welcome back guys to secret shopper 3 this is part two where all of our
systems have arrived and we're going to be looking at which PC Builder gets you
the best value for your $1,500 but this time there's a bit of an
extra twist because we'll be evaluating not just the parts list but also the
cost and quality of the shipping materials included by each of our
Builders we are located in Canada so your mileage may vary but it wasn't very
competitive not everyone can have international shipping figured out like
our sponsor for secret shopper ug green ug Green's nexe 300 W Gan charger is an
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the link in the description to get yours today thanks you green enough chitchat
though it's time to crack these boxes open so we can crack this case PC case
first up my old friend Mr Dell or as I call him Michael no unnecessary
warranties or financing this time around
although wait a second accidental damage service one year on on-site inhome
service after remote diagnosis one year did they include a warranty again it
says it has an on-site warranty but is that included with the price like with
their service is there a way to unincluded it because if there is then
it's not included making matters more complicated I just looked up this
desktop and in the time since we ordered it which has only been about 2 weeks it
is no longer available so I can't even check looking at a more upto-date
machine one year of on-site service is standard for Dell so that's something to
factor into the overall value also the shipping time from our order to it
arriving on our doorstep was just 8 days
not too bad let's see how they did on the packing materials and I'll be
opening this with my retro Edition LTT screwdriver rather than a knife because
I don't have a knife handy right out of the gate I wish it was a phone number
but I like the quick link to support in case you need help and I really like the
environmentally friendly cardboard packaging which yields to foam packaging
for the tower itself though I do understand why that is this kind of
stiff closed cell foam is extremely resilient to multiple drops whereas if
you're using cardboard it might take one hit but the second is going to be a lot
tougher yep you got a Dell dude I'm a
little confused though how do we end up with an XPS I thought we talked about an
alien wear with them it's an XPS 8950
did I space on that no I don't think so I mean un intended uh it's still look
it's a gaming computer it's got a 3060 TI yeah I just it's got got it's got a
460 W power supply technically that's
within spec does have killer networking though yeah it does maybe it was on
promo that that must be it okay this is on sale hopefully it was a really good
deal then let's get these peels removed since for performance testing we're
going to need all the grills fully opened yep that looks like a 460 W power
supply we need a little bit think the funny thing about Dell is they could
easily have a full height ATX power supply in here they just have extra
space at the top I don't know maybe it's not extra space we'll have a look at
that first let's have a look at IO three USB's USBC headphone microphone and SD
card slot and a DVD drive that Dell points out can write to DVD and CD
single 120 mil cooling fan networking bit more USB 3 Audio and a single
DisplayPort out I mean I guess we have a GPU that has three display ports and
an HDMI so it's not the end of the world but not everyone configures a system
with a GPU okay that's nice tool of side panel nice
little instructions for how to take out the graphics card take out the power
supply actually really like that and peeking our head inside just about the
Pinterest setup that you can have while still being a decent gaming box look at
this cooler it's like my kids cooler except my kids use their pool as a
cooler I do like to see an included intake fan at least that's not a given
on a system like this so you got an exhaust and an intake fan so at least
your 3060 DTI shouldn't overheat I also do really like this kind of retention
mechanism like you'll see on OEM systems this thing is not going anywhere in
shipping so when we contact them for tech support we will almost certainly
have to make up some kind of problem that we have so much of this machine
smacks of extra engineering not over engineering but unnecessary engineering
this motherboard for example is the same one that we saw in the all Alienware
setup and I said it was pretty cool and what's cool about it is it is dead
simple for us assembly technicians because all the front iio is
pre-attached to the motherboard and it just lines up with the front of the case
no cables but what sucks about it is it's completely proprietary unless
you've got one of these Dell cases you ain't getting this motherboard in place
so the work they put into that had a benefit but it's to Dell's ability to
scale their production not to the actual user of the system and the same goes for
Dell's proprietary power connectors rather than a 24 pin they've got this
