no okay no this is going great we're back again
with Intel xtreme tech upgrade where Intel has given 5 000 tech makeovers to
Anthony riley dennis tons of members of the team so far we've seen some great
themes like vr gaming extreme comfort
and minimalism but today's is unlike anything we've seen so
far james has what i would describe as the most honest theme hey
it's five thousand dollars i'm gonna take advantage of this to the greatest
extent that i can don't you knock
my name is james and i'm head of writing at LMG so i make sure the videos get
made
describing my current setup in one word adequate
or sub-optimal
if you're a glass half full half empty person you could pick which way to go
there not gonna lie your setup is pretty sick
already what exactly are the pain points we're trying to address today i have
this giant tower speakers my speakers are pretty good i didn't think that it
was worth changing them out with this budget these are way way way bigger than
anyone should have ever especially this room i should have got bookshelf but i
didn't know at the time but even though they have these big eight inch drivers
that's still not as good a base as an actual subwoofer they don't go as low as
an actual subwoofer so the biggest problem with my home theater setup is
that i don't have a subwoofer right now you don't have
you have these bolon speakers
and no subwoofer yeah exactly
this is pain point number two this doesn't seem that bad this is this is
okay but it doesn't have atmos not that i have any atmos speakers right now but
i want them the future and it's also underpowering my speakers i don't need
more power for making them louder but it's nice to have more headroom to have
a more dynamic sound right when you get those transients coming in it'll be more
lively sounding plus this doesn't have the greatest room
correction and the solution that i have for it has great room correction so i'm
excited for that hey remember when we did the review
video of this thing but james actually has it legit do you want this at the
christmas party right that's right and so today i'm keeping this chassis and
everything we're just gonna shove a new GPU in this same form factor and use a
new rocket lake CPU on a new itx motherboard i don't want to be a downer
but i couldn't help noticing there was a 3080 over on the table there what are
the odds that's going to fit in here it's going to fit the final pain point
is another home theater related one speakers are only half the equation the
other half is the room this is a giant reflective room
look at that big blank wall yeah and that's the first reflection point from
this speaker just going bunk right off of that right so your surround is going
to be just kind of all over the place and they can make it harder to
understand what people are saying in movies now this is a living room not a
home theater i can't do anything about this you know this i can't put acoustic
panels here or anything like that and i mean you can but the wife approval
factor is gonna be pretty low well case in point look at this
this is seemingly a boho shelf but actually these are acoustic foam inserts
that i made oh that's pretty cool who knew you were crafty don't look too
close at them so on that wall over there i figure we
can make a bunch of diy acoustic panels maybe even an art panel
and just fill that all up with as much treatment as we can are you telling me
that these are just a devious ploy as well are these just bass traps no we
bought these in morocco but you actually did uncover another thing that i'm upgrading these cables under here they
were taped up with electrical tape and everything but it doesn't matter my kid grabs them and rips them apart anyway
and like i just hate how they're dangling here that's why i got this
adhesive vinyl that matches my floor that's kind of genius actually except
that i'm moving in like two weeks so before we look at the receiver i have to
do some of the traditional poking around in people's homes
nice cat tree love it oh man
okay this is completely staged if you're gonna stage it you might as well just
put them on like this you know there these are some good quality baby
toys hey is this the same penguin that nicole has at her desk oh maybe i
recognize this one stolen out of the hands of my child these things are like
a the best because kids absolutely love them and use them all the time but b
impossible to store that's nothing look at this thing you know what
this is is it a puzzle no it looks like a puzzle no it's a potty no it's not it's a
headstand trainer no this is the kind of stupid stuff my wife
buys oh my phone so it doesn't
prevent you from falling over i don't oh it does oh so yeah it keeps you from is that
what it is yeah because it'll support your shoulders have you never tried it
no i don't need this it's actually not the stupidest thing ever i mean if you
use it this is one of those there's a little window behind it that opens like
that that's pretty cool i like it i like this so that whole cat
door apparatus like slides out and check this out see right here this i made this
in the winter and this is all left like extraneous rockwool from the acoustic
panel stuff i like it oh hold on there's one last thing we have to look at books
are the absolute best way to judge someone when you go into their house especially if you know them a little bit
already chris hadfield astronauts guide to life on earth i believe you actually
read this i didn't i bought it for my wife do you actually
read lord of the rings hold on hold on hold on hold on i think you forced
yourself to read it once but you hate tom bombadil as much as i do
i read lord of the rings in high school that copy i've only read like the first
hundred pages wait damn it is this the you haven't actually read it shelf i was
bamboozled no you're missing all the best ones i fell for it american psycho
being honest i've only read parts of hurricane no he's a poser no no this is
