I Bought an £80 ($95) HP ENVY Gaming PC - But What's Inside?

I found a pretty good deal on an HP Envy Gaming PC online, but as ever the question remains; What's Inside?
0:00 Intro, Condition and Finding Deals
1:30 Removing The Side Panel
3:21 First Boot and Specs
4:31 Gaming Performance As Is (CoD MW2)
4:44 Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
5:38 Elden Ring
6:08 Forza Horizon 5
6:29 CS:GO
6:42 Upgrade Potential and Adding a Better Graphics Card
7:18 Cod MW2 W/ RTX 3050
7:50 Spider-Man W /RTX 3050
8:05 Elden Ring W/ RTX 3050
8:17 Forza Horizon 5 W/ RTX 3050
8:44 CS:GO W/ RTX 3050 and Final Thoughts
Thanks for watching :)

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Sorry about the out of sync audio at the start it looked fine when rendering, and then after upload. Guess it’s one if those days 😂

[@oliknow]

it is just the difference in speed of light and sound.

[@C6Steve]

Thought I’d started watching a dubbed kung foo video 😂

[@GameFrostYT]

I can relate to editing issues appearing after upload XD

[@deagt3388]

That happened when you got sluggish PC.. ;-)

[@TechnoLadz]

Could you not make this video unlisted that way those currently watching it can watch it, and then re upload it with the correct audio?

[@C6Steve]

Dodgy audio sync 😂

[@yesterdaysjam2405]

I blame the worm affecting production quality

[@vladislavdonchev1271]

@@yesterdaysjam2405 Man's been wormfected

[@chiefpanda7040]

Okay good thought it was on my end

[@shamrockisland]

Glad it want an issue my end. Audio slightly ahead. Love you video

[@mrpositronia]

I've had the HP Envy Phoenix 860-078na with i7 6700 / GTX 980ti / 16GB RAM since Christmas 2015. Everything was fine until I bought Cyberpunk 2077 and then I realised I needed to upgrade. So I pulled out all the innards and fitted an MSI B550 Mortar with R5 5600X / RTX 3070 / 32GB RAM. The case is fine for it all. All the innards are now sitting in an old 2006 Compaq tower. Lovely stuff.

[@qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm3102]

nice upgrade man, 5600 is a beast

[@Akyomi777]

sleeper PCs are always nice to see

[@chedrwastaken]

i hoped to put my pc guts inside my acer predator case but acer made the mounting holes propietary so my pc is in an old news companies pc case

[@type45tomcat21]

One of my friends have the same PC as yours, still working now and having fun. He paid a lot at that time as he didn't know much about PC and trying to be future proofing. I think those parts did aged well and still good for gaming. The only issue he had so far is the PSU die after 7 years of services. Thanks to the standard connectors I ordered a new standard ATX PSU and replaced that for him. I am really surprise to see HP using standard connectors and formfactors, now the PC can continue bring fun to its owner.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

lovely upgrade!

[@emanuelacosta2541]

Man I love your videos, the homemade feel is awesome! The PC in the garden

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Thanks :)

[@shtreberka3642]

Til somebody pays a visit😏🐛

[@nity2248]

@@shtreberka3642 🎷🐛

[@GameFrostYT]

That's some insane value, I managed to get an i5 4590 8gb ddr3 hp build for around $45. If i managed to get a low profile GTX 1650 for cheap it would've been the best sff gaming pc! Instead I opted for a cheaper wx4100.

[@Hashtag.Sports]

How did that wx4100 work out??

[@GameFrostYT]

@@Hashtag.Sports It was pretty good, it was slightly slower than the RX 460/560 due to memory clockspeed but with a little overclock you can surpass them, with 4gb of vram and of course the architecture I can run any game.

