling that they probably didn't apply it correctly (as evidenced from the amount on... fans and stuff), and the computer didn't pass QC because it just instantly thermal throttled. Whoever was supervising the factory that day said "ok, just put normal thermal paste on it today and get it out the door, we'll fix this tomorrow". Then the same shit happened tomorrow, and ... welp, now they probably have some explaining to do. (Probably: "hey, tell the big boss when you change the specs on the factory floor! marketing made that the primary selling point!" And I'm sure that the people assembling the computers and the people designing the marketing don't even work for the same company, and the manufacturing company probably does stuff like this all the time... so... someone learned a valuable lesson about quality control.)
Fun stuff. For someone.
They must have started putting liquid metal on a lot of the units, only to later realize that it was leaking all over the motherboard. Rather than throw the contaminated parts out, they're apparently applying thermal paste instead and just shipping them out as if everything was fine. Small companies with poor fiancials tend to do this kind of shit all the time.
Best I can guess, they tried using liquid metal but misapplied it, so it failed thermal testing. Then they tried cleaning it off with compressed air and replaced with paste.
We know you guys want to bring us positive reviews. Please don't worry.
What we want is honesty, and you have that in spades.
That's what keeps us coming back. Thanks for doing the work you do.
I'm surprised LTT didn't even look into this. Also 6 years of injection molding checking in.
Carbon fiber is actually a pretty common reinforcement used for high stress tolerant plastics. So stuff like plastic chain guides in motors and such. There's no need for it on a PC and it's a thermally not very conductive so it's actually kinda bad for small form factor PCs IMO
I think their thought process was "Steve will handle this"
The reinforcement makes it a lot more rigid, esp. with higher temperatures.
would that make sense for laptop housings with plastic snaps then, to keep the snaps from... snapping off?
They're too busy testing more TikTok hacks.
Linus will automatically dock a fifth of the overall review score unless it has more RGB lights and unicorn puke than a literal pride parade.
Amazing. I thought I was a 1-off when I purchased a H31g earlier this year, and a month after purchasing, the audio jack came clean off the board. Clearly a shitty solder job. Their tech support refused to fix it, so if you were wondering whether that was false advertising too, yeah. You're on your own if you purchase from Minisforum.
They tried to put liquid metal on 3 times, gave up and went "Fuck this shit, put thermal paste."
They said my review unit did not come with Liquid metal, probably for the best but also not representative of what average customers will get.
Pissed off Steve is my favorite Steve. These manufacturers gotta stop it though.
Yeah, this can't be good for his blood pressure to be dealing with repeated failures like that.
These manufacturers pls keep Steve busy I love watching him pissed off!
I hope Steve had a blast writing this piece!
I recently (June 2022) returned a new HX90 mini, because of an electrical short that caused a ground loop when connected to AC powered studio monitor speakers. Static electricity could be heard through the speakers and also affected the USB mouse and HDMI display monitor. The same speaker set up did NOT create a ground loop with other PCs: two Mac Pros, one ASUS laptop, two Galaxy phones. Have you tested this device for electrical grounding? That begs the question... does liquid metal cause electrical grounding issues on all the PCs in which it is used, whether it is contained properly or not? Because on this HX90, it was contained and sealed in as der8auer suggested.
Gallium is EXTREMELY sticky
I wonder if someone dropped a bottle of gallium in the factory?
Splattered on some cases.... "Oh, we'll sell it as a feature!"
sticky and very corrosive to aluminium
@@dy7296 Not only aluminium. It also alloys with tin, so it will make solder joints brittle. It takes several months though.
"actually a feature in some products."
Steve is ultra savage today isn't he~
The phrase "Utter Incompetence" in the title of a GN video is all I needed to hit watch. That Liquid Metal is the subject matter is like icing on the cake.
Icing on the cake like LM iced over the place
Since Minisforum HX90G came out, I wonder if they learn from their wrongs at HX90 Liquid Metal mess and fake Carbon Fiber case.
We need your full and honest review for Minisforum HX90G.