the best book this is a copy of the wealth of nations by adam smith that i
got from a used book store with this is from like 1915 or something like that
i'm not really a milton friedman kind of guy but you've got to know your enemy right did you read it oh i'm not the
whole thing but i've read it hey look wait i just saw my bookmark
poser i gotta say after seeing particularly david's and dennis's
mountains of technology your haul here looks more focused maybe quality not
quantity eight hundred dollars twenty seven hundred dollars wait what
is that this is my new avr you spent half your budget on a receiver yes yes i
did wow
okay well why don't we go straight into that
you've got your mainstream kind of best buy receivers from sound united like
marantz and denon and then you've got your next level of more expensive ones
that some people think is a waste of money this is a higher tier supposedly
made with better components kind of amplifier from anthem which is a
canadian company i was searching for something that had really good room
correction so the top of the game there within reason is gonna be either dirac
which you get in nad products or arc which you get in anthem products i was
really interested in getting an ad one but then i read all the owners forum
reviews and there was just so many problems go for it buddy so i went with
anthem because they seem to be more reliable okay i wanted something that
was modern like atmos and stuff powerful and aesthetically pleasing and i think
this is the balance of all three one of the sweetest things about this is that has chromecast built in and the reason i
care is because i hate youtube music
what what do you do that has chromecast functionality built-in yeah the tv has
to be on okay all right all right dude don't get me into this i have okay look
look at this using the shield remote is better with the shield however
i have to still use the lg remote if i want to use the feature where i can hold
down the voice command and say screen off which would allow me to play music
and then have the tv screen turn off right but then if you hit any button it
turns back on and then using this remote freaking sucks like there's a lot of
problems that it doesn't interface quite well with cec so it's like no
this feature matters to me okay all right thanks Intel you're so fired up
james i've been waiting for a long time for this this knob it feels real good
that's a good knife i already touched it when you weren't looking wait there's more Linus wait is this like room
correction emperor apparatus or something yeah so receivers typically
come with a microphone with which you can yeah but like
it's a toy but this one as far as i can tell
this is just a rebranded umic one and the umic one is a is a 200
kind of the standard measurement microphone that people use and now i've
also confirmed that this thing is not software locked to their software you
can just plug this into your laptop and use it with roux or whatever software
you want does it come with like a stand for it now yeah a full tripod what the
hell i got to tell you as someone who's pretty happy with my sonos arc i'm
finding some aspects of this upgrade a little hard to justify so why don't we start
with the before why do we always end up in bed together this always happens i
think it's my turn to wear the wig the acoustics in this room really are
terrible the volume of air in here goes all through the house yeah the my home
theater doesn't know that there's an imaginary wall right here it
has to pressurize all the way to the front door and so i passed i think these
eight inch woofers just can't do that plus they're not gonna the extension they're just not gonna go as low as yeah
i'm just i'm still very surprised at how bad it sounds you can hear the bass more
on that one yeah i can hear it but you're not supposed to hear a bass
you're supposed to feel like there's nothing there's no arousal whatsoever
i'd love to help but you know how it is with cats you can't really
oh you're not good oh you moved her poor
thing stop looking at her butthole i'm not looking at her butthole her tail's
down i think what we should do is unplug the existing receiver yep put on banana
plugs which will make it way more convenient when i move
into because i have to plug everything back in yeah and get this in place okay
let's do it oh god oh no
the plant was over watered and it sogged in and swelled damn it i spent 30 on
this thing all right give me some banana plugs i'm ready
oh they're all individually wrapped no that's way more plastic than i want i
want this to be in the same spot this is in so it's not so easy as like taking
them and putting them here because they have to go through the same cable management hole so is this a one-person
job if we only have that one screwdriver that fits yes okay see you later oh i'll go to bed
i might even join you for those of you who aren't familiar this is how this works you just take your bare wire and
usually you would like i don't know sandpaper it a little bit or something
because you care about it making really good contact but realistically we all
know that's not going to make a difference so i'm just going to pop that in there and this is the subwoofer i got
the ever popular svs sb2000 pro the s
means it's sealed the b means it's a box instead of a cylinder and the pro means
i can use it with an app and now we go from just having ugly horrible bare wire
that is a pain in the butt and hurts your fingers to plug in to screwing this
guy on oh look at that and it plugs right back into that same
well you gotta tighten the thing i guess then it plugs right back into that
very very good there i guess it comes in two colors
black ash which which is similar to my
speakers and then glossy piano black
but i went for the black ash you like that black ash don't ya that's not good
they sent piano black this costs a hundred dollars more oh really i'm not
taking that into my budget i appreciate you svs my budget allocated 800 not 900.
