My Hands On Experience with the SGW Zone Gaming and AI Box - RX 6600M Review

I recently had the opportunity to try out the SGW Zone Gaming and AI Box, which features an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU. I was excited to see how it would perform in various gaming and content creation scenarios.

The first thing I noticed when booting up the box was that it looked quite sleek and compact, with a 240W power supply unit (PSU) on top of the device. This is impressive given its slim design. The box also has a customizable screen on top, which displays various information such as fan RPMs, temperatures, and more.

In terms of performance, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the SGW Zone Gaming and AI Box performed in gaming scenarios. When set to the lowest setting, it played demanding games like 6,600 M at a smooth 45 frames per second (FPS). This is impressive considering that integrated graphics typically struggle to reach such frame rates.

However, I did notice that the box's performance was not quite as high as expected, especially when trying to play more demanding games. Nevertheless, it still performed better than integrated graphics, which is a significant improvement.

One of my favorite features of this device is its ability to act as a dock for peripherals such as mice, keyboards, and monitors. This makes it an excellent option for anyone looking for a compact gaming setup that can be easily expanded or contracted depending on their needs.

The SGW Zone Gaming and AI Box also boasts impressive acceleration capabilities, including support for 3D CAD work and video editing. I have noticed that the box's performance in these areas is significantly smoother than integrated graphics, which makes it an excellent option for content creators.

While my experience with this device was mostly positive, I did notice some minor issues during my testing. For instance, the playback on mobile devices can be a bit slow at times, and the box occasionally drops frames (FPS). However, these issues are relatively minor and do not detract from the overall performance of the device.

In terms of thermal management, I was pleased to see that the box's fan noise is manageable, even during intense gaming sessions. The device itself also runs relatively cool, with temperatures typically hovering around 78°C (170°F).

The SGW Zone Gaming and AI Box is a fantastic option for anyone looking to upgrade their gaming experience or expand their content creation capabilities. While it may not be the most powerful device available, its ability to accelerate demanding tasks such as video editing and 3D CAD work makes it an excellent value proposition.

I also appreciate the fact that this device can double the performance of even the best integrated graphics, making it a great option for those looking to upgrade their existing systems without breaking the bank. The box is available with various NVIDIA GPU options, including the RX 6600M model I reviewed.

In conclusion, my hands-on experience with the SGW Zone Gaming and AI Box has been overwhelmingly positive. Its ability to accelerate demanding tasks, its compact design, and its affordable price make it an excellent option for anyone looking to upgrade their gaming or content creation setup. While there are some minor issues to be aware of, these do not detract from the overall value proposition of this device.

