WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.160 Now you might look at this somewhat eclectic pile of hardware and go what a piece of junk 00:00:05.620 --> 00:00:07.420 but for me 00:00:07.420 --> 00:00:12.600 Everything on this table holds a very special place in my heart because what you're looking at is 00:00:13.480 --> 00:00:18.320 after hours of scouring eBay, FreeGeek, Craigslist 00:00:19.690 --> 00:00:21.690 basically to a piece 00:00:21.730 --> 00:00:24.330 my first gaming rig 00:00:24.330 --> 00:00:36.600 So if you were building a gaming machine on a budget back when I was in high school 00:00:37.160 --> 00:00:42.040 AMD was a very compelling option the chips were cheaper the boards were cheaper 00:00:42.040 --> 00:00:47.220 And this was actually the deciding factor for me thanks to a collaboration with NVIDIA 00:00:47.220 --> 00:00:54.020 Which is probably a hard thing for our younger viewers to imagine given what bitter enemies they've become since AMD's acquisition of ATI back in 00:00:54.300 --> 00:01:00.160 2006 they had much better onboard graphics than you could get on an Intel chipset 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:02.160 And so I decided on my website 00:01:02.260 --> 00:01:06.020 And I'm going to show you the best weapon of choice the Soltech SL-75 MRN-L 00:01:06.020 --> 00:01:09.520 The crappier onboard graphics version of the famous 00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:16.880 FRN-L and FRN-2L whose budget overclocking prowess was second only to their amazing sense of style 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:20.380 That is until Soltech went out of business only a few short years later 00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:27.740 Thanks to their use of shoddy electrolytic capacitors that pretty much all leaked just outside of the warranty period 00:01:27.740 --> 00:01:30.860 I mean actually it's a miracle I found a working one of these 00:01:30.860 --> 00:01:37.520 I could have substituted some other board with GeForce 4 MX graphics onboard 00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:40.580 But to preserve the integrity of the build I 00:01:41.140 --> 00:01:47.960 Way overpaid some jackass who runs an eBay store who thought this thing was worth over a hundred dollars 00:01:48.160 --> 00:01:52.640 Because I tweeted I was looking for one so his listing got a bunch of hits. Ugh 00:01:54.540 --> 00:02:00.920 Next up is my CPU the legendary Athlon XP 2500 plus 00:02:00.920 --> 00:02:03.820 AMD marketed this processor quite cleverly 00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:12.840 The branding was similar to Microsoft's then brand spanking new Windows XP and used the PR model number system to compare the lower 00:02:12.840 --> 00:02:14.720 clocked but higher 00:02:14.720 --> 00:02:19.380 IPC Athlon chips to Intel's gigahertz marketed Pentium 4 family 00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:26.260 It ran a double pumped 1666 megahertz front side bus effectively 333 megahertz and featured 00:02:26.640 --> 00:02:30.700 512 kilobytes of cache with a clock speed of 1.83 gigahertz 00:02:30.920 --> 00:02:32.860 And was a well-known 00:02:32.860 --> 00:02:38.720 excellent budget overclocker with an unlocked multiplier that allowed basically all of them to run at 00:02:39.100 --> 00:02:41.840 3200 plus speeds or about 2.2 gigahertz 00:02:42.820 --> 00:02:49.220 K7 was notably the last generation of AMD chips to use a front side bus before they changed 00:02:49.540 --> 00:02:54.600 Everything industry-wide by moving the memory controller on board with the Athlon 64 00:02:55.600 --> 00:02:58.680 Physically, it looked very different from modern CPUs 00:02:58.740 --> 00:03:00.740 The die was completely 00:03:00.920 --> 00:03:07.120 Exposed with only some rubber pads around it to prevent it from chipping or cracking during heatsink installation 00:03:07.120 --> 00:03:09.340 You can see this one is quite chipped 00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:17.140 So yeah, they didn't always work very well and the pin layout on the bottom is very retro looking socket a has 00:03:18.160 --> 00:03:20.160 462 pins on the bottom 00:03:20.160 --> 00:03:23.200 Laughable when you compare it to a modern APU