Check out our latest video on the NZXT H1 fire hazard: th-cam.com/video/9XIKOSrQdQ0/w-d-xo.html Please consider buying one of GN's Wireframe Mouse Mats to support us: IN STOCK & SHIPPING NOW! store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-wireframe-mouse-mat - this is a high-quality desk-size mousing surface with custom blue rubber underside, blue stitched borders, and a high-quality print with PC component design.
Great coverage..no dont waste alot of time on thermals ...you already manage alot of content and this just seems like not too big of a deal unless units start catching fire or something
The black resin blob on the controller PCB will be covering a chip mounted and bonded directly to the PCB, it is a common way to protect chip on board devices, my guess is that the chip is the microcontroller that controls the thing
While i dont particularly care about the thermals of the system, I would like to know how many cores/threds, graphics compute units and clock speeds the ryzen soc has.
Brad Haines It almost never is a good deal, it often just seems like one. The PS5's 120fps mode delivers the performance of an AMD 3600 and gtx1060 combo according to GN's tests. A PC with basically PS5 performance can be bought for the same price as the PS5, but the lack of 60eu/year online subscription, and cheaper games, make the PC much cheaper. I don't think the KFConsole will be much different. After all there is an extra party that needs to profit from the same hardware you could buy directly and put into a PC
Yeah Steve wouldn't be a great engineer, it's always evident when he tries to disassemble something and be smart about the build. Jay (2cents) al least doesn't try to be a smart ass when he clearly doesn't understand things he sees.
25:30 It's what most call a "Blob Chip" It's a Chip on Board (CoB) where the bare chip is bonded directly to the board with gold leads then epoxy resin coated to protect it. Usually see them in calculators and really cheap electronics. Those old Tiger handheld electronic LCD games come to mind as another place you'd see a blob chip, but they're pretty much in everything small and cheap now.
When Nintendo was developing new chips they shipped first release games using those BLOB chips on the boards of their Cartridges. My copy of Star Fox for the SNES has a blob "MARIO" FX chip in it.
Something you may have missed: the joystick handle actually acts as a spinner/paddle, which may be the reason for it being a wobbly design (and it actually feels pretty good as an Atari paddle, smooth motion).
@@cuy50 It's suppose to be a terrible joke. The whole point was, it doesn't help increase anything. Just like putting on decal stickers on cars doesn't suddenly, give you more horsepower. It's an old dumb myth for increasing performance on things as well as for shits and giggles. 😆
I loved my old Atari2600 console. I had about 50-60 games. It was an awesome console and I hope this crowdfunded version lives up to it’s original experience and expectations 🥳🥳
The fan in this thing is called a blower fan aka 'squirrel cage' and they only ever blow, they are used in high static pressure situations where the air channel is a long run, the air always flows thought the middle and moves off the blades (see radeon RX Vega). Pull the cover off your A/C unit for your air handler... blower for the long air runs needed to hit all parts of the house/business. The "probe points" are vias to the ram on the bottom of the board... they might also be probe points.. but they are vias. You missed the ring of LED's on the controller couldn't tell if they are RGB or not, or really what the use is. And the big glob of "plastic" you saw on the bottom of the white PCB is known as a Glop top; They drop the bare silicon die right onto the device use bonding wires to connect it up and epoxy over it, pull apart a calculator, you'll find a glop top. I don't know if its a cheaper solution than SMD or some sort of socketed chip, but it is VERY robust, used in devices that might get damaged in a drop, or are exposed to twisting force that might pop the solder on a SMD device or allow a chip to fall out of a PLCC type socket.
I was going to comment on the fan, but you beat me to it. As you mentioned, the air will entering through the center and travel radial outwards. The angle of the fins and direction of rotation do not affect the overall direction of flow for these types of fans, but they may impact it's effectiveness.
for some reason they have tented half their vias, seemingly at random. I thought it was a pcb fab issue. not sure. You can see actual programming test points near Q36 and Q35 at 28:03
I think the controller has to be wobbly because the stick turns/rotates, it functions as a paddle for games like breakout and a dial/spinner in games like tempest I believe.
The black thing at 25:25 on the controller is a glop/glob top IC. Probably covering the microcontroller and the probe points near it are programming/debug pins. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_packaging#Glop-top
I'm thinking "FCC" is not "The FCC", but the initials of Fred Chesnais, the guy in charge of this version of Atari. Can't confirm since I'm not sure if his middle initial is 'C'.
@@purplegill10 Middle names are an american thing. Frédéric Chesnais is french, so he does not have a middle name. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chesnais So, I don't know what this "C" stands for. Or FCC.
@@mecha-sheep7674 (Canadian) French guy reporting in. We do have middle names, we just don't use them much outside of applying for a security clearance or other mock-high-sensitivity government crap.
@@BillLambert Well, Chesnais is from this side of the pond, so he does not have a middle name. Note that we French can have between one and a bazillion first names however... There is no rule.
The fan looks like a very typical blower fan like 99% of laptops out there. It will be drawing in air from the left and blowing through the heatsink and out the back on the right side via the airflow channel.
@@mortrem76 I'm not sure typical laptop fans with heatpipes are more effective. They do often have copper heatsinks instead of aluminimum but heatpipe is just a middle man because they don't have access to air right where the CPU is (PCB below, keyboard above).
@@sushi926 yeah. usually the CPU is near the center of the board. They totally could set up a fan to blow air across a simple heatsink on top of the CPU, but they would end up having to pipe warm air a long way to get it out of the laptop, and a lot of heat would leak up through the keyboard causing sweaty hands and annoyed customers. Better to use heat pipes to move the fin-stack to either the very back or side of the laptop. That way they don't have to deal with hot air inside the laptop itself. It's probably slightly less efficient, but totally worth it. Also, many laptops are so damn thin that there would be hardly any room for a simple heatsink on the processor. A separate radiator connected via heat pipe can then be much fatter, resulting in a much quieter machine. In this console the designers clearly have no shortage of space, and noone is going to play games while holding it in their hands. Might as well go with the simpler and cheaper solution.
That is much nicer inside than I was expecting. Props to Atari. Re temperatures: I wouldn't expect a while piece on it, but maybe just pay attention to if it's overheating or not. Maybe one day it will be hacked and people will try to over clock it XD
Huh. This might be the cheapest way to buy a PC that can be mounted inside a monitor. Usually people use laptops. But this thing looks like a better fit. Hopefully production ramps up so we can see some cool DIY mods.
