As early as 2019, Antiac announced the new Cube Max chassis at the Computex Taipei Computer Exhibition. While retaining the classic shape of the previous chassis Cube, it further improved the size of the chassis and was the largest compatible with MATX motherboard. It is considered a continuous upgrade version of Cube.
As an Antiac Cube user, although it only supports ITX board type and there are no additional air inlets and outlets reserved on the top of the chassis, its shape is very popular. I also fine-tuned the configuration of this box twice, and finally threw the 20-core E5 2679 V4 and the public version of GTX1080 into the Cube. After the release of Max, it experienced a 2020 year that was not peaceful. I thought this case was hopelessly released, but in 2021, I finally waited for it: it was renamed Dark Cube.
[Case]
packaging part is nothing worth reading. The front is the shape of the chassis, and the back is an introduction to various selling points.
Dark Cube is about 512*240*406mm. In the MATX box, its size is relatively large; in terms of appearance, it continues the Cube's "tilt" shape, which is very popular. In addition, the new Dark Cube side panels have been replaced with glass material, and the Cube in the previous ITX work was acrylic. Among the accessories included in the random case are a manual, a glass replacement cover, and a screw box; the additional cover is prepared for heavy color control players. Compared with the original mesh cover, although its air inlet efficiency will have an impact, this glass cover can better reflect the effect of fan or cold-row RGB, which depends on the specific needs and choices of the user; the screw box should still give a good review, this thing is very practical, and the attached Velcro cable strap is also inside the screw box.
So this chassis has a second shape: glass front panel shape.
is the same as that of Cube, and is on the top of the front panel. This time it is a "axial symmetric" arrangement. The Type-C interface needs to be connected to the USB3.1 interface on the motherboard. If there is no interface on the motherboard, then this Type-C cannot be used. You need to pay attention to this when choosing the motherboard.
top is the boot key and the lighting effect toggle key. This time the boot key feels better than the "ordinary" Cube in the previous EK custom version.
More RGB light strips have been added to the front of the chassis to further enhance the appearance.
The fixing method of the chassis side panel is consistent with that of Cube.
Dark Cube case removal method is very different from Cube. This generation adopts the "drawer" form. All the components in the chassis are fixed on the skeleton of the "drawer" inside, so it is relatively convenient to remove and clean the dust in daily disassembly. Just pull it out and clean it directly; for this structure, the rear of the chassis is also more humanely added with a "handle" for pulling.
mentioned above: Dark Cube is relatively large in the MATX chassis. Large size actually means better compatibility. For example, this chassis is compatible with a maximum 220mm power supply, and basically all ATX power supplies on the market can be stuffed in; the maximum length of the graphics card can be about 325mm, and most large three-fan non-public cards can also be installed; the maximum cooling height of the CPU supports 175mm, such as the Owl D15s, and the Limin ibe-extreme can be compatible.
The front end of the "drawer" can be installed with 2 14cm fans or 2 12cm fans, and is compatible with the corresponding 280mm and 240mm cold-shippers. The chassis also reserves sufficient space for the cold-shippers; a 12cm fan can also be installed at the rear.
The front IO interface and drawer frame PCB board on the case shell are connected to each other through this socket, which is a bit like a PCIE slot; there are additional ARGB lighting effects and 4Pin fan expansion interface on the inside of the PCB board, which is good for small details.
Of course, this box type is a bit regrettable. For example, this generation of Dark Cube only supports 1 2.5-inch hard drive + 1 3.5-inch "hamburger-style" hard drive, which is less than the ITX Cube. Some space is actually wasted in the power bank. If some additional hard drive expansion bits can be added to that position, it may be more friendly to players with storage expansion needs. In addition, the pull-drawer structure of this chassis, the wires need to be fixed in the drawer skeleton. If you pursue beautiful wiring, it requires some effort, and it is highly likely that you need to cooperate with customized module cables.
[Graphics Card]
Graphics Card market in the first half of 2021 can be described as "crazy". When buying a graphics card, you have to find relationships and contact dealers, and then ask in a low voice, "Brother, are there any graphics cards in stock?"... Then those dealers who are willing to sell them to your card at the first price will definitely prove that the relationship is strong enough...
I also went through a lot of hardships to find a rainbow iGAME RTX 3090 Advanced OC, don’t think that the starting price of 3090 is expensive. Now I can’t buy it without 20,000 yuan. Now I think about it, I didn’t have the awareness of investment and financial management when I didn’t mind buying a 3090 yuan.
Looking at the logo of 3090 around the box, a sense of accomplishment came naturally. Perhaps this is the pathological manifestation after being tortured and ravaged by the graphics card market today...
Graphics card family photo, this time AD OC also comes with gloves and screwdrivers.
