This is the article version of our recent tour of a cable factory in Dongguan, China. The factory is SanDian, used by Cooler Master (and other companies you know) to manufacture front panel connectors, USB cables, Type-C cables, and more. This script was written for the video that's embedded below, but we have also pulled screenshots to make a written version. Note that references to "on screen" will be referring to the video portion.

USB 3.1 Type-C front panel cables are between 4x and 10x more expensive than USB2.0 front panel cables, which explains why Type-C is still somewhat rare in PC cases. For USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C connectors with fully validated speeds, the cost is about 7x as expensive as the original USB3.0 cables. That cost is all because of how the cables are made: Raw materials have an expense, but there’s also tremendous time expense to manufacture and assemble USB 3.1 Type-C cables. Today’s tour of SanDian, a cable factory that partners with Cooler Master, shows how cables are made. This includes USB 3.1 Type-C, USB 2.0, and front panel connectors. Note that USB 3.1 is being rebranded to USB 3.2 going forward, but it’s the same process.

Our hardware news coverage has some more uplifting stories this week, primarily driven by the steepest price drop in DRAM since 2011. System builders who've looked on in horror as prices steadily climbed to 2x and 3x the 2016 rate may finally find some peace in 2019's price projections, most of which are becoming reality with each passing week. Other news is less positive, like that of Intel's record CPU shortages causing further trouble for the wider-reaching partnerships, or hackers exploiting WinRAR, but it can't all be good.

Find the show notes below the video embed, as always.

We’re still in China for our factory and lab tours, but we managed to coordinate with home base to get enough testing on the GTX 1660 done that a review became possible. Patrick ran the tests this time, then we just put the charts and script together from Dongguan, China.

This is a partner launch, so no NVIDIA direct sampling was done and, to our knowledge, no Founders Edition board will exist. Reference PCBs will exist, as always, but partners have control over most of the cooler design for this launch.

Our review will look at the EVGA GTX 1660 dual-fan model, which has an MSRP of $250 and lands $30 cheaper than the baseline GTX 1660 Ti pricing. The cheapest GTX 1660s will sell for about $220, but our $250 unit today has a higher power target allowance for overclocking and a better cooler. The higher power target is the most interesting, as overclocking performance can stretch upwards toward a GTX 1660 Ti at the $280 price-point.

We’ll get straight to the review today. Our focus will be on games, with some additional thermal and power tests toward the end. Again, as a reminder, we’re doing this remotely, so we don’t have as many non-gaming charts as normally, but we still have a complete review.

The Corsair Crystal 680X is the newer, larger sibling to the 280X, a micro-ATX case that we reviewed back in June. The similarity in appearance is obvious, but Corsair has used the past year to make many changes, and the result is something more than just a scaled-up 280X and perhaps closer to a Lian Li O11 Dynamic.

First is the door, which is a step up from the old version. Instead of four thumbscrews, the panel is set on hinges and held shut with a magnet. This is a better-looking and better-functioning option. It’d be nice to have a way to lock the door in place even more securely during transportation, but that’s a minor issue and systems of this size rarely move.

Removing the front panel is a more elaborate process than usual, but it’s also unnecessary. The filter and fans are both mounted on a removable tray, and everything else is easily accessible through the side of the case. Fan trays (or radiator brackets, or whatever you want to call them) are always an improvement. If for some reason the panel does need to be removed, it involves removing three screws from inside the case, popping the plastic section off, and removing a further four screws from outside. The plastic half is held on by metal clips that function the same way as the plastic clips in the 280X, but are easier to release. Despite appearances, the glass pane is still not intended to be slid out, although it could be freed from its frame by removing many more screws.

Our initial AMD Radeon VII liquid cooling mod was modified after the coverage went live. We ended up switching to a Thermaltake Floe 360 radiator (with different fans) due to uneven contact and manufacturing defects in the Alphacool GPX coldplate. Going with the Asetek cooler worked much better, dropping our thermals significantly and allowing increased overclocking and stock boosting headroom. The new drivers (19.2.3) also fixed most of the overclocking defects we originally found, making it possible to actually progress with this mod.

As an important foreword, note that overclocking with AMD’s drivers must be validated with performance at every step of the way. Configured frequencies are not the same as actual frequencies, so you might type “2030MHz” for core and get, for instance, 1950-2000MHz out. For this reason, and because frequency regularly misreports (e.g. “16000MHz”), it is critical that any overclock be validated with performance. Without validation, some “overclocks” can actually be bringing performance below stock while appearing to be boosted in frequency. This is very important for overclocking Radeon VII properly.