this is gonna sound so much better oh this thing's gonna haul i just i
honestly thought that you were kind of wasting a lot of your money until i
heard the before i would like to run naked no grill but i
have a toddler that's why even on these beautiful clips i have all the grills on
because they like to touch stuff and color and crucially i got this kit the
sound path subwoofer isolation system so these are for decoupling your subwoofer
from the floor the last thing you want is for your subwoofer to growl and then
to hear a rattling somewhere else in your house so these are the feet i come
with they are not hard plastic they're not that substantial and here is the
foot we're going to be replacing it with look at that oh i like feet i want to see it
well it kind of looks like a flashlight actually oh god so subwoofer placement
is a thing especially if you have multiple subwoofers if you only have one
subwoofer and you're in a small room and there's only one or two logical places
to put it then you should just put it where you're gonna put it but if you have multiple
potential spots you should do what's called a subwoofer crawl and so what
that is is you play bass sweeps and you move your subwoofer around to different
parts of the room until when you're sitting in your main listening position
that bass sweep is at equal volume across the frequencies i'm not going to
do a subwoofer crawl right now i'm just going to plug it in
because i'm moving in two weeks yeah exactly my kid is going to use this to
climb onto the couch phantom cables i don't think this is the most expensive
one they sell but this is a nice amount of shielding i'm pretty happy with this
i'm excited about the cable hey i mean i'm sitting over here fondling cables
for the last half an hour so this couch has made it really hard to find a new
place to live because it's just such a huge couch i'm basically in bed all the
time i am done the banana plugs should we do the vinyl floor thing
oh totally but i think we should do that after we put the new receiver in i keep
trying to sit on this table and it's a piece of yeah i spent like 99 on
facebook marketplace for that thing okay that was too much goodbye slim friend
hello chunky hybrid class a
okay that that that's deep enough that's what he said oh there's a really stiff
HDMI cable james no no no no no i got this i got this are you trying to
capture the moment where i realize i don't got this one thing to know about this receiver is that it's not the best
option for people who have multiple subs and that is because inside there's not
two different circuit paths it's actually just an internal y-splitter so
the two different ports you have for subs just go to the same thing and the
reason that's not great is because when you get to the room correction part of
it it can't separately tune the two subwoofers you work on the pc
i'll build some acoustic panels uh-huh we'll do the art genesis setup after
because it requires using the pc and we'll be ready to go but i'm going to
work backwards and show you the finished product this is a finished acoustic panel it's got
some white fabric on it that is acoustically transparent you can tell
because you can hold it up and see light come through it and you hold up your mouth and you can breathe through it i
just stretched it over this wooden frame and stapled it and put some hangers on
it this is a partially completed one
that's full of rock wool this stuff is cool it's not like the
pink insulation that you have to wear a mask and goggles for and that irritates
your skin this stuff is super workable you can cut it with just a bread knife
you can touch it handle it now james i couldn't help overhearing before that
you're planning to sell your receiver to david after the video's done and i
couldn't help noticing that you've got an rtx graphics card already in your rig
so are you planning to not just get a tech upgrade but also make some money
here you know i got to keep up with all the other guys here and get a 30 80
because that's the thing to do being able to do so at msrp giving me two very
good pcs at the end is great because i have some people in my life who i'd love
to give a pc to how hard is this system working
it's clearly designed to be built once at a factory and then not really worked
on but for a pre-built it uses completely
standard components so i can't really complain oh crap it split the wood oh
man this is really freaking tight james
how am i gonna put the new motherboard in here okay this is oh god don't even
look at this this is really bad oh what the what are you doing over there i
didn't think i was doing this home upgrade with dennis your wi-fi is hooked
up like internally to antennas that are built into the case how does this power
supply screw i am going to have to completely tear this thing down i have
to get the power supply out in order to remove these wi-fi wires i pulled it
david that's not what happened with me well not exactly but similar hey david
david david yas oh my god you're in luck
james i'm extracting your wi-fi thank you
there's just a couple little antenna pcbs here that need to pop off the
bottom feet all right i'm just gonna do this over my kitchen sink i think what
are you even doing i'm just lopping an eighth of an inch off over the sink oh
yeah i could scoop it out let's have a look at the motherboard we're using for
the upgrade really nice little board lots of features so we've got wi-fi ac
now with an Intel chip we've got usb 3.1
we've got type c we've got is this two and a half gig lan i believe it is nice
we've got support for the latest Intel 11th gen processors on lga 1200. so
because james isn't going to be overclocking it's not necessary for us
to go with a z series chipset we've got a core i7 11700 we've gone h570 and then
we're actually reusing his memory from his old system which is
wow 2666.