weird 8 Pin and then rather than an8 pin for the CP you they use two separated
four pins why overall cable management
is at least a B+ though with a clear path for cold air to enter this Grill in
the front and be exhausted from the back and that power supply is not as rinky
dinky as it looked on the outside actually goes all the way across to here
I mean it's still 460 wat cylind aside from the motherboard and power supply
expansion options are okay standard CPU socket support for up to 64 gigs of ddr5
memory with two free slots a free m.2
replaceable Wi-Fi and two PCIe by four
slots if you want to add a couple of expansion cards oh and an extra Bay for
a 3 and 1 half inch hard drive of course all of that would be true of a custom PC
as well so let's see if Dell can make up for their proprietary vness in order to
compare to a PC part picker list we did have to make some substitutions we
couldn't find RAM that slow for example we also ended up with a slightly better
power supply in case honestly speaking
and ooh really is that right
1124394 Mouse were around $150 how does
that compare to our oh Dell's charging about
$250 to assemble and warranty this thing but Dell also had the cheapest shipping
out of all six of our system integrators at 0 so there's some subsidization going
on there I think this is going to be a tough one when we get to Performance good luck
Dell I'm really excited about this one we've tried to include cyber power
before but they got disqualified for not being willing to advise our novice user
on what system to get this time around however they did quite frankly a pretty
bang up job so let's see exactly what
they sent us packing materials definitely a downgrade from Dell and
that's before I even look at the foam there are very different grades of
cardboard and while this is a dual corrugated one it's using a much cheaper
material compared to what we saw from Dell with that said you can make up for
a lot of deficiencies in cardboard quality with really good foam and that's
something that cyber power appears to have done a good job of here this is an
extremely highquality closed cell foone and not the sort of thing that you would
expect to see when system integrators are just putting the finished system
inside the box that the case came in because a case box is typically rated
for the weight of the case not the weight of the case plus a whole bunch of
PC stuff so this appears to be custom it doesn't really matter as far as I can
tell everything on the packing list does match our order confirmation but it's
not obvious like the model is C Series
cs450 but that's not anywhere in our confirmation even without paying for
Rush delivery though they managed to get the system to our doorstep in 8 Days the
same as Dell and as far as I can tell from the packing list they're using
pretty much quality custom parts from brands that I know and
trust oh something come off it oh hello
yeah I think this system might have been dropped near the front cuz we got a bit
of damage and a bit of a crack here and then this piece broke off right here
that's courriers for you the good news for cyber power is it's just a piece of
the Front plastic bezel which is something you could reasonably expect
the user to service themselves but based on what I know about margins in the PC
industry by the time they ship me a new one of these and walk me through putting
it on they're probably not making much on this so it's still a costly mistake
for them uh oh hello left one of my
friends behind that got quite dropped at some point
that's what better cardboard will do for you it acts as a protective shell around
the cushiony white foam that keeps the yolk safe you know this is nice love to
see this you won't generally see someone who's trying to cheap out on packing
materials use these uh this thing's not
that easy to remove though they're these formfitting bags uh you you break the
things inside and then they they grow and they fill in all the gaps but
sometimes they can be a little tough to remove also I couldn't help noticing
cyber power you guys don't have a warning over the power supply to prevent
anyone from plugging in power and turning this thing on while this is in
place that's a rookie error never assume
that something is so obvious a customer would never do it this is an interesting
Strat my gaming mouse is just chilling
inside the case um good news is it didn't scuff anything up too badly but
this is not something I would recommend either oh
no cyber power how much is RAM right now
you guys why would you do a single 16
gig stick it's not like I configured a you know basic 8 gig system and you're
worried about my future expansion but it's ddr5 right yeah it's DDR it's like
the fake dual Channel not dual channel it's better than a single ddr4 Channel
but I don't like to see that I don't like to see a single stick in a
$1,425 system no I don't want to see that I still like it better than than
the Dell better processor all SSD storage instead of an SSD and a hard
drive liquid cooler and count them five
120 mm cooling fans but that's just an unnecessary poop stain when RAM is so