"Void God Card" 3090 is available. The appearance of this generation of AD OC has not changed much. It is still the highly recognizable "little red circle" design, with a metal back plate on the back and iGAME on the side. Both the LOGO and the small red circle support RGB lighting effect; the size of the three fans + double slot shoulders is 315.5mm, which is a relatively large specification. Before purchasing, you need to confirm whether the chassis is compatible; the two fans on both sides are new 13-blade fans developed by Colorful ; the three fans of the graphics card support low-load stopping; this graphics card is equipped with 3 8Pin power supply, which is also the standard configuration for high-end non-public this year. After all, the rated power consumption of 3090 is already 350w.
Very thick heat dissipation module, the official said that this thing is the "Ice Sea Silver Shark 2.0 heat dissipation module". The main structure is a full-coverage heat dissipation base with 5 8mm heat pipes plus a large vacuum cavity heat dissipation plate at the core.
graphics card has 3 DP interfaces and 1 HDMI2.1 interface, and an additional Turbo switch key. Press to enter Turbo mode. The Boost frequency will increase from 1695MHz to 1755MHz.
[Other Accessories Overview]
Board U is the first 16-core thread tearer 1950x of ASRock X399M Taichi and AMD. This is the most perfect MATX motherboard I can find at present. Although the performance of U is far less than 5950x, at least 1950x is not a toothpick bus (64 PCIE channels), and this motherboard is equipped with 3 M.2, a U2 interface, 3 PCIE 3.0*16 slots, and four-channel memory. It is the only one that can have this expansion ability. However, this board does not come with a USB3.1 TYPE-E interface standard. Without buying an adapter board, the TYPE-C on the Dark Cube chassis cannot be used.
I also upgraded the WiFi of the motherboard to AX210 that supports WiFi6E, which should be the final form of this board.
It's a pity that AMD only supports TR4 for two generations, and the second-generation thread tearer has no qualitative leap compared to the first generation; I finally waited for the third generation thread tearer, and the interface was replaced with sTRX4, and then ASRock no longer makes a brand new MATX demon board, so... Hello everyone, I am the leek of the first generation thread tearer.
radiator actually has a large range of options. In the end, I fell in love with this Limin Silver Arrow-TR4 with a rated cooling power consumption of 320w. Double tower, nickel plated, 8 6mm heat pipe radiator , plus a irritable TY143 fan, full-coverage mirror copper base, and this radiator is very compatible with the X399M, which neither blocks the first PCIE slot nor the top motherboard Mos heat dissipation, nor does it affect the installation of four-channel memory on both sides. In addition, it seems that every time I install a chassis called Cube, I don’t have much choice for cooling. When I installed a small Cube with X99e ITX, the very niche Narrow ILM had already given me a drink...
chassis fan is equipped with two 14cm Limin TL-C14S and a 12cm EK Vardar-S.
TR4 Such a large area is too much for silicone grease.
[installation renderings]
The whole machine configuration is as follows:
- CPU: AMD Threadripper 1950x @3.9GHz
- Motherboard: ASRock X399M Taichi (Upgrade AX210)
- Memory: HyperX FuryX 64GB (16GB*4 @2933MHz)
- Graphics card: Rainbow iGame RTX 3090 Advanced OC
- SSD: Toshiba XG6 2TB
- Power supply: Antec HCG X1000
- Heat dissipation: Limin Silver Arrow-TR4
- Chassis: Antec Dark Cube
- Fan: 2*Limin TL-C14S + 1*EK Vardar-S
This time I didn’t do much RGB, and the side-transparent glass is dark, so the lighting effect in the middle area is relatively small. Let’s see what better accessories can be used to embellish it later. At least there are no high requirements for the internal RGB in the short term. After all, there is no A-RGB 5v interface on the motherboard.
[Simplified performance test]
I thought this U could be more easily stable at 4.0GHz, but it still couldn't be stable after adding the voltage to 1.45v. At this time, the power consumption has already reached 400w. It's a bit panicked... In the end, I can only settle for the second best, allowing the CPU and memory to run stably at 3.9GHz @1.36v, 2933MHz @1.25V... Overall, it can only be considered a moderate-to-low physical fitness level. In terms of actual running score performance, the CPU score has a chance of winning compared with the E5 V4 of the same era, but it still cannot compete with the current 5950x and 3000 series thread tearers. The memory delay is also the place where the Ryzen platform has always been weaker than the blue factory next door. Although the memory frequency is 2933MHz, the timing is relatively poor...
