 Okay, welcome friends to another in my series of unbuilds or teardowns or whatever we call these live streams where I put stuff together and take stuff apart. This time I was inspired to do one by a particularly unique little machine. This is the Zotac Magnus EN980. It is actually smaller than the MSI Vortex, that cylindrical PC that I took apart in the past, although it only has a single GTX 980 inside of it instead of two. But what's interesting about this guy is they managed to cram a full 120 millimeter liquid cooling system inside of it. So I want to tear it apart and see just how it all ticks. The Phoenix Vitesse features a lightweight design and an optical 3310 sensor. Check it out and enter for a chance to win down below. So let's get to it then. First things first, let's run through the overall specs of this puppy. It's got a Core i5 6400, 16 gigs of RAM, I think actually configured it with 32. It's got a GTX 980, it has an M.2 slot, a SATA slot and it has no power supply. Yes, my friends, one of the unique things about this particular system is that while they did manage to pull off an impressively tiny form factor here in terms of the PC itself, they went and they did something that I've been saying more manufacturers should do for quite some time. I've talked to Cooler Master about this, I've talked to Silverstone about this. They went and they took the power external. So this is two, what are these? I think they're like about 180 watt power bricks, giving this puppy a total of about 360 watts of total power delivery, which might explain actually why the CPU is a Core i5 rather than a Core i7 6700K or something along those lines, because I think they might have run up against a power limit, otherwise because that 980 graphics card is going to really suck up some juice. Unfortunately, this isn't something that I was able to evaluate in my review of the thing because Zotac basically went, well, it's not user serviceable and once it's a part, it's not that easy to put back together. So we would recommend you review it as a completed unit. And I kind of went, okay, that's fine, but you're not going to prevent me from taking it apart at some point. So without further ado, here we go. The bottom is pretty simple. All you do is undo the four thumb screws there, pop it off and... All right, let's go ahead and get rid of that. One thing I do need is one of my trusty magnetic parts trays. That'll help me keep track of all the screws and bits and bobbles. There we are. The RAM and the SSD that you see in here, this is stuff that I installed. So I've got a couple of those freaking fantastic intelligent memory SODIMS that I'm so fond of. These are DDR3L. So that's one of the reasons that Skylake has support for both DDR3L and DDR4 is that it gives the manufacturers a little bit more flexibility to offer a lower cost solution to folks who don't want to invest in DDR4. It was more of an issue right at the beginning, but I have a feeling this product has been in development for quite some time, given that it's running a GTX 980 when the GTX 1080 is most definitely already a thing. And if you're trying to set that up, that is straight up not going to work because I'm streaming from that computer. I really like what a good job they've done of the barebones-ness of this. I am going to use a tool because I tightened this with a tool, so it's actually a little bit tight right now, but you can do the entire memory SSD installation with no tools whatsoever out of the box because those bottom feet are thumbscrews. I thought that was really clever. One thing we've got a pretty good look at here, I'm going to go ahead and switch to my now not broken close-up here. We can get a good look at... Oh, that's kind of an awkward angle, unfortunately. It's going to be hard for me to adjust, but basically there's your 2.5 inch SATA. There's your M.2, and so you can see they've got little standoffs here to accommodate a variety of different lengths here. And then over here is where you've got your two DIMM slots. And other than that, you're basically not intended to touch this. Although what's interesting is for some reason, they went and covered up the wireless module. I'm not sure why that is, but it's right back there. And then the other thing that we can see here is a CPU backplate right there. So we're going to have a better look at that. Once we've been able to take it apart a little bit more. So step number two is going to be to remove a metric whack ton of screws all around. I say step number two as though I have some kind of like pre-planned out step-by-step guide that I'm following along. Nope, I will be making this up entirely as I go along. I have had some of the front and back panel I have had off already, but I have not removed the side panels yet. So you guys will be experiencing that with me for the very first time. Overall industrial design of this thing, not particularly next generation or anything like that. It feels like quality, but not like, wow, we did a massive amount of R&D to figure out how to assemble this