cheap right now just get another module overall I have no complaints about the
build quality the cable Management's great 600 W 80 plus gold power supply
that gives us a little bit of room to grow if we ever want to swap out this RTX 4060 and in terms of the value by
the time we factor in some extra you know RGB fans and stuff like that I mean
they're charging just over $100 for assembly and a year of warranty on this
that is very reasonable it's important to note though that that price is not
quite Apples to Apples with Dell because they charged us $100 for shipping so
they're clearly not subsidizing their shipping with the cost of the system
wait my hopes just got a little lower I was so quick to rip off this damaged
front panel I didn't really look at how
little room there is for air intake there's nothing there it all comes from
the top what is this HP on the other
hand did subsidized their shipping we paid $0 for shipping but oh this is the
one we got the $200 friends and neighbors discount on so what's 1,800
Canadian workout to 1338 well shy of our
$1,500 budget and look at this full
recyclable packaging I love to see that
if if you care about environmentally friendly shipping just wait till you hear what today's sponsor ug green has
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description down below thanks again ug green decent box
better than cyber power not as good as Dell but this this is nice I like this
so it's stores flat in the warehouse it
just folds up here if it gets the crap kicked out of
it it's not see it's like I said before a foam's not going to do that it's not
going to break and then give like that but it looks like it made it here in one
piece so can't argue with results point of clarification this plastic is ldp and
reusable but not always recyclable
so okay oh sorry this is interesting
though as long as the Courier keeps it right side up they actually have extra
reinforcement for the box down here oh wait that's not extra
reinforcement you're supposed to get it out like this by taking out these and
sliding off the top well it's out now
we've got a couple type C's at the back not typically where I want to see
those couple type A's couple more type A
I see a radiator so there's definitely liquid cooling involved standard ATX
power supply hey it turns out the tier ones can learn I actually kind of like
the look of this system big glass side panel easy access to the front IO no
type-c in the front HP what are you guys doing got all your type-c in the back
that's weird they've also got an all glass front panel but with gaps so we
should actually be able to get air in there and I like
this one button easy access to the
internals wow thank you NVIDIA for the
12 pin connector also thank you HP for
putting a decent GPU in this thing with their price hold on what am I looking at
here is this the flipping 30 this is the 370 TI that's right yeah they are going
to kill it in performance as long as
this CPU doesn't throttle like our previous hpo
we've got hyperx memory in here ddr4
though and I'm not liking this wimpy a cooler oh wow that that tuing management
oh that looks really good sorry I'm back on this cable again you can tell HP just
gave up well there's no way to make this look decent so forget it it's I just
noticed this is a completely nonproprietary motherboard too the power
supply sure fine but this is just an ATX
motherboard 24 pin connector 8 Pin power
all the same ho pattern for the screws replaceable Wi-Fi it's matx in a fulls
size ATX chassis so you're going to have a little bit less PCI expansion just 1x4
slot but oh that it's mostly blocked by these SATA ports here but it's pretty
darn good two front fans one rear fan I
think HP is going to do pretty well here yeah wow look at this Cable Management
there 24 pin has this wrap on it that makes it lie nice and flat at the back
kind of kind of like that and they've got an RGB controller in here do you
have an RGB controller in your comparable system no I don't have an RGB
controller interesting I mean we didn't know it was going to have this so that's
not your fault but two hard drive Bays right there Cooler Master power
supply they're just using custom like
name brand components for this stuff there's a final test though there's a
final test what about the front IO connector
holy crap they're standard are you kidding me is HP going to win this
thing they had the best customer service too okay we're fifth gen Rising they're
going to be a little behind on CPU performance but I didn't order a CPU
computer I ordered a gaming computer and damn it they shipped me a gaming
computer the funny thing is it's not that they're not taking any margin
they're taking at least hundred plus dollars for assembly and a year of
warranty but it's just a smartly
configured machine for gaming I do worry
that our CPU is going to struggle a little bit with that single 12 mm fan
but that'll be for Labs to test no way
with the keyboard and mouse these guys are down to only taking a about a 100