The Links section in the description box contains more information on the availability and pricing of this unit, including both the RX 6600M model and future RTX models that I am excited to see.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennow if you're into your gaming PC handheld consoles which are getting just so much better  lately this is the AyaNeo 2s that I have fantastic performance with its integrated  Graphics the Radeon 780m for what it does it does a really good job but if you want to double that  performance then of course you've got egpus and I have this one here which is called the gaming and  AI box now it's from a company called sgw Zone and why it's a little different from other GPU  setups is well you can upgrade this particular model here now they did send this out to me full  disclosure this is a sponsored video here I'll be testing it out and I'll show you what it can  actually do so to work with Min PCS gaming handhelds like this one right here as long  as you do have Thunderbolt 3 Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4.0 which this gaming handheld console does have  so inside this configuration they sent out to me I've got the radon RX 6600m as it's got 8 GB of  dedicated graphics it is an 80 wat part and you could even get an RTX 3070 model and later on in  the future they'll have upgrades because inside is an mxm card that you can slot out and upgrade you  can't do that with competing models now the power supply within it is very powerful 240 WS thanks to  gch that it does use and it is only 766 G which is impressive when you look at the size of this  here there's even a screen on the front of it that we can customize which I'll be showing you in this  video I'll show you how to set it up and what you can expect performance-wise so this is what will  be included we've got our power cable there and EU plug of course for me here in Europe and our  CA so that is a thunderbolt 3 Thunderbolt 4 USB 4 cable so type c to type- C now I just wanted to  point out that this is an early prototype so there will be some imperfections you may see  just a little little couple of things that will come up because this is a 3D printed alter shell  that they've just sent with this early unit here so I can take a look at it test it out and give  you this video here so we got a power button at at the front here we have two USB 3.0 ports and  then our Thunderbolt ports Now using one of them there's one that supports 80 Watts so I can just  have a single cable connected to it now both of them are the 40 gbits per second so that's USB 4.0  or the Thunderbolt 3 Thunderbolt four speeds and look at the size of this too so what I'm  going to be using and connecting this to is the a Neo 2s now this here you can see the sizewise  is a thinner of course but it's a lot longer than we have with this external GPU and this external  GPU is doubling the performance of it and this of course has the ryzen 7 it's got the 7,840 u in it  and that's what I'll be using so I can double that performance connecting it up to this and  this only has the radon 6,600 m in here and if you get another version later on they're going  to have with the RTX 7 3070 sorry that's going to be a little bit quicker and later on with the 40  series 2 of GPU so on the back here we have an intake for rubber feet and you'll see here this  is the exit vent so all of the hot a is going to be blowing out of there and on the back we  do have two HDMI 2.0 ports another USB 3.0 and display port 1.4 so with those three video out  see you can run three displays we have a vent here some screws on the back of it and this is  the power in for that Gan power supply which is 240 WS which is a pretty good feat incredible  really to consider how small it is it's taking up about that much room there and now at the top  of it here we do have a screen that you can use to display things like your CPU temperature the  fan RPM and whatnot and to me it does not look like a difficult task at all to be able to slot  out the GPU for those future upgrades later on so there are I can see some screws here that you  need to remove there's one there one there we've got our plug here you have to pull that off and  this is the plug for the fan too that goes in here so once that is done you remove the cooler  on this once that is off you'll then be able to slot out that mxm card now I'm going to keep it  all intact here because I want it to be just how it left the factory so we can see exactly  later on what The Thermals are like for the Radeon 6600m that this is currently using so this is my  setup there with the ne2s of course it is using an integrated GPU normally and that's the 780m which  by far at the moment Intel hasn't caught up yet is the best you can get for integrated Graphics  however now plugged into its USB 4.0 typee C Port I've got that Thunderbolt 3 cable that is going  into our egpu doubling my performance now and with that single cable that is all I need with  this USB 4.0 Port because it is powering it too with that power delivery up to the 80 ws and you  can see it is charging I don't have any problems so great that I just need that single cable and  now with the HDMI cable connected to it I have that using the video out there for it and that's  going into a capture card and I'll show you and run you through now some benchmarks of what you  can expect performance- Wise from this egpu okay so this is what it would look like when you first  do get it set up you'll see that the radon RX 6,600 m is now listed here now I installed the  drivers because you've got to do that first and I do have the latest AMD drivers get them from  their website you run that the adrenaline you can see I'm running here is version23.10.19 well it is quite fast here this is the 7,500 Mega transitions this is a little bit well  it's still good performance vrade Graphics but not quite as good as this here we do have now which is  our egpu now the egpu is using DDR 6 Samsung Ram we've got 8 GB of it here and you can see  the a little bit of the information of it here if you're interested in that okay so it does have the  units it uses is 64 now if you do want something a little bit more powerful uh look out for that RTX  70 3070 version sorry that uh does have a little bit more in terms of power and whatnot that we're  going to get out of it compared to this unit right here now I will be monitoring those temperatures  we'll see what it does get up to when we add gaming but just one little Benchmark I wanted  to show you here first because this I think is very important to show you the kind of increase  we are getting so with time spy I'm just going to run this synthetic bench mark because there's  no point me showing you anymore more because it's going to be the