PLEASE Stop Buying These RIP OFF Gaming PCs

[@LinusTechTips]

Corrections: 8:19 - The 665MHz listing is technically correct but we should have doubled it as per the Double in DDR. 9:39 - The GTX 970 shown is listed as "For parts or not working" (We sent the wrong link to our editor, oops), but there are plenty of 970s on eBay that are listed as "Used" condition that are the same price, if not cheaper.

[@nezu_cc]

a bit late, but thank you for being honest

[@exxe2454]

Let's go 660$ used 3060gpu laptop club, just smarter than desktops for budget.

[@ELWEAPON]

pls stop linus 24h live channel

[@Lueckenphiller]

To give U a advicw 655mhz isnt Correct i would Recommend a Reseat or Complete Change of CPU IT seems to BE damaged AMD has that Failure in Am3 a Lot

[@MarkJohnson-hw4hl]

You'd be lucky if Penny Sioux doesn't sue you. Lol. Talk about defamation. There is an ssd in that build. Completely lied about that. Toast bros also reviewed them twice and gave them props on price and performance being what was expected.

[@rfitzgerald2004]

The sad thing is when someone without the knowledge purchases it for their child or grandchild, they're so happy to get little Timmy the gaming rig he's always wanted, but when he finds out it can't play half the games he wants it's often too late to return it - even worse for a family on a low income who have really struggled to afford it in the first place and essentially been conned

[@HeretixAevum]

It's unfortunate but sometimes you have to learn your lesson of 'don't make a major purchase without consulting somebody in the know' the hard way.

[@samjackson7701]

​@@HeretixAevumNot everybody has access to 'somebody in the know.' PC parts aren't something that every family has a friend that's knowledgeable on.

[@kobeandgary]

This pc gets the performance expected if not better, than what was listed. Hard to complain about that.

[@uncledeadhead3674]

if they cant afford it then they didnt get taken because they arent going to get much better anyway.

[@philiprobar]

@@uncledeadhead3674 Tell us that you didn’t watch the video without telling us.

[@killer191297]

Plot twist: all 215 sold PCs are just different KZbinrs buying them to showcase why people shouldn't buy them in the first place.

[@donkey1331]

The seller would be mkeing money off of the youtubers💀

[@despairdx]

@@donkey1331and utubers be mkeing more money from their viewers💀

[@soldoutsoul5180]

@@despairdx We are giving them money by watching ads 💀

[@PickTrick-dp8th]

We are making them money by believing them.

[@Shade_tree_garage01]

...86,000USD... in old PC parts...

[@EvolvingLark]

My brother was a victim of that. The PC wasn't presented as a gaming PC, but an office PC which is exactly what he wanted. They were upfront about the specs and that it wasn't brand new. Only, they didn't say how old it was. It stopped working in like a week. They got a replacement, but it wasn't any better.

[@builder396]

Sounds like my mom. Bought a refurbished PC, essentially also an office machine with dated but not too horrible components, certainly good enough for her use case. I advised against it, I said "Those PCs probably came out of the dustiest warehouse or something and they just chucked in a hard drive because those things usually boot from a remote server, the parts are going to be worn and will probably break much sooner.", and when it came lo and behold the power cord was defective and the PC lost power in the middle of the windows install because while cleaning the case my mom moved it a bit. By the time I finally got a windows install medium to fix the mess and Windows booted the first time it booted straight into a bluescreen due to defective RAM. She got a warranty replacement, but yeah. its not like I didnt warn her.

[@lawbringer9857]

@@builder396 So whats your solution then? Not everyone has the time or know how to build their own pc

[@builder396]

@@lawbringer9857 To buy an office PC off the shelf thats made from new components. Sure, you can say whatever about E-waste not being recycled, but that PC would also last her twice as long (she retired the previous one only because Vista stopped getting security updates) than a refurbished one with Win7...and really, she couldve also just upgraded the OS itself, as performance wasnt really her problem. And even IF building a new PC had been necessary, or any gut-work at all, I was *offering* that to her and she declined.

[@builder396]

@@jeremytine What my mom got didnt even have an SSD, but yeah, this should be top of the list even for a bare-bones machine for facebook games. Not sure Id have used the exact same parts (personally more team red, especially on a budget) but it would definitely be in that ballpark area.

[@aoyuki1409]

@@lawbringer9857 my proposed solution, is for all of us tech savvy people who upgrade our stuff by ourselves, or build machines by ourselves to 1) establish that you *for a fact, know about building computers* to your friends and family. if they refuse to listen its their loss and let it be a lesson for them till they finally come around. 2) educate them whenever they come to you. in a way that dummies can understand. i help my friends who arent well versed in computers pick which part to upgrade first, to what, and i would give both used and new options. i would then open up a paint 3d and stream on discord and do a bunch of charts explaining wtf is what and why should we upgrade this first. 3) when we recycle or upgrade our stuff and want to let go of the old, but still got life inside them, trade them in at a local PC Builders. there's one about 30 km from my home that i really trust, people drop off their 2070s, 2080tis, 2060s and everything there, even motherboards. and help to sell them to people who needed parts, or a whole new build but couldnt afford shiny new components. in fact i got my used 3070 from that store last month for a cheap price of $300 (converted to USD, roughly) 4) recommend people who need computers, sellers from the ones like 3, or from trusted companies or outlets. instead of some janky ass eBay scam seller. or if they insist on using eBay or whatever marketplace they prefer, you can help them find the ones that are worth the money, and has enough life in them to make the money worth. if you dont want to do any of this, its okay. it doesnt have to be all of us. as long as there is some, others will follow.

[@InfamousTog]

my friend bought one of these systems on Amazon. It was advertised like this: "Modern Quad-Core i5, 32GB RAM, NEW GeForce Graphics, FAST SSD, USB 3". It was an i5-750 with DDR3 RAM and a GT-520 GPU. It also did not come with an SSD, it came with a hybrid HDD/SSD, and the "USB 3" ports were just USB 2 ports painted blue

[@Trillyana]

If you paint them blue the computer knows that they're faster. It's just common sense.

[@blunderingfool]

If it looks like it was written by a china bot then it's a scam.

[@daylightdies7194]

Poor sod

[@wayland7150]

If he had consulted you then you would have persuaded him to let you build one. However you would have got him to spend more money too. You may think you can build better but I bet not at that price plus a profit.

[@leonardomarquez9551]

​@@TrillyanaThat's for Red. Blue makes them run cooler and Green makes them use less energy.

[@kevinwells9751]

And this is why my friend had to ask me to help him find a good gaming laptop when he was looking for one. He's even a tech savvy guy (he's a data analyst and knows some programming), but if you don't keep up with all of the model numbers, generations, and specs it's an indecipherable mess of random numbers and letters, and it's even worse when it comes to laptops because often the mobile version of a CPU or GPU isn't at all the same as the desktop version (I don't know why they insist on calling them the same thing in the first place)

[@matthewlozy1140]

When I went from a 570 to a 1070 years ago I was so confused on what ti and non-ti variants meant just because I hadn't kept up with the generations for a while up until then. I'm very tech savvy and it took me a good amount of research to bring myself up to speed. I can't imagine how confusing it would be for a non tech savvy person even if they did research. They'd have a hard time deciphering it all.

[@Yellowredstone]

My online friend isn't tech savvy and got a used pc and I tried to get them to dig the specs out for my by guiding them. Just trying to explains what each number meant made me give up. "Can you tell me the memory amount and ddr number from this window?" or "with this ssd number being qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm,', your motherboard supports M.2 meaning you can get an NVMe SSD and it will be faster", but in reality it's really complicated if you aren't invested at all. That's the frustrating part.

[@badreddinekasmi8919]

Oh yeah honestly I have yet to understand the naming scheme of AMD GPUs. It's mostly why I stuck to Nvidia although they are worse on the low end/entry side

[@saidrahal]

INWM, I have a very expert friend in terms of tech details, I had the budget and some knowledge but didnt want to upgrade to a GEN 5 PC without his help, it took us kind of a month to define the shoping list for the parts, including the monitor and the PSU

[@Shadowninja1200]

Honestly the desktop side of things are way simpler than the laptop side of things. With laptops, you gotta worry more about power limits and thermal throttling which make you get cases where a 4070m class card will perform better than a 4080m class card (yes I know nvidia dropped the m but this is for making it clear that i specifically mean mobile gpus). Transparency in specs would go along way to address this. Personally I think older laptops were way worse for figuring out if it was good or not because the components like gpu or cpu wouldn’t even be in the same ballpark as their desktop counterparts.

[@squidworkss]

I tried to help my sister buy a gaming laptop suitable for her needs- sims 2, minecraft and text docs. Suggested something mid range. She went and dropped loads of money on a high end laptop despite having no clue what any of the specs meant- some people just dont care if they get ripped off or spend more than they need

[@familhagaudir8561]

That's sad. Wouldn't a carefully-picked $500 laptop with integrated graphics fit all her needs and some more?

[@American_2]

@@familhagaudir8561 No, a PC needs dedicated GPU for gaming. Laptops are more expensive than desktops.

