1 00:00:00,320 --> 00:00:08,160 we bought them we unboxed them and we endured tech support hell and now 2 00:00:06,960 --> 00:00:12,960 finally after three weeks of waiting 3 00:00:10,320 --> 00:00:17,440 we're ready to share the performance of our fifteen hundred dollar gaming 4 00:00:15,040 --> 00:00:21,520 systems in both gaming and game capture workloads 5 00:00:20,160 --> 00:00:26,640 but not before we share with you some 6 00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:30,880 interesting discoveries that cropped up while we were taking a closer look 7 00:00:29,039 --> 00:00:33,680 at these machines because uh 8 00:00:32,079 --> 00:00:39,840 oh boy there's far more here than meets the eye 9 00:00:37,520 --> 00:00:44,079 thermaltake's a500 has a modern minimalistic design with brushed 10 00:00:41,600 --> 00:00:49,260 aluminum panels and dual hinge swinging tempered glass doors check it out today 11 00:00:46,160 --> 00:01:20,499 at the link below 12 00:01:20,880 --> 00:01:26,799 okay uh i know 13 00:01:24,479 --> 00:01:30,560 i am just as psyched to find out which of our rigs produces the most FPS as you 14 00:01:29,360 --> 00:01:35,759 guys but we've actually got some other really 15 00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:38,640 really important stuff to go through here first 16 00:01:37,280 --> 00:01:41,840 let's start with alienware 17 00:01:42,479 --> 00:01:50,479 so this thing shipped with a reasonably recent version of Windows 10 built 1803 18 00:01:48,079 --> 00:01:55,280 and needed very few updates in order to get up and running the theme wallpaper 19 00:01:52,880 --> 00:02:00,799 and boot logo were all set so you'd know that dude you're getting a doubt 20 00:01:57,520 --> 00:02:04,320 excuse me i mean alienware and bloatware 21 00:02:00,799 --> 00:02:05,360 didn't look too bad um so let's see here 22 00:02:04,320 --> 00:02:11,280 we've got updater mobile connector customer 23 00:02:08,319 --> 00:02:17,599 connect alien effects whatever for lighting and overclocking control but 24 00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:23,680 let's come back to bloatware later first something got weird 25 00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:28,080 this system uses over four 26 00:02:23,680 --> 00:02:30,560 gigabytes of RAM at idle that is double 27 00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:36,640 our other machines and after we manually killed any and all 28 00:02:33,200 --> 00:02:38,239 alienware slash dell processes it barely 29 00:02:36,640 --> 00:02:43,120 budged then we subjected the machine to a CPU 30 00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:48,879 stress test and this is even weirder normally 31 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:55,280 this kind of stress test loads up all of the cores to the hilt but on this 32 00:02:51,760 --> 00:02:58,400 machine the load fluctuated 33 00:02:55,280 --> 00:03:01,120 not only that but the CPU would boost to 34 00:02:58,400 --> 00:03:06,640 4.5 ish gigahertz hit temperatures in the high 90 degrees celsius then do this 35 00:03:04,319 --> 00:03:11,040 weird thing where the cooling would rev up super hard then the temps and the 36 00:03:08,879 --> 00:03:14,560 clock speeds would go down rinse and repeat 37 00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:20,959 what because like if the processor can't handle the 38 00:03:17,840 --> 00:03:23,200 standard load why on earth do they have 39 00:03:20,959 --> 00:03:27,680 overclocking support well to see how bad that would be 40 00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:34,319 we fired it up and wait are you sure you got this right 41 00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:37,920 this is bizarre this shows that the CPU 42 00:03:34,319 --> 00:03:41,599 while overclocked neither overheated nor 43 00:03:37,920 --> 00:03:45,200 dropped below 4.3 gigahertz that is the 44 00:03:41,599 --> 00:03:49,360 max 6 core load per Intel spec that 45 00:03:45,200 --> 00:03:50,400 means that enabling oc stage 1 was 46 00:03:49,360 --> 00:03:55,599 faster and cooler than the out of the box 47 00:03:53,200 --> 00:04:00,239 