same story here double the  for performance here actually over double so the graphics score well yes this card if it's not via  an egpu setup using Thunderbolt 3 could actually get uh R about the 7,000 Mark but still 6,240 for  our Graphics score compared to the integrated Graphics that the Neo 2s does come with you can  see look at that difference I mean that is huge that's well over double the performance there with  the graphics even though yeah the 6600m is not exactly a powerful uh GPU it's pretty much quite  low end but you see it's going to make a bit of a difference now in gaming so first up I'm going to  play a little bit here of Starfield and I'm going to play it with the 780m first and then move over  to our egpus you can see that performance increase l so with the low preset and there's a lot of NPCs  around that 780m is fairing quite well wow look at this around well it was 60 before but now 48  52 frames per second but it is only 720p and it is the low preset that I'm using which is highly  recommend I wouldn't want to go any higher with that with such a demanding game like this and here  in Neo of course here is a lot to render we have all the smoke the steam all those MPCs the lights  and everything and now go over now to the egpu and we'll check on the performance game we're going to  get well Starfield I've kept everything think the same so it is still the lowquality preset  the only thing I've changed is the resolution we can play now at 1080P and look at this huge  jump in the frame rate well not that massive but it just looks so much better to it 1080p so you  can see that it's a lot more playable more steady frame rate too and running about here with such a  detailed busy area still over most of the time averaging yes over 60 frames per second and if  I start a fight here with security where are they what of security you guy over here it is still as  you can see quite playable the the frame does dip down a little bit now and then but the main thing  is we're gaining just so much performance now with our Thunderbolt egpu setup Diablo 4 this I do have  set to the lowest preset setting so there's nothing else I'm adjusting I'm only changing  that and again the resolution is the 720p that I'm going to go with now with the 780m   this again is fairing quite well the frame rate but it does have some big frame dips when you  load in certain areas to 75 and it doesn't look good at all really I think on the lowest preset  this looks terrible but integrated graphics and the Neo 2s can handle this game so I'll just  find an area where there's a few enemies before moving over to our sgw Z external GPU so okay  some some big frame dips there right now let's still very very playable around 70 frames persecond now look at the huge difference we have in our frame rate it's 135 frames per second but not  only that the visuals I put it up to 1080P and it's on the high preset and it can play the game  just fine again you're going to see some of those frame dips but this is just a massive Improvement  in the not only performance but the quality the game is just so much better here and of course  this is straight out from the HDMI port into my capture card so there's no performance loss the  only performance loss is of course that overhead we have with the Thunderbolt The Last of Us now  this is a very demanding game but I've got it set to 1080p with our RX 6,600 M and you can see very  playable this is on the lowest setting so maybe it might actually be better this game cuz it's  so demanding probably to even run it at something like 720p because it's only around 45 frames per  second but this is a good looking result here still compared to the integrated graphics with  that 780m let's hope so now it's not just for gaming too this egpu can accelerate of course  like 3D CAD work but video editing too I have noticed here this is one of my reviews now it  is quite basic there's no Advanced editing going on the timeline is smooth now I normally don't  run with this kind of scaling I've got it set to 300% at the moment with Windows and I've just done  this to make things a little bit clearer for the video for anyone watching on mobiles you  can see with the playback that it's not quite uh 100% it's a little bit slow I've noticed so  it's occasionally dropping FR frames and is a little bit slow but this is so much better than  integrated Graphics which does tend to choke when I do edit larger videos such as this in  the export times will be a little bit faster I'm going to export this now at the 4K preset so it's  just about to finish finish up now the bar is at 100% taking over 20 minutes now and 35 seconds so  the encoding time is a little long there we go 20 minutes 38 seconds but what it does do definitely  is Boost that editing performance I have found that the playback and the timeline is so much  smoother than using the integrated Graphics finally fan noise and thermal so I've seen it  get up to 78° C and the fan while you definitely do hear it it sounds a little bit like a gaming  laptop when it is under full load and working hard pulling the full 80 Watts so here's a sample ofit so recapping here one of the favorite things that I like about this is it acts also as a dock  too so I've got my mouse my keyboard plugged into it my external Monitor and I can take my handheld  gaming PC plug it into it and then I've got a desktop setup it just makes it a lot easier there  and you double your GPU performance over even the best integrated Graphics which right now is  that radon 7080 M this is going to still be twice as fast as I did point out there when you look at  those 3D Mark scores at least and the gaming just more fluid you can game at 1080P and just even up  those visual settings there too which is great now I'm really looking forward to an RTX 3070 model  which does have a higher power limit this one is currently the top that it runs at and pulls is  80 wats that RTX sorry RX 6600m but I hope to see later on with future models that we will have say  an RTX 460 an RTX 4070 would be really good to get some amazing performance out of it but as it  stands doubling your performance I still think is fantastic and I love the fact that it's got a 240  wat gun power supply in this so it's compact yet the output of it is really good and the  screen on the top of it that you can customize with information like fan RPMs temperatures and  various other things is really handy to have now the Links that are in the description of this  video do check those out because that's where you find an information on the availability  and pricing of this unit for both the RX 6600m model and the RTX 3070 model which will also be  coming out so thanks a lot for watching my hand hands on with the sgw Zone gaming and AI box\n"