[@lemonke5341]

Tf text docs? Give her an 11 year old laptop

[@familhagaudir8561]

@@American_2 I play plenty of games like Deep Rock Galactic on a $575 laptop with integrated graphics and 8GB RAM. Sims 2 and Minecraft will run fine if you make sure the processor can do the job. Mine is an AMD Ryzen 5 5625U. Would highly recommend at least 12GB ram though. Again, that's for someone who wants to play the games mentionned above.

[@DarkSkyies]

I had lent my old R9 280x to friend for him to use until he could afford a better gpu, and when I needed it back recently I said he could get a used rx 6600 for around $200 NZD or something like a 5700xt or used 1080, I even sent him links but he went and bought a 450$ brand new rx 6600. I guess he gets a warranty but I bought a 1080ti for $320 used that can outperform an rx 6600.

[@countfrackula6707]

13:00 As an IT professional myself, I find Intel's model numbers utterly indecipherable. I just look up every single Intel CPU up on Passmark to get an idea of where it stands.

[@zekicay]

AMD's Ryzen mobile 7xxx is even better: 7x1x is Zen - I don't think they have such a CPU, 7x2x is Zen2, 7x3x is Zen3, 7x4x is Zen4

[@enderduck4253]

Yeah, it's bizarre. Companies do a reasonably good job of naming GPUs sensibly, yet the names for CPUs and motherboards manage to be incomprehensible.

[@astra6640]

​​@@zekicayhat's only true for a small subset of their chips. Mainline follow the same scheme as desktop pretty much. Looking at Zen 2, for instance, this only applies to "ultra-mobile" chips, and in Zen 3, that's only applicable to a few mobile chips and their PRO versions. The normal APU lineups follow the normal scheme where the first number has to do with the generation or series.

[@astra6640]

​@@zekicayMight also be true for the epyc lineup, but that tends to be fairly disconnected from the consumer market.

[@SirChristoferus]

@@astra6640 For a single computer, the Epyc lineup would definitely be better suited for a basic server network machine, situated in a somewhat large house or a small business.

[@jenrosejenrose7417]

I spent the first couple weeks of starting to plan a new system thinking "I'm on an i7, I better go up to an i9" and ended up with an I5 and this thing is lightning fast... my i7 was 6th gen. The i5 is 13th gen.

[@Pulstar232]

Holy shit that's one hell of an upgrade. Right now I'm running a laptop with an 8th gen i5, but I'm planning to build a rig and use a 12th gen i5. Hopefully I'll experience the same jump you did.

[@admg8349]

the difference between gens is insane - a 13th gen i5 is better than a 12th gen i7

[@Aaron-ge7ho]

@@Pulstar232 theres just one little thing in your comment that would make you feel a big jump in performance even if you got a desktop equiped with an 7th gen i5 (older than your laptop indeed): "laptop". No mobile hardware face its contemporary non-mobile part with the same performance. It's a rule explainable by lots of things (power, form, cooling and so on). The far you can go with an 12th gen i7 laptop sometimes will be outmatched by just an i5 desktop 2 years older EVER, so take care with the math when putting the two things in the ballance, because theres a world of differences.

[@charlotteritchie9969]

I went from a 2nd gen i5 to a 13600k :) big difference

[@JORDAN-CHRISTOPHERSPENCER]

i hate the naming of these things, like why is a 3090 ti better than a 4060 by 52 percent...

[@januszkurahenowski2860]

I was duped once into this sort of a PC many years ago since it has a huge title of "INTEL I7 16GB RAM". It was pretty cheap and the cpu caliber and ram seemed very good. But on closer inspection it was only 1st gen i7, ram was from some weird niche manufacturer and it had a proprietary motherboard, case and psu from dell which were impossible to upgrade. Feel like a lot of people tell for those deals through years

[@enb3810]

cpu CALIBER?

[@nakellold]

​@@enb3810mf buying them i7 .50

[@dinglebop9998]

Happened to me with my first laptop. I needed something for uni that could game on the side, so I got an overpriced, oversized HP laptop, complete with, "powerful core i7 processor and dedicated nvidia graphics card for gaming!" i5-5500U is a dual core, hyperthreaded CPU in a world of desktop quad core hyperthreaded CPUs and a GeForce 840M, which had about the same processing power as the iGPU in the CPU. I then also had to lug around a 17" laptop for the rest of my uni days

[@pcmasterracetechgod5660]

He’s right about the “decade from now” thing. There will be $300 PC’s with “core ultra 7” and “RTX GPU” and it will be a 2060 and 15700f (which will be pretty bad in a decade I assume)

[@gokublack8342]

@pcmasterracetechgod5660 maybe 7 years from now the way tech is going and how developers are putting less and less effort into optimizing their games. Although the way Nvidia has stagnated this gen on everything aside the 4080 and 4090 maybe not

[@JokingJay]

The other bit is how heavily eBay allows these "shops" to push these things via sponsored listings that appear higher up in search results, not to mention that they will prioritize sellers that have simply sold a lot (even if what they're selling is hot garbage). I actually used to have fun building decent PCs with a mix of new and used parts, using nothing more than a 2-3 years old in the mix for CPU/GPU/mobo, and always using a new PSU, SSD/HDD combo, etc. But at some point those builds -- despite being far and away superior in both performance and longevity -- had no visibility compared to these garbage peddlers, so what's the point. It also doesn't help that seemingly the same people buying these and other "entry level Core i5 gaming PCs" from slightly more legit vendors are also delusional when they go to unload them on the used marketplaces. The amount of people being like "I paid $1700 for this" and thinking that justifies asking over $1K for their machine is crazy.

[@pafnutiytheartist]

Well, technically nothing about their posting is technically false. While it's a bait, it's not technically a scam, so I'm not expecting ebay to ban or refuse to promote them.

[@beeman4266]

I was surprised after checking out ebay again, I hadn't used it in years. I got into magic cards recently and I was on ebay browsing around. There's so many listings that are intentionally confusing and misleading. It's so easy for a parent or grandparent shopping for family members to be tricked by these listings. I'm shocked ebay hasn't cracked down at all, surely it causes a ton of refunds.

[@NightKev]

@@pafnutiytheartist It's not *legally* a scam, maybe, but in every other sense of the word, it is a scam.

[@YT_3DNA]

@@JokingJay I was the 100th like on this comment

[@potatosordfighter666]

One thing about these glamfurbishers that probably helps to keep them in business alongside OEMs and SIs is the fact that they seem to have SIGNIFICANTLY higher QC. The system you got was tidy and extremely well managed for what it was.

[@InfiniteDarkMass]

I mean, it's not like this one is hiding the specs, (even though something completely different arrived). I would expect anyone making such a purchase to do some basic research.

[@oktc68]

Spot on, I've never bought a pre-built pc, and all the ones I've seen closeup are a joke. (pre-built gaming pc's)

[@innovativeadvertising6463]

Hey there! As a fellow tech enthusiast, I can understand the importance of proper cleaning and maintenance for our setups. I recently came across the HOTO Compressed Air Capsule, which offers both powerful vacuuming and blowing capabilities. It seems to have some great features like high-quality filters and a brushless motor. Might be worth checking out if you're looking to keep your desktop and other spaces spotless! 🧹💨

[@Australiaisupsidedown]

​@@innovativeadvertising6463🤮

[@GratefulNPC]

@@innovativeadvertising6463 glowie

[@ForTheOmnissiah]

getting a 970 instead of a 660 is actually an insane upgrade.

[@fromhell1]

yeah it is like switching a r9 290 from a r7 260.

[@dantemeriere5890]

They were probably feeling guilty after selling that computer for that price.

[@StelexYT]

can we appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@yutehube4468]

Right, yet in the title it says stop buying PC's like this 🤔Maybe it's reverse psychology and he's teamed up with the seller 😂

[@baverfjant]

@@yutehube4468 If you don't end up with any real upgrades from the listing it's a pretty bad deal.

[@bradclapp4022]

Please do the same thing for Servers. All the time on Reddit I see people who want to get into home labbing looking at decade old or older severs due to them having higher core counts and lots of memory but then gulp down power and are close to EOL for even home lab use.

[@ArifKamaruzaman]

Ah this is interesting too. I'm into homelab too but new server is too expensive, used one with reasonable price is way too old. When i searched on international e-commerce the price is okay but the shipping is sometime higher than the product itself. hahh..... #doneranting.

[@stigrabbid589]

In that case, it might be better to just get a 12th/13th gen i9 or Ryzen Threadripper based desktop to use, still a bit of money but you can get a new pc with a lot of cores that way.

[@MrHakisak]

​@stigrabbid589 but most homelabbers would want more pcie lanes. Transcoding card? Hba? Quad slot m.2? Sfp+? You would need xeon or epyc.

[@gatocochino5594]

@@MrHakisak Uhh server platforms don't have more PCIe lanes than threadripper.

[@WereCatf]

Meh. Unless you have some very specific reason for needing a massive amount of CPU-cores or PCIe-lanes, bog-standard consumer-grade hardware will do perfectly well for homelabbing. I've been running services on consumer-grade hardware myself for well over a decade now. The benefits? Cheap, replacement parts are very easy to acquire, and unless you specifically need to run everything on a single device, you can just run two or more and spread your services across them.