that has over 00:03:23.500 --> 00:03:30.780 900 pins in a much smaller area and a similar size modern Intel chip that uses LGA type contact pads 00:03:30.780 --> 00:03:35.300 rather than pins to improve durability and pin density and squeezes over 00:03:36.320 --> 00:03:44.640 2,000 in about the same area more pins are used for additional signaling to the motherboard and other system components for these more advanced 00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:51.000 processors cooling and overclocking of my 68 watt beast was taken care of by a 00:03:51.380 --> 00:04:00.420 Very unique product. This is the VanTec Aeroflow one of the only CPU coolers at least on the desktop to feature a 00:04:00.420 --> 00:04:02.420 tip magnetic drive fan 00:04:02.540 --> 00:04:09.740 TMD fans have the benefit of being able to use more of their area for cooling because the center hub contains 00:04:09.920 --> 00:04:18.260 No motor only a bearing and the tips of the fan blades actually have magnets that are driven by coils in the frame of the fan 00:04:18.660 --> 00:04:20.040 Cool, huh? 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:26.540 Less cool is the fact that they vibrate like crazy and they're loud and on top of that 00:04:27.040 --> 00:04:29.520 Because of AMD's mounting system in those days 00:04:29.900 --> 00:04:31.900 Putting this thing on sucks 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:37.500 So the CPU die isn't actually centered between these two fragile 00:04:38.140 --> 00:04:40.140 plastic mounting clip things 00:04:40.300 --> 00:04:47.820 So the heatsink needs a cutout on the one side for the the hinge for the retention ARM on the socket and only goes on 00:04:47.820 --> 00:04:50.780 one way then you actually needed to like 00:04:51.340 --> 00:04:59.440 Seriously, this was the intended way to install a heatsink in those days put a screwdriver into this notch on the other side 00:04:59.440 --> 00:05:05.280 and sweat bullets while heaving down on it to pull the latch over the clips and then 00:05:05.600 --> 00:05:10.860 Move it slightly to lock on to them. I mean there were so many 00:05:11.640 --> 00:05:16.320 OMG, I put my screwdriver through my motherboard posts on the forums in those days 00:05:17.190 --> 00:05:25.170 My RAM choice was dictated by what was cheap at NCIX at the time. So this Samsung 512 megabyte DDR 00:05:25.470 --> 00:05:29.350 400 stick that I got from free geek actually still has the NCIX barcode 00:05:29.350 --> 00:05:32.470 Sticker on it and is exactly what I used 00:05:32.470 --> 00:05:36.130 In fact, it could be the exact stick that I had for all I know 00:05:36.130 --> 00:05:44.470 I opted for a single stick even though this platform is dual channel capable to give myself more room to increase the capacity 00:05:44.470 --> 00:05:46.470 of my rig in the future 00:05:47.110 --> 00:05:55.470 Technically three sticks could be run in dual channel on this platform with one stick twice the capacity of the other two 00:05:55.730 --> 00:05:59.010 But it was a kludgy solution and not guaranteed to work 00:05:59.650 --> 00:06:06.690 The case in power supply is where I really have to take a moment to thank free geek the guys that we did this collab 00:06:06.690 --> 00:06:11.970 With for hooking me up even Antec didn't have an original 00:06:12.710 --> 00:06:17.190 Landboy buried in the catacombs and I could not find one of these 00:06:17.190 --> 00:06:20.750 It took those guys like two weeks to find one and set it aside for me 00:06:20.950 --> 00:06:27.650 Thanks guys, the original land boy before they sullied the name with this nonsense was 00:06:28.170 --> 00:06:29.350 the bomb 00:06:29.350 --> 00:06:31.050 It was made of aluminum 00:06:31.050 --> 00:06:33.930 Very cool for the time it was affordable 00:06:33.930 --> 00:06:40.470 It included not just a power supply, but and this was a huge deal, especially then a decent 00:06:41.130 --> 00:06:44.270 350 watt power supply with blue LED lighting and 00:06:45.110 --> 00:06:50.810 While it may not have featured literally any room for cable management or even front panel audio 00:06:50.810 --> 00:06:58.950 It did have a removable three and a half inch drive cage for easy hard drive and floppy installation easy install sleds for the optical drive 