It's always been an astounding thing to me that a company sends something this terrible to a reviewer. It's almost as if they know they can't get it right, so they do it as wrong as possible in order to garner the bad publicity instead. Which... really doesn't work when your business model revolves around selling a product. Also, somnambulantly meandering is something I didn't expect to hear today, or maybe ever, but I love it.
They can get away with it. Check ETA PRIME, a channel with over 700k subs. Yet he never mentioned the LM being bad and actually avoided disassembling it (first video) because he didn't have LM at hand, yet he went to great lenghts to make a 2nd video just to pair it with a 3060 via m2 to pci adapter, obviously bottlenecked to just 2 third of the performance.
It's the same thing as when a videogame launches in a completely unfinished state. Some executive dickhead set an unrealistic set of goals and deadlines and doesn't listen to the engineers saying "it's not done yet" "we need to do more work" "please don't release this." etc. to no avail.
This is the result of a company with completely dysfunctional leadership.
I'm pretty happy to have such warnings. Everyone makes mistakes but if they make them repeatedly with reviewers imagine how much they care about consumers that can't do anything about it anyway.
Thank you VERY much Gamers Nexus for releasing this video at STANDARD 720p!
Almost one thousand dollars for integrated graphics 😂
Actually... due to the hyper inflation we all live in in the first world countries... that's probably actually worth about 80-110$ in 1921's monetary value. Granted, 110$ was a lot of money back then in its own way... but it also wasn't. The kind of person who should be buying a computer back then (if it existed lol) is also the same person who should be buying one today. That is, people with skills and knowledge plus money.
Want to know who shouldn't be buying them in either age? Almost anyone else.
Computers are too cheap today, and it allows the extremely unintelligent to have too much privilege they did not earn or possibly even deserve to have in the first place.
@@sagegeas5198 I disagree, I feel like computers can have a positive impact even in "unintelligent people's" lives (sort of rude to be putting people in boxes like that though, thinking you are automatically entitled to more privileges just because of your 'intelligence' ). Computers and the internet tend to have lots of opportunities for learning and self improvement that might have a higher barrier to entry without access to computer resources. I think it's a positive thing for all walks of life to have access to more information, helps improve everyone.
@@sagegeas5198 "To Be FaiR, yOu HaVe tO HaVe A vErY HiGh Iq To UsE a CoMpUtEr."
Get the fook outta here lmao.
@@sagegeas5198 Oh look a flaming hot garbage take!
@@junko4166 That was some serious pc master race stuff.
As a engineer I love torx and would love to see it getting more widespread usage (not allowed to use it in my systems though, as alan key is the standard there and I'm not even sure there is torx M10+)
But even my safety torx collection is by chance of them being included in a bit set I bought.
From what I've learned with racing bikes (the shoes to be specific), is that you've got nylon, composite and carbon.
Nylon and carbon speak for themselves, but carbon is a form of a composite material.
My initial thought was composite is carbon, but it's actually a mixture of plastic and carbon...
If you take the Shimano R7000 and r8000 pedals, the 7000 is composite and the 8000 is carbon, but by the looks they are rather similar, so it's a blurry line imo... The 8000 looks especially "strange", as there is no fiber weaving you can see (maybe internally).
So if I have to give them any benefit of the doubt, I'd say they might be messing with the definition....
Though the rest of the video shows that that might be giving them too much credit already...
I really wish someone would send Steve something he likes... just once lol. Poor Patrick having to do all this twice, press F
We did like the Torrent!
@@GamersNexus I saw that one! I was so happy for you lmao
@@GamersNexus make some good mood vids like cats angels revisit
@@GamersNexus Too bad it sets itself on fire
F
Have only seen praise for Minisforum for their regular boxes, looks like now they have great feedback so they can improve on their more challenging products.
I love how they keep dragging gigabyte's ass in every single video xD
'S what happens when a company calls them liars.
They put lives at risk with their BS.
They deserve it.
they deserve all the dragging. LOL
Definitely deserved and im here for it.
Pre-ordered one of these a few weeks ago. Can't wait to see what's in store for me. I'm still hopeful as my PC requirements are modest compared to most in this crowd. Fingers crossed they just skip the LM on my model as I didn't really care about that anyway.
the writing of these scripts is getting better and better. I tip my hats to you all!