[@Reynolds323]

The best way I was able to explain this to my friends was "Imagine you are buying a car and all it tells you is Audi - 4 wheels".

[@andreacimenti5873]

some years ago a friend of mine bought a pc, and after he did he asked me what did i think about the specs, it had a celeron gold with integrated graphics and 8 gb of ddr3, the worst part is that he paid 900euro for it

[@J-wm4ss]

aw man, he got scammed

[@GabrielForth]

Recently a friend in our discord group posted that they'd bought a new computer, a desktop to replace their laptop. I didn't say anything because they were so excited, but the spec for the machine was worse than their laptop had been. I just wish they'd asked on the discord first as there are several of us who are more familiar with the tech who could have offered advice looking at hardware specs.

[@silentking3120]

did he get scammed

[@nate_942]

@@silentking3120 nah

[@wayland7150]

No good asking you after he bought it.

[@harisjaved1379]

No! But I will keep buying LTT underwears and screwdrivers!

[@veqzor]

I already have 14 screwdrivers

[@danielkelsosmith]

@@veqzor🤲

[@razer1158]

Don’t forget the LTT water bottles and deskmats.

[@GhostReaper2043]

​@vloqy rich pig plus those screw drive aren't worth 70.00usd probably more like 50.00 if that.

[@urgaiey1358]

Isn't that illegal?

[@ripleyk6505]

Currently, if you're upgrading like I recently was so you have parts to carry over (psu, drive, ram, and case), you can buy a ryzen 5 5500, b550m k, and rx 6650xt for about $400 new for a much stronger budget build. I opted for the 5600x for a little more, but you'll see loads more performance

[@tonyjohansson8395]

I built a system like this for my younger brother for $200. That was 7 years ago. System specs were i7 2600, HP motherboard, 16GB DDR3, R9 280X, 500GB HDD, New 500W Corsair PSU, New Cooler Master Case with plastic sidepanel. He gamed on that computer until last year when we built him a new PC with new parts.

[@leonro]

I hope you got him an ssd this time

[@tonyjohansson8395]

@@leonro We reused his old case and he bought a 12600K, Asus TUF B660 Wifi D4, 3060 12GB, 16GB DDR4, 750W Seasonic PSU and lastly a 4TB HDD. Luckily I had a spare 256GB M.2 Samsung PM981 that I gave him.

[@Nalianna]

i replaced my i5-2500, GTX770, with a 12100F/2060 last October. felt good.

[@leonro]

@@tonyjohansson8395 oh man, he must have been way out of the loop on ssds, considering that he must've done some research on pc builds to get a 6600k and 3060 12gb good on you for giving him a usable m.2, he might even be convinced to upgrade to a 1tb or 2tb m.2 drive now that he's seen it (especially because of how cheap they are now)

[@StelexYT]

can we appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@13StJimmy]

Ever since I started watching this channel years and years ago whenever anyone has asked me for a PC recommendation I’ve basically just tell them to tell me their price range and let me build it for them lol

[@StelexYT]

can we appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@eloypadilla4758]

Same, I'm the tech tips guy on my close friends circle and family

[@RealElevenTimes]

And then they're calling/messaging you every time they have the smallest problem with their PC 👍

[@jazzy2164]

ikr, i always asked their budget and then proceed to lay a parts list within the budget. then i say "or give me the money and i build it for you with better (second hand) specs"

[@kowallski_9134]

@@RealElevenTimes best thing is when they call you to fix their tv, printer, fridge, washing machine, microwave etc, cause you an IT guy, you should know how to fix that right💀

[@YouSeeMeTrolling]

Thank you for making content like this - a lot of gamers out there who aren't as in the know about PC hardware like we are (potentially moving from console), and eBay is absolutely filled with recommendations like this. It's very important that you do your Kitboga-esque duty and try your best to stop others from falling victim to the amount of scammers out there selling off their old hardware. Keep it up!

[@michael-dy8hf]

also low-income gamers. when i was 16, i absolutely would have fallen for this, and would have thought i had saved my family 1k+ dollars USD by finding a PC on ebay that could run all my favorite games for cheap, when in reality i dodged a bullet by waiting until i could move out and save up enough money to individually buy the parts for my PC one by one until i could build my full setup.

[@Aaron-ge7ho]

I don't get why this urge about "move from console" people talk so much. My best advice for anyone in the last few years is go for a console if you wanna play (even Steam Deck/ROG Ally fits this despite being essentially handhelds PC that run games) and keep your old but yet functional rig for your other tasks. It's the best way to save money considering how good the performance of a closed system can be nowadays if compared to the mess that turned keep setting this and that, updating and fixing and twaking everything just to play a simple game.

[@KRAVER_]

I have been fixing PC since 1997 and this happens a lot. prob about 80+% of the PC I fix that customers call gaming PC are barely a gaming PC. and a lot of these people say they just got it online within a year. and pay way more than it is worth usually double priced. this is sad. I try to educate people or answer questions they have to not get ripped off, but it still happens over and over and over. more creators should (NEED TO) post videos like this to spread awareness to not get ripped off.

[@Arjay404]

Holy crap, buying a 660 and getting a 970 is freaking amazing. I would give them a point for that alone, thought obviously they will be losing points in a lot of other parts.

[@chubbysumo2230]

My guess is that they ran out of the GTX 660 base systems, and it cost them no more money to ship the slightly better eat waste. Assume the listing specs are a kind of minimum, and be happy when you get higher. That said, for about $ 400, building it yourself you can usually do a lot better.

[@Arjay404]

@@chubbysumo2230 Oh yeah for sure, this isn't something that would happen all the time, if like you said they ran out of the 660's and it's becoming less and less likely that they will be able to find more of those to put in their machines, that they will change the listing to have 970 instead. But yes, the overall deal is very bad.

[@BensWatchClub]

Possibly recognised that Linus or his colleague had ordered and deliberately upgraded it in order to get a better review

[@SunbleachedAngel]

yeah no, it's still overprices even like that, as they say in this very video. Also it's a very small jump in performance for both CPU """upgrade""" and GPU """upgrade""", again, as they say in this very video

[@Pasi123]

@@SunbleachedAngel GTX 970 is a huge upgrade over a GTX 660. I personally upgraded from a GTX 660 to a GTX 960 in 2016

[@avisprimey]

In my area, about 90% of computers you can buy at a retail store have Celerons from before 2015, and they can go for north of $800. That's not just for lighter Chromebooks, but for most Windows machines as well, which are pinned at 100% CPU and RAM use at idle. More times than not, buying used is a risky, but overall better practice, as many new computers that are local are practically e-waste before they even leave the shelf (at least unless you're willing to get rid of Windows)

[@Voltaic_Fire]

Amazing how these things always seem to have fewer *_(not "less"!)_* than 10 left in stock but they never seem to go out of stock.

[@daroshangounden2179]

PC I paid 330 dollars 2nd hand Facebook market Case= Evetech TRIO Tempered Glass Gaming Case Cpu = I7 9700k Gpu= MSI GeForce GTX 1650 D6 VENTUS XS V1 4GB OC GDDR6 Power supply = Antec VP500PC 500W 80+ High Performance Power Supply Ram= 16gb ddr4 2444mhz hyperx Storage =2x 512GB SSD HARD DRIVE

[@ageorgiev89]

some of these sellers actually source a few per week and sell a few per week, which is why they never have more than that assembled at any time

[@NavinF]

@@ageorgiev89 Yeah having

[@deltasixgaming]

​​​@@daroshangounden2179That sounds reasonable for that EDIT:Although I personally wouldn't trust the PSU

[@Voltaic_Fire]

@@daroshangounden2179 Good for you but I didn't ask.

[@Iri5hman]

Really looking forward to the labs' database so It becomes really easy to compair older hardware to newer stuff so it becomes waay easier to combat E-waste

[@pirojfmifhghek566]

No kidding. I simply don't pay attention to the tech specs from AMD/Intel/NVIDIA. If I'm comparing CPU/GPUs, I go straight to the benchmarks. As should _anyone_ buying a computer. There's no point in reading between the lines in the marketing. Though I do hope there's some kind of motherboard testing going on at the labs. That's the thing that you really don't see benchmarks for right now. Typically you might think "what's the point of that?" but there's still bullshit marketing flying around when it comes to things like VRM power delivery, VRM thermals, "pro/x/b/z" chipsets, pcie lanes, etc. Simply understanding power delivery is beyond the vast majority of consumers and there's _very little_ comparative information to be found even if you go looking for it. Now we've got dozens of motherboards on the market that cost more than the CPUs we put on them. What does that price premium even deliver?

[@ZexMaxwell]

depends on how the Database is presented. for us, it may look easy. but to a normal pleb? Good luck.

[@Thurgosh_OG]

@@ZexMaxwell You're right. And that's the issue. There are quite a lot of us with reasonable PC parts knowledge but there are an awful lot more people out there with very little, to none buying this kind of junk. It's not their fault, that is entirely down to the sellers.

