Check out our latest video on the NZXT H1 fire hazard: ruclips.net/video/9XIKOSrQdQ0/видео.html Please consider buying one of GN's Wireframe Mouse Mats to support us: IN STOCK & SHIPPING NOW! store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-wireframe-mouse-mat - this is a high-quality desk-size mousing surface with custom blue rubber underside, blue stitched borders, and a high-quality print with PC component design.
Great coverage..no dont waste alot of time on thermals ...you already manage alot of content and this just seems like not too big of a deal unless units start catching fire or something
The black resin blob on the controller PCB will be covering a chip mounted and bonded directly to the PCB, it is a common way to protect chip on board devices, my guess is that the chip is the microcontroller that controls the thing
While i dont particularly care about the thermals of the system, I would like to know how many cores/threds, graphics compute units and clock speeds the ryzen soc has.
Yeah Steve wouldn't be a great engineer, it's always evident when he tries to disassemble something and be smart about the build. Jay (2cents) al least doesn't try to be a smart ass when he clearly doesn't understand things he sees.
25:30 It's what most call a "Blob Chip" It's a Chip on Board (CoB) where the bare chip is bonded directly to the board with gold leads then epoxy resin coated to protect it. Usually see them in calculators and really cheap electronics. Those old Tiger handheld electronic LCD games come to mind as another place you'd see a blob chip, but they're pretty much in everything small and cheap now.
When Nintendo was developing new chips they shipped first release games using those BLOB chips on the boards of their Cartridges. My copy of Star Fox for the SNES has a blob "MARIO" FX chip in it.
Back in the old days, I was eating one controller a month. The white plastic shift kept breaking the rings that pressed the directional buttons. Then dad bought me a controller, disassembled it and made a new shift, in aluminum. That controller still works, although somewhere at their attic, together with the video game, 30+ years later. Thank you Steve for the good memories from this video. I love you dad
@@cuy50 It's suppose to be a terrible joke. The whole point was, it doesn't help increase anything. Just like putting on decal stickers on cars doesn't suddenly, give you more horsepower. It's an old dumb myth for increasing performance on things as well as for shits and giggles. 😆
Something you may have missed: the joystick handle actually acts as a spinner/paddle, which may be the reason for it being a wobbly design (and it actually feels pretty good as an Atari paddle, smooth motion).
I loved my old Atari2600 console. I had about 50-60 games. It was an awesome console and I hope this crowdfunded version lives up to it’s original experience and expectations 🥳🥳
I think the controller has to be wobbly because the stick turns/rotates, it functions as a paddle for games like breakout and a dial/spinner in games like tempest I believe.
@ 17:25 Steve's understanding (or lack of) of a squirrel-cage fan is terrifying. Ugh! It doesn't suck air IN through the heatsink and duct! It certainly doesn't suck air in through the duct and blow it back out through the same duct! What in the world. It sucks air in through the big open mesh hole at the left side of the screen, down into the squirrel cage fan which is open (you can spin it with your hands, therefore it is open and not blocked as you say!), the squirrel-cage fan spins the air and blows it outwards utilizing centripetal force, and the air flows down through the heatsink and out the duct out the right side of the screen.
The fan looks like a very typical blower fan like 99% of laptops out there. It will be drawing in air from the left and blowing through the heatsink and out the back on the right side via the airflow channel.
@@mortrem76 I'm not sure typical laptop fans with heatpipes are more effective. They do often have copper heatsinks instead of aluminimum but heatpipe is just a middle man because they don't have access to air right where the CPU is (PCB below, keyboard above).
@@sushi926 yeah. usually the CPU is near the center of the board. They totally could set up a fan to blow air across a simple heatsink on top of the CPU, but they would end up having to pipe warm air a long way to get it out of the laptop, and a lot of heat would leak up through the keyboard causing sweaty hands and annoyed customers. Better to use heat pipes to move the fin-stack to either the very back or side of the laptop. That way they don't have to deal with hot air inside the laptop itself. It's probably slightly less efficient, but totally worth it. Also, many laptops are so damn thin that there would be hardly any room for a simple heatsink on the processor. A separate radiator connected via heat pipe can then be much fatter, resulting in a much quieter machine. In this console the designers clearly have no shortage of space, and noone is going to play games while holding it in their hands. Might as well go with the simpler and cheaper solution.
Thank you Gregory for sending this in! Have been looking forward to this teardown for ages! Even asked if he was going to do it in the comments of the PS5 teardown
The fan in this thing is called a blower fan aka 'squirrel cage' and they only ever blow, they are used in high static pressure situations where the air channel is a long run, the air always flows thought the middle and moves off the blades (see radeon RX Vega). Pull the cover off your A/C unit for your air handler... blower for the long air runs needed to hit all parts of the house/business. The "probe points" are vias to the ram on the bottom of the board... they might also be probe points.. but they are vias. You missed the ring of LED's on the controller couldn't tell if they are RGB or not, or really what the use is. And the big glob of "plastic" you saw on the bottom of the white PCB is known as a Glop top; They drop the bare silicon die right onto the device use bonding wires to connect it up and epoxy over it, pull apart a calculator, you'll find a glop top. I don't know if its a cheaper solution than SMD or some sort of socketed chip, but it is VERY robust, used in devices that might get damaged in a drop, or are exposed to twisting force that might pop the solder on a SMD device or allow a chip to fall out of a PLCC type socket.