FPU single baking part, at 1.36v 3.9GHz, the power consumption is close to 300w. If I remember correctly, this power consumption is comparable to 10900K of 5.0GHz. At this time, the temperature of this 1950x is displayed at 87 degrees in Ryzen Master, while the temperature in AIDA64 is 114 degrees, which is also the saying that the temperature of the stone hammer drifts by 27 degrees. However, since the fan speed strategy is affected by temperature drift, in most cases, the fan is at a higher speed state, and the "crazy guy" like TY143 will have a lot of noise. But no matter what, I am quite satisfied with the cooling capacity of this radiator.
graphics card test, use Turbo mode directly. In the Furmark scenario, the core frequency will be limited to around 1320MHz, the power consumption is above 370w, and the temperature is stable at around 73 degrees.In the
routine 3DMark score link. In these test scenarios, the power consumption of video memory is basically 100w, which is worthy of being GDDR6X.
By the way, I tried several test scenarios that were not commonly used before: DLSS/VRS/DX ray tracing.
graphics card single precision and double precision test. RTX3090 is stronger than the previous generation RTX8000 in both of these items, and in terms of single precision floating point performance, it is almost as close to the A6000, which is officially announced as 38.7TFLOPs.
selected two comprehensive software Passmark and VRAY5 for testing. It seems that if I want to surpass 75% of the world's Passmark users, I still have to continue to upgrade and transform.
game experience session. Although HPET has been turned off, the actual results are still slightly lower than expected. I personally feel that this old first-generation thread tearer 1950x and the less high-frequency memory, coupled with the more heartbreaking timing, has dragged it down.
Far Cry 5 Extremely high picture quality At 1440P resolution, if you open 2 times, you can only use about 6.5G of video memory capacity...
Of course, in the OctaneBench stage, the score of this RTX3090 is still quite good. In this test ranking, this score is already the top level of a single graphics card platform.
[Summary]
Let’s talk about the usage experience first. The TY143 fan on the radiator is very violent. At the same time, the temperature monitoring of the motherboard drifts, which will cause the fan to be in a high speed state. Although the TY143 fan is both the wind pressure and air volume, it is the top level among the 14cm fan, but it also brings a relatively large fan sound at high speed. In addition, this radiator with a height of 163mm is basically the limit size , which is highly compatible with the chassis. If the heat dissipation is higher, when the small drawer inside the chassis is integrated into the main structure, it will collide with the outer frame and cannot be pushed forward. For example, when I use the HyperX vest strip and hang a TY143 fan on the outside, the fan can only be lifted outward to be compatible. However, after the fan is lifted, the fan will hold up against each other with the outer frame of the chassis. Considering the noise of the fan, a TY143 fan is actually enough.
For this MATX installation solution, unless you have extremely high requirements for scalability like me and have feelings for AMD, you can consider X570M/B550M/X299M/Z490M and other solutions, and the overall performance may be more balanced.
Compared with the previous ITX Cube, I personally think the improvement is very obvious. The chassis size is not many, which has been exchanged for better inlet and outlet air performance at the graphics card end (it's finally not a can) and more installation solutions (both ITX/MATX are available). At the same time, the front panel can also be replaced with the front panel according to different installation styles, and the covers on both sides have been upgraded to glass, and the graphics card/power/heat dissipation compatibility of this chassis is very good; the drawer structure of the new Dark Cube is also more convenient for installation and maintenance; the handle on the "small drawer" at the rear of the chassis looks very good when disassembling and assembling or handling.
The only drawback is that the compatibility of 2.5/3.5-inch hard drives is not enough, the wire cannot be wrapped around the outer skeleton to cover it, and the glass on both sides is not transparent enough. Of course, these are also some nitpicious views.
Regarding graphics cards, to be honest, for players at 2K/4K resolution, the performance is enough to cope with top 3A masterpieces; and the 24GB video memory is simply too rich, and the importance of super large video memory can be reflected in an 8K environment. With the current market, for those who have installed installation needs recently, they must first get the graphics card done and then consider other accessories, otherwise they will most likely encounter the embarrassing scene where other accessories are already in place but they cannot buy graphics cards.
One more thing, the Colorful IGame Center software seems to have also been upgraded. The software interface of the 20 Series at that time was ugly than that of now, and the functions are not as rich as that of now.
Imagine when 3090 was just launched, everyone compared the 24G video memory 3090 with the previous flagship card Titan RTX. At that time, the price of Titan RTX was 20,000 yuan, but now the price of 3090 can be bought has risen to 20,000+. This may be the legendary hammer to get hammered......
No financial management awareness: hold 3090 and tinker with the installation and play games
Advanced financial management awareness: sell with this air card at a higher price or dig a mine.
If you remember correctly, the first ITX box type Cube was born around 2016, and then in 2021, I finally saw the Dark Cube on the market. So at this pace, maybe you can touch the new ATX box type Cube form around 2026, hahaha.
The full text is over, thanks for watching.
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