It's as though someone said "We can't ship these, we promised liquid metal!" so they were sent back to assembly where disgruntled workers were like "They want liquid metal? Let's give 'em liquid metal!" and squirted it right on the CPU fan... Then, when turned on, it created this spattered spectacle.
I'm reminded of the McLaren F1 in the early 90's that had carbon fiber and gold heat shields since carbon fiber is not a good conductor and doesn't react well with extreme heat. I know modern impregnated carbon fiber does much better in regards to heat, but it doesn't help conduct heat. It's quite a good barrier though!
There are two kinds of carbon fibers: turbostratic ones, and graphitic ones. They have about a 100-200x difference in thermal conductivity in the fiber's direction, and at the "200x" end, end up being twice as conductive as copper.
The turbostratic ones stretch more and end up a little stronger, while the graphitic ones are much stiffer and fracture a little sooner.
Regarding high-temperature stability: that's just an issue/effect of the matrix. If it's a generic epoxy, it'll strongly weaken around 150C. If it's pyrolitic graphite, it'll remain structurally sound at 3000C (if you keep it from burning, it's basically coal from that perspective).
Edit: Carbon fiber, with a chemical barrier coating, can be literally used to hold vaporized iron as a pressure vessel. It's the highest-temperature structural material that isn't extremely exotic (there are a few materials, but there is no industry to turn any (but one) of them into large structural parts. The exception is Tungsten, but that's 10x as dense as the graphite-matrix carbon-fiber composite, and about equally as strong (at room temperature; I expect Tungsten to soften more rapidly).
@@namibjDerEchte That's interesting though, but I wouldn't expect to find that on the shell of a Chinese case (of that price), and of course we were let down again.
@@namibjDerEchte Buuut it wouldn't be oriented in the direction of the fibres. At least not for the case or any structual things. You *could* make a thermal pad of unidirecrional fibres but I don't see much use there either. There is still matrix material and it would need to be rather thick to not just crumble. Plus it wouldn't conform to surfaces thus making bad thermal contact.
@@TheYear2525 you could use in-plane graphitic fibers to distribute heat in-plane.
For transfer normal to the plane, you'd use a metal/conductive-ceramic matrix or a lot of heat-conducting powder filler.
Just got my HX90. Glad to say that there is no liquid metal splatter and everything is running great after I installed the Nvme SSD, RAM, & SATA SSD x2 (I bought the barebones version). I'm running Linux (Manjaro) on it and it's very snappy! Need to tinker more but everything seems to be working as intended. Even the 2.5Gb ethernet is correctly recognized. No regrets so far!
was watching some liquid metal cleaning videos last night, honestly it has no place outside of extreme overclocking use.
Right. Hell I still use Arctic Silver 5
I'm on the complete opposite of liquid metal… Carbonaut, because consistency, long life and cleanliness > performance
14 year old me probably would have wanted it, but back then i didn't yet understand the difference between "best" and "absolutely fine".
@@hughjassstudios9688 I see why someone might want that but I like my components to run as cool as possible for max efficiency, lifespan and performance and for that liquid metal is perfect, it doesn't dry up either
a bit concerning when companies reach out for a bit of marketing, and what you'd think they would do with a crappy product, is make one good one that you send out to get reviewed, while you continue making a cheaper version for the public.
but to send the consumer "version" to a GN in such a state can only mean theres even less effort put into the production model
I wonder how much of this is poor application, shipping, or a combination of both. The main cost of using liquid metal is by far developing a reliable application process that can be done in a factory setting and survive freight shipping. Sony spent a lot of R&D on that on the PS5 precisely to avoid this situation we see here. A lesson to be learned I suppose.
I would really like to see GN do a a proper liquid metal application on that, to see if it would make any difference, or if the power limit would make the liquid metal useless
Oh wow, dawid just did a review on this!
Yeah and didn't seem like his was like this.
