For the AMD Stardust box - yes, we can just make a power plug. The problem is that we would need the specialized motherboard (looks like an FPGA). If you have that, let us know! Power doesn't get us anywhere without the board, sadly. We do have the software, though, so mostly need the board. Get a GamersNexus toolkit! Includes a 7-year warranty! store.gamersnexus.net/products/gamersnexus-tear-down-toolkit Or a GN Anti-Static Modmat for PC building: store.gamersnexus.net/products/modmat-volt-large Watch our Xbox XDK Developer Kit tear-down here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jdSfZ9dovtexfWg.html

It would be a clever PR move for AMD to give GN a old star dust kit with the simple request to please forget about the AMD mountain bike.

I love it when GN gets their hands on things they're not supposed to have.

I'm DAM glad you showed us the DAM connector that connects to another DAM connector for the DAM module = )

I'm really enjoying the new pace and breadth of content you guys are putting out between GN and Extras. It was definitely worth to take that time in-between to get things in order if the content is this high quality.

As a test engineer, this gives me a strange kind of happy.

They should totally make it available to reviewers so they can use it to potentially better test motherboards. Reminds me of the Vega preview GPU with the extra diagnostic stuff on a long PCB linus showed off ages ago.

Those blue cables are actually 50 ohm micro coax cables made by samtec, and a single assembly with connector is about 200-300$

The power supplies are probably just standard 12v ones with internal DC-DC converters to make up the standard rails. Hooking it up to a bench power supply with current limiting should help keep you from frying anything. EDIT: At 19:57 the board has an LTC3853 DC-DC converter on it. They take anywhere from 4.5v to 24v. But it's probably shipping with 12 at a few amps depending on the load they need. If they need a couple hundred watts into these things they'd be using beefier connectors (most likely an off the shelf laptop PSU). The 12v fan is a giveaway that they are expecting 12v since it would most likely just run directly off the DC-in.

AMD always has the coolest code names, Dragon Range, RDNA, Raven Ridge, i could go on. Much better than Intel, who just attaches Lake to everything.

Concerning the missing power brick: You can likely follow the one side of it to some screw hole (= ground) and the other one will at some point run into a linear regulator. The spec sheet for that regulator will then give a hint for voltage, likely 12V center positive input. Or, for the brave, get a bench PSU, current limit to 20mA and slowly creep up voltage until the device attempts to start.

In software testing we'd call these mock objects, or stubs and drivers (a stub accepts input according to the interface/spec while a driver produces output also according to the interface/spec. A mock can do both of these and may contain some limited logic for producing valid output when given predefined input). It's really cool to see the hardware equivalents.

This is a very interesting video from you, thanks for the content! It's always highly enjoyable when you and your team get your hands on something a bit more off the wall rather than reviewing a prebuild or the most recent product releases and the like. It also gives some interesting insight into the manufacturer or product(s) affiliated with the hardware you take apart and look into that I would otherwise never come across. Thanks for all the videos!

Those DAM connectors look like good DAM connectors. Would be nice if you had another DAM unit so you could connect two DAM connectors together.

enjoying the more frequent uploads 👍🏼

Funny you stuck the AMD bike in the background. Interesting content like the way they learn about the products they wanted to make and figured out how to test for them

AMD really should reach out and connect more with the community at this level - be nice if they gave you a tour or demo or the latest sudo-secret testing stuff motherboard makers use. PR opportunity I'm sure they wouldn't want to miss. #AMDPR

6:05 You are our DAM guide. You took all the DAM pictures we want.

I laughed a lot, with "You can see there's the DAMN connector right here that would connect to another DAMN connector, for the DAMN unit", reminded me of "mFing snakes, in this mFing plane"

Finding an FPGA in test equipment like this is not surprising. There might be another one under than heatsink. I am glad you did bot force that heatsink off though. I believe those attach to the package itself, so if you do it wrong, you could rip that chip off the motherboard or at least crack some solder joints.

Hey, you might be interested on how Oxide computer engineers talk about this (or equivalent of this) hardware in the context of bringing up a SP3 server board. Their podcast is here kzfaq.info/get/bejne/os6anJCctZmwmJ8.html the stuff about the power tester starts at about 33 minutes, but the whole episode is great and full of technical details.

That DAM connector probably has a lot of DAM functionality. Bless you for this moment.

First time I'm watching one of your videos and I can definitely say this is quality content

Its just a barrel adapter, you just need to know what voltage it is. You can figure out polarity from the PCB but most are center positive. You could even try ramping up voltage until it turns on or draws current

Your vids on these sorts of things are always fantastic. Hope to see more.

Man, this is a great complement to Linus with his recent Intel insider tour. Different brand, different sector, but a deep view we don't usually get.