settings and not to mention essentially required to get the processor running 48 00:03:58,080 --> 00:04:04,799 the way that it was supposed to to begin with 49 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:09,120 stage two was not as rosy with our processor shooting up to 4.8 gigahertz 50 00:04:07,040 --> 00:04:12,879 occasionally but then quickly toning itself back down to 3.7 51 00:04:11,599 --> 00:04:18,639 okay what made this even more puzzling was 52 00:04:14,799 --> 00:04:20,639 that after we disabled the software oc 53 00:04:18,639 --> 00:04:26,160 that weird turboing up and overheating behavior completely disappeared 54 00:04:23,840 --> 00:04:30,639 and that's not even the end of our software and firmware and whatever 55 00:04:28,080 --> 00:04:35,520 issues with this box but we really need to move on to hardware now 56 00:04:32,560 --> 00:04:40,080 so our graphics card is a standard issue gtx 1060 that behaved entirely 57 00:04:38,639 --> 00:04:46,240 predictably minus the driver set from six months ago 58 00:04:42,720 --> 00:04:48,080 so that's all right but there are some 59 00:04:46,240 --> 00:04:52,160 issues here that we missed during the initial inspection first we found that 60 00:04:49,919 --> 00:04:56,479 the machine had a sloppily wired wi-fi module 61 00:04:53,120 --> 00:04:57,759 then we noticed that while the box said 62 00:04:56,479 --> 00:05:03,360 NVMe our configuration is actually equipped 63 00:05:00,080 --> 00:05:05,199 with an m.2 drive that uses SATA rather 64 00:05:03,360 --> 00:05:09,199 than pci express meaning that there is no performance benefit over a 65 00:05:06,960 --> 00:05:12,479 traditional two and a half inch drive now our invoice was marked correctly 66 00:05:10,880 --> 00:05:16,000 it's not false advertising or anything like that it's just 67 00:05:14,560 --> 00:05:21,280 kind of a drag anyway much more interesting is the 68 00:05:18,400 --> 00:05:29,080 topmost pci express slot that runs at only 8x electrically rather than 16x no 69 00:05:25,360 --> 00:05:32,919 matter what we did and that our 70 00:05:29,080 --> 00:05:37,199 multi-GPU approved power supply only has 71 00:05:32,919 --> 00:05:40,160 385 watts combined on its 12-volt rails 72 00:05:37,199 --> 00:05:44,560 with no 80 plus certification whatsoever now given that this machine already 73 00:05:42,320 --> 00:05:49,520 pulls around 300 watts from the wall under a combined CPU and GPU load 74 00:05:48,320 --> 00:05:54,880 calling that sli capable is misleading at best 75 00:05:52,880 --> 00:06:01,199 one positive note is that the power supply fan does stop under low load and 76 00:05:58,400 --> 00:06:05,680 our machine idles at just 26 watts furthermore after the rev up throttle 77 00:06:03,600 --> 00:06:10,639 down behavior magically disappeared the system would only hum up under load with 78 00:06:08,560 --> 00:06:14,800 no sharp fan rev ups those naked vrm modules that we were 79 00:06:12,639 --> 00:06:19,280 concerned about before by the way those did not end up heating up pretty much at 80 00:06:17,120 --> 00:06:24,000 all and finally when it comes to the UEFI bio settings they were about as 81 00:06:21,919 --> 00:06:29,360 sparse as you'd expect with a pre-built machine like this with no option to save 82 00:06:26,400 --> 00:06:35,039 a profile and SATA mode set to raid which then disables BIOS recovery from a 83 00:06:32,240 --> 00:06:39,680 hard drive which is enabled by default so i guess all we can really 84 00:06:36,960 --> 00:06:39,680 say is uh 85 00:06:40,319 --> 00:06:48,000 let's move on to the hp omen unlike the alienware our hp omen ships with Windows 86 00:06:45,440 --> 00:06:53,360 10 version 1709 from over a year ago 87 00:06:50,720 --> 00:06:58,479 so between that and replacing the graphics driver from 88 00:06:55,199 --> 00:07:01,759 five months ago it took over an hour to 89 00:06:58,479 --> 00:07:03,680 get this thing updated out of the box 90 00:07:01,759 --> 00:07:07,520 note is that the issue with games running slower off of the hard drive 91 00:07:05,280 --> 00:07:11,280 versus the SSD that we encountered while using this machine in our walmart pc 92 00:07:10,319 --> 00:07:18,160 video has