[@Hashtag.Sports]

@@GameFrostYT Awesome. It's amazing how hard it is to find content or info around a GPU that isn't an RTX that will game fine but will primarily video edit. We do a lot of editing on my channel and I really don't want those RTX hogs in my system. Trying to find a workstation card that will allow me to game with the kids (all of them have systems in the house so we campaign together) but be a editing beast. I don't have a SFF for this system but good to know.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

nice :)

[@xzavierspeed1425]

Bro I got the same thing but with 16gb ram and added a rtx a2000 the pc it self was 160 though

[@jo54763]

FSR (Ultra) Performance never fails to put me in awe. When I was a kid I would have loved to have something like FSR to make unplayable games at least open to experience. 12yo me would have gobbled up a way to make my GPU run new games at 40fps...

[@raven4k998]

he's dealing with worms run for it

[@irishgiant5150]

There were DDR3 boards for Skylake available to consumers as well. It was like what Intel is doing now with both DDR4 budget boards and main line boards being DDR5, just a little less variety back then.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Ah I see. I wonder how much performance you loose these days

[@irishgiant5150]

@@RandomGaminginHD there's an old LTT video that showed back then it didn't matter at all, but that was early days DDR4 and obviously it got a lot faster over time. I guess it would come down to how fast a kit you could get running on an unlocked 100 or 200 series motherboard. Not quite fair as the ddr3 boards were budget, but interesting for science.

[@dyslectische]

I never forget the pentium 4 with sdr memory. The Botlek in that time.

[@Chris-yc3mm]

Would not surprised me if a lot of the big system builders had an oversupply of ddr3 to get rid of too

[@bdub1682]

yeah, infact most of the 14nm chips had a ddr3 imc, though after the switch to lga 1200 noone bothered to make ddr3 boards

[@type45tomcat21]

One of my friend bought one in 2016 with DDR4 16GB and GTX 980ti inside. It's expensive but they are still rocking these days after 7 years. And the standard formfactors and connectors really helps a lot. A few weeks ago the PSU dead, I can just order a new standard ATX PSU and replaced it for him. Now it's back online and working again.

[@ArkonBlade]

I had that one It was the HP Elite Phoenix They were like $2200or something when they came out I got mine $500 through work on a raffle they do once a year and the guy who won it didn't care about it and took the best offer for it and i offered him $500 and he took it I had it 6 years before I built a new one and never had any issues with it

[@jeffie8696]

Good stuff Maynard, I appreciate all your videos

[@DryadMachine]

Brilliant video as always. I love the fact that you take SSDs with existing installs of Windows and place them in a different machine. I did that last year when I built a new computer and didn't want to sit through the lengthy Windows install to find out if all my components worked.

[@mikes567]

love these and how your doing your best to keep systems out of landfills

[@SoulZGaming]

i love low end budget builds like these,, nice work mate,,,

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Thanks :)

[@spajderman9101]

I hope you got more sponzors and get nice table and lighting for rewievs. Nice bro keep going we love you

[@rometherevenant8749]

Love these HP machines. Especially the Phoenix desktop models.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah they made some great looking ones

[@CarthagoMike]

As much as we can give HP flack for using cheaped-out or non-standard parts, it is still nice they keep user expansion in mind by giving multiple vacant sata and molex cables already connected to the psu.

[@Gamingomad]

I love your videos with home made greenery garden background of product which is fantastic cover picture on your videos !🤩🤩😍

[@PacketWrangler]

Great find. The EliteDesk PCs that are out there are also a good deal. I managed to grab one with an i7-8700 and 16gb of RAM for $240 - it runs great, especially since the platform supports NVMe. I dropped a 1050ti in it for now since it's the best LP card I have, but an RTX A2000 is in the near future - might be a fun build for you to do some time if you feel like trying it out.

[@michaelthompson9798]

I love the sleek case design and the fact it’s using run of the mill parts makes this an ideal pc for upgrading 👍🥰💪

[@popcorny007]

Awesome video man! Love these old OEM PCs. Here's some tips for CSGO :D - Don't shoot more than 5-10 bullets at once - Learn the basic spray patterns! Or just pull down a little while spraying - Use slow taps at long range to maintain accuracy Sorry for nitpicking haha, with just a little advice it's easy to see large improvements.

[@FynnR]

Nice steal you got there! I picked up the Dell Optiplex 3050 Tower with an i5 6500 and 8GB single channel RAM for 110€. At least it had NVME boot drive. Paired with a GTX 1650 without external PCIe power it is actually very useful for LAN parties! It's lightweight, compact and silent / low power. Lacking IO is luckily no issue with modern USB docking stations.