bucks like 90 100 bucks profit on this not that I would use this keyboard and
mouse but the value is there and what's
nice is they didn't ship me a bilingual layout a lot of the time when you buy
from a tier one in Canada you get a crappy stupid bilingual keyboard nope
English keyboard for me thank you moving on to I by power good quality
box yeah I'm into it what do you want I
am willing to bet between this box and this foam that this thing arrived in one
piece these guys clearly have been shipping systems for a while and they
get it because it's one of those things that we could save $3 on every system
until every 10 system cost you $50 in
dealing with the customer complaining about their broken computer this is
pretty cool your move sticker for use use video ports below for display again
the cost of someone calling your support line is so much higher than the cost it
takes to put this sticker on every system these guys know oh and they got
the one on the power two instructing us to remove the foam I like this case um
not 100% % sold on the ventilation this is pretty restrictive but how long did
this take to get to us 7 Days these guys
are right up there with HP for delivery time man everyone's been 7 to eight
days you know what it is the PC industry
is super slow right now I didn't think of that before like man how is everybody
delivering everything so fast W uh let's
take a look at the io pretty basic two
USB power button headphone microphone
Jack and and then around back you can tell this is obviously a custom
motherboard 2 and 1/2 gig LAN USB 3 type-c lots of audio jacks built-in
Wi-Fi more expanding foam packing material the way that they put it in is
easier to remove but is not necessarily quite as protective to the GPU with that
said they have really good outer packing materials and obviously our system
arrived in one piece boy does this motherboard ever have a lot of vrms and
a lot of places for mounting for cooling for them but no actual Cooling
motherboard b760 Wi-Fi right but which
one is it yeah it's full ATX we get more expansion which is nice to see we've
also got not just our included 1 tab SSD we've got another m.2 slot for expansion
four memory slots I think they've contracted one of the motherboard
manufacturers to make a ever so slightly cost down version of their motherboard
that just doesn't have cooling on the vrms I'm really not sure how I feel
about that I mean as long as it doesn't you need it for the CPUs that they're
putting in here and the configurations that they're shipping in it then I guess it's fine but oh no no here it is pro
b760 DVC Wi-Fi by who yeah what is pro oh it's
MSI according to every listing I found this is a
$250 oh wait no this is oh it's oh okay that's Canadian pricing okay still $250
Canadian this is 180 that can't be yeah $180 motherboard
but it doesn't have vrm no what it's probably fine as long as
it's a product that MSI expect to run that way it's probably fine sorry I kind
of broke the rules I'm not really supposed to be disassembling them I just really wanted to know what the heck this
motherboard was there's lots of cooling otherwise though they've got three 120
Ms in the front one 120 mil in the back and this is the highest end power supply
we've seen so far a 700 wat 80 plus gold
though I haven't actually seen what model they're using yet okay I guess the
other panel's coming off so much for the rules and it is the OEM of OEM power
supplies not a marking on it that I can see what does stand out to me though is
the ReUse of the twist ties that were probably included in the case packaging
actually like it I like it as for Value they've got a 4060 TI in here but it's
the 8 gig variant not the higher performing 16 gig variant and they maxed
out our budget whereas everyone else has been a little bit under budget so far
good processor though 13th gen but I do think that the HP with that 370 TI is
going to give this a run for its money and my concern is probably valid given
the nearly $250 difference between what we paid for this and what we would have
paid on PC part picker compared to 100
150ish that we've seen on some of the other systems here's one difference
though they offer a threeyear standard warranty but only one year on Parts
three years on labor I mean what labor
by the time it arrives in one piece I
what this is weird I only ordered one PC
this one's pregnant interesting this is not the
smartest use of these expanding foam bags that I have ever seen this is just
to take their inner box which is under
sized compared to their outer box and fill in a small Gap here they could have
put anything in there with how much these cost they could have put main gear
t-shirts in there just like put a couple rolled up t-shirts in there with that
said double boxing is a 100% valid did
they put more of these in here what the heck you guys I mean that's why it
expanded so much it was blowing up my box here what a weird Strat they also
didn't have to take so long 16 days which probably would have been a pretty
decent showing in some of our previous secret shoppers but is the slowest we've