I was going to comment on the fan, but you beat me to it. As you mentioned, the air will entering through the center and travel radial outwards. The angle of the fins and direction of rotation do not affect the overall direction of flow for these types of fans, but they may impact it's effectiveness.
for some reason they have tented half their vias, seemingly at random. I thought it was a pcb fab issue. not sure. You can see actual programming test points near Q36 and Q35 at 28:03
That is much nicer inside than I was expecting. Props to Atari. Re temperatures: I wouldn't expect a while piece on it, but maybe just pay attention to if it's overheating or not. Maybe one day it will be hacked and people will try to over clock it XD
The black thing at 25:25 on the controller is a glop/glob top IC. Probably covering the microcontroller and the probe points near it are programming/debug pins. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_packaging#Glop-top
I'm thinking "FCC" is not "The FCC", but the initials of Fred Chesnais, the guy in charge of this version of Atari. Can't confirm since I'm not sure if his middle initial is 'C'.
@@purplegill10 Middle names are an american thing. Frédéric Chesnais is french, so he does not have a middle name. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chesnais So, I don't know what this "C" stands for. Or FCC.
@@mecha-sheep7674 (Canadian) French guy reporting in. We do have middle names, we just don't use them much outside of applying for a security clearance or other mock-high-sensitivity government crap.
@@BillLambert Well, Chesnais is from this side of the pond, so he does not have a middle name. Note that we French can have between one and a bazillion first names however... There is no rule.
The fan is meant to suck air from inside the shell through the circular cutouts above the fan blades and blow it through the fins and out the duct to the back.
Totally liked watching this Atari tear-Down and watched till the end i would like also to see the temp and if someone is going to do a little gaming preview or what not so yea. thanks Love your content. Have a good one.
For those wondering, that's a Ryzen R1000 embedded SoC. Specifically, the R1606G. 2 cores, 4 threads, Zen1, integrated Vega 3. So it's roughly equivalent to the Athlon 200GE. Also, white PCBs add pretty much nothing to cost nowadays. Green, blue, red, yellow, black, and white are all standard colors at most fabs, with no real cost difference. The only time you pay more for different soldermask colors are for matte or novelty colors. White isn't considered novelty. Source: Am PCB engineer. Looking at these boards, it seems like they were just designed by geeks who wanted to do something cool; white PCBs, Asteroids silkscreens, etc. This was clearly a hobby project, and it's cool for what it is. Would be cooler with a V2000 (Renoir, Zen2) SoC, but still.
Did I miss the internal storage overview? I saw a couple of M.2 slots, one of which housed the WiFi card. Did the video show an SSD storage drive with the "Over 100 Classic Games" installed on it? I've heard the VCS is supposed to come wtih a Windows 10 mode on it. Time stamp if I missed it would be great, thanks!
Huh. This might be the cheapest way to buy a PC that can be mounted inside a monitor. Usually people use laptops. But this thing looks like a better fit. Hopefully production ramps up so we can see some cool DIY mods.
Nice teardown. It was good to see the internals. ETA Prime's video was more about the functionality of it. You can pop an M.2 drive in there and run Windows since it's actually just a small PC. You can also stream games through Stadia, Geforce Now, etc. and have a much larger library than other consoles. Or load it with all of the classics via emulators. That chip on its own can handle games up to PS2 and Wii. EDIT: ETA Prime uploaded a teardown today too where he added the SSD and 3200MHz RAM. Looked like a 10-20% performance boost, but it's still a low-end APU so don't expect great performance in AAA titles. The Vega 3 graphics can only be pushed so far.
The "We Have Played ATARI Today" logo is probably there because the people designing the board had a big giant empty spot, and since they're silk-screening the board anyway, it wouldn't cost them anything to put *something* there.
It might also be a throwback to the 1970s when vanity signing PCBs was a thing. I don't think Atari itself ever did it, though. They were big on anonymizing their employees in an attempt to keep them dependent on the company.
I'm in the process of prototyping my own product and will need a custom PCB designed. Even though there's not really going to be much room on the board, you better believe I'm going to be filling any extra space on there full of Easter eggs and fun designs. :D Sadly, if the board is designed properly, there won't be any extra space on there.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 It could be a reference to the first "Easter Egg" where the coder, working for Atari, would not get any publicly visible credit for their work, so they hid their name within the game - only accessible through a convoluted and unnecessary rigmarole that most people would never perform. Here the names are hidden behind another convoluted and unnecessary rigmarole that most people would never perform.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 Atari codenamed their projects after female employees of the company. This was a custom of Jay Miner, the engineering manager at Atari. The only exception was Stella, the codename for the VCS, which was named after an employees bicycle.
The fact that they have things printed on the PCB speaks volumes about how the company feels about people opening up and modifying the unit. They are acknowledging that enough people will want to open up and mod their console and they are welcoming it in a sense. This is a touch that I really appreciate.
I just bought a copy of star trek cats off Amazon lol prime 1 day shipping too, it'll be here tomorrow!! Glad you plugged it otherwise I'd have never known about it!
That circular splotch on the white PCB in the controller is a COB IC; the IC is adhered to the board, the legs soldered, then a protective black cap is poured atop of it
@@rixzin5046 seek "Eta Prime" on YT ,hes also uppraded one with faster RAM,opened BIOS(password) and installed win10 + tests before and after upprade....