eye protection use it yeah if you ever
feel like upgrading your memory that's probably going to hold you back just a
little bit with this puppy but hopefully it's fine
we don't i have a plan first let's go ahead and
install the CPU oh no way this is awesome
check this out so this motherboard because you've got support for pci
express gen 4 on Intel's 11th gen
processors you can have a high speed m.2
that runs at gen 4 speeds and then you can have like a normal gen 3 one and
even though this is an itx board they actually managed to put two m.2 slots on
it without like a a big sort of like
riser that comes off the board or anything like that check this out it's just right here under their m.2 armor
heatsink freaking awesome i love it so
if you need help with the power tools i can't help you
it's just so annoying not having like clamps and stuff and the vice grips
here's my plan we don't have any thermal compound but i have some experience with
these things reusing thermal compound unfortunately there's not enough really
on here for us to just kind of plonk it
onto a new clean CPU so what we're gonna do is we're just gonna kind of salvage
as much of this back as we can here pilots are done no
okay no this is going great oh yeah we're gonna
be done at like two oh i mostly just met my thermal paste application here now i
understand david you might look at this and go gee Linus i don't know if that's
enough thermal paste especially because it's kind of it's old and desiccated
that's where the stock heatsink that came with the CPU comes in we don't want
to use this heatsink but we can get a little bit of extra
fresh thermal paste off of it oh wow this stuff's way better i should have
just used this is Linus somehow trying to make my upgrade more jank than yours
david not trying succeeding i found the extra
rock wool the highest frequencies that come into your stereo can get absorbed
by like curtains or a thick rug but the lower
you go the deeper you need because the wavelengths are longer so this is about
four inches actually i think it's five and a half inches thick this is kind of too thick to hang off of my wall that
wouldn't really look like a normal painting or anything so i'm actually gonna take a bread knife and cut this in
half oh this is really tight
just get out of the way it really does just go right in there so
i'm just pulling this tight so it's wrinkle free on the other side
i did the opposite ends first to get that axis
tight and then now i'm going to go to the side starting with the middle i'm just checking the front panel connector
configurations usually from one brand to the same brand it's the same but
sometimes when you switch brands they're different usually they print the key somewhere on the pcb but on these really
small boards they often can't fit it right next to it so you can see this one's over here but it looks like
they're the same so i can just plonk that in excellent so one of those front
usb ports has some gunk on it that doesn't work i was hoping to hear that
maybe you could uh do something about that oh i see that's where you're going
with it well you don't just get five thousand dollars of Intel's money you get eight hours of Linus's time the only
thing left to do now is put some fabric on the back so you don't want to use the
same fabric you did on the front you can cheap out and get either burlap or
if the fabric store you go to just has a bin of crap that's like refuse that's
what i got so this mine happens to be white but
it just serves to cover up and make a little nicer and i've got an update too
i've got my motherboard and CPU in i've got all the cable management done on
this side i think this panel should close so all that remains for me
is to put in the rtx 3080. look at that
it's almost like it's new you left the peel on there and everything you
pretended that you weren't using it for three weeks you know what this was a
little annoying to work in but good job MSI for making a pre-built that's
actually upgradable with completely standard parts look how spacious that
GPU yeah cave is totally you could absolutely do like anything in here as
long as it's not triple thick we're finished with all the acoustic panels i
have four white ones like this but
why just stick with white when you can get printed art panels so what i've done
is i got some artwork from my friend jasmine
who's an artist she does prints now so i got one of her prints i have another one
in my bedroom and i got it printed onto fabric using dye sublimation printing
that is a very colorful art well it's mostly orange that's really not what it
meant so do i get to listen to it now no we have to do the arc genesis setup are you
ready for arc genesis yeah i'm pretty sure this gives you a live feed oh
really from position one position the microphone at your level and point it