gone away so that's good and we were also pleased to 93 00:07:16,080 --> 00:07:22,080 see less than two gigs of our RAM being used at idle that is half of the 94 00:07:20,800 --> 00:07:27,280 alienware onto software the so-called omen command 95 00:07:24,800 --> 00:07:32,800 center commands almost nothing except for enabling dual 96 00:07:30,560 --> 00:07:38,479 force mode to send low priority networking traffic over the integrated 97 00:07:35,599 --> 00:07:43,199 wi-fi and then higher priority packets over Ethernet but i mean given that they 98 00:07:40,720 --> 00:07:48,319 both terminate at the same modem i'm i'm having a hard time understanding 99 00:07:45,919 --> 00:07:52,080 what the point of that is also of note our omen included mcafee 100 00:07:50,800 --> 00:07:57,720 antivirus so if you want to uninstall it 101 00:07:54,240 --> 00:07:57,720 john says hi 102 00:07:58,400 --> 00:08:05,840 now here's something weird our 8700 103 00:08:02,080 --> 00:08:08,560 non-k processor boosted to about 3.5 104 00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:15,280 gigahertz with all core turbo now this is well below the 4.3 gigahertz 105 00:08:13,039 --> 00:08:20,800 all core boost that gamers nexus measured for this CPU and only 10 106 00:08:18,879 --> 00:08:28,000 above base clock now why hp might have handicapped the CPU 107 00:08:25,120 --> 00:08:32,320 frequency in this way is not clear but what we do know is that this can only 108 00:08:30,400 --> 00:08:38,800 hurt it when it comes to performance moving on our graphics card is a bone 109 00:08:34,640 --> 00:08:40,719 stock gtx 1070 with as expected behavior 110 00:08:38,800 --> 00:08:44,640 and then finishing it up in here we found a wi-fi module that we actually 111 00:08:42,479 --> 00:08:49,920 didn't notice during our unboxing also it turns out that our power supply 112 00:08:47,040 --> 00:08:53,600 is rated to 470 watts max on the 12 volt rails with 80 plus certification 113 00:08:52,800 --> 00:09:00,080 so far more sli ready actually than the one 114 00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:02,480 in the dell moving on to the BIOS well 115 00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:06,320 actually you just don't get to pressing f2 at boot takes you to a diagnostic 116 00:09:04,480 --> 00:09:10,959 screen for just about every subsystem in the omen from CPU and RAM to usb and 117 00:09:08,480 --> 00:09:16,800 keyboard then going to advanced reboot yields a mostly useless gray on blue 118 00:09:14,160 --> 00:09:19,680 setup screen straight out of the 90s all right 119 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:24,880 let's move on to the eye by power rig now then which is apparently 120 00:09:22,160 --> 00:09:28,880 so advanced that janice is not even worthy of opening it and you're not able 121 00:09:27,200 --> 00:09:32,720 to help me through that not my ability to 122 00:09:30,800 --> 00:09:35,600 mimic your ability to look inside a computer if you're not familiar with the 123 00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:39,680 part it's going to be very difficult to do anything inside of the pc 124 00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:45,120 while this one shipped with a recent version of Windows 10 the machine still 125 00:09:42,080 --> 00:09:48,160 did require quite a few updates and the 126 00:09:45,120 --> 00:09:49,360 graphics driver here is the oldest one 127 00:09:48,160 --> 00:09:53,040 yet i mean i guess that's uh what they had 128 00:09:51,279 --> 00:09:56,959 rolled into their os image and they just haven't bothered to update it i mean 129 00:09:54,320 --> 00:10:00,320 frankly back at ncix we did a lot of stuff wrong 130 00:09:59,200 --> 00:10:05,760 we did but we did regularly update the bloody 131 00:10:03,680 --> 00:10:07,600 graphics drivers for our gaming systems like 132 00:10:06,880 --> 00:10:14,160 i with that said this behavior doesn't seem that 133 00:10:11,519 --> 00:10:18,880 surprising given the clap it together and ship it overall build quality that 134 00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:24,800 we observed there were zero changes made to the UEFI BIOS so