It's a bit weird looking at the internals and specs of this, I went into this expecting an ARM-powered device as typical of these "classic consoles" but it really is closer to a NUC-style computer isn't it? Looking forward to the testing!
Thank you Gregory for sending this in! Have been looking forward to this teardown for ages! Even asked if he was going to do it in the comments of the PS5 teardown
@@rixzin5046 seek "Eta Prime" on YT ,hes also uppraded one with faster RAM,opened BIOS(password) and installed win10 + tests before and after upprade....
The "We Have Played ATARI Today" logo is probably there because the people designing the board had a big giant empty spot, and since they're silk-screening the board anyway, it wouldn't cost them anything to put *something* there.
It might also be a throwback to the 1970s when vanity signing PCBs was a thing. I don't think Atari itself ever did it, though. They were big on anonymizing their employees in an attempt to keep them dependent on the company.
I'm in the process of prototyping my own product and will need a custom PCB designed. Even though there's not really going to be much room on the board, you better believe I'm going to be filling any extra space on there full of Easter eggs and fun designs. :D Sadly, if the board is designed properly, there won't be any extra space on there.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 It could be a reference to the first "Easter Egg" where the coder, working for Atari, would not get any publicly visible credit for their work, so they hid their name within the game - only accessible through a convoluted and unnecessary rigmarole that most people would never perform. Here the names are hidden behind another convoluted and unnecessary rigmarole that most people would never perform.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 Atari codenamed their projects after female employees of the company. This was a custom of Jay Miner, the engineering manager at Atari. The only exception was Stella, the codename for the VCS, which was named after an employees bicycle.
@ 17:25 Steve's understanding (or lack of) of a squirrel-cage fan is terrifying. Ugh! It doesn't suck air IN through the heatsink and duct! It certainly doesn't suck air in through the duct and blow it back out through the same duct! What in the world. It sucks air in through the big open mesh hole at the left side of the screen, down into the squirrel cage fan which is open (you can spin it with your hands, therefore it is open and not blocked as you say!), the squirrel-cage fan spins the air and blows it outwards utilizing centripetal force, and the air flows down through the heatsink and out the duct out the right side of the screen.
on the controller that piece of hard plastic looked like a COB ( Chip on board. ) especially with all the caps, resisters, and what looks like a crystal right next to it.
Did I miss the internal storage overview? I saw a couple of M.2 slots, one of which housed the WiFi card. Did the video show an SSD storage drive with the "Over 100 Classic Games" installed on it? I've heard the VCS is supposed to come wtih a Windows 10 mode on it. Time stamp if I missed it would be great, thanks!
The fan is meant to suck air from inside the shell through the circular cutouts above the fan blades and blow it through the fins and out the duct to the back.
It's really not a good deal. Pretty sure I built my 3400g build for about 500 bucks. And I don't think that was a good deal either, but much better than this will ever be
@@notquiteordinary For a ready to run mini-pc in an attractive case with these specs, upgradable, with a functioning OS, apps, and storefront...$280 is a good deal!
@@Josh-ce9sv system on chip with 3 vega cores isn't good at all isn't upgradeable. 2 cores 4 threads also is bad. Zen 3 apu's are out now and they blow away my system for about 200 dollars more than I spent, if you get the same ram config and hdd setup. 8 cores, 16 threads, faster vega. This console is a rip off.
Nice teardown. It was good to see the internals. ETA Prime's video was more about the functionality of it. You can pop an M.2 drive in there and run Windows since it's actually just a small PC. You can also stream games through Stadia, Geforce Now, etc. and have a much larger library than other consoles. Or load it with all of the classics via emulators. That chip on its own can handle games up to PS2 and Wii. EDIT: ETA Prime uploaded a teardown today too where he added the SSD and 3200MHz RAM. Looked like a 10-20% performance boost, but it's still a low-end APU so don't expect great performance in AAA titles. The Vega 3 graphics can only be pushed so far.
Oh, yeah, the "Standard" ribbon cables. Recently took apart a Compaq 610 with 3 different types of ribbon cable locking mechanisms (lift, slide and slide but in two halves and reversed)
0:01 Patrocinante: case. 3:00 PC. 4:30 Certificado de autenticidad y holograma: coleccionismo. 6:00 Control: joystick. 7:45 Atari 2600 restaurado: no se siente con la mism resistencia ni la palanca ni el botón. 18:00 Tarjetas de memoria. 19:45 Decoraciin interna al estilo de "Asteroides". 25:00 Segundo botón en la palanca de mando. 26:00 4 sensores dentro del joydtick.
22:56 You're correct, centrifugal fans can only work one way, drawing air in through the circular opening and blowing it out through the rectangular opening. Interestingly, whereas traditional fans obviously blow in the opposite direction if flipped around or run in reverse, centrifugal fans always blow the same direction, regardless of whether spun clockwise or counter-clockwise.
Back in the old days, I was eating one controller a month. The white plastic shift kept breaking the rings that pressed the directional buttons. Then dad bought me a controller, disassembled it and made a new shift, in aluminum. That controller still works, although somewhere at their attic, together with the video game, 30+ years later. Thank you Steve for the good memories from this video. I love you dad
Ahhh, a late 70s flashback. I want one just because the original 2600 was the first console I played games on. I also had a Mattel Intellivision and a Magnavox Odyssey 2. They were all bought new and around the time of their original releases.
It pulls air in through the right grille and through the conduit and causes +ve air pressure inside the case which will exhaust wherever it can.. like the grille on the opposite side. It's absolutely fine as it's only meant to push air past the heatsink.
Totally liked watching this Atari tear-Down and watched till the end i would like also to see the temp and if someone is going to do a little gaming preview or what not so yea. thanks Love your content. Have a good one.
That circular splotch on the white PCB in the controller is a COB IC; the IC is adhered to the board, the legs soldered, then a protective black cap is poured atop of it
The fact that they have things printed on the PCB speaks volumes about how the company feels about people opening up and modifying the unit. They are acknowledging that enough people will want to open up and mod their console and they are welcoming it in a sense. This is a touch that I really appreciate.
G'Day Steve, The Game Images on the PCB are Cool, although most owners won't ever see them, The specs for the Ryzen Processor would be good to see compared to the Desktop APU line
8:46 The Sears Telegames console! That's the one we had when I was a kid. My parents couldn't afford the official Atari, so we got the Sears knockoff. :)
if you've ever tore an old vcs controller apart to fix those damnable wafer switches... you wouldn't be complaining about ANYTHING with the new controller. NOTHING is worse than those old controllers.