It's a bit weird looking at the internals and specs of this, I went into this expecting an ARM-powered device as typical of these "classic consoles" but it really is closer to a NUC-style computer isn't it? Looking forward to the testing!
That reminds me that I still have an Atari 2600 Junior Console that I bought back in 1989 and its still working fine. Its sitting right next to my Sega Megadrive (with the Mega-CD Attachment), my SNES and my N64. I still love to play them from time to time and even today the games on them are fun.
Plz do more wt this. The 2600 was the first device I played games on as a kid. I loved this just for the nostalgia. And yes , I have played Atari today.
Ahhh, a late 70s flashback. I want one just because the original 2600 was the first console I played games on. I also had a Mattel Intellivision and a Magnavox Odyssey 2. They were all bought new and around the time of their original releases.
Engineer here: The fan is exhausting through the duct, and because of that, it's pulling fresh air through the case, every so slightly cooling the rest of the components. Upgradable ram, M.2 slot. Board looks incredibly well made. Too bad it's just a console.
@@alexcrouse Alright, thanks for your input. Oh, I wouldn't necessarily trust the manufacturers on having properly tested it. It wouldn't be the first time a commercial product has had a bad design. But of course I can't say for sure without testing it. It's probably fine.
on the controller that piece of hard plastic looked like a COB ( Chip on board. ) especially with all the caps, resisters, and what looks like a crystal right next to it.
if you've ever tore an old vcs controller apart to fix those damnable wafer switches... you wouldn't be complaining about ANYTHING with the new controller. NOTHING is worse than those old controllers.
That old-style Atari controller is actually freaking genius. The stick rotates, so you can use it as a spinner for games like Pong, something most people haven't been able to do since the early 80s, when Pong consoles actually shipped with spinners. You guys, Pong is actually a pretty cool game *IF* you don't play it with a d-pad, but with an actual spinner. Also, Arkanoid, Tempest, Gyruss... There are a whole lot of games that never worked correctly with a gamepad and a mouse, and can finally be played properly.
Oh, yeah, the "Standard" ribbon cables. Recently took apart a Compaq 610 with 3 different types of ribbon cable locking mechanisms (lift, slide and slide but in two halves and reversed)
The plastic bit in the controller that you thought was for support, was the microcontroller. It's an exposed die that's wire bonded directly to the pcp then covered in epoxy.
On the credits bit round the 'we played atari today bit' i saw NRC and for some reason my first thought was "what does the nuclear regulatory commission have to do with this" lul
8:46 The Sears Telegames console! That's the one we had when I was a kid. My parents couldn't afford the official Atari, so we got the Sears knockoff. :)
Seeing that you went as far as you did Steve, I am very, very curios about the thermals now. Please don't leave us hanging TJ (tech jesus) but no need to rush it either because we know it isn't really important. It is just the point of going all the way with a pointless but curiously and interesting video and I look forward to your next one. 👍
There are others that have already done guides on upgrading these, but you should definitely do some thermal tests and benchmarking just for the hell of it. it's well worth it for something a lot of us have been waiting years to see.
Hey steve, just used the Component mouse pad as a surface to tear down my new VCS and install a SATA m.2 and some 3200mhz sodimms :) also took off the crappy thermal sticker pad and put some proper Arctic paste on there! thanks for the in-depth video!
That glob of epoxy you were scratching was probably a custom made asic using the Chip On Board (COB) process. It's used a lot for super high volume mass produced chips especially in cases where custom silicon is needed. You see those a lot in toys.
They are a nice htpc or steam machine. Got a 2tb nvme attached to mine ruuning Fedora. In some ways better, other ways not, to a traditional console. Pro is i can do whatever I want to it. Bad is i have to do it. But for the price, not a bad little unit, even with my upgrades. I can play my emulators, steam titles, and even battlenet blizz games, as well as with a bt remote, deal with streaming from Jellyfin.
Excellent video! Thank you. I'm one of the 6000 to have a collector's edition, so I'm definitely interested to see a video on thermal testing. The fan is notoriously loud and Atari has said they will continue tweaking the fan profile in future bios updates.
It looks really nice, and the hardware seems decent. That controller is a travesty though. It's easy to make a controller that feels good, it's going to affect the entire experience of the product, and yet they cheap out on it. Boo.
You should definitely test it. And send it back to your supporter with upgrades. Test with the cheap thermal pads vs some real thermal paste, or higher quality pads. Toss some big RAM sticks in it and a drive that'll last a while, would be cool to see the differences the thermals made as well as the RAM. Plus your supporter gets the perks.
It pulls air in through the right grille and through the conduit and causes +ve air pressure inside the case which will exhaust wherever it can.. like the grille on the opposite side. It's absolutely fine as it's only meant to push air past the heatsink.
@@Josh-ce9sv it's not bad at all at that price, but i'd still be hesitant in pulling the trigger just because of the narrow use it has and having other computers.
Whilst the joystick looks garbage, the actual machine looks surprisingly well built. And suggests some limited options for expansion. Would like to see clarification on the direction of the cooling flow though - smoke test?