that means no 135 00:10:22,079 --> 00:10:29,279 optimized profile was saved even though the option is present on this 136 00:10:26,720 --> 00:10:34,560 motherboard and in practical terms this means that while our invoice boasted a 137 00:10:31,680 --> 00:10:39,680 free upgrade to 3 000 megahertz RAM you can see it in there it's all shiny 138 00:10:36,640 --> 00:10:41,760 ours was only running at the default 26 139 00:10:39,680 --> 00:10:46,640 66 megahertz don't get me wrong everything worked and 140 00:10:44,640 --> 00:10:52,160 it was stable with our CPU boosting to 4.3 gigahertz max across all cores as 141 00:10:49,680 --> 00:10:56,000 expected and our graphics card was factory overclocked with idle RAM usage 142 00:10:54,480 --> 00:11:01,200 that was normal it's just that we didn't really get a 143 00:10:58,160 --> 00:11:03,680 you know we care a lot vibe from the 144 00:11:01,200 --> 00:11:05,600 overall build quality like 145 00:11:04,640 --> 00:11:11,360 again this kind of sort of sloppiness 146 00:11:09,040 --> 00:11:14,640 doesn't affect performance which we will see is definitely a strong point for 147 00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:20,880 this system but not even one of the CPU cooling fans 148 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:25,040 is plugged into the CPU fan header they put the pump there when there's an empty 149 00:11:23,680 --> 00:11:28,880 pump header right here 150 00:11:27,360 --> 00:11:35,680 i mean why and like we found a grand total of 151 00:11:32,560 --> 00:11:38,880 exactly one zip tie and 152 00:11:35,680 --> 00:11:41,839 one twist tie in the entire system 153 00:11:38,880 --> 00:11:44,160 let's move on to the next oh 154 00:11:44,560 --> 00:11:53,839 so this is what you get for 155 00:11:49,320 --> 00:12:00,320 1500 us dollars from origin pc 156 00:11:53,839 --> 00:12:02,800 a core i5 processor and a gtx 1050 ti 157 00:12:00,320 --> 00:12:06,240 i mean at this point it almost doesn't really matter what else they do right 158 00:12:05,200 --> 00:12:11,600 does it but for the sake of completeness let's 159 00:12:08,560 --> 00:12:14,639 take a look the os the machine shipped 160 00:12:11,600 --> 00:12:16,720 with was recent and so was the graphics 161 00:12:14,639 --> 00:12:22,000 driver that shouldn't be worth bonus points but apparently it is 162 00:12:19,279 --> 00:12:27,279 idle RAM usage was sub 2 gigabytes another good thing but we did notice 163 00:12:24,720 --> 00:12:32,720 that when we looked at the UEFI settings that while our xmp 3000 megahertz 164 00:12:29,839 --> 00:12:37,440 profile was enabled for our RAM the speed field was left on auto which 165 00:12:35,440 --> 00:12:42,800 for some reason caused it to clock in slightly lower at 29.33 to origin's 166 00:12:40,399 --> 00:12:47,680 credit even though only that one setting was tweaked on the machine it was saved 167 00:12:45,120 --> 00:12:50,800 into a profile which we could load onto it for our performance testing 168 00:12:49,760 --> 00:12:56,000 but profiles are only as useful as how 169 00:12:53,839 --> 00:12:59,760 enabled they are we've really hoped that our tech would prompt us when we called 170 00:12:57,920 --> 00:13:04,839 them for tech support to load the profile after that whole only half the 171 00:13:02,560 --> 00:13:09,680 RAM is being detected incident but he didn't looking under the hood we found 172 00:13:07,680 --> 00:13:15,360 cable management that on the surface looked pretty good until we noticed that 173 00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:18,639 our pump was powered via molex 174 00:13:15,360 --> 00:13:20,880 which means no speed control and no 175 00:13:18,639 --> 00:13:25,760 warning if your pump dies and then making matters worse we notice 176 00:13:23,440 --> 00:13:30,399 that there is an available header on the motherboard that they used that they 177 00:13:28,320 --> 00:13:32,480 plugged the front intake fan into instead 178 00:13:31,600 --> 00:13:38,160 then this is the worst thing yet we came to the pass-through power cable that 179 00:13:36,399 --> 00:13:42,880 connects the rear plug on the back of the actual system to the power supply 180 