Mine was the Sears Tele-Games model. $200 is *not* the inflation-adjusted price. I bought it in 1979, so according to one inflation calculator, $200 then is $712.98 now.
That reminds me that I still have an Atari 2600 Junior Console that I bought back in 1989 and its still working fine. Its sitting right next to my Sega Megadrive (with the Mega-CD Attachment), my SNES and my N64. I still love to play them from time to time and even today the games on them are fun.
Whilst the joystick looks garbage, the actual machine looks surprisingly well built. And suggests some limited options for expansion. Would like to see clarification on the direction of the cooling flow though - smoke test?
For those wondering, that's a Ryzen R1000 embedded SoC. Specifically, the R1606G. 2 cores, 4 threads, Zen1, integrated Vega 3. So it's roughly equivalent to the Athlon 200GE. Also, white PCBs add pretty much nothing to cost nowadays. Green, blue, red, yellow, black, and white are all standard colors at most fabs, with no real cost difference. The only time you pay more for different soldermask colors are for matte or novelty colors. White isn't considered novelty. Source: Am PCB engineer. Looking at these boards, it seems like they were just designed by geeks who wanted to do something cool; white PCBs, Asteroids silkscreens, etc. This was clearly a hobby project, and it's cool for what it is. Would be cooler with a V2000 (Renoir, Zen2) SoC, but still.
On the credits bit round the 'we played atari today bit' i saw NRC and for some reason my first thought was "what does the nuclear regulatory commission have to do with this" lul
@@mareksendecki5695 That only matters if the top plate is right on top of the fan inlet, which in this case it clearly is not. The fan pulls air from the entire interior volume of the chassis, which clearly allows fresh air in through the left side of the rear plate.
The plastic bit in the controller that you thought was for support, was the microcontroller. It's an exposed die that's wire bonded directly to the pcp then covered in epoxy.
I took mine apart to add a m.2 sata SSD. It doesn't support nvme drives. If you do this, be careful with the wifi antenna. The big reason to add a SSD is to dual boot it with another operating system. It will boot windows 10 or some versions of Linux. It's a 64bit UEFI setup and secure boot is required. Further, they have parts of the bios locked out with password protection. you can't disable secure boot. The OS on it is based on a linux distro. It will not boot any OS, just ones that there are secure boot keys in the UEFI for. I was unable to boot FreeBSD or MidnightBSD on the device, but it can boot ubuntu or windows. You can also boot off a flash drive. If you hook it up to a keyboard and mouse, you can boot into the BIOS. If you install a custom OS on a SSD, it will default to booting that and you have to get into the bios to actually get it to boot the atari OS. From the atari os, there is an option to restart it in pc mode. One more problem is that PC mode and the UEFI are not visible in all cases. If it's hooked up to a pc monitor, it will work. I had a lot of problems with it not displaying anything going through my Yamaha receiver in my entertainment center in PC mode although the atari os does work. They have a discord server running for backers to get early feedback and there are still a lot of bugs with their online store. Some of the classic games do not work with the joystick controller at all as they require a numeric pad.
Just for your knowledge the big blob of hard plastic on the controller is encapsulating the microcontroleur handling the different functions of the controller hence all the traces we can see going on there =) edit the traces can seen (kind of) at 26:14
You should definitely test it. And send it back to your supporter with upgrades. Test with the cheap thermal pads vs some real thermal paste, or higher quality pads. Toss some big RAM sticks in it and a drive that'll last a while, would be cool to see the differences the thermals made as well as the RAM. Plus your supporter gets the perks.
They are a nice htpc or steam machine. Got a 2tb nvme attached to mine ruuning Fedora. In some ways better, other ways not, to a traditional console. Pro is i can do whatever I want to it. Bad is i have to do it. But for the price, not a bad little unit, even with my upgrades. I can play my emulators, steam titles, and even battlenet blizz games, as well as with a bt remote, deal with streaming from Jellyfin.
That glob of epoxy you were scratching was probably a custom made asic using the Chip On Board (COB) process. It's used a lot for super high volume mass produced chips especially in cases where custom silicon is needed. You see those a lot in toys.
Plz do more wt this. The 2600 was the first device I played games on as a kid. I loved this just for the nostalgia. And yes , I have played Atari today.
Good tip for anyone who takes apart stuff like this or laptops infrequently. Separate out the screws with a 7 day pill container. Cheap and keeps stuff organized
For all you hip youth children that didn't experience this and were curious, at 6:30 Steve is referring to systems commonly referred to as "plug & play" consoles. They were low cost systems priced at or (often) below $100 USD and were mainly marketed for relative ease of use and setup, and for having some IP or branding backing a collection of included games. These systems were similar to the NES/SNES Classic or PS Classic in that they had a selection of games included which weren't meant to be modified by the user, and often only had cables for composite video out and power. They were often sold in places like pharmacies or big box retail outlets such as Walmart and Target, and were typically designed after certain characters or series (hence Steve's explanation that they were "about the size of the controller"), and were fairly unimpressive as their libraries consisted of about a dozen imitations of (often) better titles on far more successful systems. For personal anecdotes, I had a SpongeBob plug & play that had a bunch of 2d platformer games that felt like something out of the Atari 5600 and NES era. It wasn't good, but some bizarre aspect of the fact it was present during my childhood leads me to look back on it fondly like you would an ipod touch or a desktop computer from your youth. Thems was the days, indeed.
Air gets in the fan from the top and the underside and gets pushed through the heatsink. Samsungs first 4K Blu Ray Player had quite a similar cooling, without a flow guidance behind the heatsink, but therefore a second fan working as case fan
Engineer here: The fan is exhausting through the duct, and because of that, it's pulling fresh air through the case, every so slightly cooling the rest of the components. Upgradable ram, M.2 slot. Board looks incredibly well made. Too bad it's just a console.
@@alexcrouse Alright, thanks for your input. Oh, I wouldn't necessarily trust the manufacturers on having properly tested it. It wouldn't be the first time a commercial product has had a bad design. But of course I can't say for sure without testing it. It's probably fine.
@@Josh-ce9sv it's not bad at all at that price, but i'd still be hesitant in pulling the trigger just because of the narrow use it has and having other computers.
I'm interested in the performance once y'all publish the benchmarks. Props to Atari for at least coming up with something different from the other retro consoles. It is very decidedly different. Though performance is going to need to be up there to justify $390.
It can play Cyberpunk in Windows :) ...at potato quality, 15fps, but it plays! Of course, it can also run Stadia in Atari VCS mode, and that can play Cyberpunk much much better.