towards the ceiling okay okay now once you hit start boy hi how are you doing
we should actually get out of the way um i'm getting down
let's be quiet! everybody stood up
worst
there's some room rattle on that one i think this little bump right here is
actually me saying to you when the sub was running because
uh the other one didn't have anything above one kilohertz for the subwoofer
this is super cool
okay it says it's done please wait for your correction curves
is ready to upload corrections to your device so i click upload now i guess oh
we should probably swap out your shield before we do sure that's the last piece
okay well also don't forget about the floor oh right right right okay you get
the shield i got this i got this this is going to be really high effort because i
know james is staying here a long time this self-adhesive can be applied to all
smooth clean and dry surfaces i don't know let's eyeball it oh in that case
it's not really long enough realistically over here i don't really
care though honestly whatever man at this point this is a waste of 20 dollars
so um this is not going very well
no it folded in on itself um okay here hold on hold on i got it
deeper end are you proud of me yet oh god i can see why they want the
surface to be clean oh there you go
all right enjoy james totally not noticeable is that worse than the
speaker wire i think so yeah
and we're back to square one and the worst part is that i taped down the
wires right under the hair right under the legs like sitting on you
what are you gonna do ask for a refund oh my god this is getting so bad
oh my god this feels like an infomercial fails level like this is awesome i'm
gonna wrap you in this for a prank one day go away okay i'm
ready are you ready who gets your daughter's pee spot here hey that's a
baby animal pee oh i'm totally gonna be that guy that goes
into someone else's home and takes the alpha listening spot right in the dead
center and i just dropped a silent fart onto
your alpha listening spot
that is night and day do you feel like the sub is super localized no
you probably do because you're right literally feel the vibration of it one
thing i did notice though is there's only so much that your arc calibration
can do exactly i can there's still a void over there it's the cherry on top
it's not gonna change your world no but it's better
what about your impressions this is your setup let me sit there a few pieces
i want to see some intelligibility of dialogue wait you're not going to give
music compressions other than that i'm not ready to it just i need to audition
for longer than that
that sounds awesome this is like neighbors complaining level
though the sound stage i can pinpoint all the sounds like when
he stepped on that cello and broke it yeah it was like right in front of me
i can't wipe the smile from my face this is so sweet yeah it's night and day man
any regrets about spending twenty seven hundred dollars of your budget on the
receiver not yet but a receiver is the type of thing you like you learn about
over time the quirks and stuff but right now i'm very happy it looks awesome it
sounds awesome and it's gonna be future proof enough for me for many years the
way james flips his computer over to his tv for now is just by moving the cable
because he's only got a single HDMI output but what we'll do in the future then is
you'll just go displayport out to a new monitor because this one doesn't have
displayport and then you'll go HDMI out to your receiver and then you can just
switch the input and boom now we're ready with the gaming pc hold
on i need to be able to see this from my wired keyboard over there you do where's your
wireless one in my storage locker oh i haven't couched gamed in a long time
okay this is co-op gaming oh it looks fantastic how's it sound
high fidelity so that's pretty much it once you move into the new place you can
get the wireless keyboard mouse out you'll have gaming movies music
everything freaking covered it's sick i'm very happy it sounds amazing i saw
your setup and i was like wait a minute we're upgrading something that is
already freaking amazing but then i tried it and it blew chunks and now it's
awesome man now you didn't totally waste your money on these speakers because
those weren't as expensive as you would have thought marketplace baby
my stuff's all used all the time this is the first new stuff i've ever had and
yet when i give you a budget you go and buy a bunch of stuff brand new i see how
it works or rather Intel did so thanks again to Intel for sponsoring extreme
tech upgrade diameters edition we will
see you guys at the next one which i believe is going to be maybe alex oh it
might be the one and only alex clark if you guys are looking for another video
to watch make sure that you guys check out our previous Intel extreme tech
upgrades with dennis riley Colton all
kinds of colorful characters oh dennis