 Buy an unlocked Intel 4th Gen Core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of Rome 2 Total War. Click now to learn more. Welcome to my unboxing and overview of the ASRock M8. Their tagline for it is unstoppable and while I might have agreed with that if they had made it out of something other than aluminum alloy, I think you could stop an MITX system made out of aluminum alloy, it just might be uncomfortable, particularly if it hits you in the head. Alright, let's have a look at the packaging. So the first thing we find is a very healthy feeling accessory box followed by, ah yes, awesome, closed cell foam. ASRock expects this, unlike most computer cases, to be shipped with a fair amount of weight to it because not only is it a very well built chassis, and Linus how are you saying all this stuff before you even opened it? Well, I've seen it before. So not only is it a very well built chassis, it also has a pretty significant amount of hardware in it and it can hold a significant amount more. So the first thing we find opening it up is the usual do not eat. Of course, please do not eat this. Put it away, put it in the garbage, keep it away from babies, all of that good stuff. And then we find the chassis itself. This is the M8. It was designed in collaboration. I have it upside down with BMW Design Works USA. It uses, oh man, it's just absolutely gorgeous. I mean, we'll do some B-roll of this, but I'll still try and show it to you guys a little bit. So it can be configured either to stand up like this or you can lay it down on its side. It actually has a G sensor, a gravity sensor for the front OLED display that also has a little rubberized soft touch knob around it. So you can use that for a variety of different functionality. You can use the knob to control things like volume as well as power management. It has a display that can show you a clock, CPU usage, CPU clock speed, all kinds of cool stuff like that. They have a little application. A command, yes, A command. So to me, this baby really is about form and function. So while I will spend a lot of time sort of getting all doe-eyed over the gorgeousness of the exterior as well as the industrial design here, I would like to take a moment to show this to you guys. It is also extremely robust. You can actually use these cross braces here around the outside as handles for the unit. You can move it around that way and you're not going to risk damaging it in any way. So here in the front, we have a slimline DVD rewriter that is actually included for USB 3.0 ports as well as a nice little stealthy, I love this nice touch, boom, front headphone and microphone jacks as well as an SD card reader. So this is hooked up via USB inside. We also find just, I really quite like this, a stylized sort of maze-like pattern over the ventilation holes. So you can actually see there are two 60 millimeter fans in here. The fans are arranged in a bit of an unusual configuration by default, but what you're going to want to do is have a look at the kind of system you're installing and optimize it yourself for the best possible airflow. You have more sort of airflow here. You've also see, ah yes, this is a bare bones folks. So it actually has a motherboard included and ASRock has done a great job of including a motherboard that isn't a piece of junk that you're going to have to remove and they have included a standard mini ITX board, which means that when it becomes time to upgrade it, you will actually be able to throw a standard component in there and upgrade the system fully. Big thumbs up to ASRock for that one. So you've also got a power in here. So there's going to be an internal cable presumably somewhere inside running to a power supply. Then we move around to the bottom of the unit where we find two more fans, so a couple more 60 millimeter fans. So this one's intake, that one's exhaust. It's a very, very strange configuration as well as a couple of rubber feet right here that keep it from slipping and sliding around all over the place depending on how you're using it. On the left hand side where traditionally we would see all of the internal components, we have some of the most gorgeous cable management that I've ever seen in a pre-done system. I mean, this is fantastic. This is the kind of thing that Apple's philosophy I think really reminds me of, and that is that things should look beautiful whether you can see them or not. And if you're proud of it, I guess you might as well show it off and put a window on it. I like it. And there's another sort of stylized window on the other side here that allows you to actually see the components inside. So this is where we can see the motherboard, the PCI Express riser, the power supply, as well as some other stuff. Now I want to show you guys the accessories that are included very briefly here. You've got six SATA cables. Why would you need six SATA cables you might ask? Well, I might answer, because you can actually install six SATA devices inside. So there's the optical drive, there's a two and a half inch SSD drive, and then there's a three and a half inch drive bay that can also be converted to four SSDs should you so desire. You have some included screws and included power cable, included keys and included pen and included screwdriver. So that's like a hex screwdriver. As well as little feet for mounting it horizontally so that you don't damage it. So you can actually see there are little indentations here. So you can put it down whichever way you want. They're on both sides. And then this key right here, which is going to allow us presumably to open up the chassis. So these guys are held on magnetically. So there are actually no screws. It is completely tool-less. Magnets are basically magic. I'm a big fan of them. I think that everything should be magnetic. Actually the side panels feel quite robust. You can see the gauge of the aluminum is actually quite thick there. So normally with an aluminum chassis, it's going to have a bit more flex than a steel one. But if you use thick enough