[@reneschellevis7897]

​@@ZexMaxwellNo database. Plebs will ask, however I even doubt that, will this motherboard (A620) work with this CPU (Ryzen 9 7950X). Yes it runs, will it throttle, yes. That's the honest answer. But the plebs don't ask that question if it will throttle. Lack of knowledge. It all depends on whom they get the well-meant advice from I'm afraid.

[@Lueckenphiller]

The funny Thing ist a BX500 Crucial and a New GPU make any old PC as Strong as some of The newest

[@simsonta]

Building a computer is so sophisticated. I did it last year and it took over 2 months to get the parts all working together. Found out that CPU and M.2 SSD must support each other and so on. Computer shop that actually put everything together also installed the power supply because I did not know how much power I needed. But, all parts work nicely, so proud of myself :D So, it is very tricky for normal people who don´t know muck about building a computer from scratch. :D And there are people who will take advantage of people like me...

[@simonwest80]

Been fighting this battle for years! Where I am see so many "new" 13 year old CPUs and ram kits it's impressive - yes I have seen people saying this stuff is new!

[@МаксимПазюк-э5в]

I got a Fujitsu workstation for around $100. It came with a GTX630 graphics card and no SSD, but it did support M.2 NVMe drives and had 16GB of DDR4 memory. I purchased a 2TB M.2 SSD for $60 and a used RTX3060 for around $200. Cyberpunk runs smoothly on this machine, with an average of 80 FPS. I believe this was a good deal

[@omega1231]

Buying used workstations can be a really good idea, however just make sure the MOBO is not propietary or locked by Intel because it'll be very difficult to upgrade then without basically just changing all the components (or atleast the MOBO) If it had M.2 slots then you were probably lucky without making sure, Fujitsu seems like a trustworthy brand when it comes to enterprise level stuff. However, yes that's a more than decent gaming machine for atleast 5 more years (assuming you want to play the newest games at the highest graphics, if not then all you need is a can of air and a good cleaning once every couple of months), what CPU did it come with though?

[@StelexYT]

can we appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy]

Good deal that wont last long due to many things, especially you running trash on it like Cyberfart ... 10 years ago I managed to get and build a PC for bit more then 200 euros that in stores costed 1,500+ euros new. And upon running GTA5 few months in it fried my GPU, then bought a new GPU for 200 euros that was on discount, it ran GTA5 great for a month or so and progressively the more patches been released which you are forced to download then GTA5 fried it again half a year later. Bought another new GPU for the same price and one day upon a new patch it stopped running GTA5 all together and this was around the time I stopped playing games too. So yeah f__k PC games. The PC worked ok for 10 years but progressively got worse with each passing year sometimes month by month not because the tech was bad it's due to the patches and new software garbage that behaves like malware and optimization is zero. The same PC now is a offline setup running Window7 and programs for the same OS and it works like a dream. So for that it's a great deal, but for online use sadly we live in cursed era where one day something works and the next it gets burnt on purpose by a patch or bad code in your browser ... I mean just one example 32 GB of RAM yet browsers run like they are dataminers viruses burning through that RAM like it's below 1GB ...

[@LeoKira997]

about as much as a used PS5 these days and its a PC so you can do whatever you want with it winkwinknudgenudge

[@Ztygs]

@@StelexYT you are a bot.

[@vulpinemachine]

As an upcycler (as I call myself) I see fellow upcyclers doing crazy stuff out there. I've never sold on eBay because I'm almost certain that the wrong kind of person will be buying it or buying it under the wrong assumptions and it'd tempt me to raise my prices. But honestly, I never got into this to make a living, I got into it to save decent computers from going to the landfill. I take the machines and make them look prettier and stuff, but I also make sure I pair the right processor and gpu together so even if it's older hardware they'll get smoother performance. I also keep the prices reasonable. And, I think this might be the most important part, by selling in person, I can talk to the customers one on one. I can actually see if the machine I've got will meet their needs. I'm also realistic about what their budget is and what they want to accomplish. You can game for $400. But if you're trying to do video editing and streaming and 4K 100FPS+ gaming... I'm like...whoa whoa whoa, that's not realistic. Sometimes I've talked kids out of my computers because I knew the build I had for sale wasn't the right one. Sometimes I've told them they should save up more money. I've also pointed some kids to computers that cost less but still met their needs. Parents....oh man...PARENTS as customers especially need help. Point is, upcycling is an awesome fun hobby that might also be an ok business, but I think it requires a lot of ethical consideration. It's like selling used cars. You can get good stuff into the hands of good people who need a bargain, or you could try to overly gussy up something that isn't actually worth someone's time. There's a right and wrong way to upcycle. A little glam ain't bad. Price gouging and preying upon ignorance however is. Stay ethical out there fellow upcyclers. Money isn't everything.

[@Collin_J]

I've done a few similar builds recycling old parts and mixing them with new components to make budget PCs. I always run a few games and share the benchmarks so it's super clear what they're getting. Like yup CS2 on medium will hit 120 but Starfield will run at 20 frames while also looking like absolute garbage.

[@TheBlackMage3]

I remember when I bought a pre-built during the crypto mining craze (since individual parts were unavailable/unaffordable), it took so long to dig through all the junk old PC part build on ebay, Amazon, and the big box stores. It was so time consuming and it would be impossible for the average person who didn't know anything about parts. The prices were all over the place too. There were some PCs with old parts selling for top dollar. I see why the simplicity of the mac system is so appealing. You just look at the date it was manufactured, know the parts being used, and can look up a review.

[@foodlover5210]

Happy that Linus acknowledges the real issues and try to make us aware about it

[@innovativeadvertising6463]

Hey! As a fellow tech enthusiast, I totally get your frustration with overpriced gaming PCs. It's great to see Linus shedding light on these issues. If you're looking to optimize your desktop setup, have you checked out the HOTO Compressed Air Capsule? It's a compact and powerful tool for keeping your space clean. It has some awesome features like strong suction, efficient blowing, and even keyboard cleaning! Definitely worth considering. Good luck with your upgrades!

[@NE0N0W0]

One thing to mention with the "upgrades" to the hardware, these companies most likely just slap computers together and when someone buys one of the listings they just grab the first pc they see and send it over. you could easily get a worse system or an even more mixed mishmash of parts.

[@robertsandfield5684]

If they're being honest they at least put the listing with the minimum specs they might send.

[@robster7787]

That motherboard CPU combo for $400 is a giant middle finger to the consumer. I can get an 8th gen i5 complete workstation for $250 at a goodwill that has a “GRID” electronics section. I followed up with a GTX 970 going for $40. It needed a replacement fan. Hell, a university school surplus got me an i5-9400 complete workstation for $80 (dual monitors included). You’re better off getting an A520 (or better) with Ryzen 5 3600 base combo for $129. That’s what I did a couple days ago for my brother’s pc build.

[@toamastar]

i recently got a ryzen 5 3600 too haha complete build with a 3060 12gb for £350 was a steal tbh lol

[@WiiUniverse]

I ended up buying a used ryzen 7 2700x (very similar to 3600x) for just $40 on my local Facebook marketplace and despite being 5 years old its a great CPU and runs every game I want to play. Even played half life alyx on it and got smooth performance

[@syaieya]

Im almost certain something near identical was selling for this price 6 years ago.

[@justinbaillod4684]

This happened to me when I switched to PC. The machine I got: Dell OptiPlex 7010 motherboard, i5 3470, 16gb ddr3 ram, 1TB PNY SSD, some Gigabyte bronze PSU around 400 watt, and get ready for it..... A really insulting GT 1030 DE. Clearly a stock 7010 Dell put in a cheap Aerocool case. Even worse they superglued the power button connector to the board.... For a while I limped along by swapping the 1030 for a R9 270X. But eventually I completely disassembled the whole thing and assembled my current PC. After learning from that experience I've built several computers with the help of this channel and my friends. I ended up using the Dell hardware as a server after soldering a new header on the board. The Aerocool case was built into a much better machine and sold for a fair price as it should of been originally. DO NOT BUY UNLESS EVERY SINGLE SPEC/DETAIL IS AVAILABLE TO YOU. DON'T BE LAZY.

[@Bustermachine]

I just built a PC for the nephew of a family friend and I think I used that same RGB case that was shown at the start. I got it at microcenter specifically BECAUSE it was a cheap, so I could concentrate the money on better parts. Wound up building a 5600x, 16gig DDR4 3200mhz, a used RTX 2070 Super, 1 TB of M.2 SSD, and enough power supply overhead for an upgrade, for about 650 all in. The 2070 and the RAM were the only used parts from my own recent PC upgrade. And I actually angsted a bit about reselling them to the build given the age of the card.

[@Jmcgee1125]

You did great! A 2070S might not be latest gen but I have a friend on one and can tell you that it's a perfectly acceptable card, even for VR gaming. Honestly, I don't think I could do any better than what you did for that price. Unless he wants to be doing AAA at 1440p max he'll be fine for years.

[@David_Quinn1995]

thats a killer machine there man, hope your nephew appreciates it and asks you for education on what to upgrade or what they can do to extend its life.