seen so far you're not going to believe this more how many what these flipping
pegs did they use okay main gear has a
philosophy I know this because we've talked about them before they don't
believe in using software RGB control so they still use old school remotes and
they're not entirely wrong because it does cost you a little bit of
performance to run software to control your RGB say what you will about the
wastefulness of it there was no way that
this system was going to cross the continent in more than one piece
also a company that has clearly learned some lessons over the years oh my
gosh I'm pretty familiar with this case I think we've actually unboxed something
at least similar on ShortCircuit before I think this yeah is replaceable so
that's cool power reset headphone jack type c nice to see couple type A and
then of course main gear is using a custom motherboard pretty good I/O
overall on this board decent cooler nice looking standard matx board
so a little bit less expansion but given how many ATX boards don't even have all
the slots anymore it's not as bad as you might think there is not a lot to say
about this that's a computer all right good Cable Management I give it an a the
problem though is not what it looks like this looks great the problem is the
specs at $12.99 they're only about $200
more than our PC part picker comparison system but something about this configuration
just looks very uncompetitive they've got one of the weakest processors
they've got a good GPU compared to the rest but not the best one half as much
storage as the lowest other competitor I can't put my finger on it it just feels
like it's not really configured for best value of course feelings aren't going to
enter into part four where we actually drag graas these things now it's time
for NZXT and I forgot to talk about shipping price for the gear
$158 that actually kind of makes sense given that they're on the Eastern
Seaboard and we are way over on the west coast as for NZXT
$23 that does not make a ton of sense these guys are down in Cali the good
news is being closer made them a little bit faster took only 7 days from
ordering to receiving it this isn't my least favorite packing material that
goes to peanuts they're useless in an environmental disaster but these aren't
my favorite either even if they are the better variant that has a bridge between
the bubbles so they're really hard to pop double boxed that's a good approach
when you're just going to use the case box to ship a completed system hey I
like this live chat phone number love that put the support number
right on there they definitely get some points for that what they won't be
getting any points for is this the crappiest of foam Types on the inside of
this case box
there it goes it'll only take that once they need
that outer box to make this thing survive front AO pretty okay usba USBC
headphone microphone Jack around the rear pretty basic IO or that four USB 2s
couple more USB 3s at least they've got uh two display outputs wow nice well
ventilated front panel with no fans in it hey and my old friend makes another
appearance for how much we paid and how big did gpus have been in some of the
other systems I don't know if I'm that impressed by this one fullsize ATX
motherboard though decent 120 mm Tower
cooler only a single 120 mil exhaust oh
that's not quite true there's a 120
mm it's fine everything's fine there's a
100 oh it's mostly fine there's a 120 mm intake in the bottom it's angled up
toward the GPU that is a very smart placement for that I'm just going to put
this back on wait we paid 4
176 for this plus shipping $200 worth of
shipping and 46 of RAM is also going to be less uh stable to probably won't run
into problems but you never know this is not fast enough to run into problems
this is ddr4 3200 oh
Jee okay yeah NZXT I I I I don't think
this is going to go very well it's a 12 600k at least you can take matters into
your own hands and overclock it a little they're definitely on the higher end for
the margins that they're taking and I really question some of their configuration choices here but maybe
they know something I don't that 12600 K is going to Turbo so much better that it
it'll make up for being 12th gen it's interesting to me that Wi-Fi is now just
standard in this price range even the last time we did this wi-fi was a o a
surprise bonus or like a weird thing the tier ones did I don't know if you guys
have noticed by the way but in addition to our uh Haze we've been adding for
Ambiance we've had these cute little product placements from ug green just
kind of chilling over here this is a 300 Gan PD USB charger this thing is
absolutely flipping ridiculous or if you're not into that actually got some
really cute little ones as well it's amazing how small and efficient these
Chargers are with you green scan technology you guys can check that out down below which of course you knew
because you heard what I said earlier and you're going to hear it again after
I'm done going through yeah we saved the best for last star Forge 7 days from
