iQunix ZX-1 review: Ryzen 7, RTX 3080 Build!

This is my PC. It's big, it's bright, it's really loud. I don't want my PC to be like this, especially as I edit most of my videos on my Mac and have done for the past couple of years now. I only game on my PC and I lack space so I want a small case. I reached out to my friends at iQunix and asked for their very lovely ZX1. They sent it out and almost a year later we're doing it. Today I'm going to talk about building my new computer inside this case with a few bits from my old build and tell you about my experience with thermals, with building the thing and how the thing just is as a computer case. So a weird one for my channel, a computer case review kind of ish and an experience in one. Hey guys, I'm Ryan Thomas and this is my review of the iQunix ZX1. Let's briefly go over the case and the layout. It's a black water-cooled model, meaning that it's taller top portion compared to the rest. There's enough room in here for a mini ITX motherboard with one two-slot expansion card, such as a graphics card, an SFX power supply compacted inside the case with an extension cable to route the plug to the rear of the chassis, as well as a 240mm liquid cooler at the top. My only drive going into this PC is an M2, which sits on the board itself so it's not mounted anywhere in the case, which is good because there's not a lot of room in there. It's a sandwiched layout, meaning that the included PCIe Gen 3 riser carries the PCIe signal with a ribbon cable to an external board where you plug your graphics card or expansion card into. There are no fancy glass side panels here, which is really refreshing because I myself am not a big fan of RGB, seeing inside your computer, all those typical gamery things. I like stuff to be sort of classy and clean and this fits it really well, with a lot of perforations in the side, enough to maybe see a couple of lights, but not overbearing. I'd like to note that I never got my USB-C port working for some reason. I believe this to be a faulty daughterboard and connection on the case itself. This isn't something I brought up with Iconic so I don't want to bear them huge responsibility. I didn't bother asking them for help because quite honestly I just wanted the computer together so I could get on with the rest of my day. Maybe a slight issue from Iconic's there, but I'm sure if you asked them to replace it they would absolutely do so, they seem like the kind of people to do that. I just was in a bit of a hurry. And all the other ports on the top of the case work as well. The power button presents itself on the front with a surrounding power light. I like the design, it's very clean, maybe my favourite case ever made purely for the aesthetics. The whole case is made of really high quality aluminium, it looks and feels amazing to put together. It is rather heavy because of the thickness of the aluminium, it's sort of a hyper premium case and when you go to pick up it, especially with a computer inside it, it doesn't look as heavy as it is. Just going to interrupt this video to say if you're enjoying the content, please do leave a like and please do subscribe if you're new around here to never miss a video like this one. Before we discuss thermals and usability and design and go into more detail there, I want to discuss my building experience with this thing, because this isn't my first rodeo. I've built, I don't know, hundreds of computers, over a hundred, I don't know, many, many computers and my day job is actually a computer repair technician so I'm constantly building, taking apart all that. I've also built a fair amount of mini ITX computers, but this was different gravy as they say. So, this was maybe the hardest computer I've ever built in my entire life, just purely because it was so tight and hard to get into different places. If you are new to building computers, I would not recommend building in this case. It is, it was frustrating to the point where, you know, you gotta go make a cup of tea, come back and carry on. It was just so annoying to build in. A few issues that I had. Firstly, the PCI cable, it's a Gen 3, so if you've got a Gen 4 board and a Gen 4 card, I recommend putting everything together outside the case, going into the BIOS and then changing the mode from automatic to force it to go into Gen 3, just so you don't run into any compatibility errors, which I did and that worked fine. But the riser was a little bit tight. Okay, little bit was maybe an understatement. It was ridiculously tight to the point where screwing it in, I felt like I was going to snap something. Yeah, you know, touch wood it hasn't broken yet and it's been absolutely fine, but it just felt incredibly tight and maybe a little bit too much so. The second issue was getting the power supply in there. So I opted for an SFX power supply. I say opted, you have to have an SFX power supply in there and it fit most of the cables in, but it just covered everything on the board. The VRMs are covered, pretty much all the PCB is covered just by a little bit of excess cable and bear in mind, this is an SFX power supply, so the cables are already shorter. They're much shorter than standard power supply cables to enable sort of, you know, so it fits in the case better. And even then it was kind of bad. The third one and the biggest issue for me, you know, aside from the whole USB-C thing, was getting the 240mm radiator in here was an absolute slug. Now I tried as hard as I could to not go the water cooling route. I'm not a fan of all-in-one liquid coolers. They've typically gone wrong for me in the past and I much prefer a good air cooler. However, with the processor that's in here, it just wasn't really an option getting a decent sized heatsink in there. I'll talk more about the specs in a minute. I'm sure you've seen some of the components already in the B-roll, but yeah, this was not a super nice experience to build in. Now they did provide a little toolbox and a little screwdriver and everything went together very nicely, like you kind of put all the brackets in separately and it's very nicely laid out and the instructions are pretty clear and, you know, it's good in that regard. But my gosh, was it stressful trying to get it all together. And I don't even have the biggest components in the world. Get your mind out of the gutter. But really, in the case itself, it was just a mess. However, now that it's all together and it's on my desk, it is my