@@mareksendecki5695 That only matters if the top plate is right on top of the fan inlet, which in this case it clearly is not. The fan pulls air from the entire interior volume of the chassis, which clearly allows fresh air in through the left side of the rear plate.
Check out our latest video on the NZXT H1 fire hazard: ruclips.net/video/9XIKOSrQdQ0/видео.html
Please consider buying one of GN's Wireframe Mouse Mats to support us: IN STOCK & SHIPPING NOW! store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-wireframe-mouse-mat - this is a high-quality desk-size mousing surface with custom blue rubber underside, blue stitched borders, and a high-quality print with PC component design.
Great coverage..no dont waste alot of time on thermals ...you already manage alot of content and this just seems like not too big of a deal unless units start catching fire or something
The black resin blob on the controller PCB will be covering a chip mounted and bonded directly to the PCB, it is a common way to protect chip on board devices, my guess is that the chip is the microcontroller that controls the thing
Thanks, i finally slept.
Can you set up the heat shimmer camera set up for the VCS thermals?
While i dont particularly care about the thermals of the system, I would like to know how many cores/threds, graphics compute units and clock speeds the ryzen soc has.
Thank you Gregory for loaning the device so we can have fun watching this.
You're welcome. This is great entertainment for me as well.
@@penguinguyx thanks Greg! Love u papa. Best console ever make(':
@@penguinguyx hope he didn't jack up that joystick's rotary function, since he had no idea about its existence going into it.
Still waiting for KFConsole teardown
I literally need to see this review. Lmao
Saaame
He needs to buy some actual KFC to put into the console to test how well the system can keep the chicken warm!
It's gonna get greasy!
Thermocouple in chicken strips, impact of grease interface, noise normalised efficiency of smell-flow...
Piece of tape is to prevent the RFI cage from cutting the fan cable.
Could've held the slack to the wifi antennas too.
That was my thought as well.
Yeah, it just didn't really seem like it was held in place very well.
Oh boy nzxt would approve
Yeah Steve wouldn't be a great engineer, it's always evident when he tries to disassemble something and be smart about the build. Jay (2cents) al least doesn't try to be a smart ass when he clearly doesn't understand things he sees.
Not gonna lie, when Steve said "Have you played atari today? Is that a reference?"
I felt my hair grow white in real time.
The white PCB might be to help reflect/diffuse that ring of LEDs
Excellent point and great observation. Thanks for sharing.
Also making white PCBs these days isn't as expensive as it once was, I'd say the cost was the same given large quantity
@@the_perigoso Even in small batches they're still the same cost. Things have definitely gotten more streamlined in the past 5 years.
@@YttriumtYcLief depends on the fab, but yes, lot's out there offering prototypes and low quantities for the same cost
Not only do we get an Atari breakdown but also Star Trek cats? Steve taking things to another level.
25:30 It's what most call a "Blob Chip" It's a Chip on Board (CoB) where the bare chip is bonded directly to the board with gold leads then epoxy resin coated to protect it.
Usually see them in calculators and really cheap electronics. Those old Tiger handheld electronic LCD games come to mind as another place you'd see a blob chip, but they're pretty much in everything small and cheap now.
Thanks so much for the background information! Really hellps a lot.
@@GamersNexus "glop top" is another commonly used term
When Nintendo was developing new chips they shipped first release games using those BLOB chips on the boards of their Cartridges. My copy of Star Fox for the SNES has a blob "MARIO" FX chip in it.
@@GamersNexus They're super common in old game cartridges! I'm familiar with those cause I often repaired my old Famicom cartridges back in the days.
Came here to explain this, happy to se someone already did it!
Back in the old days, I was eating one controller a month. The white plastic shift kept breaking the rings that pressed the directional buttons. Then dad bought me a controller, disassembled it and made a new shift, in aluminum. That controller still works, although somewhere at their attic, together with the video game, 30+ years later. Thank you Steve for the good memories from this video.
I love you dad
Initials- FCC- the Atari CEO is Fred Chesnais. The COO is Michael Arzt.
That would be FC then, not FCC. Unless he got a middle name of course...
@@Qyngali well duh. Go watch the video again, they did middle initials on them..
COO is a pigeon call.
Maybe the initials are the backers ?
@@DrSid42 There was somewhere around 10,000-11,000 backers.
No glue on the console. That has to be an achievement unlocked.
Maybe, they should've add glue, it would've increase performance by 50%! 😆
@@cuy50 It's suppose to be a terrible joke. The whole point was, it doesn't help increase anything. Just like putting on decal stickers on cars doesn't suddenly, give you more horsepower. It's an old dumb myth for increasing performance on things as well as for shits and giggles. 😆
Something you may have missed: the joystick handle actually acts as a spinner/paddle, which may be the reason for it being a wobbly design (and it actually feels pretty good as an Atari paddle, smooth motion).
I was wondering why there was a flat flex going up into the controller stick.
Saw that, yeah, but we hadn't yet tested it and so we're reserving commentary on its quality until we get to the review itself.
Yeah, this is pretty genius. After 40 years, we can finally play games like Arkanoid, Tempest, Pong, or Gyruss properly at home.
@@adrianmalkovich7101 hopefully we can get it working on pc to play some Typhoon 2001
@@adrianmalkovich7101 You could buy paddles for the 2600
16:35 squirrel cage fans input through the top and out the side. Its venting OUT the back, not in.