00:06:59.350 --> 00:07:03.550 And a side panel window to show off the aftermarket 00:07:04.230 --> 00:07:09.350 80mm blue LED fan that I bought on an impulse like two weeks later at London drugs 00:07:10.010 --> 00:07:15.310 Officially my first way overpriced computer modding component for drives 00:07:15.310 --> 00:07:21.970 My original gaming rig reused the floppy drive and CD burner that I got as hand-me-downs from my uncle's Pentium machine 00:07:22.190 --> 00:07:28.590 This is not an insignificant part of the reason that front case doors were so fashionable at the time 00:07:28.930 --> 00:07:33.450 Black drives were not that common and they were even more 00:07:34.090 --> 00:07:37.150 Expensive than their beige counterparts. Yes friends 00:07:37.150 --> 00:07:41.570 The optical drive was as pricey as it was essential in those days 00:07:42.090 --> 00:07:43.350 for the hard drive though 00:07:43.350 --> 00:07:47.010 I couldn't carry forward an old one if I wanted better speed and 00:07:47.410 --> 00:07:51.970 To have enough storage to install more than one CD based game at a time 00:07:52.250 --> 00:07:57.810 So an 80 gig with an 8 Meg cache or a 120 gig with a 2 Meg cache 00:07:57.810 --> 00:07:59.250 Cost about the same 00:07:59.250 --> 00:08:05.270 I eventually settled for the 80 feeling confident that that was more than I'd need for a long time and 00:08:05.450 --> 00:08:08.450 Feeling like the extra performance would be more worthwhile 00:08:09.760 --> 00:08:15.860 Drives sure used to be more difficult to install by the way 80 pin versus 40 pin IDE cables 00:08:16.200 --> 00:08:19.880 Master and slave jumpers you kids have it easy 00:08:20.520 --> 00:08:27.930 For the rest of the machine. I'm using close approximations of the components that I had at the time my CRT was not a flat-core 00:08:28.070 --> 00:08:29.690 Screen and yes young kids 00:08:29.690 --> 00:08:34.190 We called it a flat screen because the piece of glass in the front was flat rather than curved 00:08:34.290 --> 00:08:39.230 We knew it was still big and heavy and I actually had slightly different hand-me-down 00:08:39.570 --> 00:08:44.210 Keyboard and mice before upgrading a year or so later to a wireless MX duo 00:08:44.550 --> 00:08:51.410 But the one thing that is exactly the same here is the mouse pad being too cheap to buy a real mouse pad 00:08:51.410 --> 00:08:56.770 I used a piece of paper to overcome the tracking issues on my computer desk and it worked great by the way 00:08:56.770 --> 00:08:58.070 You just have to replace it everywhere 00:08:58.070 --> 00:09:02.250 Once in a while, so we interrupt the scripted portion of this video to bring you 00:09:02.950 --> 00:09:08.150 the moment of truth 00:09:08.330 --> 00:09:20.270 Pressing the power button after of course turning on the power supply. Oh, you hear that tip magnetic drive fan 00:09:21.350 --> 00:09:23.360 music 00:09:23.360 --> 00:09:26.100 Come on display 00:09:26.280 --> 00:09:29.050 It's alive 00:09:29.110 --> 00:09:30.690 Athlon XP 00:09:30.690 --> 00:09:36.170 1.1 gigahertz, that's okay. We can go and change that manually. You can see 32 megs of memory shared 00:09:36.170 --> 00:09:37.950 Ah 00:09:37.950 --> 00:09:42.270 Hard drive not being picked up. I'll diagnose that later. Maybe that I DE cable 00:09:44.180 --> 00:09:47.210 Delete center set up and there we are 00:09:47.930 --> 00:09:52.600 Let's get some Windows XP installed on this bitch, right? 00:09:53.260 --> 00:10:01.180 so then with the system working, the only question remaining was will it run minecraft and the 00:10:01.860 --> 00:10:03.180 answer is 00:10:03.180 --> 00:10:04.600 surprisingly 00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:08.380 No after overpaying for that stupid motherboard 00:10:08.380 --> 00:10:09.840 It turns out that the system? 00:10:09.840 --> 00:10:13.120 the system is not stable enough to do anything more 00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:16.400 than install Windows and look at the desktop. 00:10:16.400 --> 00:10:21.680 Not entirely unexpected, but disappointing to be sure. 00:10:21.680 --> 00:10:23.400 So if you're not familiar with Massdrop, 00:10:23.400 --> 00:10:25.600 the concept is pretty simple. 