[@charles_1523]

I have a standard 2070 and its more than enough for just about anything i throw at it.

[@wayland7150]

You spent a bit more money and got a lot more computer. Something well capable of modern games. The chap building this ebay PC was hard pushed to build something decent and hit his $400.

[@vadnegru]

Its a nice case and it looks expensive so they thought they could rip-off people, pretending it's new and fast.

[@PhysicsGamer]

I really appreciate how you named the seller, early in the video. It's probably not technically all that meaningful since it's just an eBay store, but so, _so_ many KZbin channels are hesitant to do even that much in cases like these.

[@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy]

It can be illegal to share someone's information without their consent, even if it's a storefront ... If that person is in a bad mood and decide to report the video he she have the right to take down the video for whatever reasons there might be but at least the one I mentioned is valid.

[@PhysicsGamer]

@@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy That wouldn't be due to any laws, though.

[@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy]

@@PhysicsGamer I don't understand your reply really, but I will just add, just in case that it does exist and it's punishable by law, also it's in TOS on almost every platform there is. That is why often, license plates, brands, faces, etc are blurred out too, to keep privacy and to not get sued over it.

[@PhysicsGamer]

@@minmogrovingstrongandhealthy KZbin is based in California, so it operates under American law... In which there are very few cases where you're required to do any of that, especially when you're reporting on something someone in particular did. It's also surprisingly rarely against TOS. I think people mostly do so by habit or personal ethics, really.

[@ameunier41]

​@@minmogrovingstrongandhealthyworse case would be a defamation case and since Linus can prove what he said are either true or an opinion it would never stick.

[@FerralVideo]

I literally just bought an i7 Gaming Computer with 16GB of RAM. At a yard sale for $30. And for that price it was actually really good. (I type this comment on it.) i7-6700, GTX 750ti (scheduled to upgrade to RX 570), 16GB single stick DDR4 "upgraded" to 8GB dual stick JEDEC 2400 (I need to give it 16GB again, misremembered how big the kit was), the prior owner wisely yoinked the storage so I gave it a 128GB SSD and 1TB HDD.

[@MongooseTacticool]

Nice, my kids still play games on my old 6700k R9 580 and 8086k 980ti systems.

[@Docs4]

I paired an I7 6700K with a RTX3070, use it as main on 4k and 2 K gaming on the TV. On 4K the processor doesn't matter, either way it wont go over the TVs refresh rate of 60 HZ. "Very" old processors aren't a bad deal, GPUs on other hand....

[@carmengrrr42]

I got a quantum computer at a yard sale for a pack of bubble gum and a baseball, (I type this comment on it.)

[@kantokuu]

sounds like a bunch of baloney

[@Jawneh69]

I've seen this thing everywhere, not just ebay. Amazon, Newegg, BestBuy, even people on Facebook marketplace. And it's been going on for YEARS. Been trying to snag some cheap PCs for the kids to upgrade them into something better, but everyone is selling their horribly old boxes with a pretty case and actual specs hidden somewhere at the bottom. :/

[@walterlegere1403]

I'm really glad you're making these videos because people who are new to PC's or are switching from a console to a PC my not know what to look for. I used to be the same way years ago. I would also like to mention those resellers on E-Bay that push pre-built retired office PC's as gaming rigs are just as bad or even worse. Having attempted to upgrade several generations of these older off-lease systems to try and convert them into even modest gaming systems I discovered was a huge waste of time and money. Very narrow upgrade path! One more point I'd like to make is that when dealing with pre-built OEM systems, newer doesn't necessarily mean its faster or better. I have a 4th Gen Core i7 HP small form factor system that runs rings around a newer 7th Gen HP system with almost the exact same upgraded specs! Lack of power was the main issue. Keep up the good work and, as always, enjoy the content!

[@jamtea388]

Until a few months ago when I started watching this show, I would have had no idea that you could get something better than this for $530 CAD (that's what 400 USD is right now by the way!!). In fact, I wouldn't have known you could get this for that price. I thought that desktop computers would all be thousands of dollars. That said, I'm a grad student so the reason I never checked was because I have never had the budget to do so.

[@aoyuki1409]

you'd be amazed by what you can get when you cherry pick your parts, and only buy what you need. or like linus say, take the lowest of the current generation and wait as time passes so you get a fresh paycheck and upgrade it. i really wish scammers arent real, but they are and they will continue to do so. its hard for me to recommend used parts unless i know it came from somewhere reputable, like a PC build store 30km away from my house is very dedicated to bringing amazing gaming PCs to people without drilling a hole in their wallet. i got my used 3070 there just for $300 (roughly, my currency has been swaying a lot). they tested it for hours, serviced it for me before handing it over to me. i wish more PC outlets are like those.

[@zerocal76]

Best bang for the buck are used Dell Optiplexes off eBay. I've used them in my business for years and they run great. All I did was swap out the HDD w/ a SSD. A lot of 8th gen i5 models come w/ NVMe SSDs now too so its 100% ready to go.

[@nathangamble125]

@@zerocal76 Dell Optiplex + GTX 1650 = decent ultra-low-budget gaming PC

[@victoresarey4036]

Ebay isn't bad just them sellers. My aurora r10 was 350 and 50 shipping it's a great computer

[@JJSFC]

Ashamed to say I was one of these people back in 2017. And my ‘new’ i7 chip can’t even upgrade to Windows 11. That’s forced me to build my own this year and I really put the work in to research and source parts for a SFF build that will stand up for years but is affordable.

[@wouterdeen]

Can you do a more in-depth video about AVX2 and other technologies that you don't hear that much about, compared to e.g. clock speed, cores and threads? Would be really interesting to hear how comparing CPUs on clock speed and cores is actually valid, especially Intel vs AMD.

[@Pasi123]

That would be an interesting video. From other channels I've seen that having AVX2 helps quite a bit in newer games making the difference between i7-3770K and i7-4770K way bigger than it was back in the day Zen1 and Zen+ (Ryzen 1000 and 2000 series) also had quite bad AVX2 implementation which required two clock cycles for each AVX2 instruction

[@Qwepzy]

This was my 1st PC over 7 years ago now, It was a great starting point with a 1050ti. Maybe not so much now LOL

[@syaieya]

It's been wild seeing how long the legs of the i7 2600 are. A friend of mine used it in his first ever build over a decade ago and another friend of mine got a used one off ebay because tthey needed something cheap to play games 5 years ago (1050ti ftw). That second friend has been talking about replacing it ship of theseus style since 2020 but it keeps ticking.

[@David_Quinn1995]

I know a few people who still have the 2600 and either a 970/980 or upgraded to a 1080/1080ti and since finding out W11 won't work on it some moved to Linux and will get a few more years out of it.

[@TimmmmCam]

This thing is slightly faster than my current desktop. It still works fine. Rocket League works fine. Compiling things is a little slow but I can wait. Frankly a $400 PC that you can build yourself if you shop around for $300 does not scream "scam" to me.

[@CLBorges92]

Feels old when you start your first pc with a GT 440, to play Grand Chase and Gunbound.... Don't even remember what processor was..

[@squidwardo7074]

@@TimmmmCam No you can build a PC that's 10x better for the same price, if not a little less because of shipping.

[@AbdullahMasoodLord]

Bought a used gaming pc with gtx 1080, 64gb ram i7 7790 4tb hard disk 256 gb nvme. No joke. Not disappointed at all. 400 dollars. You just gotta be careful in what you buy.

[@AbdullahMasoodLord]

*4790 sorry 😂

[@Thunder_477]

quite overkill ram but amazed thats only 400 dollars

[@Thunder_477]

mainly bc of the fourth gen i7 that drags it down a little (maybe this is just my experience talking with integrated gpu, not sure)

[@dav3yb]

Had a friend recently go through this, but through amazon instead of ebay. He did end up getting something much better than the "Intel i7 CPU," which was a 4770, but then the PSU died when we were testing things out, so I've helped spec something out for him when he gets a refund.

[@ChrisJones-gd2no]

4770 is actually a good cpu in its own right

[@skela098]

​@@transistorjump919 Psh yeah, it's 10 years old... But costs 10 times less then modern equivalent... An it is only 70% slower... In games that comes down to 30-40% (so if you have ok GPU, you will have 100-140 FPS instead od 120-170 FPS, so really, really big deal)

[@leonro]

@@skela098 Horrible comparison - if you're on a budget, you're not looking at modern i7s, you're looking at new i3s or AM4. A modern i7 has much more cores; like in this video, you can get just an i3 and beat the 4770. Also, 4770 is only cheap when buying used, has higher power consumption, and getting a functional motherboard for it isn't any cheaper than a modern one, but it'll be used and have a reduced lifespan. Newer motherboards will cost about the same used, but... are newer, hence less expected issues. You should only get older intel cpus if you already have a motherboard or are deal hunting for clearance office pcs.

[@nathangamble125]

@@skela098 "But costs 10 times less then modern equivalent." More like 1/3 as much for the same performance. *than.