25:36 thats a glop-top chip
I always love when people put Easter eggs inside a product. I took apart a Razer mouse and saw they wrote credits on the plastic.
Loved that they did the same thing with the original Amiga 1000.
And, was there any way to skip the Credits??
The most impressive thing was the Star Trek Cats 🐱
We thought it was very cool!
The lizard guy Kirk was fighting was called the Gorn.
@@pancrojones Yeah, we put that on the screen
@@GamersNexus I didn't see it. sorry about that.
My grandma just walked in and said...this guy looks like jesus...
hey man i watch your videos....
that's tech Jesus to you grandma.
nice channel name
Damn your grandma's that old to know what Jesus looked like?
That's what every dead grandma says.
I must admit, I do love those easter eggs on the pcb.
I loved my old Atari2600 console. I had about 50-60 games. It was an awesome console and I hope this crowdfunded version lives up to it’s original experience and expectations 🥳🥳
Steve "I hope I can play E.T." me "oh god don't even think about it"
It’s so bad it’s good.
I just watched “Ready Player One” tonight. I was beginning to think that managing to play E.T. Would be the final 3rd key challenge.
I found that game for a dollar at a local disc traders, Don't even have an atari, just wanted the game history.
The added trash sounds when he tossed it was a nice touch
@@Aaron-iz3hk I prefer the gunshot sound affects when a wire gets cut but yeah the Trash effect got me good.
I think those lil easter eggs on the board are a really nice touch.
I think the controller has to be wobbly because the stick turns/rotates, it functions as a paddle for games like breakout and a dial/spinner in games like tempest I believe.
@ 17:25 Steve's understanding (or lack of) of a squirrel-cage fan is terrifying. Ugh! It doesn't suck air IN through the heatsink and duct! It certainly doesn't suck air in through the duct and blow it back out through the same duct! What in the world.
It sucks air in through the big open mesh hole at the left side of the screen, down into the squirrel cage fan which is open (you can spin it with your hands, therefore it is open and not blocked as you say!), the squirrel-cage fan spins the air and blows it outwards utilizing centripetal force, and the air flows down through the heatsink and out the duct out the right side of the screen.
The fan looks like a very typical blower fan like 99% of laptops out there. It will be drawing in air from the left and blowing through the heatsink and out the back on the right side via the airflow channel.
Actually, laptop tend to use heat pipe to throw warmth away more effectively with a blower fan and fins. That is just an aluminium heatsink!
Its honestly nice to see them use an off the shelf notebook fan since the modern designs move a lot of air with almost no noise.
@@mortrem76 I'm not sure typical laptop fans with heatpipes are more effective. They do often have copper heatsinks instead of aluminimum but heatpipe is just a middle man because they don't have access to air right where the CPU is (PCB below, keyboard above).
@@sushi926 yeah. usually the CPU is near the center of the board. They totally could set up a fan to blow air across a simple heatsink on top of the CPU, but they would end up having to pipe warm air a long way to get it out of the laptop, and a lot of heat would leak up through the keyboard causing sweaty hands and annoyed customers. Better to use heat pipes to move the fin-stack to either the very back or side of the laptop. That way they don't have to deal with hot air inside the laptop itself. It's probably slightly less efficient, but totally worth it.
Also, many laptops are so damn thin that there would be hardly any room for a simple heatsink on the processor. A separate radiator connected via heat pipe can then be much fatter, resulting in a much quieter machine.
In this console the designers clearly have no shortage of space, and noone is going to play games while holding it in their hands. Might as well go with the simpler and cheaper solution.
@@sushi926 exactly
Thank you Gregory for sending this in! Have been looking forward to this teardown for ages! Even asked if he was going to do it in the comments of the PS5 teardown
The fan in this thing is called a blower fan aka 'squirrel cage' and they only ever blow, they are used in high static pressure situations where the air channel is a long run, the air always flows thought the middle and moves off the blades (see radeon RX Vega). Pull the cover off your A/C unit for your air handler... blower for the long air runs needed to hit all parts of the house/business. The "probe points" are vias to the ram on the bottom of the board... they might also be probe points.. but they are vias. You missed the ring of LED's on the controller couldn't tell if they are RGB or not, or really what the use is. And the big glob of "plastic" you saw on the bottom of the white PCB is known as a Glop top; They drop the bare silicon die right onto the device use bonding wires to connect it up and epoxy over it, pull apart a calculator, you'll find a glop top. I don't know if its a cheaper solution than SMD or some sort of socketed chip, but it is VERY robust, used in devices that might get damaged in a drop, or are exposed to twisting force that might pop the solder on a SMD device or allow a chip to fall out of a PLCC type socket.
I was going to comment on the fan, but you beat me to it. As you mentioned, the air will entering through the center and travel radial outwards. The angle of the fins and direction of rotation do not affect the overall direction of flow for these types of fans, but they may impact it's effectiveness.
Im certain it must be cheaper at large scale to do the 'glop tops'
for some reason they have tented half their vias, seemingly at random. I thought it was a pcb fab issue. not sure. You can see actual programming test points near Q36 and Q35 at 28:03
I don't think Steve knew what a blower fan was after all these years of reviewing technology with blower fans. Thank you for sharing.
Already saw Spawnwave's teardown but still a good video and different perspectives are always appreciated. Ty.