[@BillyBoy444]

2:22 that model of HP ENVY also was available with a GTX 970. I bought one of them a few years back. That's why the PSU has the connectors on it. Some 6th Gen DELL systems also use DDR3. I had a inspiron with an i5-6400 and DDR3 RAM.

[@bjarne431]

But an i7 plus gtx 970 on a 300 watt psu?!? That must be some seriously understated psu power haha

[@Beetlejuicer]

Looking slimmer my brotha

[@certs743]

Great video. My current system I got from a place that refurbs old office PCs. Got an Acer TC-885 with an i5 8400. Swapped out the PSU and put a FE GTX 1080ti in it and maxxed the RAM to 32GBs. Should be all set for awhile.

[@bjarne431]

i5 8400 is an excellent CPU!

[@Beisepimp]

Great find, i've got a Dell Optiplex 7040 today (50$) , also an i7-6700 inside but with no RAM. I have a 1650 lying around, so i will pair this CPU with this card for a budget build. :')

[@scottchampion]

Dude way to step up the professionalism

[@kaushikkv8423]

interesting video as always

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Thanks again!

[@t1aoshibby]

2060 or 2060s I think would pair nicely with this. Great video as always!

[@414mayns]

6th and 7th Gen intel cpus had both DDR3 and DDR4 controllers. And with alot of 6th gen intel OEM builds you will find DDR3 setups as you gotta think DDR4 was new and I sure they had stock piles of DDR3 to offload so they made the motherboards DDR3/DDR3L. i had dell optiplex SFF with a i5-6500 and it had DDR3 too. You can find some Z170 motherboards with DDR3 released on the consumer market. It is the same thing they did with 12th Gen being able to do DDR4 and DDR5

[@HairyScrambler]

I love your videos but dude how do you not get better at games when you play them so often xD

[@thealien_ali3382]

Daaam u look good my brother

[@pure462]

Nice video! I currently rocking a gigabyte g5 rtx 3060 with i5 10500h 16gb ram its a good decent machine!

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Very nice

[@RudolfSikorsky]

It's a bit hard to believe that i7 6700 bottlenecks RTX 3050 which is only a bit faster than GTX 1070. In my secondary i7-4790/GTX 1070 system only bottleneck is GPU, as rarely as it happens.

[@aleksazunjic9672]

Poorly optimized Nvidia drivers for new GPUs.

[@MyNameIsBucket]

Much more likely HP cheaped out with PCI 2.0, which is going to cripple an 8 lane card.

[@karensee2893]

Wait, isn't the 1070 better than the 3050?

[@RudolfSikorsky]

@@karensee2893 According to Techpowerup, 3050 is 2% faster. Usually in newer games.

[@daytimerocker3808]

the 4790 would definitely be the one bottlenecking.

[@enochid9874]

The barber butcherd your hair . Nice review 👌

[@joeyhillers9460]

Get the man to 500k today guys! Let's do it

[@ntgm20]

I'm hoping to upgrade on of these soon. I've been looking over it realizing it uses what appears to be ATX compatible parts.

[@Burago2k]

That audio and video sync tripped me up...

[@Konkretertyp]

Pretty nice, i've got an hp workstation aswell a couple of days ago, with i7 6700, 16gb ddr4 ram, 256gb ssd. Changed the power supply to a better one (og is a 180W 80+, that was way to weak, to power a usable GPU), slapped a RX 580 8GB in, and it runs like a charm, the only downside to it is, that it has only 3 sata ports, of which i can only use 2, because the graphics card covers the sata ports beneath its cooler.

[@bjarne431]

I run into similar problems occasionally with these older machines: important ports blocked by GPU.

[@acid3129]

I got a hp prodesk last week for £45 it had an i5 6500 16gb ram and a 4gb rx550 . Getting a 6th gen i7 system for under £100 is impressive

[@mike.1390]

id be interested to see if there be much of a performance hit @1440p with the 6700 and 3050. Seeing as though the gpu is limited by the cpu @ 1080, perhaps both will work equally as hard at a higher res.

