 The industry has been simultaneously moving in two very interesting directions this year. On the one side, Core i9 and Threadripper showed us the performance that can be accomplished if you don't sweat minor details like power consumption and heat output. But on the other side of things, Nvidia has tweaked the efficiency of their Pascal GPUs to the point where this pint-sized PC, well, 5.7 pints to be precise, harbors a full GTX 1080. The Desk Mini is a really good-looking little machine. At 2.7 liters, it is surprisingly compact, like the whole product, including the large external power brick, is the same size as the box of a mini-ITX motherboard, and despite its gaming pedigree, the black brushed aluminum and powder-coated steel design is understated and professional-looking. It won't be a centerpiece in your RGB-ed out gaming den, but it will blend seamlessly into basically any environment. Now, being a bare-bones kit, we've got to open it up to install a few things before we even think about booting it up. And what are we greeted by? This is the secret sauce, an entirely new motherboard standard developed by ASRock called Micro STX. It features a pretty good assortment of standardized I.O., including one 3.1 type C port, three of the type A variety, plus audio out, audio in, and ethernet, and our board has an LGA1151 socket, room for a couple of SODIMM slots that we populated with 32 gigs of DDR4 memory from a Pacer, and the most interesting part, the MXM slot. For the uninitiated, MXM is a PCI Express X16 standard for the super low-profile graphics cards that are generally used in high-end laptops. So our desk mini came with none other than a fully-featured desktop-grade GTX 1080 installed. Man, that's impressive, considering how small this thing is. The backside of the motherboard tray is dedicated to storage. We went with a single Samsung 960 Pro M.2 SSD, but you could actually install up to three high-speed NVMe drives and two 2.5-inch drives for slower bulk storage. Oh, and there's also a 2x2 Intel wireless card back here. So now the plan was to pair our GTX 1080 with the best consumer gaming CPU, an Intel Core i7-7700K with Noctua's slim, high-performance NH-L9i heatsink. But this is where we hit our first snag with the desk mini. Cooler compatibility. Unfortunately, the DC-in jack housing interferes with any square cooler. So while we did briefly try out the 7700K using Intel's anemic stock cooler, it thermal throttled to the point that we wouldn't recommend it, so we swapped it out for a regular i7-7700. Even after that change, though, our cooling woes weren't quite over. With the fan curve set to its default of silent, the CPU was getting up to a toasty 75 degrees doing basic things like installing programs. Not that comfortable. A quick trip back to the BIOS did fix this problem, but it introduced another. Now, we aren't blaming ASRock for Intel's lame-o stock cooler, but since we don't have great aftermarket options, it kind of doesn't matter who's to blame when we're stuck with a system that's annoyingly loud, especially while gaming when the GPU fan joins the chorus. And join the chorus it did. Gaming-wise, this thing is an amazing little beast. It performs almost-ish, pretty much like a full-sized desktop with a full-sized GTX 1080. The GPU didn't reach its full boost potential compared to a Founders Edition running in the same 24 degree office, but it's safe to say that this machine is capable of handily driving modern AAA games maxed out at 1080p, those same games at 1440p with some details turned down, and in some titles, 4K gaming is even achievable. I mean, check this out! Buttersmooth. Unfortunately, at $1,600 US dollars for the bare-bones GTX 1080 kit, the Deskmini is far from cheap. To put that into context, that's $300 more than a slightly faster, not to mention water-cooled and overclockable Corsair One, and over $500 more than a similarly-specced DIY PC. So why? Well, it seems to be due to business decisions at Nvidia, not ASRock price gouging. At this time, MXM cards are only available to notebook system integrators or through shady sellers on eBay. But we were able to find enough listings to confirm that it's the video card being priced at double its desktop equivalent that's making STX gaming machines unaffordable right now. I would like to see this change in the future. This is cool. But I'm not sure if I want to get my hopes up, because it's actually rumored that Nvidia is planning to end support for MXM altogether, something that would seriously hurt this exciting new form factor. So, hey guys, maybe let them know if you're with me and you don't want to see that happen. For now, the more sensible models are the 1060 and 1070 ones, which should have the added benefit of running cooler and quieter while they deliver top-tier gaming performance without ruining the aesthetic of your room, or, these ones really caught Alex's eye, the upcoming Quadro models that should chew through CAD or 3D modeling tasks without ruining the professional look of your office. Ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and satisfaction. When you call Ting, you actually do not speak to a robot. You get put through directly to a person, and they do this without having bloated contracts. You pay only for what you use, with the average Ting bill being only about 23 bucks a month per device. The best part is that if you're stuck in a contract and switch to Ting, they'll cover 25% of your cancellation fee up to $75, and if you use our link, then you will also get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device. So go to linus.ting.com and try out their savings calculator. Just throw in your last few bills and how much you paid, and it'll spit out how much you would save on Ting. And for a limited time, activate two or more lines with Ting, or add a line to your existing Ting account between October 2nd to 22nd, and you'll get two gigs of free data. So thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked, you can hit that button, but if you liked the video, hit the like button, get subscribed, maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Also down there, we have our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join.