I was thinking liquid metal, replacing the ram with 32gb of b-die, replacing the wifi module with Wifi 6e, installing 2tb of pcie 4.0, and ignoring the fact that most of those features will not be utilized.
It looks really nice, and the hardware seems decent. That controller is a travesty though. It's easy to make a controller that feels good, it's going to affect the entire experience of the product, and yet they cheap out on it. Boo.
That old-style Atari controller is actually freaking genius. The stick rotates, so you can use it as a spinner for games like Pong, something most people haven't been able to do since the early 80s, when Pong consoles actually shipped with spinners. You guys, Pong is actually a pretty cool game *IF* you don't play it with a d-pad, but with an actual spinner. Also, Arkanoid, Tempest, Gyruss... There are a whole lot of games that never worked correctly with a gamepad and a mouse, and can finally be played properly.
![[UNCUT] "เสรีพิศุทธ์" แฉยับ! งัดหลักฐานใหม่ชั้น 14 ได้นอนคุกสมใจแน่!! I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์ I 2 ก.ย.67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/O1SSg4p9Izs/mqdefault.jpg)
Check out our latest video on the NZXT H1 fire hazard: th-cam.com/video/9XIKOSrQdQ0/w-d-xo.html
Please consider buying one of GN's Wireframe Mouse Mats to support us: IN STOCK & SHIPPING NOW! store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-wireframe-mouse-mat - this is a high-quality desk-size mousing surface with custom blue rubber underside, blue stitched borders, and a high-quality print with PC component design.
Great coverage..no dont waste alot of time on thermals ...you already manage alot of content and this just seems like not too big of a deal unless units start catching fire or something
The black resin blob on the controller PCB will be covering a chip mounted and bonded directly to the PCB, it is a common way to protect chip on board devices, my guess is that the chip is the microcontroller that controls the thing
Thanks, i finally slept.
Can you set up the heat shimmer camera set up for the VCS thermals?
While i dont particularly care about the thermals of the system, I would like to know how many cores/threds, graphics compute units and clock speeds the ryzen soc has.
Still waiting for KFConsole teardown
I literally need to see this review. Lmao
Saaame
He needs to buy some actual KFC to put into the console to test how well the system can keep the chicken warm!
Brad Haines It almost never is a good deal, it often just seems like one. The PS5's 120fps mode delivers the performance of an AMD 3600 and gtx1060 combo according to GN's tests. A PC with basically PS5 performance can be bought for the same price as the PS5, but the lack of 60eu/year online subscription, and cheaper games, make the PC much cheaper. I don't think the KFConsole will be much different. After all there is an extra party that needs to profit from the same hardware you could buy directly and put into a PC
It's gonna get greasy!
Thank you Gregory for loaning the device so we can have fun watching this.
You're welcome. This is great entertainment for me as well.
@@penguinguyx thanks Greg! Love u papa. Best console ever make(':
@@penguinguyx hope he didn't jack up that joystick's rotary function, since he had no idea about its existence going into it.
Piece of tape is to prevent the RFI cage from cutting the fan cable.
Could've held the slack to the wifi antennas too.
That was my thought as well.
Yeah, it just didn't really seem like it was held in place very well.
Oh boy nzxt would approve
Yeah Steve wouldn't be a great engineer, it's always evident when he tries to disassemble something and be smart about the build. Jay (2cents) al least doesn't try to be a smart ass when he clearly doesn't understand things he sees.
25:30 It's what most call a "Blob Chip" It's a Chip on Board (CoB) where the bare chip is bonded directly to the board with gold leads then epoxy resin coated to protect it.
Usually see them in calculators and really cheap electronics. Those old Tiger handheld electronic LCD games come to mind as another place you'd see a blob chip, but they're pretty much in everything small and cheap now.
Thanks so much for the background information! Really hellps a lot.
@@GamersNexus "glop top" is another commonly used term
When Nintendo was developing new chips they shipped first release games using those BLOB chips on the boards of their Cartridges. My copy of Star Fox for the SNES has a blob "MARIO" FX chip in it.
@@GamersNexus They're super common in old game cartridges! I'm familiar with those cause I often repaired my old Famicom cartridges back in the days.
Came here to explain this, happy to se someone already did it!
The white PCB might be to help reflect/diffuse that ring of LEDs
Excellent point and great observation. Thanks for sharing.
Also making white PCBs these days isn't as expensive as it once was, I'd say the cost was the same given large quantity
@@the_perigoso Even in small batches they're still the same cost. Things have definitely gotten more streamlined in the past 5 years.
@@YttriumtYcLief depends on the fab, but yes, lot's out there offering prototypes and low quantities for the same cost
Not gonna lie, when Steve said "Have you played atari today? Is that a reference?"
I felt my hair grow white in real time.
Not only do we get an Atari breakdown but also Star Trek cats? Steve taking things to another level.
Something you may have missed: the joystick handle actually acts as a spinner/paddle, which may be the reason for it being a wobbly design (and it actually feels pretty good as an Atari paddle, smooth motion).
I was wondering why there was a flat flex going up into the controller stick.
Saw that, yeah, but we hadn't yet tested it and so we're reserving commentary on its quality until we get to the review itself.
Yeah, this is pretty genius. After 40 years, we can finally play games like Arkanoid, Tempest, Pong, or Gyruss properly at home.
@@adrianmalkovich7101 hopefully we can get it working on pc to play some Typhoon 2001
@@adrianmalkovich7101 You could buy paddles for the 2600
Initials- FCC- the Atari CEO is Fred Chesnais. The COO is Michael Arzt.
That would be FC then, not FCC. Unless he got a middle name of course...
@@Qyngali well duh. Go watch the video again, they did middle initials on them..
COO is a pigeon call.
Maybe the initials are the backers ?
@@DrSid42 There was somewhere around 10,000-11,000 backers.
16:35 squirrel cage fans input through the top and out the side. Its venting OUT the back, not in.
25:36 thats a glop-top chip
No glue on the console. That has to be an achievement unlocked.