favourite computer. Definitely my favourite desktop computer that I've ever used, purely for the size. I mean, it fits pretty much anywhere I have it on the desk. But I'll rattle through the components pretty quickly. We've got an AMD Ryzen 3700 CPU, the 8-core one, 32GB of Corsair LPX 3600MHz memory, a Gigabyte B550i Pro AX motherboard with the Wi-Fi and all that stuff, and a Founders Edition RTX 3080 with an NZXT Kraken X53 on the CPU with Noctua 120mm fans, a Corsair SF750 power supply and a Kingston 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD. So it's a nice computer, it's a fairly high-end one, but it's not the latest, it's not the greatest. I've had the 3080 for a little while now. The 3080 Ti wasn't out, maybe I would have bought that one if it was out at the time. And actually, the Ryzen CPU came from a SimRig computer that I had, so the only thing I really had to change was the motherboard, because I was going from full ATX to mini-ITX, and the RAM because I had four sticks to get 32 and I had to get more, fewer sticks that were more dense to get to 32. Now, the keen-eyed amongst you might have noticed that I have the Founders Edition 3080, which has a fan on the back and the front of the card. This case was not designed for one of those cards. There is basically no room behind the graphics card, so airflow is limited. Now, I've tried to do my best to mitigate the thermal issues, let's say. So I've got my two Noctua fans pulling the air through the bottom of the case and pushing it out of the top. That means taking air from the graphics card as well and getting rid of it. And secondly, I did some undervolting. Now, I will leave the guides that I used, mainly from Optimum Tech, Ali Saeed. I'll leave those in the video description. They're great guides on how to undervolt your GPU. Now, using this, I've managed to get my GPU down about 10 to 15 degrees under max load and about 10 degrees lower on sort of the medium load and low load. So actually, I got it a lot cooler and I maybe dropped sort of around 5% performance. Now, I'm not a numbers guy. I do not care that my computer doesn't produce as many frames as my mate's computer. All I care about is I get mostly enough frames that I paid for, plus also having the ability to run the computer and not worry about thermals. Overall, I haven't experienced any thermal related issues. The fans naturally ramp up when everything is warmed up and there is naturally some coil whine from the CPU and GPU, which is to be expected when everything else is a little bit quieter. But since I've got my earphones or headphones when it's on, I cannot notice this. But, and this is a big but, make sure that you have ample room around your computer. This isn't the sort of thing you can stick on the floor. And trust me, as someone who is a more computer on the floor kind of guy, I've almost always had my computer on the floor on a bit of wood or a bit of cardboard to stop the carpet becoming an issue. This is not one of those. It's going on the desk, on a solid surface with plenty of room around it, near the perforations on the sides, on the front, on the back, on the top, on the bottom. It needs to have plenty of airflow. Thankfully, because it's such a small computer, you can get it on the desk and it really doesn't take up a lot of room. I happen to think it looks fairly clean in my setup, although my desk has had many gouges taken out of it at this point. I probably do need to replace it. But just make sure you've got plenty of airflow. Trust me, just do it. Which brings me to my conclusion. At £250, which is a lot for a computer case, is it worth buying? And maybe I should rephrase the question. If Icunix had not sent me the computer case, would I have bought it? I think the answer to that question is no. And that's because I don't value having a pretty computer over £200 in my bank account. I'd much rather spend closer to £50. Well, probably closer to £100 to get something that is nice. The small form factor niche is naturally more expensive. Stuff costs more. So your power supplies, your motherboards, and obviously the cases as well, cost a lot more. So maybe I'd want to pay closer to £150 to £175. However, when you get the quality of the thing, the fact that it's from Icunix, who's not mass producing it on the scale of, let's say, a Corsair or a Fractal design. And so their manufacturing costs are going to be more. It makes more sense when you consider that you get really good instructions, a really nice little toolkit with it. It goes together really well. Unless you're like me and the whole USB-C thing breaks, which shouldn't happen to you. You get a nice set of I.O. with that USB-C working. You get the nice power button and everything integrated. It's a very seamless looking design. You know, you don't see the harsh edges and the screw holes and everything from the outside. Yeah, I would say it's a really, really nice case. Again, stressful. So if you're prone to having panic attacks, don't bother. But otherwise, actually, it's not the worst experience in the world. So if you've got loads of money, go out and buy it. If you don't, maybe consider spending more money on something like a better graphics card or a CPU. And this is sort of the small form factor in general. If you're like me, you live in a small space, you really don't have room for a big tower computer. This makes a big difference. It also means that you're getting something that's easier to carry around. Say, if you move a lot or you're in university accommodation and then you go home for the summer, this is also a big difference. You can get one. I mean, you wouldn't want to, but you could put this in your backpack if you wanted to. And given the quality of the parts, the quality of everything that comes with it, the packaging, it's probably worth $250. I just wouldn't pay it. Am I cheap? I want to give a massive shout out to Icunix for sending this out because it's probably going to be my computer case for the next god knows how many years. And it's thanks to them that that's possible. I also want to give a shout out to my patrons for being genuinely supportive. So yeah, thank you so much, guys. And also, I want to let you know about the links in the video description. Go check those out. Please do like, comment and subscribe if you're new around here to never miss a video like this one. I've been Ryan Thomas. Thank you all so much for watching. I'll catch you later. Peace.