I replaced a $20,000 server with this

you've probably seen the metric boatload<br>of videos that we make every year at CES<br>but the thing is in spite of being<br>called and I quote the most powerful<br>Tech event in the world the show runs<br>out of Las Vegas where the hotels don't<br>exactly have the fastest internet so<br>instead of sending our footage back home<br>to the studio to be edited we have to<br>bring our editors to the footage and<br>there's a lot of footage so much so that<br>a couple of years ago we built this and<br>you might think think wow lus that looks<br>like a crappy old business machine and<br>you're right but I promise it's got a<br>heart of gold and a heart of kokia cm6<br>nvme storage specifically 60 terabyt of<br>it that allows our editors to work on<br>location with the same speed and<br>efficiency as they would with the crazy<br>servers we have here in our studio all<br>without even having to think about<br>running out of space it's small enough<br>to fit in a yes thank you for that Jake<br>carry-on and it has enough networking to<br>support more editing machines than we<br>could ever need at the<br>show but it has a major flaw<br>it's at least with the case way too<br>heavy I actually almost missed my flight<br>last year because of this thing it just<br>so happened that like the airline<br>check-in manager was a fan and was like<br>okay he can go we don't want that to<br>happen again so it's time for a portable<br>Nez V2 smaller lighter but just as<br>capable and we're going to be using oh<br>oh yeah you have the box do you want the<br>box or the actual thing sorry meet the<br>mini Forum ms01 Mini PC this thing's got<br>to be what a quarter of the volume of<br>what we built before and if the spec<br>page is to be believed we'll be making<br>basically no compromises to Performance<br>perhaps the best part is you could just<br>buy one of these online no weird<br>modifications required check this out I<br>can't even fit our sponsor in there<br>threat Locker their cyber security event<br>zero trust world is a great way to get<br>some hands-on experience on how to<br>protect against modern threats click our<br>link and use code ztw lt25 to save $200<br>on your registration<br>today we promis basically no compromises<br>compared to our older Nas machine so why<br>don't we start with networking any<br>storage system that we use is going to<br>have to be at least 10 gig ethernet good<br>for around 1 gab per second of<br>throughput to the MacBooks that our<br>editors bring to CES but this has not<br>one but two onboard Intel powered 10 gig<br>SFP plus ports not unlike the system<br>that it's replacing but on top of that<br>it also has dual 2 and2 gig and dual 40<br>gig USB 4 ports which could easily Run<br>10 or even 25 gig Thunderbolt adapters<br>now we wouldn't want to bring a 25 gig<br>switch with us to CES<br>right you're not are you no I'm not what<br>well I don't know I'm not going to can<br>never tell with you where am I going to<br>put that I'm going to bring that on the<br>airplane I'm going to end up on a watch<br>list the point is the onboard 10 gig is<br>already lots for what we're doing but<br>it's cool that we could go faster if we<br>wanted to speaking of faster is that a<br>freaking pcie by 16x slot on a computer<br>this small it's a half height slot so<br>there are some limitations I call them<br>lus slots that's a great name for them<br>unfortunately while it is a 16x slot<br>only eight of the lanes are hooked up<br>but that's still a ton of bandwidth to<br>play with if you wanted to add something<br>like a couple additional ssds or in our<br>case an Nvidia Quadro p1000 a half<br>height oh my God it's so cute single<br>slot workstation GPU now this might be a<br>bit of an older card but realistically<br>it's powerful enough for our purposes<br>actually why do we need a workstation<br>we're going to get into that in this<br>read the bloody script brother which<br>we'll talk about in a minute but the<br>system officially supports up to<br>nvidia's current gen RTX 2000e Ada with<br>a whopping 16 gigs of vram or if you're<br>feeling crafty you can install this sick<br>custom single slot cooler From Nerd<br>Weare onto an RTX 40008 sff like craft<br>Computing showed off recently we're<br>going to have all that Linked In the<br>description if you wanted to do<br>something like this for yourself as for<br>why we need a GPU in a NZ I mean we're<br>not running a Plex server on it are we<br>well I don't think I told you but I<br>actually did find a place place in Vegas<br>with good internet hyperx Arena Esports<br>venue and they offered to let us keep<br>this machine there which is great it's<br>just that they're not open 24/7 like<br>everything else in Las Vegas so we need<br>to like export a video at 2: in the<br>morning which going to try not to<br>happens it happens this way we can run a<br>VM on this machine remote in and render<br>a video from wherever that is awesome<br>and it will