 Here at LTT, we're all about pushing boundaries. Far beyond what anybody asked for. Like when we brought you the PC made of radiators, cooling insane hardware with zero fans. But ever since then, we've wondered, what would it look like if some actually smart people tried to achieve the same thing? Well, today we get to find out because the good people over at Monster Labo have done just that. Creating a case that supposedly is capable of cooling up to an Intel eight core 9900K and an RTX 2070 completely passively. But don't pass by private internet access. Private internet access gives you a safe and protected IP and it's got loads of other features as well. Check it out at the link below. (*upbeat music*) With this being Monster Labo's first product, actually it's even called the first, we were naturally a little bit skeptical. But now that we've built an entire system inside it, there actually is some truth to their claims. But more on that later. Starting on the outside, the first has an understated look. Well, I mean, ours does have a custom paint job so it's visually a lot louder, but normally it's painted in either black or white satin metal finish, along with a metallic accent piece, which kind of to me makes it look like a mini fridge. But I'm not mad because with everything else these days, turning towards rainbow barf, I personally appreciate the more subdued look. Up top we get dual USB 3.0 audio and a pretty power button that frankly, just loves to get stuck. Around back, there's access to the PSU and that's about it. With the motherboard IO relying on pass-through cables, limiting you to five ports max on this oddly unfinished backing piece. It seems like this was kind of an afterthought, especially since the included display port pass-through doesn't have mounting holes. And the HDMI pass-through didn't come with screws. But enough of the boring stuff, inside is where things get interesting. After removing all three outer clamshells and their accompanying 14 screws, we finally get to get a glimpse of the internals. And right about now, it also starts to become apparent that this case isn't for first-time builders or even pretty experienced ones, since we ourselves were kind of lost at this point. But okay, we're humble. Why not just consult the manual? Because there is no manual. No, Monster Labo instead opted for a series of assembly videos, which are way more annoying to scrub through than a regular print manual. But nevertheless, they did help us find a few more screws that were hiding behind this weird fabric tape that we quickly introduced to the trash bin. Once it is opened up though, man, is it ever cool looking. I mean, literally, look at that heckin' heat sink. It's massive, and the heat pipes, the heat pipes. Oh, the heat pipes. Whew. Both the CPU and the GPU each get six of their own, evenly spread throughout the heat sink. Now I'm starting to think their claims might actually have some merit. All right, so time to throw some hardware in it and boot it up, right? Well, because of the first totally non-standard mounting and form factor, planning ahead is kind of a must. Thankfully, Monster Labo has vetted a bunch of hardware already, with compatible parts listed on their site, including what motherboards and GPUs work and what brackets or modifications are necessary. In our case, the triple fan RTX 2070 we chose was supposedly a non-issue. All we should have to do is remove the cooler and strap on Monster Labo's provided VRM heat sink. But it wasn't that easy. The screws for the VRM cooler weren't long enough, so we ended up having to use zip ties to hold it all together. It is worth noting though that this accessory isn't yet available, so hopefully they'll have all that ironed out by launch. And then again, maybe quirks like this are to be expected in this wacky realm of custom cooling. As for our X470 motherboard, it too called for some minor modifications, but thankfully both went as described. First, it requires the use of their custom riser, which is only included on the premium model. So watch out for that. And second, the audio chipset had to be removed. As on this board, it's installed on a riser and would otherwise block the heat pipes. This sucked, so again, plan ahead. Don't be like us. We suck. Hopefully on Monster Labo's second case, the heat pipes are positioned to better accommodate boards like this as daughter boards aren't uncommon on ITX motherboards. Things did start to look up though when it finally came time to put all the pieces together. That is until we went to mount the motherboard and found that there was no mention anywhere of which bracket to use for AMD's AM4 socket. Fortunately though, Monster Labo's customer service was pretty quick to respond. And they informed us that AM4 boards actually use two of the brackets in tandem, which was easy enough after we figured it out. Once that was out of the way, the rest of the assembly was pretty straightforward. You might have to bend the heat pipes just a little bit and slide the motherboard and GPU mounts back and forth in order to make sure that everything lines up properly, but that's apparently pretty normal. Installing Corsair's SF600 SFX power supply was a walk in the park. And its fan doesn't even spin up at full load with this setup, nice. Storage-wise, we opted for a Samsung M.2 SSD, but the first does advertise support for three two and a half inch drives along with one three and a half inch drive, if that butters your biscuit. Just above the PSU is where the included 140 millimeter fan can be mounted, or it can be removed to accommodate full ATX power supplies, a nice touch. But blah, blah, blah, who cares about all that? We wanna know about performance. And as you can imagine, with a high-end setup like what we chose, temperatures are simply not going to be as low as with a fan cooled setup. But for something that's entirely passive, this is pretty impressive. We did notice when running without the fan, the 2700X loses some boost clock while hitting 84 degrees Celsius under an IDA64 CPU load. But if you remove the top cover panel, like they recommend, it's really competent. Monster Labo does mention that the actual passive TDP rating on the first is only 215 Watts, but you'd be hard pressed to find an application that would actually load both parts to 100% power draw consistently. Hence why you could run a higher-end config like we did. Once the fan is added into play, temps are a lot more comfortable. We set ours to run at 700 RPM, which was inaudible, even as close to a foot away from the case. Speaking of inaudible, the coil wind from the GPU is not. Because of the way it's positioned, the GPU's power distribution is right near the big fat opening on the top of the case. And without the higher noise floor of a typical fan cooled build, the video card's high-pitched wind is surprisingly irritating, even from a sitting distance. It sucks. And I guess that's kind of where the concept of these passive cases starts to fall apart for me. Coil wind, IMO, is actually way more annoying than the low hum of a fan. And frankly, with a decent AIO on your CPU and the gargantuan GPU coolers of today, most regular rigs tend to be pretty inaudible anyway. So if it were me, I'd stick to the aforementioned fan setup, but if you're not an audiophile or just hate hearing your PC, you can find a GPU that doesn't suffer from much coil wind. And if you don't mind your hardware running a little hotter than most, this can be an awesome way to achieve a nearly silent PC. As for the first itself, for a $400 plus case, it's kind of a hot mess. But honestly, I love it. I just like it. I don't know that I'd recommend it full on. Clearly one or two corners were cut, but it's just so freaking cool. It kind of looks like a build your own Corsair one. So yeah, I want it. FreshBooks is a small business accounting software custom built for how you want to work. It's the simple way to be more productive, organized, and get paid quickly. FreshBooks lets you create and send professional looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. Set up online payments with just a couple of clicks so you can get paid up to four days faster and see when your client has viewed your invoice to put an end to the guessing games. For your unrestricted 30 day free trial, just go to freshbooks.com slash tech tips and enter Linus Tech Tips in the how did you hear about us section. So thanks for watching guys. Dislike this video if you thought I sucked. Like it if you didn't and be sure to subscribe. 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