@Familia Caparas true. He did open it up though and didn't find a mess like this one
@Familia Caparas well tbh he doesn’t do in-depth reviews like gn, he just kinda messes around with pcs
"...is rich in texture and delicate in hand"
Steve: Eww gross
Good one Steve
if they didn't put liquid metal on the cpu why is it all over the parts, I can't figure this out.
They tried and failed but still had to ship product so they slapped them together with paste after hastily wiping them off.
There are precious few channels going in depth like this and I appreciate the effort! Gained a sub.
Since you're already using an AvE testing method, perhaps embracing his "Sharp Knife Fiber Test" - Cut the material in question, and listen for the snapping of fibers. Carbon doesn't have the same obvious sound as glass fibers, but it's still obvious when it's there. Heat from the soldering iron likely just allows you to move any fibers by melting the substrate, assuming there are any.
The year is 2045, humanity has abused the earth to a wasteland and humans are on their last leg. GN still finds a way to sneak in a clip of a gigabyte PSU sacrificing itself in the name of OPP. I love it, back to you Steve.
They must be crazy to want GN to review their machine, clearly they don't know who their dealing with lol👍
"I sent out review samples to 10 top youtubers". Very good.
"Oh no, boss, look"
@@volvo09 - maybe they’ll fix their quality control? Oh and stop lying about the faux carbon fiber.
The funniest part about security screws like that is that they aren't really secure, especially if one doesn't use a thread locking compound. I've popped lots of them loose with a small flat head driver. Kudos for the running of AvE's iron test -- I know it's a lot of work. 😁👍
Heeeeeeeeeeey Steve speaks French "Suggestio-ns" miles better pronunciatio-n than I could
It was better than Doug Heffernin himself could have done! :)
"onfesté", s'il vous plait.
@asdrubale bisanzio 'Tis a great country where you can face racism not only for the colour of your skin but also the language you speak. Does English Canada not have better things to do than Franco-bashing? Do you guys get sexual pleasure at disparaging French speaking people? Because this shit is getting old.
@asdrubale bisanzio Sup fatso? Still being a fascist in 2021? Where are you from so I can return the favor with added value?
@asdrubale bisanzio Racism applies to ethnic groups and culture, to say that French Canada has the same culture as France is like saying that the US has the same culture as the British. Also, why do you hate French culture? French culture is far more than Parisian culture, you know? To say that you hate a whole country's culture make you sound extremely bigoted.
What am I missing here? If there is no liquid metal on the heat sink so why are bits splattered about the unit?
I recently bought a Flow X13, I had to clear C-mos when I got it.
I was surprised to find a similar problem. Not as bad as what you are showing but there was a line of liquid metal on one of the ribbon cables, and a drop on the motherboard itself.
I carefully cleaned it off as best I could. I haven't had any problems with the laptop after i cleared C-mos.
@9:28 Seriously, you could have saved me 10 mins buy saying this at the start. A system described as "Upgrade Friendly" using special security screws just to open the lid is just beyond ridiculous.
So not only did they lie to reviewers once they doubled down and sent you another one with the lie? That's just sad, what were they expecting?
"As if liquid metal was sprayed out of the rear end of a hippo at the chassis for this case."
Brutal, and utterly hilarious. Sadly I was drinking my morning coffee as Steve said that. I now need to wipe down and clean the coffee table, the carpet and the walls!
They didnt lie there is liquid metal just not on the CPU lol
yeah I bet they spun up the fan and then squirted it on there at full blast so the case got well covered (guess they didn't read the manual for liq met)
Just FYI. I bought a little Minisforum windows 10 mini PC on Amazon that was dead on arrival. Or rather it worked perfectly except the screen being black 8 out of every ten seconds on both display outputs. Really a shame, it was amazing value for money but...broken. Did get my money back in week though.
Such a hard flex on Minisforum from Steve using verbiage like "Somnambulantly Meandering" against "big fun and much convenience"
The way I read their description of the material is that it's carbon fibre reinforced plastic with a carbon sheet look. It's injection molded, so that means they can't use sheets. But essentially all carbon or glass fiber products are different levels of plastic and fibre combination. If you use sheets you have a lot of the fibres and typically use epoxy (which is plastic), if you injection mold it you typically use shorter pieces of fibers and something like ABS plastic that can be injection molded. It's not bad in any way, except that it gives marketing teams a way to mislead customers. But nearly all high strength plastics (for tools and such) uses these materials. It should say how much fibre is in it though.