order to a delivery that's good $300 for
shipping is that in US ah while our
invoice said $300 for shipping in their check out you can see the shipping cost
should be $99 and the rest is import duties and taxes that they're charging
up front so you don't get a surprise bill when the career drops off your PC
and in our case it was so high because of a software bug that charged us double
the tax which they did refund a few days later quality box I mean what is a
computer if not just a box that costs hundreds of dollars anyway
This Is Not Great packing this is the
crappy poppable kind of Bubbles and you can actually see some of them are popped
already you can see this entire row is popped which means it took some kind of
impact at some point this is a great box
but this is bad foam they might have gotten away with one here I don't see
any obvious damage one of the places you want to check because case manufacturers
They Don't Really account for this see that that's the thickness there that's
the thickness where your thumb screw is so that's a weak point you tend to end
up with the back panels kind of bashed in and stuff like that it really does
look like they got away with one here I still don't like it but if it's stupid
and it works it's not stupid I guess not much in the way of accessories Wi-Fi
antennas power cord pretty much what we saw with everyone else though I do
appreciate the inclusion of the rest of my modular cables they're using modular
power supplies at this price point not something that I would probably have
done but it's a bold move two USB's
front panel audio power oh an LED button
adequate front ventilation probably rear
iio looks decent solid even did I just
hear something what did we lose oh no that's
a PCIe lock that's a bad sign they put
so much internal foam yeah it's it's not about that it's about hard stops and
sudden drops you know you can't account for that by just putting foam inside you
have to have an outside I mean you ever tried to do one of those egg drop
challenges in high school right okay try putting all the packing material on the
inside of the egg I mean they did at least use lots of
this stuff wow there this is not only a
modular power supply but they're even using individually sleeved cables they
are they're going for looks points here one thing that we forgot to include in
our pricing is they've got cable mod cables they have some nice sleeved
cables and that's like what $100 or so personally at this price
point this been shot I would not be
spending my money or my customer's money on cable mod cables I know it makes for
nice photos but I just don't think it's
justifiable our first AMD card a radon
RX 6750 XT that's a solid GPU this could
be a contender decent looking cooler got
some of their cute branding on here little replaceable facial piece uh
they've done away with the giant penis rocket here at least at this price tier
$33.49 for the Horizon 2 Prime by
comparison even if we did shell out for a couple of cable mod extensions we'd be
paying about $ $250 less so they're right in line with
some of our other systems we're just going to have to see if a 12th gen Core
i5 and their AMD graphics card combo pans out for them it looks great I can
see how if I didn't really know anything about specs and I looked at all these gaming systems and was like yeah that
one that one looks cool this could be very appealing but I don't know how
competitive it's going to be right is it even going to work okay what
what happened oh wow the GPU is out it's
out star Forge managed to ship me a nonfunctional system again I mean I
don't know for sure that the other ones work we haven't powered any of these on
yet but this one definitely will not poke
for the Integrity of our investigation here we have to try to power this thing
up as is but I'm worried we're going to blow that motherboard or that
GPU this hold on I hear it's not I hear
something else rattling around him there so I want to yeah we're not quite done
here oh yeah y this missing oh yeah one
of the motherboard screws came out you would be amazed what vibration can do
it's also what looks like some dead skin cells or something on the back of the
GPU oh it's probably from the uh the phone things
okay you know what else there is there's a segue to our sponsor are you still
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Silver Lining is we don't have to make up a reason to contact star forge's tech
support for the next part of this video where Shay is going to be contacting all
of these system integrators with some kind of issue whether it's a real one
that we actually encountered or whether it's a small one that could conceivably
happen like uh us just you know loosening a RAM stick a little bit all
they have to do is walk shade through it and we'll be gauging them on response
time as well as thoroughness I'll see you guys there if you enjoyed this video
go check out part one or go check out previous secret shoppers it seems like
it should be just boring dry content about computers but there ends up being
a lot of drama