thing like this. Because it's just basically an aluminum box, but it's nice thick anodized aluminum that's got a pretty durable finish on it. So I'm not going to criticize ZOTAC for it. It just doesn't stand out as like an amazing feat of art in addition to just being a functional and sturdy computer covering. So this gives us a pretty good look at the front panel here. So basically there is a little power PCB that plugs into four wires. So that's going to be basically your front switch as well as your front power LED, since the LED is actually built into the switch here. Everything else is just an aluminum cutout. And then this is kind of interesting. So this is a solid aluminum piece, and then this black part here is like a plastic insert that appears to be just kind of glued on to give it an accented look at the front. If I was going to have one of these in my living room, I'd probably want to paint it, like do some kind of a more performance looky finish to it. Because honestly, that's one of the things that I think is really missing from this. It is a $1,600 US bare bones machine. And then it's got like this weird, I think if you guys are close to look at it, it's got like this weird powder blue color mesh on the top. And then it's otherwise white and silver and black. It doesn't have like a high performance vibe. Like I get trying not to do the overdone gamery. Oh, it's red and black. And those are the only colors that exist for some reason because Asus ROG said so. Like I get that. But I don't know that powder blue would have been the route I would have gone, especially when you're Zotac and you already have kind of a black and orange color scheme that I personally think looks pretty good. So I've taken out all the screws around the outside. Let's go ahead and pop off the rear panel. That's one that I've already had off before. So again, it's like a nice, thick, very rigid piece of aluminum here. Not really a whole lot to say about that. So let's go ahead and put it down. There we go. Then let's have a look at our side panels here. See if we can. See if we can. Oh, there's more screws. Well, that explains why I couldn't get it off before. Oh, Kate, the top completely fell away when I went and tried to remove that piece. Oh, it's very shiny. Massdrop is currently hosting a drop for the amazing Chocolatier Custom SA Keycap Set, which is designed by Zam Bouman and inspired by the motion picture adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The keycaps are MX-STEM compatible and made in the USA. If you guys don't know about Massdrop, they're the site that facilitates group buys. And the more people that buy something or commit to buying something, the lower the price will go, even if the product you're buying is a chocolate keycap set. You can check this and other drops at the link in the video description down below. One of Zotac's biggest boasts about this machine is how small it is. And justifiably so, it's however many liters, pretty few liters. Let's go ahead and take this off as well. But they go and they do things like cover the entire outside in actually a surprisingly thick outer shell when the actual hardware inside is considerably smaller. I'll give you guys a better look at that sort of baby blue color that I am not that fond of. You can't see it on camera through here very well for some reason, but it's quite visible in person. It looks about like that. Very, very strange choice. And I will also give you guys a better look at the machine itself. All right, so that's the top. So that's a full 120 millimeter radiator that they managed to put in there. And not only that, but while it's not a super thick one or anything, it's also by no means the slimmest one that I've ever seen. It's like a standard full-size PC radiator that they've managed to cram into this tiny little space here. On the bottom, it still looks largely the same. On this side, we actually get our first look at the custom GPU block. So that's an MXM form factor GTX 980, the same kind that you would see used in those GTX 980 laptops, devices like the MSI Vortex, all that kind of stuff. And then over here, yeah, see, this panel is solid for some reason. Not quite sure why, but the CPU block would be behind there. There's a vibration dampening mount for the pump right here. Oh, I guess that's why this is one solid piece, because that's where they did all the mounts for there. And then if we look at this side, we get a pretty good look at front I.O., which is on a little daughterboard, as well as the fan for the radiator. And you can kind of see the CPU block, but this rear shot gives us a bit of a better angle on it. So there's the CPU block. There's the dual DC power ins. There's the, I believe this is for the graphics card, I want to say. Yeah, so there's the PCIe 8-pin for the graphics card. And then here's all of our I.O. and that stuff. So what's interesting about external power supplies to me is that the conversion from DC to DC is a lot more efficient than the conversion from AC to DC. So what that means is even