[@boredasallgetout1379]

my first PC was a similar enough story- the graphics card was modern for that time, a 960 about a year before the 10 series launched. I saw 6 cores in the listing and was like, woaaaah, must be so good! I got an FX-6300 in that system.

[@leonize2459]

I ran a fx8320 with a gtx 970 until about 2 years ago. It was a solid rig but games got more complex. It is still a very capable workstation.

[@syaieya]

Iirc that 6300 actually punched above the 8000 series in a number of cases because the extra cores just weren't utilized by programs in the day. Fx was a weird little chipset

[@manbeezis]

lol i ran an fx6300 until 2017. had dual radeon HD 7750 sapphires in that thing too. proper ebay built pc

[@hikkamorii]

@@syaieyafx was misunderstood and ahead of its time (even if the future was forced to us by AMD)

[@alberot11]

Nah that was a decent pc back then, not a similar story.

[@wogozyt]

Thank you for this video. It breaks my heart to see people buy desktops with ridiculous performance just because scammers take advantage of the fact that most people cannot differentiate one part from another. One of my mates almost went through the same thing. He told me before he bought one of those prebuilt so I stopped him. I sat down with him, picked the parts and helped him build his own pc. He is much much happier now. Again, thank you for this video.

[@kaleklol]

Even as someone who is reasonably savvy (I'm a software developer for work, albeit for Apple hardware), the Intel processor marketing confusion is very real. I have legitimately been confused about the difference between an i7 from 2012 vs one from 2018 with only a vague awareness of generational differences (mostly just that they exist, but not in-detail what they are). Even now, I have a greater awareness that generational differences are significant in real-world performance, but model numbers are still basically indecipherable. If I am pretty savvy and still don't really know what's up, I cannot imagine what it must be like for someone who isn't savvy at all. Or worse, just savvy enough to know "i7 = good" without further understanding. I at least know enough to know I must research well when buying.

[@RickMyBalls]

The higher number is the newer and better one - it's not that hard. It's also not difficult to find comparison benchmarks...

[@nathangamble125]

You are not "reasonably savvy" if you don't understand that newer generations of processors tend to be better than older ones.

[@cuparino]

My cousins have kids and when they first saw my gaming setup a few years ago they obviously thought it was awesome and wanted to have their own, I know the feeling bc exact thing happened to me when I saw my cousin (on the other side of the family’s) setup as a kid and trying to teach them about what they wanna be looking for is such a trouble and I feel bad bc it can be such a complicated niche

[@IGustiNgurahPutraArimbawa69]

I know your feel

[@StelexYT]

can we appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@MindstabThrull]

I think when the seller says a "mix of new and used components", they're not talking about any one given computer, but what they have access to for the builds. So some might end up being fully out of used parts, some might be out of new parts, and some might be mix-and-match.

[@Dragoon-tie]

I used to go to my local recyclers everyday and buy boards and gpus for around 100-150 depending on the generation but we're pretty similar to this and I would sell them for $400 five years ago

[@johnthomas2970]

God damn it he’s revealing our secrets

[@raekoch2905]

I love seeing factorio in CPU benchmarks, but as rabid id love to see the save game they use for testing as factorio only loses performance on really big saves (on my PC at least)

[@izSpadez]

It’s harder for those who can’t afford to build their own pc’s cause seeing this marketing online would make anyone click the buy button. Without doing the proper research on what you are buying, it’s so easy to get screwed. My advice, save up as much as you can to buy a build yourself so you know what you are getting.

[@kaytea5958]

Yep, or do some research to understand exactly what you’re buying

[@knowmatter5503]

You guys might want to do a video about the scams on amazon too, my parents bought what they told me was a brand new HP Omen PC for their home office and when they asked me to look at it (because it kept crashing) it turned out to be a bunch of random used parts slapped into an Omen case.

[@hikkamorii]

if that was the case, HP should probably sue them

[@StelexYT]

can we please appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@omega1231]

See if you can find the reseller and then call HP, they may or may not replace your parents pc with an actual HP Omen, but they will most definently do something about the reseller, because that's not legal.

[@JogauTV]

I think there's another argument to be made against those PC : wattage, those PCs aren't cheap to run because they'll ramp your electricity bill up and probably way more than a more expensive, newer PC. In the long run they're probably more expensive, especially with electricity prices in EU right now

[@11skatergirl1]

My little brother got one of these, though luckily he asked me and my friend about it first so he knew what he was getting into, lol. He still bought it because he wanted a cheap PC but he knew what to expect and it performed fine for his needs. I don't recall them lying about the specs but they weren't super upfront about it either

[@shreybansal]

Just a suggestion while specing pc at the same price for comparison try to keep some buffer for labour to build it. For example to compare a 400 dollar machine from ebay spec a 350 dollar machine for comparison keeping around 50 dollars as labour fee for building and setting up the computer. i think that would be a more fair comparison.

[@matthewlozy1140]

Are you not planning on building it yourself?

[@zeronothinghere9334]

Fine, we can use money for labor, but instead buy used parts like they are doing. What, we actually get more money this way? Wtf nono please stick to the old thing! If it's used, expect around 20-30% off. For 400 dollars, that's about 80-120 dollars you are saving. You can then use that to have someone set it up for you.

[@ViolentMLG]

$50 for labor is too little IMO, only some high-school kid would take that, or, if you're talking someone who builds PC's on the daily and can bang out something that they're familiar with, like this seller, for example. I think $100-$200 for a custom build is fair considering a few hours of labor from a professional. Regardless, this guys honestly offers OK deals, when accounting fees, tax, shipping, packaging materials, etc. People will just hate on it because "Build it yourself" will always be the answer from tech guys. Or "I could get the parts for $400 so screw you" guys. If you're deal-hunting you should buy something used from a private seller that's not made for-profit, go find a guy who needs cash and willing to take a loss, they're everywhere, otherwise you should expect to pay the fees associated with it.

[@squidwardo7074]

Labor fee? Dude it takes like 1 hour 30 mins max to build a PC like that

[@zeronothinghere9334]

@@ViolentMLG 50$ for good quality PC build is too much but this is some cheapo stuff, so take some cheapo labor with it. No need to cable manage, zip tie, get fancy case, just chuck everything in and confirm it's running.

[@rabbitrampage]

*looks nervously at my 2012 office PC with an rx570 and an RGB case that cost more than the PC itself* I'm gonna add a 4th gen Ryzen 5 or 12th gen i5 once I have the cash, it does the job for now. Forza horizon 4 high/ultra 60fps, ran me around $450 including new PSU, CPU cooler, case, ssd, 4tb HDD, RAM, GPU, and WiFi card, slowly upgraded over 3 years. The case was a huge upgrade, dropped temps from 100-110 at max load to 50C.

[@MarvinWestmaas]

Chucking a decent gpu into an 'office' pc is still the best cheapest second hand way to get something capable of playing most recent games.

[@MarvinWestmaas]

Btw, watching this on a i5-10400 office pc with an rx580 ;)

[@rabbitrampage]

@@MarvinWestmaas Cries in i5-3470 It's actually a capable CPU. It's maxed out on Forza but it works without stuttering at 60fps, works for CAD, video editing, good for it's age and price.

[@MarvinWestmaas]

@@rabbitrampage My pc before this was an i7-3770. Basically this isn't much faster but I gave that to my son since his Q6600 was chocking on anything he wanted to do.. That i5 is basically my old 3770 without ht though right? Should be decent in older games which don't require more then four cores. And it has the exact same support / feature level ( except ht ).

[@rabbitrampage]

@@MarvinWestmaas same generation as the 3770, just a bit weaker. It handles most games I play fine on high settings, 2018+ games are usually medium/high, older than 2018 is all high and some ultra usually. I've got 8gb vram and 12gb ddr3 (mobo only supports 8 according to Foxconn but 12 works)

[@TheMightyKinkle]

3:58 Nevermind that it doesn't even have USB 3, it has bloody Parrallel!

[@radicalxg8282]

Every day that passes we are needing more and more a legit Linus Tech benchmark / pc builder website. I know there are alternatives out there but id like to see Linus take on their own one

[@pirojfmifhghek566]

Mo' data always mo' betta.

[@BatLB]

I swear linus is in every video since stepping down. Cant believe how great the decision was.

[@StelexYT]

can we please appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@BbyB-Builds]

I can build this with everything new, except the hdd and the gpu of course for around 350 euro. CPU: Ryzen 5 4500 (6cores-12threads) GPU: GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 ASUS RAM: 16GB DDR4 3200MHz MOBO: Α520Μ-HVS Asrock SSD: M.2 256GB Patriot HDD: 500GB WD PSU: Cheap 600W unit (system draws less than half so pretty safe)

[@ASmallGreenBean]

Hey! On the matter of (slow) old hardware, I think it would be great if you made a video about how you would see use for this kind of hardware. Not just for personal use, but in general. Maybe there are some people watching who would be interested in building upon your ideas!

[@StelexYT]

can we appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@pjg7472]

I have to admit, even as a veteran IT tech and enthusiast, searching for used laptops, you find yourself levitated towards i7 machines, which you often find are several generations behind

[@RickMyBalls]

is it like smelling a nice pie?