[@qimxv4757]

You're the best man

[@mpkny]

I have a Gigabyte Skylake DDR3 board (GA-B150M-D3H DDR3) which I ran with a Pentium G4560 (I remember I had to flash the bios using an i3-6100 that eventually went into another build I was doing for someone else) and the R9 280X which I had just taken out of my main build (I had upgraded to a GTX 1060 6GB). At the time DDR4 was expensive (the DDR5 of its day 😅) so it was a neat budget combo and a nice secondary computer at my parent's house.

[@dio007]

the audio is out of sync, or maybe youtube is still processing the video

[@miguelmoreno-qh6wl]

this man is goated

[@ApurvaSukant]

That "For parts" ebay tip is gold mate! Cheers!

[@RandomGaminginHD]

😁

[@MaxOnCFW]

hey man really love the content would you ever start your own discord?

[@rmgaminguk7079]

Awesome fine, for a budget build I think a 500w PSU and a gtx 1070 would be good combo Would love to hear your stories and overall experience of buying Spare or Repairs tech off ebay, both the wins and the dead systems.

[@E5rael]

For older/slower CPUs an AMD GPU is preferable, since NVidia's GPUs don't have hardware schedulers. Maybe an RX 6600 would be a better pairing, maybe even an RX 580 could do, or an RX 5500 XT.

[@JimbobflobbadobPlays]

Really digging the old school Jackie chan dub

[@karroq]

filtering by buy it now and newly listed can also get you some good stuff. you can find things that have only been listed for a few seconds that you don't have to bid on.

[@theholeofglory]

hey man love the video so i live in nz and here i cant get a i7 6700 for the price u brought that whole pc lol pc parts here tend to be pretty expencive

[@noelienoelie8425]

Oh Ohh someone's been working out. Is that a jaw line I see bro.

[@TheSpotify95]

That's not a bad little system you got, small form factor and takes a DVD drive :) Obviously the R7 GPU was a little underpowered but it's good to know that a more powerful GPU can be used to match the i7 CPU. Though for me at least, 16GB (of any type of RAM) would be too much of a bottleneck, as would only having 2 RAM slots on the board!

[@kurgisempyrion6125]

Can't believe the humble earthworm forced a change in your channel! 🙂Or is it the blast of cold weather we're having? :)

[@TheDudeWithNoName]

Kinda surprised at that Elden Ring performance, by the way, which English Premier League team do you support Steve? i was watching Tottenham vs Chelsea while having this video in the background and i thought you seem like you could be a Tottenham fan.

[@deamondeathstone1]

I noticed that as wel as I was looking at the HP Elitedesks'. I almost bought an G2 which would make the DDR4 2400 I had laying around quite useless.

[@shodan2958]

The case of the machine in particular looks like a good candidate for a sleeper PC build. Though cooling of components needs to be considered.

[@windows9556]

While a great deal, I find it extremely fascinating that a modern I3s essentially render these old I7s obsolete. You will see much better performance with an I3 10100 than you would see with this not very old flagship. Not to mention the power consumption difference!

[@akoskollar5467]

Only I7 6700 costs 80 pounds in Hungary..... Amaizing deal you made!

[@andyshtroymish4997]

Good one Steve! Now the real question: can it be modded to so-called "coffee-mod"? Though I'm not sure there are DDR3-compatible CPUs, some "mutants"(laptop ones) could easily be. And if the RAM speed can be tuned to at least 2133MHz to not become a bottleneck to the whole system...

[@stevenneaves8079]

I just picked up an hp z240 sff with an i5 6400. The plan is to swap to a Xeon e3 1240v5 and drop either the rx 6400 in there or the a2000. I know the gpu will bottleneck some but this actually ended up being the best value rig I could put together for what I could find given I got a good deal on the SFF model and not an MT. So these benchmarks were very timely for me given the comparative closeness of the parts

[@randy206]

I have a dell office PC that I rehoused into a cheap sama case from Newegg. The board was non standard in shape and required some Dremel modifications to the case. It is running an i5 6500 with ddr3 ram so apparently it is rather standard for 6th gen Intel to use ddr3.