When everything is on micro levels and nanometers. The smallest of liquid metal can destroy the whole system. It's a cascade of destruction.
Did..
Did they think the liquid metal was supposed to be applied to the fan?
I swear half the companies seem engaged in a race to the bottom here. It's good they're competitive at least? Shame they're being competitive at being awful.
Minisforum still might have issues with their liquid metal application. I got a used HX99G (supposedly LM for CPU and GPU) and was surprised that my fan ramps up quite a bit under heavy load (Cinebench R23 or multiple simultaneous compression and decompression jobs). Checking with HWiNFO, the core temps are all over the place.
A run of R23 had following max temps, while average temps were also at similar levels core to core: core 0 - 84.8C, core 1 - 64.8, core 2 - 91.7, core 3 - 74.2, core 4 82.2, core 5 - 79.2, core 6 - 66.6 and core 7 - 63.7.
Running multiple compressing and decompression jobs, core 2 went up to 99.2, while core 7 only reached 61.4, while the CPU was at 100% load and all cores were at around 4 GHz.
Abysmal. I was wondering why the 5900hx in this thing was getting sub-par performance.
Quick question: If I put my GTX 1080, Ryzen 5 3600, B450, RAM, harddrives, case, etc into a "Powerbrick" could I make the worlds smallest gaming PC which consists of a USB C connector in a plastic shroud?
Probably safe to assume this will be the last sample minisforum sends to GN 😂
Bet they seen gamer in the name and figured you would just run a couple benchmarks and praise it, not tear it down and test their marketing too 😎
I love when you absolutely destroy companies like this - good work
To test if carbon fibre is in there the easiest way to test would probably to break a piece of. the high e-module of carbon fibre comes with very low elongation at fracture and it tends to splinter with sharp edges. Granted, some plastics will show a similar behaviour to the eye, but those would be rarely used in that type of application. You could also just burn it, the carbon fibres themselves don't burn up even with a torch burner placed directly under them (temperature >1100°C) and remain after the matrix plastic has burned away. Please be careful with the toxic fumes of the plastic burning if you do that.
Anyway, this really doesn't look like carbon fibre reinforced plastic. Fraudulent marketing
They call it "composite", which is correct.
Hmm in my experience when doing burn test the carbon fibres will only stay there when the content is at least 30% or higher otherwise they will be carried away with the flame which will definetly be visible though. tiny specks of light will be in the flame if it is reinforced.
@@Shrrrg That might be that way, I have only seen fire tests with material build for structure, not optics.
I love how in depth and thurly you go thru this product. And i like how you dont care about the maker and tell the truth about the product. Keep up the excelent work.
Looks like some of the motherboards with uh.. fluids on them repaired by Louis Rossmann.
Not sure if it's new, but the gradient background in the GN chart does not compress very nicely, causing gradient banding other artifacts.
Conclusion: Use static color background for all charts (or increase the gradient range)
Another POS E-waste box, thanks for the heads-up! Not that I would have use for a NUC of any type anyway, I run a full sized box for all the NON-NUC reasons. Great video.
Thanks Steve ! Roman is very happy now :)
Images of removed integrated-heat-spreaders. Didn’t realize people still doing this.
Still using liquid metal? Of course they are. Nothing performs better.
Love seeing the AvE soldering iron test being implemented into the GN testing suite! Another great, informative, diligent review. Well done team!
I want to extend a HUGE shoutout to “Near Cleveland, Ohio” on the carbon fiber invention credit
Imagine sending this to GN. The TH-cam channel famous for it's in depth, technical criticism of tech they review. GN is not going to play hunky-dory and be like "wow cool". They will look for every chance they have to reveal the cracks in the marketing a design, (as they should).
If you want to send something to GN, you better have your shit fully together lol.