still have good internet but<br>why not go with something newer I think<br>I know the answer workstation cards are<br>expensive and that was on the Shelf and<br>because I had a better idea huzzah the<br>new Mac Mini M4 it's so small and this<br>is so small that I can bring both and to<br>be honest this Mac Mini will absolutely<br>crush this system even with the best GPU<br>we could possibly put in there yeah this<br>thing is actually kind of incredible<br>especially for the price and for Adobe<br>apps Mac OS is better anyways so that's<br>why we use MacBooks for our editors<br>normally here we're a PC house but<br>Premiere is just so much more stable on<br>the MacBooks and we don't have time to<br>screw around with that stuff when we're<br>a show of course anything would Shred<br>the performance of our ms01 in its<br>current state while you can buy it in a<br>ready to go out of the box system we got<br>ours as a be bones so it still doesn't<br>have any memory or<br>storage oh cool ddr5 sodiums let's go<br>every once in a while I'm like oh yeah<br>mushkin still exists they actually have<br>some really cool stuff it doesn't have<br>labels on it so you wouldn't know what<br>it is oh but it's on here oh no are you<br>kidding me yeah those are dual 48 gig<br>ddr5 5600 megga transfer soda wow so we<br>are technically downgrading our capacity<br>128 to 96 but it's close and we're going<br>from 3200 to 5600 it's not going to be a<br>problem now I just have to figure out<br>how to get it into the system Philips<br>zero perhaps yes sir yes<br>sir o that's cute you can take the fan<br>off without actually removing the heat<br>sink to get the Thum slots oh and that<br>gives them lots of air flow too I love<br>it yeah but you're going to remove the<br>heat sink anyways oh I heard through the<br>grave Vine that the thermal paste they<br>use on these not the greatest a lot of<br>the mini fors boxes use Liquid Metal but<br>this one does not okay screws her out<br>but no there's two more they're under<br>the foam if you feel it right what I got<br>to take the foam off there I just poke<br>through oh that's horrible Jake where's<br>the other one e it's not the worst thing<br>everever I I I'd actually rather you do<br>it like that than rip the foam off cuz<br>it probably won't stick back<br>on remember when CPUs were Square I do I<br>mean look at this thing it's a laptop<br>chip it's a tall boy it's a laptop chip<br>or a short wide boy I assume this is<br>Intel then cuz AMD doesn't look like<br>that yeah they actually sell a few<br>different versions of the ms01 but we<br>went for the top dog core I9 13900 H<br>given the forrator like I said it is a<br>laptop chip but it is no slouch 14 cores<br>six of which are high clocking<br>performance cores reaching Peak speed<br>needs up up to 5.4 GHz with the rest<br>being low power efficiency course but<br>this chip is rated for a max turbo Power<br>of<br>115 watts how is that a mobile chip well<br>it's a I mean I guess that's why their<br>CEO's gone<br>yeah I was just primed to say yeah I<br>wasn't expecting you to say that<br>Jesus that's nice he he's prepared to<br>agree with me even when he hasn't heard<br>what I said I mean usually not but I<br>just I mean with the size of this cooler<br>or the size of the cooler in any lap top<br>it's not going to be able to do that<br>kind of wattage sustained No in fact<br>minis form actually limits it to 80<br>watts in the bias but they do allow you<br>to change it and since I heard that the<br>thermal paste is kind of crappy PTM 7950<br>from LP store.com okay and maybe we can<br>turn the wat up then yeah this stuff's<br>actually perfect for this application<br>funnily enough the reason we started<br>carrying it was because of the crazy<br>improvements people were seeing after<br>upgrading laptop chips with it because<br>on a normal desktop CPU which has a<br>metal heat spreader the thermal pce<br>might only see like 70 80° but on a<br>laptop chip it's a bare die and you<br>might actually see temperatures of 110°<br>which normal thermal paste is not made<br>for this stuff it handles it we'll uh<br>throw some screenshots on the screen<br>maybe a before and after to see what the<br>the temps are like oh did you get before<br>temps oh yeah I'm sure it's quite a bit<br>better here's the application process by<br>the way you just cut yourself a little<br>piece peel the one side hope that you<br>cut the right size piece and then peel<br>back the top that's a lot what's trippy<br>is it goes on like a thermal pad<br>especially if you put it in the fridge<br>or freezer before you work with it so<br>you can see it's a it's a solid right<br>now but once it heats up it changes to a<br>liquid so that it fills in all the<br>grooves just like a more traditional<br>paste would oh I forgot to clean that<br>yep I believed in you though I thought<br>too much of you you put so much oh my<br>God that's fine you can't put too much<br>paste on something we proved it recently<br>that