00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:28.040 They've got this huge community of enthusiasts, 00:10:28.040 --> 00:10:30.500 and I can't say like computer enthusiasts 00:10:30.500 --> 00:10:33.420 or knife enthusiasts or audio enthusiasts, 00:10:33.420 --> 00:10:36.480 because there's all these different enthusiasts. 00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:37.320 And they basically go, 00:10:37.320 --> 00:10:39.840 hey, there's this like really cool product that we'd like, 00:10:39.840 --> 00:10:43.020 can you go to the manufacturer or an authorized reseller 00:10:43.020 --> 00:10:45.520 and tell them, hey, you know, we're all willing to buy it 00:10:45.520 --> 00:10:47.920 if you could just do a little something on the price. 00:10:47.920 --> 00:10:52.100 Massdrop takes buyers and sellers and does volume deals, 00:10:52.100 --> 00:10:53.860 so everyone gets a good deal. 00:10:53.860 --> 00:10:55.440 The manufacturer sells a bunch 00:10:55.440 --> 00:10:57.160 and the buyers get a lower price. 00:10:57.160 --> 00:10:58.340 Pretty freaking cool. 00:10:58.340 --> 00:10:59.340 And you can check it out at the link 00:10:59.340 --> 00:11:00.600 in the video description. 00:11:00.600 --> 00:11:03.300 But recently they have branched out a little bit 00:11:03.300 --> 00:11:05.500 and they've started working with manufacturers 00:11:05.500 --> 00:11:08.800 to do special editions of their products 00:11:08.800 --> 00:11:09.640 just for Massdrop. 00:11:09.840 --> 00:11:13.020 And special pricing is of course included as well. 00:11:13.020 --> 00:11:15.540 So they worked with HiFiMan this time around 00:11:15.540 --> 00:11:20.540 to bring back the HE300 with a special MD 00:11:20.700 --> 00:11:23.200 or Massdrop flare. 00:11:23.200 --> 00:11:24.340 So in their former life, 00:11:24.340 --> 00:11:25.600 solely under HiFiMan, 00:11:25.600 --> 00:11:28.840 these entry-level headphones were priced at 00:11:28.840 --> 00:11:30.840 about 300 US dollars. 00:11:30.840 --> 00:11:35.080 And the new one is very similar to the old HE300s, 00:11:35.080 --> 00:11:38.180 but with an updated and more lightweight structure, 00:11:38.180 --> 00:11:39.840 a more neutral sound signature, 00:11:39.840 --> 00:11:41.680 and an all black appearance 00:11:41.680 --> 00:11:44.920 compared to the silver and black of older generations. 00:11:44.920 --> 00:11:46.960 The most important change, however, 00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:49.080 that they have made is reducing the price 00:11:49.080 --> 00:11:54.080 to a very actually legitimately low 99 US dollars. 00:11:54.640 --> 00:11:56.140 So all you gotta do to check them out 00:11:56.140 --> 00:11:58.680 is head over to the draw.pss 00:11:58.680 --> 00:12:02.520 slash LTT dash HE dash 350. 00:12:02.520 --> 00:12:03.920 Don't expect you to remember that. 00:12:03.920 --> 00:12:07.990 Check it out at the link in the video description. 00:12:07.990 --> 00:12:08.830 Thanks for watching. 00:12:08.830 --> 00:12:10.030 Guys, if this video sucked, 00:12:10.030 --> 00:12:10.870 we know what to do, 00:12:10.870 --> 00:12:13.930 but if it was an awesome trip down nostalgia lane, 00:12:13.930 --> 00:12:14.910 then get subscribed, 00:12:14.910 --> 00:12:15.990 hit that like button, 00:12:15.990 --> 00:12:18.010 or even consider supporting us directly 00:12:18.010 --> 00:12:20.190 by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon, 00:12:20.190 --> 00:12:21.910 buying a cool shirt like this one, 00:12:21.910 --> 00:12:23.770 or with a direct monthly contribution. 00:12:23.770 --> 00:12:25.830 You can find the Amazon and the T-shirt links 00:12:25.830 --> 00:12:27.030 up there, by the way. 00:12:27.030 --> 00:12:28.310 Now that you're done doing all that stuff, 00:12:28.310 --> 00:12:29.150 you're probably wondering, 00:12:29.150 --> 00:12:30.590 hmm, gee, what should I watch next? 00:12:30.590 --> 00:12:33.690 Oh, maybe a review of like a super sick 00:12:33.690 --> 00:12:35.610 17-inch gaming laptop. 00:12:35.610 --> 00:12:36.890 You can check that one out there. 00:12:36.890 --> 00:12:38.770 I guarantee you that it is both more powerful and smaller, 00:12:38.770 --> 00:12:39.950 but it's worth it. 00:12:39.950 --> 00:12:42.490 Smaller and more expensive. 00:12:42.490 --> 00:12:45.810 And that's three things that it is both of than this.