Maybe, they should've add glue, it would've increase performance by 50%! 😆
@@cuy50 It's suppose to be a terrible joke. The whole point was, it doesn't help increase anything. Just like putting on decal stickers on cars doesn't suddenly, give you more horsepower. It's an old dumb myth for increasing performance on things as well as for shits and giggles. 😆
I loved my old Atari2600 console. I had about 50-60 games. It was an awesome console and I hope this crowdfunded version lives up to it’s original experience and expectations 🥳🥳
The CPU is a r1606g which is basically a Ryzen 3 2200U with higher clock speeds
The fan in this thing is called a blower fan aka 'squirrel cage' and they only ever blow, they are used in high static pressure situations where the air channel is a long run, the air always flows thought the middle and moves off the blades (see radeon RX Vega). Pull the cover off your A/C unit for your air handler... blower for the long air runs needed to hit all parts of the house/business. The "probe points" are vias to the ram on the bottom of the board... they might also be probe points.. but they are vias. You missed the ring of LED's on the controller couldn't tell if they are RGB or not, or really what the use is. And the big glob of "plastic" you saw on the bottom of the white PCB is known as a Glop top; They drop the bare silicon die right onto the device use bonding wires to connect it up and epoxy over it, pull apart a calculator, you'll find a glop top. I don't know if its a cheaper solution than SMD or some sort of socketed chip, but it is VERY robust, used in devices that might get damaged in a drop, or are exposed to twisting force that might pop the solder on a SMD device or allow a chip to fall out of a PLCC type socket.
I was going to comment on the fan, but you beat me to it. As you mentioned, the air will entering through the center and travel radial outwards. The angle of the fins and direction of rotation do not affect the overall direction of flow for these types of fans, but they may impact it's effectiveness.
Im certain it must be cheaper at large scale to do the 'glop tops'
for some reason they have tented half their vias, seemingly at random. I thought it was a pcb fab issue. not sure. You can see actual programming test points near Q36 and Q35 at 28:03
I don't think Steve knew what a blower fan was after all these years of reviewing technology with blower fans. Thank you for sharing.
I always love when people put Easter eggs inside a product. I took apart a Razer mouse and saw they wrote credits on the plastic.
Loved that they did the same thing with the original Amiga 1000.
And, was there any way to skip the Credits??
I think the controller has to be wobbly because the stick turns/rotates, it functions as a paddle for games like breakout and a dial/spinner in games like tempest I believe.
The black thing at 25:25 on the controller is a glop/glob top IC. Probably covering the microcontroller and the probe points near it are programming/debug pins. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_packaging#Glop-top
I'm thinking "FCC" is not "The FCC", but the initials of Fred Chesnais, the guy in charge of this version of Atari. Can't confirm since I'm not sure if his middle initial is 'C'.
Wow you really aren't kidding. I've been searching for half an hour and I can't find anything related to that dude's middle name.
@@purplegill10 Middle names are an american thing. Frédéric Chesnais is french, so he does not have a middle name. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chesnais
So, I don't know what this "C" stands for. Or FCC.
@@mecha-sheep7674 Ah, that makes sense then. I wonder why they did FCC then if those are his initials.
@@mecha-sheep7674 (Canadian) French guy reporting in. We do have middle names, we just don't use them much outside of applying for a security clearance or other mock-high-sensitivity government crap.
@@BillLambert Well, Chesnais is from this side of the pond, so he does not have a middle name.
Note that we French can have between one and a bazillion first names however... There is no rule.
Steve "I hope I can play E.T." me "oh god don't even think about it"
It’s so bad it’s good.
I just watched “Ready Player One” tonight. I was beginning to think that managing to play E.T. Would be the final 3rd key challenge.
I found that game for a dollar at a local disc traders, Don't even have an atari, just wanted the game history.
The added trash sounds when he tossed it was a nice touch
@@Aaron-iz3hk I prefer the gunshot sound affects when a wire gets cut but yeah the Trash effect got me good.
The most impressive thing was the Star Trek Cats 🐱
We thought it was very cool!
The lizard guy Kirk was fighting was called the Gorn.
@@pancrojones Yeah, we put that on the screen
@@GamersNexus I didn't see it. sorry about that.
The fan looks like a very typical blower fan like 99% of laptops out there. It will be drawing in air from the left and blowing through the heatsink and out the back on the right side via the airflow channel.
Actually, laptop tend to use heat pipe to throw warmth away more effectively with a blower fan and fins. That is just an aluminium heatsink!
Its honestly nice to see them use an off the shelf notebook fan since the modern designs move a lot of air with almost no noise.
@@mortrem76 I'm not sure typical laptop fans with heatpipes are more effective. They do often have copper heatsinks instead of aluminimum but heatpipe is just a middle man because they don't have access to air right where the CPU is (PCB below, keyboard above).
@@sushi926 yeah. usually the CPU is near the center of the board. They totally could set up a fan to blow air across a simple heatsink on top of the CPU, but they would end up having to pipe warm air a long way to get it out of the laptop, and a lot of heat would leak up through the keyboard causing sweaty hands and annoyed customers. Better to use heat pipes to move the fin-stack to either the very back or side of the laptop. That way they don't have to deal with hot air inside the laptop itself. It's probably slightly less efficient, but totally worth it.
Also, many laptops are so damn thin that there would be hardly any room for a simple heatsink on the processor. A separate radiator connected via heat pipe can then be much fatter, resulting in a much quieter machine.
In this console the designers clearly have no shortage of space, and noone is going to play games while holding it in their hands. Might as well go with the simpler and cheaper solution.
@@sushi926 exactly
My grandma just walked in and said...this guy looks like jesus...
hey man i watch your videos....
that's tech Jesus to you grandma.
nice channel name
Damn your grandma's that old to know what Jesus looked like?
That's what every dead grandma says.
I must admit, I do love those easter eggs on the pcb.
I think those lil easter eggs on the board are a really nice touch.
That is much nicer inside than I was expecting. Props to Atari. Re temperatures: I wouldn't expect a while piece on it, but maybe just pay attention to if it's overheating or not. Maybe one day it will be hacked and people will try to over clock it XD
dont need to, just use Ryzen master to overclock. I'm sure it isnt hard to get the x86 OS of your liking. Wether the bios is locked or not.
@@bradhaines3142 that’s what I’m wanting/waiting to see
Getting Windows 10 to boot would be nice. Or Linux.
ETA Prime did an overclock and upgraded the ram. Got a little bit more out of it.
Feels like a device that could be fun to put Linux on
Someone on TH-cam installed Windows 10 I think as well...Yes Eta Prime did
th-cam.com/video/7pt0_bI2be4/w-d-xo.html
I think the OS it comes with is actually Linux, modified Debian I believe.
@@LuckyStrikeLT As long as its stable, doesnt playstation use linux as os as well, i remember that it was an open source thing, might be wrong
@@exitioregem8466 Ye most consoles run on the Linux kernel nowadays
It most definately has already been done. And probably everyone should do!