I love this kind of content, things manufacturers use to test/design their products. I wonder why AMD is so secretive about it if Intel offers their tests kits in the open, it's not like those kits will give the competition the data on how their cpus are manufactured

This is the cool stuff I love to see! Great content as always Gamersnexus! Is the pinout exactly the same as the TR4 so let on the SP3 test kit? 🤔

5:59 you can see there's the DAM connector, for the DAM unit. Damn!

6:02 Every time you say dam I think you hate until I realize the thing is called a dam🤣🤣🤣

Dam connector connects to another Dam connector which then connects to the Dam unit.... Well Damn! But seriously this stuff is actually fascinating. Keep up the great work!

GN is one of those channels I am always interested in seeing what they are publishing, the value of the content is unparalleled in this space as far as I’ve seen. Really great no nonsense coverage and a steady voice in the community and not simply jumping at whatever can be most sensationalized. I love it!

i just really love that you and ltt are going head to head with this kind of stuff, after watching linus tour of intel factory this video is so much more understandable and interesting

21:11 it looks like this RAM dunny load module has some RAM on it, looks like a cluster of 2, and a cluster of 4 micron dies. I wonder why it needed two pools

I thought he was going to start with a "Yeah, we got one" from the infamous Verge PC Build video.

"You can see there's the Dam connector right here that would connect to another Dam connector to another Dam unit" - Had some "Vegas Vacation" flashbacks there

that's cool test gear. When I worked at a smart phone startup in 1999/2000, I got see some cool CDMA gear for testing cellular networks. It was a van full of wireless gear and ton of different kinds of antenna and computers.

You can easily find a power adapter, barrel plug is very common. You can get a wall adapter that has switchable voltages so you can start low and work your way up till the unit powers on, if you don't know the operating voltage.

I love this guy; "We're on to you tech giants ." LOL

1) Nice touch having the AMD bike in the background xD 2) Anyone else gets nervous when Steve keeps pointing to small circuits with a METAL screwdriver / philips? Cmon man, get some plastic thing do to that =P

Prepare for Wendell of Level 1 to attempt a mind-meld with Steve to glean what knowledge he can about Stardust hardware...

Seems like Andrew's got some new gear, huh? Cool to see some movement added to these types of pieces ❤️

"The DAM connector." I see what you did there. Thanks, Steve. 😉

"what is this Jessica, some kind of joke??" said me to the man with the long brown hair

I do stuff in the retail and consumer tech end, so it's really neat to see all the development tools and equipment in the enterprise areas that I don't get to interact or play with on a regular basis.

4:10 when you're supposed to be playing a tree in the play. But you can't stop fidgeting

Steve, can't you power this with a bench top adjustable PSU?

Holy Nice. Was expecting some good Tech Jesus ASMR while cooking, ended up having to pull it up on the computer and watch it (while looking stuff up) because he made it fascinating.

The fact you guys have painted all your offices black or dark grey... I dig it you big sexy tech geniuses.

Amazing camera work in this video!

Whenever a youtuber like Steve gets items like this, I imagine their phones are ringing nonstop post-videorelease from the related company being like TAKE IT DOWN TAKE IT DOWN! xD

You might think most people find topics like this boring, and you might be right but I find it fascinating. GN is like my spirit animal.

"You can see there's the damn connector right here, that would connect to another damn connector for the damn unit" 😆

"DAM connectors for the DAM unit"... God knows I've said those words before.

You know real shit's gonna go down when Steve is presenting in the blacked-out conference room instead of the test bench set.

@6:00 I feel like Steve just wanted to specifically point this out to say DAM multiple times. Vent a little lol.

It took me multiple back-tracks, WITH subtitles, in order to hear you saying “test equipment” at the beginning. I thought you were hyping it up by calling it amd’s “testicle.”

06:38 Steve's impression of a dial-up modem :D

Please tell me that I'm not the only person that started giggling at 6:02

Hilarious Vegas Vacation Reference xD

Lisa Su’s highly paid team of elite assassins is currently enroute to North Carolina. RIP gamer’s nexus.

6:00 the damn connector and the damn unit!!!

"The DAM connector on the DAM unit.." 😂 DAM it all to hell, Steve!

Super interesting video, I'm really enjoying pulling back the curtain on the development hardware.

I imagine the intel headquarters searching the internet for the top secret material before GN finds it

Ok without even watching I resized what those are and they are cool AF! Products like these and dev kits are so amazing to me. When people complain about the price of a motherboard all I can think is "do you have any idea how many billions of dollars of investment it took to create that?" Awesome stuff.

I like how you guys can't turn it on but still put out fun and educational content.

Perhaps you should try to get your hands on all the DAM units so you can connect all the DAM things together! nice find. This is cool.