though, unless you had like a very complex power brick, you can only feed one voltage in. So in the case of these ones, it's probably 19 and a half would be my guess. Yeah, 19 and a half volts converting that to a 12 volt, five volt, 3.3 volt, all the different voltages that you need for a computer doesn't generate a ton of heat and can be done very, very efficiently. And it doesn't take up a lot of space. So remember those Pico PSUs, actually not remember, I'm sure they're probably still around. But Pico PSUs basically take an external power brick and they do all that splitting out. And it's on a PCB that's probably about this size. It's very, very small. So that's effectively what they're doing is they've created a completely custom motherboard here that includes all of the power conversion circuitry that's needed to take that 19 and a half volts and turn it into what all of the other components inside need. So this bottom plate here just pops right off, just a couple of screws there. It's actually really easy to disassemble compared to the MSI Vortex, even though the size is very similar, I guess, because they went with a more traditional square shape. So the only thing that that really reveals is a better look at the CPU back plate here, as well as a look at our wireless card. So that could quite easily be swapped out if we really wanted to. Let's just go ahead and switch to our close up here. So that could be swapped out quite easily as an end user if we wanted to, but it should be noted, I think, actually, no, I don't think we have broken any warranty void if removed seals yet. So you're in good shape as long as you don't start taking out the motherboard. It looks like that's where you start to get into trouble. That's OK. We'll be voiding that warranty before this video is over. Pop the wireless card off. 3165 NGW in case anyone on Earth care. OK, so there's some debate about the GTX 980 card that is inside the system. We've got some people saying that it performs on par with the 980M due to its probably due to its MXM form factor. And then we've got others among you saying that it does not. It actually performs the same as a desktop 980, which is the correct answer. It performs identically to a desktop GTX 980. It's just mounted on a much more compact PCB and requires there's probably some binning involved in making sure that it'll operate within the thermal and power limits. But no, it performs exactly the same as long as it doesn't thermal throttle. So, wow, there you have it. That's actually a whole thing just kind of comes out like that. So there's the other main piece of the chassis. Let's go ahead and switch to our close up camera here. See if I can get you guys a bit of a better look at this. So there's our anti vibrational pad on the bottom of another black aluminum plate here. There we go. That's a bit of a better angle for you guys. Mounted on that, this I thought was just a little bit of a this I thought was just such a weird, weird implementation of this system. So yeah, that is so just so bizarre. So the pump is here and then they've actually got a tube coming out to a completely separate standalone reservoir. And then they've got another tube coming out to the radiator. The radiator bone is connected to the GPU bone right over here. The GPU bone is connected to the CPU bone. No, wait. Yes. Yep. So GPU is connected to CPU and then CPU comes back to the pump. Most of the time with a compact water cooling system, the reservoir gets combined with some other component, either the radiator or if you want to deal with ASA-TECH's legal team with the CPU block. So it's very strange to me that they went and they it's like, it's such a weird little part here. It's this tiny little reservoir, but I guess for some reason that was easier for them to do or cheaper or something. Either way, I mean, they didn't compromise on the compactness of the system, so I can't really fault them for it. One thing's for sure, though, this disassembly is about to get a little bit more complicated. So let's go ahead and I think I'm just going to try and remove the water cooling system as one piece here so we can get a better look at it because that will have to come off if I want to swap out the CPU. Now, with all these tubes kind of zip tied and cable managed together, it's actually kind of hard to get at anything. I guess this is what they were warning me about. It's hard with this overhead shot for you guys to see anything with this radiator constantly in the way. So here are my options. I can either remove one, two, three, four, five screws. Here, I'll point with something that's a little bit easier for you guys to follow along with me. So I can either remove this one and one, two, three, four around this fitting here, or I can try and remove one, two, three, and see if the whole video card will come off. So I'm going to try that. What a cool little machine. There it goes. All right. Let's see if we have a better angle of this. So now, CPU is free. GPU. It seems like I can just tilt it up along with this whole assembly and