Looks like they didn't want to have to deal with heatpipes and ended up getting a more substantial fin stack out of it too.
Huh. This might be the cheapest way to buy a PC that can be mounted inside a monitor.
Usually people use laptops. But this thing looks like a better fit.
Hopefully production ramps up so we can see some cool DIY mods.
It's a bit weird looking at the internals and specs of this, I went into this expecting an ARM-powered device as typical of these "classic consoles" but it really is closer to a NUC-style computer isn't it? Looking forward to the testing!
th-cam.com/video/wSKTYPXgWsU/w-d-xo.html
Thank you Gregory for sending this in! Have been looking forward to this teardown for ages! Even asked if he was going to do it in the comments of the PS5 teardown
I'm actually really interested in those Ryzen SoCs. Try booting into your standard benchmark OS and running some tests.
Someone already did.
@@rixzin5046 seek "Eta Prime" on YT ,hes also uppraded one with faster RAM,opened BIOS(password) and installed win10 + tests before and after upprade....
@@jkarra2334 thank you!
What handles the audio on the VCS? Is it the SoC? Or something else?
The "We Have Played ATARI Today" logo is probably there because the people designing the board had a big giant empty spot, and since they're silk-screening the board anyway, it wouldn't cost them anything to put *something* there.
It might also be a throwback to the 1970s when vanity signing PCBs was a thing. I don't think Atari itself ever did it, though. They were big on anonymizing their employees in an attempt to keep them dependent on the company.
I'm in the process of prototyping my own product and will need a custom PCB designed. Even though there's not really going to be much room on the board, you better believe I'm going to be filling any extra space on there full of Easter eggs and fun designs. :D Sadly, if the board is designed properly, there won't be any extra space on there.
@@BRUXXUS You could still use fun numbers like R420 and C69.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 It could be a reference to the first "Easter Egg" where the coder, working for Atari, would not get any publicly visible credit for their work, so they hid their name within the game - only accessible through a convoluted and unnecessary rigmarole that most people would never perform. Here the names are hidden behind another convoluted and unnecessary rigmarole that most people would never perform.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 Atari codenamed their projects after female employees of the company. This was a custom of Jay Miner, the engineering manager at Atari. The only exception was Stella, the codename for the VCS, which was named after an employees bicycle.
25:24 don't scratch the glob of encapsulant, there's a chip under there.
Indeed, I remember seeing that in old logic boards during the 90s.
@ 17:25 Steve's understanding (or lack of) of a squirrel-cage fan is terrifying. Ugh! It doesn't suck air IN through the heatsink and duct! It certainly doesn't suck air in through the duct and blow it back out through the same duct! What in the world.
It sucks air in through the big open mesh hole at the left side of the screen, down into the squirrel cage fan which is open (you can spin it with your hands, therefore it is open and not blocked as you say!), the squirrel-cage fan spins the air and blows it outwards utilizing centripetal force, and the air flows down through the heatsink and out the duct out the right side of the screen.
on the controller that piece of hard plastic looked like a COB ( Chip on board. ) especially with all the caps, resisters, and what looks like a crystal right next to it.
Already saw Spawnwave's teardown but still a good video and different perspectives are always appreciated. Ty.
Did I miss the internal storage overview? I saw a couple of M.2 slots, one of which housed the WiFi card. Did the video show an SSD storage drive with the "Over 100 Classic Games" installed on it? I've heard the VCS is supposed to come wtih a Windows 10 mode on it. Time stamp if I missed it would be great, thanks!
As for the last one, he read it from the box: has a PC mode, no OS included.
th-cam.com/video/wSKTYPXgWsU/w-d-xo.html and click the PC mode tab here- AtariVCS.com
Classic games are streamed, not on board, and the M2 slot is for windows. The whole system runs off NAND flash
Atleast there's stock. I can pre order one no problem right now if I wanted too. Can't day that about a lot of products.
“I just hope we can play E.T. on it”
- Steve, GN 2021
6:00 “Gorn”. I now know I have reached a crossroads in my life...
As it allows installing other x86 OSs the base VCS is actually a very good price for a Ryzen embedded system.
The fan is meant to suck air from inside the shell through the circular cutouts above the fan blades and blow it through the fins and out the duct to the back.
This is actually a pretty good deal, better performance than any pre built mini pc in that price range, if you find it at 400$.
Starts at $280 at Walmart for the base model.
It's really not a good deal. Pretty sure I built my 3400g build for about 500 bucks. And I don't think that was a good deal either, but much better than this will ever be
@@notquiteordinary For a ready to run mini-pc in an attractive case with these specs, upgradable, with a functioning OS, apps, and storefront...$280 is a good deal!
@@notquiteordinary I said specifically PRE BUILT MINI PC, no custom made setups.
@@Josh-ce9sv system on chip with 3 vega cores isn't good at all isn't upgradeable. 2 cores 4 threads also is bad. Zen 3 apu's are out now and they blow away my system for about 200 dollars more than I spent, if you get the same ram config and hdd setup. 8 cores, 16 threads, faster vega.
This console is a rip off.
Nice teardown. It was good to see the internals. ETA Prime's video was more about the functionality of it. You can pop an M.2 drive in there and run Windows since it's actually just a small PC. You can also stream games through Stadia, Geforce Now, etc. and have a much larger library than other consoles. Or load it with all of the classics via emulators. That chip on its own can handle games up to PS2 and Wii.
EDIT: ETA Prime uploaded a teardown today too where he added the SSD and 3200MHz RAM. Looked like a 10-20% performance boost, but it's still a low-end APU so don't expect great performance in AAA titles. The Vega 3 graphics can only be pushed so far.
Oh, yeah, the "Standard" ribbon cables. Recently took apart a Compaq 610 with 3 different types of ribbon cable locking mechanisms (lift, slide and slide but in two halves and reversed)
pretty cool little thing I appreciate all the pictures on the PCB and the message under the heat sink its like a reward for being curious lol
Very strange to see a 'Atari' VCS with 8gb of SODIMM ram and M.2 slots.
0:01 Patrocinante: case.
3:00 PC.
4:30 Certificado de autenticidad y holograma: coleccionismo.
6:00 Control: joystick.
7:45 Atari 2600 restaurado: no se siente con la mism resistencia ni la palanca ni el botón.
18:00 Tarjetas de memoria.
19:45 Decoraciin interna al estilo de "Asteroides".
25:00 Segundo botón en la palanca de mando.
26:00 4 sensores dentro del joydtick.