It would be cool if companies would collaborate on pieces like this to give the full history and details of the prototype/internal system

Sorry but you cracked me up when you looked at the "DAM Connector" :)

"There's a DAM connector here and a DAM connector there that connect to the DAM unit." I wonder how much giggling there was when writing that part of the script :D

I love this "behind the scenes" stuff. No one sees this, like an Xbox or Nintendo dev kit, but this is more rare.

Xilinx are FPGA manufacturers (mostly). So that's going to be how they run the ADC coversions.

I hope this is something you guys go after preserving and possibly try to hunt down the remaining parts if they're still out there. A neat little piece of PC history.

on amazon they have a universal laptop charger. it comes with like every barrel plug ever created like tonns of em. my college uses them as loaners when peoples chargers go out. might be helpful in powering up funky hardware.

It's just a standard barrel-plug. a more indepth look onto the pcb near the connector would pretty easily reveal if you need 1: an ac or dc power source (ac would be very unlikely but possible) 2: if DC: is the center pin is postitive (usual configuration) or negative (a#$hole configuration) 3: needed voltage (basically the first capacitor tells you the rough range, a 20V cap must not exceed 20V. the bulkier the cap the more likely you neet to beef up the amperage of the psu). the closest ICs nearby the powersource are also an indicator. they usually have a datasheet, telling what voltage they need to have supplied to. taking the resistors nearby into account, should pretty easily make it pretty deterministic, what is needed 4: needed amerage rating (higher than needed would work, less than needed will cause problems, but would be very inlikely to damage anything. the barrel-plug itself also has a max amperage rating, providing more hints about what's needed) ...best bet, because it makes the most sense would be a 12v psu, which can hanlde at least the maximum test-parameter +~20% most of these parameters can be found out by just looking at the board, some carefully guesswork with a lab-bench-powersupply can at least mostly rule out damaging the unit.

"These plans are incomplete. Do you know how many Bothans died to bring you these plans?"

The AMD bike in the background has me going

So funny story; Til now I never thought to look up threadripper, this video made me curious lol. Looked up Threadripper 3990X (it was the first suggestion when I started typing "threadripper") and saw 8 grand and 6 grand price tags and was like "holy fucking shit what" lol. Like I knew OF threadripper but didn't know wtf it was in terms of processor purposes. I didn't expect price tags bigger than my current used car lmfao.

Ohhh, that's cool! It'll be even more awesome if y'all can get the rest of the parts and show this in action the way it would have been used, even if it's not of any real use now

Wow, this is awesome. I love this "behind the industry scenes" type stuff.

This is SOOOO cool! Thx for bringing us a video on something like this! Yet another reason I love GN! I always learn something new whenever I watch a video, often times multiple something's haha. Love it.

Nice catch. Gives all of us a peak behind the curtain on the amount of work that goes into platform development.

I know to some these things might look like 'high' end things, but man... it all looks so jank. It's fascinating.

6:00 Well, dam.

Ah yes, the famous David Bowie song... *AMD Stardust*

Steve and Team quality just keeps getting better ! Also loving how independent you are compared to other channels from sponsors etc.

I don't think those are 3D printed - there are general purpose enclosures for low volume products. They're like 10 bucks apiece free shipping on Amazon and UL rated, so not worth spending printer time to print one.

Getting a power tingy is easy, just check the required power marking and polarity, it's legally required to be marked and the devices should be marked. If not they are NOT ment for sale. Then take a modular powerbrick, I got mine at a local 'we got everything' type store. Then it's just a matter of getting the right plug attached and the polarity (which lead in the hole is the positive, sigh standard would be nice) and you are ready to go. I've done this where I had a missing power adapter many times. The hard way to do this, is to get a adjustable power source with a swappable connector and tweak the hell out of it to find the power that works, but there are many typical hints you can find if the device has the basic of marking, aka part number, power info and so on. Be aware that doing this without any clue, tend to fry the device. Google's your friend. And if there are no outside info, then you'll find it inside. But figuring out the clues that way is harder. It would be nice if we could have an auto sensing power device that could check resistances and suchs and from there get to a working power setting. Or maybe that's only a Europe thing?

Man I hope you get a cable. This was really cool. Keep on keeping it on. Love the content always.

As an I.T grad It's amazing to see things like this. It's really quite interesting in multiple ways.

My mom was giving me the death stare at 5:59 - 6:05 and I had to tell her to chill.

Very cool! It answers a question I didn't know I was asking.

0:16 "assy bar code" lmao

Would not be surprised if these entire boards were soldered by hand! I have seen solders from experienced engineers that you cannot tell it was not made by a machine.

Am I the only one giggled at the "dam" connector. Yeah I have a lot of those 😆

That DAM System !!

I can only assume from the set design that Steve is now officially in hiding and that government agents are now searching for him as we speak

3:15 Didn't know this was shot in HDR!

Asrock must be watching this going 'wow, can't believe the others use this for their motherboards, suckers'.