The CPU is a r1606g which is basically a Ryzen 3 2200U with higher clock speeds
That is much nicer inside than I was expecting. Props to Atari. Re temperatures: I wouldn't expect a while piece on it, but maybe just pay attention to if it's overheating or not. Maybe one day it will be hacked and people will try to over clock it XD
dont need to, just use Ryzen master to overclock. I'm sure it isnt hard to get the x86 OS of your liking. Wether the bios is locked or not.
@@bradhaines3142 that’s what I’m wanting/waiting to see
Getting Windows 10 to boot would be nice. Or Linux.
ETA Prime did an overclock and upgraded the ram. Got a little bit more out of it.
The black thing at 25:25 on the controller is a glop/glob top IC. Probably covering the microcontroller and the probe points near it are programming/debug pins. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_packaging#Glop-top
pretty cool little thing I appreciate all the pictures on the PCB and the message under the heat sink its like a reward for being curious lol
I'm thinking "FCC" is not "The FCC", but the initials of Fred Chesnais, the guy in charge of this version of Atari. Can't confirm since I'm not sure if his middle initial is 'C'.
Wow you really aren't kidding. I've been searching for half an hour and I can't find anything related to that dude's middle name.
@@purplegill10 Middle names are an american thing. Frédéric Chesnais is french, so he does not have a middle name. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chesnais
So, I don't know what this "C" stands for. Or FCC.
@@mecha-sheep7674 Ah, that makes sense then. I wonder why they did FCC then if those are his initials.
@@mecha-sheep7674 (Canadian) French guy reporting in. We do have middle names, we just don't use them much outside of applying for a security clearance or other mock-high-sensitivity government crap.
@@BillLambert Well, Chesnais is from this side of the pond, so he does not have a middle name.
Note that we French can have between one and a bazillion first names however... There is no rule.
“Decades of nerd grime...” 🤢😂
That's a delicacy.
Life of Grime
This is my new band name! I call dibs! You can't have it it's mine all mine!
@@MiGujack3 bro
thats a layer of protection..
The fan is meant to suck air from inside the shell through the circular cutouts above the fan blades and blow it through the fins and out the duct to the back.
Totally liked watching this Atari tear-Down and watched till the end i would like also to see the temp and if someone is going to do a little gaming preview or what not so yea. thanks Love your content. Have a good one.
I was there, swinging and running from swamp creatures in pitfall.
Now, the swamp creatures have us swinging into the depths of the swamp.
Looks like they didn't want to have to deal with heatpipes and ended up getting a more substantial fin stack out of it too.
For those wondering, that's a Ryzen R1000 embedded SoC. Specifically, the R1606G. 2 cores, 4 threads, Zen1, integrated Vega 3. So it's roughly equivalent to the Athlon 200GE.
Also, white PCBs add pretty much nothing to cost nowadays. Green, blue, red, yellow, black, and white are all standard colors at most fabs, with no real cost difference. The only time you pay more for different soldermask colors are for matte or novelty colors. White isn't considered novelty. Source: Am PCB engineer.
Looking at these boards, it seems like they were just designed by geeks who wanted to do something cool; white PCBs, Asteroids silkscreens, etc. This was clearly a hobby project, and it's cool for what it is. Would be cooler with a V2000 (Renoir, Zen2) SoC, but still.
Did I miss the internal storage overview? I saw a couple of M.2 slots, one of which housed the WiFi card. Did the video show an SSD storage drive with the "Over 100 Classic Games" installed on it? I've heard the VCS is supposed to come wtih a Windows 10 mode on it. Time stamp if I missed it would be great, thanks!
As for the last one, he read it from the box: has a PC mode, no OS included.
ruclips.net/video/wSKTYPXgWsU/видео.html and click the PC mode tab here- AtariVCS.com
Classic games are streamed, not on board, and the M2 slot is for windows. The whole system runs off NAND flash
I had an Atari Console as a child, this review made me smile. Thanks!
Huh. This might be the cheapest way to buy a PC that can be mounted inside a monitor.
Usually people use laptops. But this thing looks like a better fit.
Hopefully production ramps up so we can see some cool DIY mods.
Nice teardown. It was good to see the internals. ETA Prime's video was more about the functionality of it. You can pop an M.2 drive in there and run Windows since it's actually just a small PC. You can also stream games through Stadia, Geforce Now, etc. and have a much larger library than other consoles. Or load it with all of the classics via emulators. That chip on its own can handle games up to PS2 and Wii.
EDIT: ETA Prime uploaded a teardown today too where he added the SSD and 3200MHz RAM. Looked like a 10-20% performance boost, but it's still a low-end APU so don't expect great performance in AAA titles. The Vega 3 graphics can only be pushed so far.
The "We Have Played ATARI Today" logo is probably there because the people designing the board had a big giant empty spot, and since they're silk-screening the board anyway, it wouldn't cost them anything to put *something* there.
It might also be a throwback to the 1970s when vanity signing PCBs was a thing. I don't think Atari itself ever did it, though. They were big on anonymizing their employees in an attempt to keep them dependent on the company.
I'm in the process of prototyping my own product and will need a custom PCB designed. Even though there's not really going to be much room on the board, you better believe I'm going to be filling any extra space on there full of Easter eggs and fun designs. :D Sadly, if the board is designed properly, there won't be any extra space on there.
