 For the past few years, MSI has really been pushing the limits of how much power can be crammed into a small case and cooled properly with their Trident lineup. Now after making some truly small systems, MSI has given us the Trident X, a much larger version, but also a darn powerful one rocking a Core i9-9900K and an RTX 2080, so let's crack it open and see if the machine itself holds up to its impressive spec sheet. And today's video is brought to you by Honey. Honey is a free web browser extension that will find you the best promo codes on many shopping websites like Amazon, eBay, and more. Get it today at joinhoney.com forward slash LTT. It's free. From a distance, the Trident X is a good-looking machine. I appreciate the smaller size, although it is unfortunate that it can't be placed on its side like previous Trident models for integration into a home theater setup. After getting closer to the Trident X though, things get a little less convincing. Like the front USB ports and their lettering is in red, but then moving around to the GPU, it has green accents. Come on you guys. How did you not just swap these stickers for red ones? And moving over to the other side, things get even grimmer. Now, I appreciate that there is a tempered glass panel here, but how did this gap pass inspection? And behind, it isn't even painted. Also, the CPU airflow cutout is kind of wobbly, and then back over to the front, these two RGB lights don't match. Why is this light in the middle so much brighter than the ones around it? And why is the base such a different color? Why does this power button feel so mediocre? And why do I have to point all of these things out? Now, the tempered glass panel can be swapped out for a metal one, and this is actually how the Trident X comes out of the box. So, it solves the Tesla-esque panel gap issue, and also means that you won't have to worry about your side panel getting shattered when you're going to a LAN. So, the bottom line is really this. Honestly, the Trident X is not a bad-looking machine at all. Everything that I complained about was a little icky-picky detail. It's just the kind of thing that the Corsair One would have done right, and I hope that MSI can fix these problems in the future, since none of them are particularly big ones, and there's a lot of good stuff here. So, back to the good stuff. Specs. Rocking an Nvidia RTX 2080, Core i9-9900K, 32 gigs of RAM, this thing is no slouch, and normally, this is where I would say, but, can they keep it cool in a case this small? The thing is, though, honestly, I'm not concerned, because the design is really solid. First, let's take a look at the graphics card. Well, okay, it's just that. It's a full-sized desktop graphics card with a nice beefy cooler, and lots of access to fresh air. This also means that upgrading the GPU in the future is relatively simple. Just take the side panel and top panel off, undo a few more screws, which might be the hardest part, since one of ours came factory chowdered, and you're good for the next gen. As for CPU cooling, once again, before even testing it, there are no concerns here. This heatsink is massive and breathes in nice fresh air, and the motherboard that's included is standard. Actually, before we even get to the performance, I should talk about the insides a little bit more. I do wish that MSI had given the outside the same kind of attention to detail that they did here. Despite cramming so much hardware in, MSI has still somehow allowed all of it to be easily accessed, upgraded, repaired, and with great cable managing to boot. Need to upgrade the storage? Well, there's two two and a half inch bays right here, and the second one even already has the power cabling done for you, making an upgrade pretty much trivial. Need to change out the M.2 drive? Well, just open the other side panel to reveal this easily accessible and extremely high-performance Samsung drive. The power supply is also a standard modular affair, either in 650 watts in this version, or 450 for the 2070 equipped model, and replacing it is entirely possible, with the only real bummer for upgradeability being the RAM, which is underneath the CPU heatsink. Now, this does have the benefit of providing the RAM with a little bit of cooling, but the real reason they did this is probably just that the standard 120 millimeter fan fit best this way. And removing the cooler is actually still a pretty simple operation. It's just the only blemish that we could find on an otherwise really well-thought-out internal layout. So then, performance. As expected, under a full synthetic load, our i9-9900K 8-core processor has no trouble staying cool with temperatures peaking at just around 80 degrees. Fantastic, and it stays well above base clock, settling in around 4.3 gigahertz sustained. That's even better than the Corsair One, and that one was liquid-cooled. The GPU also doesn't disappoint, topping out at 67 degrees and boosting to a sustained 1875 megahertz, and that's after half an hour of the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark. These are really strong numbers, and even more impressively, it does this while remaining very quiet. Like, okay, it isn't quite Corsair One quiet. That thing is really quiet. Even under full load, though, I was hard-pressed to hear the Tride Nex over the HVAC in our office, and I doubt it's gonna be annoying to anyone, even if it's sitting next to you on your desk. Like, this one's running a benchmark right now. My mic is right here. So all this adds up to, then, the Tride Nex giving us, well, the expected desktop levels of performance. You want a game? Expect heaps of frames. You want to render a video? Well, don't expect it to take very long. Basically, you're getting bomb-ass hardware in a smaller case, and you don't have to worry about building it yourself. Which, I guess, brings us to the make or break of any pre-built computer. The price. Since, at the end of the day, hardware is hardware, and there's nothing particularly special about what's going on in here. Now, our recommended config comes in at $2,500 US dollars, which is a pretty good price, especially when you compare it to the Corsair One, but it's still actually about $500 more expensive than building it yourself, which also gives you a little more flexibility, and could result in you ending up with a system that looks more to your liking. So, the answer is, as usual, if you want to build a computer yourself, yeah, you should do that. But if you don't want to build a computer yourself, maybe try anyway? It's pretty fun. It's not actually that hard. Oh, no, no, no. This way. Ha. Ha ha ha. And then, if you're still not convinced, well, we actually really like the MSI Trident X. This is a really good option. Speaking of great options, our sponsor, Ting, is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction. When you call Ting, you don't speak to a robot. You get put through directly to a person, and for some reason, that kind of customer service doesn't cost extra. With Ting, you pay only for what you use, with the average bill coming in at just $23 a month per device. If you're stuck in a contract and you switch to Ting, they'll cover 25% of your cancellation fee, up to $75, and they've got lower mobile data rates than ever. It's $10 per gig beyond the second gigabyte. And one of the ways they want you guys to save money is to enter their giveaway, since you can win a Samsung Note 9 and other great Ting swag at start.ting.com. So go check it out if you want to lower your phone bill over at linus.ting.com. And by the way, if you go to that second link, which we'll have down below, you will get $25 in Ting credit. So thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button, but if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join.