pop it out. Okay. Now, being very, very careful with that. Let's go ahead and switch angles here. The whole thing should basically peel away. So let's pop that off. Pop that off. And, whoa, okay. Sure. Awesome. So let's have a look at the water cooling stuff first. Wow, that is a lot of thermal compound. Geez, Zotac. Like, what the heck is going on here? The good news is it didn't leave a whole lot of goop on the actual CPU, so I can deal with that relatively easily. This is cool, though. So they've actually opted to make completely their own custom block. I do have to wonder about the wisdom of using aluminum and copper within the same block design. If Swift Tech couldn't do it, I don't know how much faith that I have in Zotac's ability to pull this off without corrosion, given Swift Tech's vastly superior experience in water cooling. The Apogee GT-X, I want to say, total disaster for them. But this is cool. So by using their own block and machining their own block, they were able to have the VRM, so the actual voltage regulation modules on the motherboard cooled by this block as well. So that's kind of the other component on a motherboard that's going to run quite hot and might be a concern in a system that doesn't have a lot of airflow, something that I actually was a little bit worried about when I did my review of this thing, which will be up later, but I have filmed it already, because pretty much the only exhaust is out the top here. So the exhaust is all here, and then the only intake that I could find was actually above the I.O. in the back panel here. I mean, yes, there are intakes in the very bottom here, and the SSD down there did actually manage to stay pretty cool. But what's interesting about those is that they basically sit here and are pretty much here. If I can give you guys a better look at this, they are pretty much cut off. See? They're covered by these plates here. Like, only a little bit of it is exposed, and even then it's kind of closed in by the way that this shell sits here. So I don't know. It was something I was a little concerned about, and I'm really glad to see that the VRM is being taken care of by a water block there, because that means that will definitely be okay. All right. Let's go ahead and pull the GPU block off here. Looks like it should be just four screws. This is the first time that I have ever laid hands on a water-cooled MXM card. There's a first time for everything, right? Water-cooled MXM. Theoretically, I could use this block to jury-rig some kind of water-cooled video card nonsense. Although there would be no need, because Asus has already kind of been there and done that. GX700 or something, I think they call it. Okay. Has this unscrewed yet? How long do you have to turn these for? Geez. I can't even tell if they're still coming out. No screws in the bottom going into it. All right. Let's see if I can get you guys a good look at this as it comes apart. Whoa. Okay. It sounds still holding on. No, okay. There we go. Here we go. Okay. Off it comes there. So here is our MXM GTX980. There's your power delivery. Here's the 8-pin power in. Just like that. It looks like, I don't remember, you know what? I haven't looked that closely, but I can't imagine that most notebooks are using an 8-pin PCIe connector like that. So I would imagine that's something slightly custom that they've done here. Remember Zotac is an actual manufacturer of graphics cards, so it wouldn't be that big of a deal for them to do something like that. There's the GPU itself. And then there is your either 4 or 8 gigs of RAM depending on your GTX980. So this one has 4 gigs of RAM. Okay, and then here we've got pretty much every part of that graphics card is cooled by the water block through the use of thermal pads or this copper slug in the middle. So again, they've gone with mixed metals for their block design here. It's such a rookie mistake. You know, like if you guys have been following along with ASUS's Rampage series of motherboards over the years, or is it Maximus? Whatever, I don't know. The one that's had water cooling integrated onto the North Bridge for years and years and years now, they went from, what was the first one, like tiny little barb fittings and aluminum to like, I think they did mixed metals at some point, to they included these weird adapters to get the barbs to different sizes. And there's all this stupid stuff. And it's very simple. Water blocks are made of copper, and they use G1 quarter threads. Now in this case, I can forgive not using an industry standard threading. That's fine because you don't intend for anyone to actually use these outside of this one system. But water blocks are made of copper. Yes, it costs more. Yes, it is more difficult to machine. But the benefit of your system not corroding and having the block fall apart is a pretty compelling one. All right, so let's go ahead and have a quick look at this guy from overhead. So now that we've got the video card out, there's our MXM slot. There's our DC power in. There's where that 8-pin is going over to the