aluminum, then it's not an issue at all. So we're going to start on that side that had the cable management on it. Again, this is just absolutely beautiful. Aluminum, no plastic. So this is all red anodized aluminum. This piece right here is plastic, but that's about it. Other than that, we've just got nice sleeved power supply cables running from where they need to go to where they came from. All right. Let's shift around to the other side and have a look at the layout of the internals. So first of all, there is our DVD CD rewritable drive over there. So that could be removed and replaced with a different slimline slot loading optical should you so desire. Here is our standard SFX power supply that is a 450 watt power supply. So that will be able to handle even something like a 4770K and something like a GTX 780 to go along with it. However, that will be quite tight. It's not going to, you're not going to be able to run much more than that. You can also have a look at the custom motherboard that ASRock does include. Once again, okay, I don't mean custom, custom form factor. I mean, custom it's designed for this machine, but of course you could put a different in a ITX board in here. So this is the Z87M8 and it includes AC wireless as well as Bluetooth 4.0. It includes Soundcore 3D audio, which is something unique about this is the fact that it can handle headphones that have up to 250 ohm impedance. So it actually has a decent headphone amp on the front panel audio. That's very unusual, often even good onboard audio solutions skimp on the front panel audio implementation. It has a PCI Express 16X slot that leads up to this riser right here. So the graphics card actually goes, I grabbed a graphics card. This is a GTX Titan. So the graphics card actually goes a little bit under there. You can see that a 10 and a half inch card like that is going to fit just nicely, just barely. The unusual thing is that it does use SODIMM slots. You can see what ASRock was doing here though, is they wanted to give you the options to install all six of the SATA devices that you can potentially have in here. So they include all the SATA cables you need, all the SATA ports you need, and in order to do that, well, they have to use SODIMMs. The good news is that SODIMMs really don't cost anymore. They cost about the same as a standard DIMM. We've also got Intel gigabit LAN, so that's a really nice thing to see. I don't think we went over the I.O. in detail here. So on the back there's four USB 2.0 ports, SATA, DisplayPort, HDMI, Intel gigabit LAN, four USB 3.0 ports. That's a total of eight of those, as well as that 7.1 audio out, including optical audio out. So here's a look at the G-Riser card, which is all like G-Rising something. I don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, so that's just a straight pin to pin PCI Express riser card. So that came out of the slot right here. Then the next thing you have to do is remove those giant hex screws up here, and then you can pull off the top of the unit. You can actually see how they're using a fan splitter to power those two fans, and you can actually see as well that you can unscrew those fans, you can undo this cage, and you can swap around the orientation as needed, which is important because the stock orientation is a little bit funny with this as an exhaust and this as an intake, which will work... That is just bizarre. That's just not a very good idea because the graphics card, even a blower design graphics card, is going to then go in like this. So you would want the fresh air coming in this way and the exhaust coming out away from this. So no matter how you slice that, that's not the greatest thing ever. But the good news is once we get around behind here, we find the three and a half inch or four by two and a half inch hard drive sled, as well as the way to actually get the graphics card in there. So you just go ahead and remove this piece right here, undo the two screws, and install the graphics card the way that you normally would. So what I would probably do is go up to intakes here, get some positive air pressure going on in here. I'd probably go intakes at the bottom as well just because there's so much general ventilation on this case that the air is not really going to have anywhere to go except out the back for the most part. So I think that pretty much wraps it up. Guys, if you're looking for something that is mostly pre-done for you, although a little bit tricky to put together if you're not willing to look at a manual, you will definitely need the instruction manual, which fortunately is quite clear and outlines each of the steps in exquisite detail. So if you're looking for something that's a little bit, I don't know, I can't call it easier for a first DIY computer or anything like that, but at least the hardware selection is easier because it comes with pretty much everything you need. So you're going to want to add storage. You can put in pretty much whatever you want there. I'd probably just throw in an SSD and a hard drive and call it a day. You're going to need a CPU, so any LGA 1150 CPU is going to do you just fine. You'll use the stock cooler or a very low profile cooler from the likes of Silverstone or Noctua would be quite appropriate. You'll need SODIMM RAM, so just DDR3 1600, anything like that along those lines, and you're pretty much ready to rock once you get an operating system installed and you throw an optional graphics card in. You don't have to run it with a graphics card because you do have those HDMI and DisplayPort ports on the back. Thank you for checking out this unboxing and overview of the ASRock M8. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips from Unboxing Reviews and other computer videos. Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, and leave a comment and let me know. Would you go bare bones at this point if it meant that you could have a very compact, well-engineered case that's designed to fit together versus DIYing something that might not be quite as space-efficient?