@@BRUXXUS You could still use fun numbers like R420 and C69.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 It could be a reference to the first "Easter Egg" where the coder, working for Atari, would not get any publicly visible credit for their work, so they hid their name within the game - only accessible through a convoluted and unnecessary rigmarole that most people would never perform. Here the names are hidden behind another convoluted and unnecessary rigmarole that most people would never perform.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 Atari codenamed their projects after female employees of the company. This was a custom of Jay Miner, the engineering manager at Atari. The only exception was Stella, the codename for the VCS, which was named after an employees bicycle.
Thanks Gregory, for loaning the VCS to GN so they could show all of us what it's made of.
25:24 don't scratch the glob of encapsulant, there's a chip under there.
The fact that they have things printed on the PCB speaks volumes about how the company feels about people opening up and modifying the unit. They are acknowledging that enough people will want to open up and mod their console and they are welcoming it in a sense. This is a touch that I really appreciate.
“I just hope we can play E.T. on it”
- Steve, GN 2021
I just bought a copy of star trek cats off Amazon lol prime 1 day shipping too, it'll be here tomorrow!! Glad you plugged it otherwise I'd have never known about it!
This is a pretty interesting tear down. If I didn't already have a Hades Canyon Nuc I would consider getting a VCS.
Hades Canyon was excellent!
That circular splotch on the white PCB in the controller is a COB IC; the IC is adhered to the board, the legs soldered, then a protective black cap is poured atop of it
I'm actually really interested in those Ryzen SoCs. Try booting into your standard benchmark OS and running some tests.
Someone already did.
@@rixzin5046 seek "Eta Prime" on YT ,hes also uppraded one with faster RAM,opened BIOS(password) and installed win10 + tests before and after upprade....
@@jkarra2334 thank you!
What handles the audio on the VCS? Is it the SoC? Or something else?
One of the few that time stamp . Thanks 👍
It's a bit weird looking at the internals and specs of this, I went into this expecting an ARM-powered device as typical of these "classic consoles" but it really is closer to a NUC-style computer isn't it? Looking forward to the testing!
ruclips.net/video/wSKTYPXgWsU/видео.html
Looking forward to seeing the testing!
Atleast there's stock. I can pre order one no problem right now if I wanted too. Can't day that about a lot of products.
That reminds me that I still have an Atari 2600 Junior Console that I bought back in 1989 and its still working fine. Its sitting right next to my Sega Megadrive (with the Mega-CD Attachment), my SNES and my N64. I still love to play them from time to time and even today the games on them are fun.
I think this is a very fascinating device and I much appreciate the in depth tech video
Plz do more wt this. The 2600 was the first device I played games on as a kid. I loved this just for the nostalgia.
And yes , I have played Atari today.
I cringed every time Steve said "heat shield" - EMC shielding seems to be largely forgotten in PC building these days. Young whippersnappers!
I was confused why he kept calling it a heat shield.
The funny part is he thinks he's an expert on this stuff and cant even work out which way a fan moves air...
The fact that this comment has only 27 likes is telling.
Ahhh, a late 70s flashback. I want one just because the original 2600 was the first console I played games on. I also had a Mattel Intellivision and a Magnavox Odyssey 2. They were all bought new and around the time of their original releases.
I care immensely about the VCS thermals. I probably shouldn't, though.
Engineer here: The fan is exhausting through the duct, and because of that, it's pulling fresh air through the case, every so slightly cooling the rest of the components. Upgradable ram, M.2 slot. Board looks incredibly well made. Too bad it's just a console.
What do you think about the duct being so long? Usually these laptop-type fans have almost no exhaust travel.
@@Maxim0M1 seems to have minimal restriction. I don't see it being an issue.
@@alexcrouse Even when there's a 90 degrees curve on it? Isn't that inefficient compared to a straight duct?
@@Maxim0M1 yea, but i think it's got enough cross section to do the job. You'd think they tested it.
@@alexcrouse Alright, thanks for your input.
Oh, I wouldn't necessarily trust the manufacturers on having properly tested it. It wouldn't be the first time a commercial product has had a bad design. But of course I can't say for sure without testing it. It's probably fine.
As it allows installing other x86 OSs the base VCS is actually a very good price for a Ryzen embedded system.
Thanks Gregory. Appreciate the content piece help you're giving.
Atari got that M.2. I heard that. 😁 And Ubuntu? Very interesting.
Yaaay, My Wireframe Mouse Mat turned up today. And it is fancy!
on the controller that piece of hard plastic looked like a COB ( Chip on board. ) especially with all the caps, resisters, and what looks like a crystal right next to it.
6:00 “Gorn”. I now know I have reached a crossroads in my life...
Atari makes a comeback
Me: now thats a name i haven't heard in a long time
The brand, but not the company.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari
Wow! Nicely done on the box! I CANT make out that logo :D
if you've ever tore an old vcs controller apart to fix those damnable wafer switches... you wouldn't be complaining about ANYTHING with the new controller. NOTHING is worse than those old controllers.
That old-style Atari controller is actually freaking genius. The stick rotates, so you can use it as a spinner for games like Pong, something most people haven't been able to do since the early 80s, when Pong consoles actually shipped with spinners. You guys, Pong is actually a pretty cool game *IF* you don't play it with a d-pad, but with an actual spinner. Also, Arkanoid, Tempest, Gyruss... There are a whole lot of games that never worked correctly with a gamepad and a mouse, and can finally be played properly.