“Decades of nerd grime...” 🤢😂
That's a delicacy.
Life of Grime
This is my new band name! I call dibs! You can't have it it's mine all mine!
@@MiGujack3 bro
thats a layer of protection..
22:56 You're correct, centrifugal fans can only work one way, drawing air in through the circular opening and blowing it out through the rectangular opening. Interestingly, whereas traditional fans obviously blow in the opposite direction if flipped around or run in reverse, centrifugal fans always blow the same direction, regardless of whether spun clockwise or counter-clockwise.
This is a pretty interesting tear down. If I didn't already have a Hades Canyon Nuc I would consider getting a VCS.
Hades Canyon was excellent!
Back in the old days, I was eating one controller a month. The white plastic shift kept breaking the rings that pressed the directional buttons. Then dad bought me a controller, disassembled it and made a new shift, in aluminum. That controller still works, although somewhere at their attic, together with the video game, 30+ years later. Thank you Steve for the good memories from this video.
I love you dad
I think this is a very fascinating device and I much appreciate the in depth tech video
Ahhh, a late 70s flashback. I want one just because the original 2600 was the first console I played games on. I also had a Mattel Intellivision and a Magnavox Odyssey 2. They were all bought new and around the time of their original releases.
I cringed every time Steve said "heat shield" - EMC shielding seems to be largely forgotten in PC building these days. Young whippersnappers!
I was confused why he kept calling it a heat shield.
The funny part is he thinks he's an expert on this stuff and cant even work out which way a fan moves air...
The fact that this comment has only 27 likes is telling.
It pulls air in through the right grille and through the conduit and causes +ve air pressure inside the case which will exhaust wherever it can.. like the grille on the opposite side. It's absolutely fine as it's only meant to push air past the heatsink.
Totally liked watching this Atari tear-Down and watched till the end i would like also to see the temp and if someone is going to do a little gaming preview or what not so yea. thanks Love your content. Have a good one.
That circular splotch on the white PCB in the controller is a COB IC; the IC is adhered to the board, the legs soldered, then a protective black cap is poured atop of it
I care immensely about the VCS thermals. I probably shouldn't, though.
The fact that they have things printed on the PCB speaks volumes about how the company feels about people opening up and modifying the unit. They are acknowledging that enough people will want to open up and mod their console and they are welcoming it in a sense. This is a touch that I really appreciate.
G'Day Steve,
The Game Images on the PCB are Cool, although most owners won't ever see them,
The specs for the Ryzen Processor would be good to see compared to the Desktop APU line
8:46 The Sears Telegames console! That's the one we had when I was a kid. My parents couldn't afford the official Atari, so we got the Sears knockoff. :)
if you've ever tore an old vcs controller apart to fix those damnable wafer switches... you wouldn't be complaining about ANYTHING with the new controller. NOTHING is worse than those old controllers.
Mine was the Sears Tele-Games model. $200 is *not* the inflation-adjusted price. I bought it in 1979, so according to one inflation calculator, $200 then is $712.98 now.
That reminds me that I still have an Atari 2600 Junior Console that I bought back in 1989 and its still working fine. Its sitting right next to my Sega Megadrive (with the Mega-CD Attachment), my SNES and my N64. I still love to play them from time to time and even today the games on them are fun.
Atari got that M.2. I heard that. 😁 And Ubuntu? Very interesting.
Whilst the joystick looks garbage, the actual machine looks surprisingly well built. And suggests some limited options for expansion.
Would like to see clarification on the direction of the cooling flow though - smoke test?
OMG "Decades of Nerd Grime," is this some sort of grunge cover album or ?
For those wondering, that's a Ryzen R1000 embedded SoC. Specifically, the R1606G. 2 cores, 4 threads, Zen1, integrated Vega 3. So it's roughly equivalent to the Athlon 200GE.
Also, white PCBs add pretty much nothing to cost nowadays. Green, blue, red, yellow, black, and white are all standard colors at most fabs, with no real cost difference. The only time you pay more for different soldermask colors are for matte or novelty colors. White isn't considered novelty. Source: Am PCB engineer.
Looking at these boards, it seems like they were just designed by geeks who wanted to do something cool; white PCBs, Asteroids silkscreens, etc. This was clearly a hobby project, and it's cool for what it is. Would be cooler with a V2000 (Renoir, Zen2) SoC, but still.
On the credits bit round the 'we played atari today bit' i saw NRC and for some reason my first thought was "what does the nuclear regulatory commission have to do with this" lul
Thanks Gregory. Appreciate the content piece help you're giving.
Kind of miffed that Steve doesn't know how that style of fans are designed to work to be honest😬
i mean when is the last time you've seen him take apart a laptop? should give you a good enough idea..
He knows how they work. He just points out that the top plate doesn't have any holes in it which is odd because that's where the air should come from
@@mareksendecki5695 That only matters if the top plate is right on top of the fan inlet, which in this case it clearly is not. The fan pulls air from the entire interior volume of the chassis, which clearly allows fresh air in through the left side of the rear plate.
The plastic bit in the controller that you thought was for support, was the microcontroller. It's an exposed die that's wire bonded directly to the pcp then covered in epoxy.
Idk if it can handle ET...I sure can't lol.
I shall drink my vintage early 2000's internet wine to that,
I took mine apart to add a m.2 sata SSD. It doesn't support nvme drives. If you do this, be careful with the wifi antenna. The big reason to add a SSD is to dual boot it with another operating system. It will boot windows 10 or some versions of Linux. It's a 64bit UEFI setup and secure boot is required. Further, they have parts of the bios locked out with password protection. you can't disable secure boot. The OS on it is based on a linux distro.
It will not boot any OS, just ones that there are secure boot keys in the UEFI for. I was unable to boot FreeBSD or MidnightBSD on the device, but it can boot ubuntu or windows. You can also boot off a flash drive. If you hook it up to a keyboard and mouse, you can boot into the BIOS. If you install a custom OS on a SSD, it will default to booting that and you have to get into the bios to actually get it to boot the atari OS. From the atari os, there is an option to restart it in pc mode.
One more problem is that PC mode and the UEFI are not visible in all cases. If it's hooked up to a pc monitor, it will work. I had a lot of problems with it not displaying anything going through my Yamaha receiver in my entertainment center in PC mode although the atari os does work.
They have a discord server running for backers to get early feedback and there are still a lot of bugs with their online store.
Some of the classic games do not work with the joystick controller at all as they require a numeric pad.