[@vasharol]

I am still using my i5 6600 and GTX 1070, I have a 1440p display but it still manages to run most games at high/medium settings. It's only very recently that I have noticed that I am having to lower the settings or resolution to get 60fps although in some games I would rather get 30fps and nice looking graphics since I personally don't really notice a difference.

[@Darth001]

Same I upgraded from an rx 590 to a rtx 3060ti. Not because I wanted to play my games new and old at above 60fps but because my old card didn't support directx 12.1/12.2 which newer games are starting to use more often. I'm happy playing at 30 FPS all day long as long as the graphics look good with no stuttering

[@vasharol]

@@Darth001 I have just ordered myself a new computer though, I have gone with an Ryzen 5 7600X and an RX 6700XT and my current rig will be relegated to the living room as a couch coop machine.

[@Xenotypal]

6700xt is a pretty good card, I've found

[@vasharol]

@@Xenotypal yeah it's so much better than my 1070. I am able to run returnal at high settings with ray tracing at over 100fps.

[@Xenotypal]

@@vasharolyeah i can play death stranding on basically max graphics with it at a pretty good framerate. i was pretty impressed by the card and would recommend it, particularly if you use linux. I just have the cheapo power color one

[@zimbu_]

That's an amazing deal if the valuable parts like the CPU work. Only the SSD not working is basically the dream since cleaning it up and putting in a brand new SSD is what someone would do if they were turning it into a cheap computer for an elderly relative or something.

[@MikeDragonborn]

I have that exact same computer with a 1650. I've had the PC since new, used to have a 1050ti in it. I didn't want to replace the PSU so I've just used GPU's that don't need extra power.

[@geraldgutsueii3324]

for the more budget/real world build i'd pair it with a 600w psu, a gtx 1060 6gb, a 256gb boot ssd, and a 1-2tb mechanical drive for storage, and keep the 16gb ddr3

[@remke5137]

RGiHD got that fiver editor audio sync

[@MiKeKiwi]

Would love to see what difference DDR4 would make with these combos!

[@mustasheolll2020]

I pray for you my man, I am scared of worms too you are not alone.

[@InfuzedPH]

previously got a HP 280 G2 MT with the same processor but with GT710 and DDR4 Ram running in 2133Mhz too bad the H110 Mobo doesn't support XMP and all used b150 and z170 boards that are compatible in this cpu are expensive in my area (Philippines). i yeeted the gt710 and chucked in a palit gtx 1650 (gddr6 variant) and it was all good. i was able to play 1080p max settings in genshin impact with this build.

[@zeroturn7091]

Nice find, although that’s a steep price if it were barebones.

[@nunofernandes4501]

My older kid's main system has a 6700k with a Radeon RX 480 and it performs rather well. Either that or a GTX 1060 would be a pretty good match for your HP build.

[@mattparker9726]

0:49 I found an old Xeon based HP z480 mid tower with 24 gigs of DDR3 and a 1 tb hdd for literally the same price as yours, you just gotta look and not click buy now on the first machine that takes your fancy.

[@idied2]

i think the audio sync issue made the video even more viewable

[@st.john_one]

nice one

[@ProjectPhysX]

Man I hate these nice-looking cases with non-standard motherboards inside. Had that recently with a motherboard that was opposite mirror symmetry, slot bracket and PCIe slots on the wrong side, to make sure it's impossible to use the case for a regular motherboard... such a waste of resources!

[@philtkaswahl2124]

The intro just made me imagine your home under siege by earthworms.

[@DanielGT_93]

until 9th gen there is ddr3 support inside the chip, what proves it is the QQLS cpu (i9-9900h aliexpress frankstein) with Z170 ddr3. Yes, it's possible, i've used for years.

[@YusssoM]

Damn, that would've been a crazy deal if there's one in my country.