you cannot you definitely can you<br>can put it even in between the pins and<br>the CPU really and it still worked oh<br>yeah oh my God you're not what that's<br>the GPU mounting solution look okay<br>Justin has not had time to make a<br>bracket for this GPU because it's<br>missing the half height bracket and he's<br>going to today before we go to CES<br>tomorrow I'm sure it'll definitely<br>happen now since we're talking about<br>using this as a Nas we should definitely<br>talk about storage which is another one<br>of this system's strong suits it has not<br>one not two but three m.2 storage slots<br>which is kind of crazy now in the old<br>system we used two of Kia's 30 TB cm6<br>ssds because well we had them on the<br>shelf and it's nice to not have to worry<br>about capacity and while we could still<br>use a 2.5 in SSD with this handy m.2 to<br>2.5 in adapter they actually include<br>with the msl1 now that we have<br>experience running a assas at a show we<br>know that even three or 4 terabytes is<br>lot so instead of me having to worry<br>about lugging around a $20,000 in kyoki<br>ssds on a plane we're going to install a<br>pair of these sabrent Rock rocket 4 plus<br>8 TB drives they're still stupid fast<br>with a ton of capacity but at about a<br>tenth of the price of the kyia drives<br>then for boot storage a normie 512 gig<br>gen 3 Sab<br>rocket and I think with that we're all<br>ready to power this thing on this looks<br>great the entire package with networking<br>plus the Mac plus its external network<br>card is smaller than our previous<br>machine where is that thing look at this<br>that's freaking awesome yeah I could<br>honestly probably just like stuff that<br>in an LTT store backpack I think it's<br>lighter than the previous setup too the<br>whole thing 8.26 lb 10.68 not to mention<br>we didn't have a Mac Mini before and<br>that switch would have been with this<br>computer too yeah this is awesome yeah<br>does it work oh yeah as with most of our<br>storage builds this system is running<br>true Nas scale it's a staple in the<br>network attached storage community and<br>it makes use of ZFS a combo file system/<br>volume manager we have been using for<br>years I already went ahead and put our<br>two 8 TB drives whenever it loads into a<br>mirror with is that enough storage space<br>for the entire trade show we already<br>addressed that I was working I had a<br>meeting the point is that a mirror will<br>create a redundant copy of any footage<br>or projects that we copy to it so in the<br>event of a drive failure which probably<br>won't happen we will still have a fully<br>functioning Nest are you going to talk<br>about your windows 11 virtual machine<br>with Premier wait why do we even need<br>that if we're going to be using the Mac<br>to this is our plan C if for whatever<br>reason the Mac not responsive we can't<br>get into the building right so we're<br>just out of luck well we put the GPU in<br>there we might as well have the VM ready<br>to go so if I start it up that's also<br>part of why it wasn't worth going to buy<br>a fancy new one right right cuz we<br>probably won't use it this is our plan C<br>and so you've just got it passed through<br>to the VM yep cool and I don't even need<br>to leave the VM running like we can just<br>if we need to turn it on are we using<br>like a p KVM or something like that for<br>the machine itself uh it's funny you<br>should ask another super tiny thing the<br>Nano KVM they finally open source the<br>firmware on this thing and this is the<br>more expensive one with the screen and<br>stuff but the base model version of this<br>is like $30 basically what this does is<br>it takes any computer uh desktop laptop<br>uh you know little mini PC like this Mac<br>Mini and it turns it into almost like a<br>server with a remote management<br>interface so you plug this into your<br>network you plug this into your USB port<br>and your HDMI port and remote access<br>over the network to any machine like a<br>digital keyboard and mouse so cool<br>actually this one is pretty cool too cuz<br>it has those pins if you have this in<br>like a desktop computer and I guess in<br>theory you could do it with this you can<br>run little wires to like your power on<br>switch so if the system the bed you can<br>hard restart it that is so awesome are<br>we going to wire it up no I don't think<br>that's going to be a problem the system<br>also does technically have Intel's I<br>think it's called the vpro management<br>thing so you can wake on land but like<br>extra super special wake on land I think<br>it'll be okay okay I like this one a lot<br>too because unlike the pi KVM it doesn't<br>require uh additional power oh it can<br>just be powered off the system unless<br>the machine doesn't output enough but as<br>far as I know it does is it off I<br>wouldn't know because you<br>know is it you got to put the press the<br>power button on the bottom smart design<br>let's look at Plan<br>B yep that's