I'm shocked it has a ryzen cpu in it :O
I'm surprise, you are shocked, as it was advertised with a AMD Ryzen in it a while ago. 😁
Just for your knowledge the big blob of hard plastic on the controller is encapsulating the microcontroleur handling the different functions of the controller hence all the traces we can see going on there =)
edit the traces can seen (kind of) at 26:14
I have the original joystick and it feels like it came straight out of a F16 unlike the crappy cheap modern one.
Thanks Gregory, for loaning the VCS to GN so they could show all of us what it's made of.
Atari makes a comeback
Me: now thats a name i haven't heard in a long time
The brand, but not the company.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari
You should definitely test it. And send it back to your supporter with upgrades. Test with the cheap thermal pads vs some real thermal paste, or higher quality pads. Toss some big RAM sticks in it and a drive that'll last a while, would be cool to see the differences the thermals made as well as the RAM. Plus your supporter gets the perks.
th-cam.com/video/wSKTYPXgWsU/w-d-xo.html
I still want one for no good reason.
No good reason is a good reason.
They are a nice htpc or steam machine. Got a 2tb nvme attached to mine ruuning Fedora. In some ways better, other ways not, to a traditional console. Pro is i can do whatever I want to it. Bad is i have to do it.
But for the price, not a bad little unit, even with my upgrades. I can play my emulators, steam titles, and even battlenet blizz games, as well as with a bt remote, deal with streaming from Jellyfin.
That glob of epoxy you were scratching was probably a custom made asic using the Chip On Board (COB) process. It's used a lot for super high volume mass produced chips especially in cases where custom silicon is needed. You see those a lot in toys.
Its a purpose built mini PC with an APU and $10 of Atari classic software. I grew up on a 2600 and this thing had zero draw for me.
Plz do more wt this. The 2600 was the first device I played games on as a kid. I loved this just for the nostalgia.
And yes , I have played Atari today.
Next step: Liquid N2 overclocking!
Good tip for anyone who takes apart stuff like this or laptops infrequently. Separate out the screws with a 7 day pill container. Cheap and keeps stuff organized
Steve was trying to get the controller out of the box so I skipped ahead and he was still trying...
For all you hip youth children that didn't experience this and were curious, at 6:30 Steve is referring to systems commonly referred to as "plug & play" consoles. They were low cost systems priced at or (often) below $100 USD and were mainly marketed for relative ease of use and setup, and for having some IP or branding backing a collection of included games. These systems were similar to the NES/SNES Classic or PS Classic in that they had a selection of games included which weren't meant to be modified by the user, and often only had cables for composite video out and power.
They were often sold in places like pharmacies or big box retail outlets such as Walmart and Target, and were typically designed after certain characters or series (hence Steve's explanation that they were "about the size of the controller"), and were fairly unimpressive as their libraries consisted of about a dozen imitations of (often) better titles on far more successful systems.
For personal anecdotes, I had a SpongeBob plug & play that had a bunch of 2d platformer games that felt like something out of the Atari 5600 and NES era. It wasn't good, but some bizarre aspect of the fact it was present during my childhood leads me to look back on it fondly like you would an ipod touch or a desktop computer from your youth. Thems was the days, indeed.
The Atari joystick you were describing is literally called a plug and play console 😅
Jakks Pacific TV Games
Air gets in the fan from the top and the underside and gets pushed through the heatsink. Samsungs first 4K Blu Ray Player had quite a similar cooling, without a flow guidance behind the heatsink, but therefore a second fan working as case fan
"non destructively tear down" And someone lets this guy do the tear down.........
Engineer here: The fan is exhausting through the duct, and because of that, it's pulling fresh air through the case, every so slightly cooling the rest of the components. Upgradable ram, M.2 slot. Board looks incredibly well made. Too bad it's just a console.
What do you think about the duct being so long? Usually these laptop-type fans have almost no exhaust travel.
@@Maxim0M1 seems to have minimal restriction. I don't see it being an issue.
@@alexcrouse Even when there's a 90 degrees curve on it? Isn't that inefficient compared to a straight duct?
@@Maxim0M1 yea, but i think it's got enough cross section to do the job. You'd think they tested it.
@@alexcrouse Alright, thanks for your input.
Oh, I wouldn't necessarily trust the manufacturers on having properly tested it. It wouldn't be the first time a commercial product has had a bad design. But of course I can't say for sure without testing it. It's probably fine.
If this was like $200, it'd be a really fun living room toy. as it stands, it's just really hard to justify.
Perhaps it will come down in price sometime. I would buy it if I could get a console + controller for $200 or less.
Actually the $280 the base model costs is really good for a mini pc with these specs, upgradable ram and ssd, and an os, apps, storefront.
@@Josh-ce9sv it's not bad at all at that price, but i'd still be hesitant in pulling the trigger just because of the narrow use it has and having other computers.
I'm interested in the performance once y'all publish the benchmarks. Props to Atari for at least coming up with something different from the other retro consoles. It is very decidedly different. Though performance is going to need to be up there to justify $390.
It can play Cyberpunk in Windows :) ...at potato quality, 15fps, but it plays! Of course, it can also run Stadia in Atari VCS mode, and that can play Cyberpunk much much better.
Base model is only $280 at Walmart
@@Dreamwriter4242 Definitely a cooler STB than a Chromecast + Stadia controller.
Simple PCB... Why not water cool it for no reason at all?!
I was thinking liquid metal, replacing the ram with 32gb of b-die, replacing the wifi module with Wifi 6e, installing 2tb of pcie 4.0, and ignoring the fact that most of those features will not be utilized.
@@hakurei06 not sure about the liquid metal but everything else. Why not? Wondering if there's any way to OC the APU or even better the RAM.
I had an Atari Console as a child, this review made me smile. Thanks!
It looks really nice, and the hardware seems decent. That controller is a travesty though. It's easy to make a controller that feels good, it's going to affect the entire experience of the product, and yet they cheap out on it. Boo.
It seems to happen a lot with these kinds of things.
@@brokenpixels263 I have to assume it's harder than it looks, because as you say companies keep fumbling it.
That old-style Atari controller is actually freaking genius. The stick rotates, so you can use it as a spinner for games like Pong, something most people haven't been able to do since the early 80s, when Pong consoles actually shipped with spinners. You guys, Pong is actually a pretty cool game *IF* you don't play it with a d-pad, but with an actual spinner. Also, Arkanoid, Tempest, Gyruss... There are a whole lot of games that never worked correctly with a gamepad and a mouse, and can finally be played properly.