Oh, yeah, the "Standard" ribbon cables. Recently took apart a Compaq 610 with 3 different types of ribbon cable locking mechanisms (lift, slide and slide but in two halves and reversed)
The plastic bit in the controller that you thought was for support, was the microcontroller. It's an exposed die that's wire bonded directly to the pcp then covered in epoxy.
On the credits bit round the 'we played atari today bit' i saw NRC and for some reason my first thought was "what does the nuclear regulatory commission have to do with this" lul
8:46 The Sears Telegames console! That's the one we had when I was a kid. My parents couldn't afford the official Atari, so we got the Sears knockoff. :)
OMG "Decades of Nerd Grime," is this some sort of grunge cover album or ?
That comic book is great. Dude is smart for sending it!
Very strange to see a 'Atari' VCS with 8gb of SODIMM ram and M.2 slots.
Seeing that you went as far as you did Steve, I am very, very curios about the thermals now. Please don't leave us hanging TJ (tech jesus) but no need to rush it either because we know it isn't really important. It is just the point of going all the way with a pointless but curiously and interesting video and I look forward to your next one. 👍
I have the original joystick and it feels like it came straight out of a F16 unlike the crappy cheap modern one.
The wood finish is nice throwback to the 2600.
Very nice.
Next step: Liquid N2 overclocking!
There are others that have already done guides on upgrading these, but you should definitely do some thermal tests and benchmarking just for the hell of it. it's well worth it for something a lot of us have been waiting years to see.
I'm shocked it has a ryzen cpu in it :O
I'm surprise, you are shocked, as it was advertised with a AMD Ryzen in it a while ago. 😁
Hey steve, just used the Component mouse pad as a surface to tear down my new VCS and install a SATA m.2 and some 3200mhz sodimms :) also took off the crappy thermal sticker pad and put some proper Arctic paste on there! thanks for the in-depth video!
Steve was trying to get the controller out of the box so I skipped ahead and he was still trying...
That glob of epoxy you were scratching was probably a custom made asic using the Chip On Board (COB) process. It's used a lot for super high volume mass produced chips especially in cases where custom silicon is needed. You see those a lot in toys.
I still want one for no good reason.
No good reason is a good reason.
They are a nice htpc or steam machine. Got a 2tb nvme attached to mine ruuning Fedora. In some ways better, other ways not, to a traditional console. Pro is i can do whatever I want to it. Bad is i have to do it.
But for the price, not a bad little unit, even with my upgrades. I can play my emulators, steam titles, and even battlenet blizz games, as well as with a bt remote, deal with streaming from Jellyfin.
10:05 is the most honest moment I've ever seen, heard or felt in a review of a product.
The Atari joystick you were describing is literally called a plug and play console 😅
Jakks Pacific TV Games
Excellent video! Thank you. I'm one of the 6000 to have a collector's edition, so I'm definitely interested to see a video on thermal testing. The fan is notoriously loud and Atari has said they will continue tweaking the fan profile in future bios updates.
Idk if it can handle ET...I sure can't lol.
I shall drink my vintage early 2000's internet wine to that,
That desk mat is absolutely filthy, clean your set guys!
It looks really nice, and the hardware seems decent. That controller is a travesty though. It's easy to make a controller that feels good, it's going to affect the entire experience of the product, and yet they cheap out on it. Boo.
@@brokenpixels263 I have to assume it's harder than it looks, because as you say companies keep fumbling it.
You should definitely test it. And send it back to your supporter with upgrades. Test with the cheap thermal pads vs some real thermal paste, or higher quality pads. Toss some big RAM sticks in it and a drive that'll last a while, would be cool to see the differences the thermals made as well as the RAM. Plus your supporter gets the perks.
ruclips.net/video/wSKTYPXgWsU/видео.html
"non destructively tear down" And someone lets this guy do the tear down.........
It pulls air in through the right grille and through the conduit and causes +ve air pressure inside the case which will exhaust wherever it can.. like the grille on the opposite side. It's absolutely fine as it's only meant to push air past the heatsink.
If this was like $200, it'd be a really fun living room toy. as it stands, it's just really hard to justify.
Perhaps it will come down in price sometime. I would buy it if I could get a console + controller for $200 or less.
Actually the $280 the base model costs is really good for a mini pc with these specs, upgradable ram and ssd, and an os, apps, storefront.
@@Josh-ce9sv it's not bad at all at that price, but i'd still be hesitant in pulling the trigger just because of the narrow use it has and having other computers.
Whilst the joystick looks garbage, the actual machine looks surprisingly well built. And suggests some limited options for expansion.
Would like to see clarification on the direction of the cooling flow though - smoke test?
Kind of miffed that Steve doesn't know how that style of fans are designed to work to be honest😬
i mean when is the last time you've seen him take apart a laptop? should give you a good enough idea..
He knows how they work. He just points out that the top plate doesn't have any holes in it which is odd because that's where the air should come from
@@mareksendecki5695 That only matters if the top plate is right on top of the fan inlet, which in this case it clearly is not. The fan pulls air from the entire interior volume of the chassis, which clearly allows fresh air in through the left side of the rear plate.