a fast processor got the M4<br>Mac Mini is sick yeah I mean like if you<br>tried to build a computer with the same<br>amount of money I'm sure you could build<br>one that was like technically faster for<br>editing oh right and it costs twice as<br>much once you increase the RAM and<br>storage One Step yeah but all we would<br>realistically use it for is taking a<br>final video making a couple little edits<br>and exporting and sure that might take<br>45 minutes instead of 30 minutes but at<br>least we can do it at all I see how<br>we're going to edit remotely if we need<br>to but how are we planning to ingest<br>footage to the nas it's actually pretty<br>similar to how it's set up right now<br>just instead of a Mac Mini MacBook Pro<br>they already have an SD card slot right<br>there all we have to do is take uh sorry<br>if that's still open in Premiere wow<br>take our 10 gig dongle I mean we're all<br>going to bring one so it's fine we don't<br>have to share plug it in copy over your<br>footage the place that I told you that<br>has the internet they're just going to<br>let us have some editors hang out there<br>no way yeah it's like an orts venue oh<br>yeah the thing that drives me crazy is<br>none of that used to be necessary the<br>Arya and the vidara used to have great<br>internet and then as far as I can tell<br>because of just like the ownership group<br>for pretty much all the hotels on the<br>Strip being either like one or two and<br>them all basically colluding to make<br>sure that none of them are too much<br>better than the others um meant that the<br>fast internet went away yeah they all as<br>far as I can tell have the same internet<br>service provider and it's all like 10<br>megabit yep and they used to have<br>hardwired Jacks in the rooms and they<br>just they pulled them out yeah it would<br>have cost them literally nothing to just<br>leave them there but they couldn't do<br>that everything's Wi-Fi so everything is<br>dog yeah I'm not recommending this but<br>sometimes they have you know the AP or<br>just plugged in you can just unplug it<br>plug it into your laptop I didn't tell<br>you to do that I did the same thing in<br>Japan sometimes it works of course not<br>all of our editing is going to be done<br>down in Vegas what about what we have to<br>send back to the office here right we<br>have faster internet than we usually do<br>but not like 10 gig like we have at the<br>office so we're not going to be sending<br>the raw footage instead we're going to<br>start using proxies so the editor's back<br>home with our fast but not crazy fast<br>internet can get proxy footage and then<br>they send the project file back and then<br>since we have the raw footage here you<br>take your Mac Mini or your laptop and<br>you conform the raw footage which is<br>basically like replacing the proxy with<br>it and render the video cool and I think<br>all that's left is to show how all of it<br>fits into our commuter backpack LTT<br>store.com here we<br>go I'm going to put that power cable<br>there going to put that computer right<br>there I'm going to put this other power<br>brick which I don't even know what it's<br>for right here oh no wa that's for the<br>computer it should fit right well you<br>still left your Tech sack in there yeah<br>I know well I need my tech sack how am I<br>going to take stuff apart at the show if<br>I don't bring my text you're bringing<br>this I put that over<br>there I don't know man this is looking<br>spicy no no no I up this well this can<br>just sit right there easy and then this<br>no they're good they're good put the put<br>the cable up there okay easy easy peasy<br>squeezed<br>lemons oh my God and macman is going to<br>have a giant scratch on the top of no no<br>it's going to be fine it's on the bottom<br>where no one will ever see it except<br>when they turn it on and off which<br>nobody does apparently mhm oh God<br>oh it should be uh what what did you say<br>9.6 lbs<br>heavier it's pretty heavy now I got a<br>lot of screwdrivers in there too you<br>can't bring those on the pl no no I know<br>there it is commuter backpack no Pelican<br>case required oh this says weigh it here<br>we<br>go with a water bottle not bad how full<br>is it full 24 lb that's pretty awful and<br>here's a 24lb segue to our sponsor<br>threat Locker whether you're a<br>multi-billion Dollar business or a<br>scrappy young upstart dealing with cyber<br>threats is always going to be a very<br>real inevitability and learning how to<br>mitigate risk in the online world can be<br>daunting but fear not cuz from February<br>19th to 21st threat Locker is hosting<br>their fifth annual zero trust world<br>event in Orlando you'll get access to<br>daily info sessions and Keynotes<br>Hands-On hacking Labs a whole bunch of<br>vendors with Security Solutions to<br>explore not to mention the opportunity<br>to network with like-minded peers from<br>around the world there will be a 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