[@kcinplatinumgaming2598]

I used to buy a lot of laptops on ebay for around 5 or 10 max 50 quid , try and fix them and sell em on...miss those days

[@Ps3RetroTv]

i paired my hp 280g2 same i7 6700 and 16gb ddr4 with 1060 6gb seems a good pairing and 500w White evga power supply

[@Mexicanuu]

I had a hp envy laptop and for 30 dollars for I5 3gen 8gb ram and radeon HD 7600m pretty good machine

[@zk0rned]

Looks like that worm made you get in shape dude lol must've scared the hell out of you

[@fujiwaranovari]

I love how nice you are

[@Kumimono]

This is the dubbed kung-fu variant of RandomGaminginHD. :D

[@sammoore2242]

Skylake supports either DDR4 or DDR3L (a low power version of DDR3, same voltage as DDR4). There were a few industrial motherboards released with slots for either, though DDR4 took over faster than expected and DDR3L DIMMS are pretty rate.

[@Eeveewashere]

Any tips on how some novice like myself can increase my knowledge of motherboard and memory specs? I'm not greedy. I could gratefully settle for the pre-Calc level not the Differential Equations advanced math level of knowledge.

[@sammoore2242]

@@Eeveewashere uh I just read old anandtech articles when I'm bored lol

[@grujadin311]

feels like i watched the 70's kung-fu movies with that sound unsync 🤣

[@shaneeslick]

G'day Random, 🤔HP RGB is a Red GPU PCB👍+ Green Motherboard PCB👍, I hope the PSU PCB is not what will eventually be Blew 😱😭 Yeah you can find some good bargains looking through the Broken listings, you just need to have a good read of what's "Broken" or ask the seller for some more info so you don't get stung. PS maybe a 1660/Super/Ti would be a good pairing?

[@HiddenRefuge]

In all honesty - contrary to what many high profile people have been saying on the net - budget gaming isn't in a tragic state; it's better than ever. It's just most of the users grew up and became far more demanding and now want budget gaming to deliver what it's been never technically capable of delivering. 1440p/144hz isn't budget, that's high end; but what used to be 720p/30-60 is now capable of going all the way up to 1080p/75-120hz with ease in plenty cases. I'd say what people keep complaining about is a gap between budget and high-end and that one is sorely needed, especially nowadays with it's inflated GPU prices of the high-end cards.

[@yhiz4757]

Love you dude, keep up the great vids

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah been meaning to look at that again :)

[@yhiz4757]

@@RandomGaminginHD Gotta make sure you have ton of storage for it though, with all the maps installed it takes up 430gb of storage on my pc

[@everythingismichael]

Lha i love this kid

[@andrescantillo5755]

Que suerte, en mi país la mera gráfica ya la pondrían en 40 dólares y esa PC entera en 250 dólares, que suerte de tener esos precios

[@thecreatorofcloudyandrosie]

kinda looks like my old HP ENVY with an i7-7700 which was my main PC. I just use an HP Victus 15L as my main PC.

[@K1R1Q]

Just got a I7 6700 its quite nice

[@p674mle2]

That's a nice prebuilt for £80 i7 6700 is still a good processor if u have the 6700k its even better as i know they overclock well

[@p674mle2]

@wakenbaker-uk yeah office boards are terrible

[@EzwanRohman]

some of the quirks and features of this channel that you WON'T see with other youtubers : audio de-sync

[@dazzlerweb]

algae rhythm

[@ClayWheeler]

Pardon me Bro. At the beginning, your video's AUDIO seem like out of sync

[@mrpositronia]

Phew. I thought it was my computer.

[@tomislavkaltnecker6354]

Vega 56 work really well with a Skylake I7. They are evenly matched, that's my thought.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah great card been meaning to revisit it

[@threzz3]

The 6th gen of intel i think was the one that change ddr3 to ddr4

[@Wockes]

Yeah, reason I stuck with an i7-4790k for 6-7 years

[@aisle9]

GTX 1070. An i7-6700 would be gold paired with a 1070. Do you still have that MSI 1070 Mini? It'd be fun to see a SFF-ish build and see how that little dude holds up in 2023.

[@aldenmarroquin5783]

Skylake did support PC3L Not just normal ddr3 ram it has to be those modules since it matched the voltage of ddr4

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah that’s what I thought