graphics card over here. Here is our VRM for the CPU. Actually over here as well. That's interesting. Okay, there's our chipset. Wow, that's kind of a funny layout. So IOHUB is here, which means that this is communicating with this. And then pretty much everything here is going to be using another layer of the PCB to go all the way back over here, where the USB ports and at least... Oh, no, Ethernet is probably using... Yeah, that's a... Here, I'm going to go ahead and switch to my other angle that I didn't have for a bit there again. I need to see that. That's okay. So we've got... Where did it go? Ethernet. Okay, so there's a real tech chipset right there. So that should be handling this. We've got... Yeah, basically just USB then, I guess, running off of that because the two HDMI ports and two DisplayPort ports should be running off of the GTX980M. So I guess that's why they put that there, because those are much higher bandwidth connections than really anything else on the back here, which is just a wireless module, which is running off PCI Express, which is over here around on the back, right there. And then power in. That's it. So I guess that does actually make a fair amount of sense. So right here is for the CPU fan. So that's running the fan for the radiator, as well as... Okay, this is interesting. So this is something Luke actually told me while I was working on my review of the EN980. There is another version that's very similar to this that's actually air-cooled, and Zotac was using as like a VR backpack thing. So that would explain why there's not one, but actually two fan headers here. So one of these is for the MXM fan, and one is for CPU fan. So that would be if they are air-cooling this monster. Very interesting. This says motor power, so that's going to be for the pump. And then other than that, there's really not a ton of connectors here. This is just for the front LED and power button. And let's go ahead and I can let you guys have a look at the back again, now that my camera angle is actually a little bit better. Good work, Brandon. Yeah. Oh, well, this is kind of neat. Why don't we have a quick look at this one? Oh, that's weird. Okay, okay, no, no, no. Things are about to get kind of interesting here. So this daughter board right here is plugging into an M.2 slot for some reason. Why would they do it that way? So, well, if you ever had to pull your CMOS battery on this puppy, you would be basically doing a full disassembly. So that's kind of a pain in the ass. Way to go, Zotac. You can think of a fair number of reasons why doing that might be convenient. Wow. So interesting. There's an M.2 slot here that appears, at least on the surface, to just be a normal M.2 slot. Yeah, it's keyed the same as the one on the front. So it's not a mini-PCIe 4X slot, which it could have easily been, depending on what they were doing on here. And then it looks like, oh, yes, okay. So basically they are using it, though, as just a small PCI Express connection, because they've gone and they've put an ASMedia chipset to handle the front USB connections. So that would be that USB, I believe these are USB 3.1, but don't quote me on that. I'm just going to go ahead and pull an old Linus trick here and consult the packaging when I can't remember something. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yep. So there you go. That's why they did it that way. It's a USB 3.1 controller from ASMedia so that those front ports can be USB 3.1. This drives me crazy, though. The industry cannot decide what to do. It's supposed to be, as far as I can tell, white or black on the inside for USB 2, blue for USB 3.0 is what we used to call it, but now it's called 3.1 Gen 1, so 5 gigabit, and then it's supposed to be pale blue or like this green for USB 3.1, as we used to call it, or USB 3.1 Gen 2, 10 gigabit. And then you've got Razer who's running around putting green plastic on all of their USB ports, so no one knows what the heck is going on. I blame Razer for this. There. Let's go with that. The last thing that's really left here, then, is to go ahead and pull out the CPU. So it's a completely standard desktop LGA 1150 socket, covered in thermal goop, of course. Thank you for that. There you go. That gives us a nice look at that. And that is our mountain of thermal paste on the CPU that I just pulled out. See if I can get you guys a good look at that. So that was actually surprisingly straightforward. Zotac claims that this thing is not user serviceable and very difficult to reassemble once it's taken apart. Okay, I haven't actually tried to reassemble it yet. It could be very, very difficult still, but I don't think it is. Their claims seem to be pretty much baseless. I think I'll be able to put this together, and maybe I'll, like, I have no idea in what context I would do this in a video, but I would really like to try a 6700K in here and see if it can handle the extra power that's required for that. I'm very, very interested. So I guess that pretty much wraps it up. 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