[@MravacKid]

Man, the case is the only thing I'm keeping... the one I have now has served me over 15 years through an E6500 with an Radeon HD 4670 and i5 4590 with an GTX 960 now upgraded to an i7 4790 with an RX 570... I fully intend to keep it for my next upgrade whenever it comes.

[@TheFreeBro]

Linus: “don’t help your family buy a pc, they’ll never stop bugging you” Also Linus: “no stop buying your pcs like that, here’s what to do”

[@Henrik_Holst]

well both are very true statements though...

[@_--9286]

The unsolvable dilemma 😔

[@Pandamaniaaa]

i thought it was "dont help your family build a pc"? Pointing out prebuilt options vs being *responsible* for the actual build is 2 different things

[@pirojfmifhghek566]

"Don't help your family buy a pc.... but if you _are_ gonna help your family buy a pc..."

[@1Grainer1]

it's either point them at good value one or go to store that might assemble it for them and help them choose, since it was made in shop then it will probably have warranty, so you're half off from being responsible for maintaining it

[@tractorman7733]

I love the thought of buying older hardware to reduce e-waste, just shop carefully; I bought a system to use as a thin client and only paid $50 for the entire platform RAM included. (I had the case, power supply and SSD on hand) and this computer would be more than adequate for anyone that just wants to browse the internet and do some office work.

[@vulpinemachine]

If the system is use within its limitations, upcycling can be a great way to give older machines a second lease on life.

[@PCarDriver87]

7 years ago I got lucky with my PC from an eBay auction right before crytpo took over. Put in my bid and got an unopened ASUS with an i7 and GTX 1080 for almost half the retail price and no reserve. It was from a PC repair shop that didn't need it. Still going strong today. It's really rare, but you can win, some times!

[@MrReese]

I have been selling refurbished PCs for a while now and in my opinion it is paramount to list all parts that are used in the PC as exactly as possible. However, that does not help when a buyer does not know what a certain model name (for example i7-6700K) means. Regarding the HDD, the power on hours count is not problematic at all, but the power on cycle count is very problematic. HDDs often die from turning them on and off a lot because of the head parking/resting mechanism, they mostly dont die from just running.

[@BattlingWarrior1985]

Great video, I am glad that even before I built my first PC I watched enough build guides and buying guides for PC components that I was already in the know about these crazy marketing schemes.

[@StelexYT]

can we appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@tatortoot123]

I have the same case or something very similar. I had to rebuild on a low budget. I paid 75 from Amazon

[@mikul2646]

I actually fell prey to this for my first PC. It had a low-tier Bulldozer CPU with a pitiful amount of low-speed DDR3 RAM. It had a SATA boot SSD, but the HDD was used too (I never checked the use hours). I learned the hard way that GHz doesn't matter at all.

[@WiiUniverse]

My first PC I had an AMD A6 with 3.2ghz which sounded good from the clock speed and A6 being between i5 and i7. But in reality this CPU was only 2 cores and terrible for gaming, even after adding an rx 580

[@rrsharizam]

GHz does matter to some extent

[@StelexYT]

can we please appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@chdvnc]

I like this week's videos. It about informing consumers and what to do about it. Keep it up.

[@StelexYT]

can we please appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@redbeard_raccoon]

It's a trade off. You either keep charging people the "lazy tax" (a.k.a. keep charging more for stuff that shouldn't cost so much and get away with it because people aren't inclined to do research or learn about technology enough to have a better judgement for their purchases). or You get rid of the "lazy tax" but then you also make the general populous incredibly lazy and unintentionally convince them that there's no need to learn about technology since it's so cheap and easy. Double edged sword here. Personally, I say keep the lazy tax. More people need to suffer for their incompetence. "Oh I'll just ask my buddy/brother/son/etc. what to buy and when they're too busy to help me I'll be a giant a-hole about it." happens TOO much than it should.

[@mizuki4002]

"more people should suffer for their incompetence" when he clearly states a lot of the issues is with the actual companies withholding informations on their products and misleading naming schemes even for someone actually researching yeah doesn't sound like a sociopath at all i'm sure you know so much about other things than computer hardwares and would never be fooled?

[@michaelcorcoran8768]

Most people that buy bad PC are not being lazy. They're doing the best they can with a limited information and limited time. Has this community always been this out of touch? The amount of people wagging their finger and basically saying low information first time purchasers deserve to get ripped off on this comment section is staggering to me. "The Internet exists.." literally people keep saying this as if that knowledge can save someone from having growing pains when buying a PC. Jesus no wonder people are just going to buy a console this community is out of their mind. It's worse than the audiophile community

[@michaelcorcoran8768]

​@@mizuki4002yeah all these people that are well versed in PC... It's like telling them that they go to the vineyard for the first time they can just look at the internet and they'll know exactly what wine to buy.

[@gunnarthegumbootguy7909]

Even though i'm very much someone who lives and works through tech stuff, I hadn't bought a new graphics card since 2015, which was a 960 Ti, and even then I kept forgetting even after reading about it several times if the Ti was a slightly higher or if it was slightly lower performance "light" version of the same name card. So when I got a new computer in 2020 had forgotten everything about how the naming and generational steps for the nvidia graphics cards worked, but still for some reason i felt certain I knew that the last numbers mattered so an 80 was more high end than a 60, but I assumed that any 2000 card was "better", higher performance than any 1000 card, it seemed natural that any "higher series card" would be more advanced and therefore better, so that a 2060 would be at least equivalent to or just a bit stronger than an 1080, and a 3050 would be a bit higher than a 2080, it just never struck me to even consider this to be wrong until I started reading online content about gaming related computers. Like most people even those who are very interested in these things aren't buying new stuff that often. Even when I figured it out I didn't make the best decision because I had lost persperpective of how demanding games were, and also i was going up from 1080p to 1440p which i understood would be more demanding but since ppl were already talking about 4k, i thought anything would run well in 1440p if it was new, so I ended up buying a 2060 Super which i thought was good enough and was extremely disappointed in how new games were running so badly with my new setup... it would have absolutely been within my financial reach to buy a 2080 specially back then before the price madness, and i would have been much more satisfied and even saved money in the end, but i thought it seemed like overkill at the time. Ended up buying a 3080 12GB just a year and a half later (when they were much more expensive), I could have saved a lot of money by going straight for a higher graphics card earlier but I never remembered a time before when this mattered that much.

[@Thomas-lv9se]

These schemes seem to be the same all around the world. Here in Germany those PCs are sold on every relevant platform, too. A friend of mine just bought an "amazing deal" PC about a month ago consisting of a 1TB HDD, an FX4300, 4GB of RAM and an HD4350 in a flashy RGB case. 300€ seem to be a bit much for this setup, to say the truth... Next time I'll build a PC together with him like you suggested.

[@tweakz_tech]

That PC isn't even worth half I would say. Try to max it out and see what happens.

[@TonyChan-eh3nz]

I think "next time" is coming pretty soon

[@Thomas-lv9se]

@@TonyChan-eh3nz You are right😁 Next time will be, in fact, next weekend! That FX4300 processor is almost useless nowadays and the HD4350 keeps overheating (should be repasted - but for what?)... He's already excited because we'll build a computer together. His not so well-spent money, however, is gone...

[@TonyChan-eh3nz]

​@@Thomas-lv9seI guess that was a painfuly learned lesson, you also get to say "I told you so" lol. Can you tell me the specs on PC part picker?

[@Untilitpases]

You only have alternatives depending on location. Some countries, shipping is equal to or higher than the item itself.

[@ggwp638BC]

You know what I think would be AMAZING for this issue? An aggregate, independent, average score. Maybe it's something the Labs could do now that it exists, maybe even make a bench tool we can use in our own systems and send in results like PCbench does, except with an actual reasonable evaluation. Even for enthusiasts, if you miss one cycle because your mind was elsewhere, coming back is often a mess. It would be very helpful to have a slightly inaccurate dumb product score. It would be amazing if I could just look a spreadsheet and know this Core i3 scored 2000 Linus points vs that Core i7 that only got 800 Linus points. Maybe even have a productive score, a gaming score and an overall score. Include factors like performance in a bunch of benchmarks and then also add things like combability, official support, etc.

[@omkartanpure270]

2:04 "A Compûtēr" 😂

[@cheeseisgreat24]

This is one of the major reasons why I never begrudge my friends and family coming to me for tech advice on what things to buy, because I know all this shit like the back of my hand at this point, and in 20 seconds of reading a listing I can tell them if the thing they’re gonna buy is gonna do what they need or not, and save them several hours of research on their own. I would even much rather have them give me their budget and have me spec them a brand new machine for me to assemble for them (with or without used components depending on their budget needs) than have them waste $400 on a POS.

[@Anonymous-sb9rr]

0:39 Wow, this PC has a 16 GB SSD, a 1 TB Nvidia GTX 660 and a 2 GB HDMI!

[@done-ahhh578]

Honestly I really think the minimum these days you should have for gaming is a fourth gen i7 rather than a second gen. And that's even a stretch.

[@KineDa96]

Thanks for the heads up! Planning on getting a Mac mini and a PC down the road, even shopping for a monitor was a daunting task, learning more

[@jakedunn7090]

bro the genuine look in linus' eyes when he is telling people what he thinks is so humble i love it

[@StelexYT]

can we appreciate the amount of effort he puts into making these videos

[@UpperLeftRC]

Speaking of used hardware, when are we going to get another “Scrapyard Wars!” I miss those, so fun to watch and great info about the used pc parts market

[@enb3810]

no

[@Sharpthieve]

thank god you shed some light to this i was going to buy from that seller like a month ago but i had a gut feeling that the specs weren't the greatest and the motherboard looked old and looked pretty messy from the images so i just decided to build mine

[@stucorbishley]

I think I remember both Intel and AMD starting to do this when the GHz race reached its peak and AMD (iirc) started using model numbers to represent its chips - appeared to be a strategy to reinforce that GHz doesn’t matter as much; was annoying then, and I guess part of a bigger problem now.

[@nathangamble125]

GHz _doesn't_ matter though, when you're comparing different architectures. A model number is more useful.

[@TheRealStus]

It would be so awesome to compare it to the performance of a steam deck! Because it's in the same price range.

[@MP-ul]

The steamdeck should have the performance of a Radeon RX560 2GB and a Ryzen 3 1300X with 8GB of ram, but at 15-25W of total power.

[@Eromaw]

Yet one is portable and one is not. I don't understand why compare the two other than just for fun.

[@DanVibesTV]

@@Eromaw portable or not, both are full fledged PCs

[@Eromaw]

@@DanVibesTV You have to admit its an unfair testing ground, one has to worry about power consumption of a battery, packing power into a tiny case whilst keeping it from overheating... the other does not.

[@niter43]

​​​@@Eromaw so what? One is 10 year old while other is recent technology, it's interesting comparison. Deck would be significantly faster at least in terms of CPU, so it's legit better option if you solve base model storage issue somehow.

[@yazi2879]

My 2 ideas for a budget build(everything ebay): Cpu: Ryzen 5 2600x (20-30$) or Xeon e5 2667v3 (10-16$) Motherboard: Some B450 (70$) for AM4 ;or Hp Z 440 Board or some Chinese Board (40$/60$) for the Xeon Ram: Like 30$ in both Cases 16 gigs of 3200 for the Ryzen and 2666 on the Xeon PSU: New 50$ Case: Some Tower like the one here I guess 70-100$ Gpu: Rx Vega 56 (80$ or so used can be more or less depends on your patience) or Rx Vega 64 (90-120$) The Xeon Version with a 100$ Tower and Vega 64 nets 356$ The Ryzen also 100$ Tower and Vega 64 nets 400$ The 56 and a cheaper Tower 286$ for the Xeon Build The 64 330$ for the Ryzen build. Advantages and disadvantages Xeon vs Ryzen: - cheaper - more cores - more cache - Quad Channel Ram on some Boards enables better Ram timing overall - runs cool - can need some tinkering (eg for unlocking all core turbo) - not too good for reselling since brand is not broadly known - locked Advantages and disadvantages Ryzen vs Xeon: -motherboard availability far better and more modern mb's (nvme etc.) -only a little more expensive -less cores but higher clocks -unlocked Both systems knock the i7 2600s and 970 out the park a couple of times

[@brianchan8]

I would go for the ryzen, it comes with a upgrade path. Plus, more cores don't matter much in gaming.

[@nathangamble125]

@@brianchan8 The main benefit of the Xeon for gaming isn't the core count, but the low price and large cache.

[@kamithegod00]

i'm new to pc stuff and am looking to build my own. at first, i just wanted a pre built, and i thought ebay would be a good place to check. i went on the EXACT same seller and item listing and almost bought it. i cannot thank you enough for this video

[@asimmughal871]

About 6 years ago from now, i had the 2600s paired with 580 8 gb and 16 gb. Man it was a beast ,i remeber playing watchdogs 2 , re7 , Battlefield 1 on ultra everything cranked up. This was 2017, damn cant believe 6 years have passed😢

[@milescarter7803]

Oddly enough they could have used a full Xeon 1220 or something instead of a low power "i7 S" and used an adapter from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 and had the front panel even try to do something. But the real bottom of the barrel value these days is 4th gen where you can still use the DDR3 and Xeon E3 and play the newest games at low res. Highly recommend whatever card you can get for $80-150. So a GTX 1070/1080 or Rx5700-6600. (I am literally selling a whole rig in an NZXT case for $400 with a 5ghz 9600k ASUS Z390 and a GTX1070)

[@N7RiZe]

I have to say that it would have been nice to see some of those older and less demanding games on the list the seller provided. I have a spare PC with a 2nd gen i5 and gtx 760. It handles everything perfectly fine from it's era all to about 2018 games. And as someone who ran a 780ti after the driver support ended, I know this hardware has a lot of life in them. You just need to adjust expectations and pray you don't loose driver support. When the 900 series GPUs fall out of support, I bet they will still be powerful enough for what anybody new to gaming could want. I know this video was about overpaying for something with random specs but I felt like the writing team could have done more.

[@vicolin6126]

Great comment and exactly my point of view too. LTT can come off as elitist with saying that basically anything older than 2 generations is useless, unusable, stone-age crap. I can see their point, sure, them being this company that review NEW tech stuff, but when they make videos on older hardware I cringe a little as it is very much like they view the older stuff through a lens. The lens being something like being too used to super high end stuff. So yeah, the writing team could have done a better job pointing out that you should not overpay for dressed-up old stuff, but still say that the old stuff is fine if you lower your expectations.

[@PhysicsGamer]

​@@vicolin6126 Part of it was probably wanting to keep the explanation and advice simple - the highest-end first-generation i7 was an extremely powerful processor for its time, and paired with a good GPU it can still run even modern games very well. But that's not the "i7" you're going to be getting in these machines.

[@potatomining4806]

I’d love to see companies that Linus backs when it comes to selling PC’s

[@Guitarocker493]

NZXT BLD

[@Scyborg832]

I think its clear Linus mainly supports building your own.

[@korumann]

They accept build redux as a sponsor, so he clearly doesn't hate them. He seemed to think starforged wasn't that bad. There's also the ltt secret shopper series, which I think they do yearly. That should have some good insights. Other than that, Gamers Nexus has a fair bit of content on pre-builts.

[@ziljaeyan1203]

from where i live, the gaming pc market/group is all about aesthetics and less about performance, its infuriating cause that means the market is saturated with rgb instead of great components were talking about multiple rgb fan and case builds, saturating every fan slot, all while boasting an a or h line motherboard, i3 r3 old gen cpu with stock cooler, and 7 year old gpu/igpu builds, they could save so much money by not buying rgb fan shit which doesnt even cool anything or needs to cool high temp components its nuts and it makes shopping for parts hard cause theres no market for high end parts and a super saturated market for low end parts and rgb

[@DropIet]

You talking about labs made me think I really hope you guys manage to get some sort of bottleneck calculator. Should I upgrade my CPU? Will it give me more performance? Should I actually get the highest end CPU or will it not even give me more performance?

[@BriBCG]

Aside from a few edge cases or if you have a really old CPU the answer is almost always that the GPU is the bottleneck.

[@flameshana9]

Don't cpu upgrades _usually_ need a whole new motherboard? That doesn't seem sensible when the gains from a new cpu are small compared to a new gpu.

[@squidwardo7074]

@@BriBCG Some CPU heavy games benefit a lot more from a good cpu than a good gpu like eft

[@DanDoesGame]

So as someone that has tried to do this.... People need to understand we do not want to list these on ebay for the price they are. We have to make up for the outrageous fees they charge, Amazon is even worse. So unless you are a massive company like iBuyPower, CyberPowerPC, etc. the little guys that cant buy 100 CPUS, 100 GPUs, 100 Motherboard, etc. all at once has to mark them up to avoid the 15% fee...... if you have a $1000 computer, you cant just mark it up $150, becuase then you have the 15% fee on a $1150 PC. So I absolutely agree with the people who reply saying just build your own, but not everyone wants to or has the time to do that..... it is very hard to sell a computer on ebay or amazon for a reasonable price because of the fees, its not the seller or companies fault, its ebay and amazon. As far as the computer in this vid, I absolutely agree its a waste of money, so Im not talking about that one because ya nobody should touch that thing lol

[@flameshana9]

Right. And keeping the cpu model number out of the listing is also because of the fees. And putting ancient GPUs in there while claiming they can play modern games? Yep. Listing fees again. These are lies and scams, not desperation. Or are you going to claim that the mountain of gtx 710's listed as "gaming" GPUs are not lies?

[@DanDoesGame]

@@flameshana9 I dont think you read my whole comment... I said that I absolutely agree the one Linus covered is a scam. I was talking about the prebuilt computers everyone is always saying are overpriced

[@Mondaris584]

My grandparents used to get shopping brochures in the mail. There would be ads for old laptops that were at least 10 years old tech wise at retail level prices. These magazines were marketed at old people so most seeing it wouldn't know what they were getting.😭