00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:45,600 inside because it's got a really unusual internal layout 181 00:13:44,399 --> 00:13:50,880 this here uses non-soldered 182 00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:56,320 hobby grade connectors and on our machine the metal contacts were slightly 183 00:13:53,760 --> 00:14:01,120 exposed with no power off switch available at the back of the system that 184 00:13:58,800 --> 00:14:07,600 means that while it would be unlikely these can slip off and someone could 185 00:14:04,720 --> 00:14:14,480 accidentally bridge those live wires full ac power with their fingers 186 00:14:10,480 --> 00:14:16,399 this could and should be done better 187 00:14:14,480 --> 00:14:20,079 let's move on to main gear first we need to make a correction here 188 00:14:18,560 --> 00:14:24,560 during the purchasing part of this system the rep mentioned the two-year extended 189 00:14:23,440 --> 00:14:29,199 warranty and we laughed oh here comes the 190 00:14:26,880 --> 00:14:31,839 warranty pitch well he saved it for the last you know 191 00:14:32,720 --> 00:14:38,560 oh man he mentioned it because it was free and 192 00:14:36,880 --> 00:14:42,480 that's a good thing but we were mostly laughing because we'd 193 00:14:40,560 --> 00:14:46,399 sat through so many warranty pitches in the last two hours 194 00:14:44,480 --> 00:14:50,880 we should have corrected ourselves because free is free baby so thanks to 195 00:14:48,720 --> 00:14:55,120 our commenters for noticing that as for the machine itself well the 196 00:14:52,560 --> 00:14:59,920 software side was virgin other than a custom boot logo wallpaper and a red 197 00:14:57,360 --> 00:15:05,199 theme both the os and the graphics driver were recent and our gtx 1060 was 198 00:15:03,279 --> 00:15:10,320 a factory overclocked version the processor clocked itself at about 3.9 199 00:15:07,760 --> 00:15:15,519 gigahertz on all six cores this is exactly what we would expect for a ryzen 200 00:15:12,560 --> 00:15:19,680 2600x and we noticed that the machine had its high performance power plan 201 00:15:17,279 --> 00:15:23,519 enabled by default this would help explain why it had the highest idle 202 00:15:21,600 --> 00:15:28,560 power draw out of our competitors at around 50 watts but that is considered 203 00:15:26,160 --> 00:15:33,360 best practice with ryzen processors the UEFI did have a factory settings profile 204 00:15:31,440 --> 00:15:37,040 set but there was really nothing in there that would affect performance just 205 00:15:35,040 --> 00:15:41,680 a couple of networking related settings and boot mode forced into UEFI only mode 206 00:15:39,600 --> 00:15:43,920 a closer look at the insides revealed that 207 00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:50,880 well in terms of issues we had a really hard 208 00:15:47,839 --> 00:15:53,680 time finding fault in this build they 209 00:15:50,880 --> 00:15:59,279 even cable managed the back side of the motherboard tray 210 00:15:55,920 --> 00:16:02,240 digging deeper the power button was 211 00:15:59,279 --> 00:16:07,759 slightly off center i guess but that's more of like a case qc issue and 212 00:16:05,279 --> 00:16:11,920 actually no this was one the hard drive SATA cable clicked when we pushed on it 213 00:16:10,160 --> 00:16:17,360 meaning that it wasn't actually in a hundred percent but the drive was 214 00:16:14,079 --> 00:16:19,680 detected and did work out of the box and 215 00:16:17,360 --> 00:16:22,560 given main gear support if that did come out in shipping i'm sure they would have 216 00:16:21,040 --> 00:16:26,320 been able to help us with it pretty quickly 217 00:16:24,639 --> 00:16:33,279 so then you want to line them all up here i guess let's finally do it for you let's 218 00:16:30,240 --> 00:16:34,959 summarize the specs of all the machines 219 00:16:33,279 --> 00:16:40,399 we ended up with alienware shipped 220 00:16:36,560 --> 00:16:44,800 with a liquid-cooled 8700k processor 221 00:16:40,399 --> 00:16:47,519 16 gigs of 2666 RAM a stock gtx 1060 222 00:16:44,800 --> 00:16:51,240 with a 128 gig SATA os drive coupled with the two terabytes of storage and it 223 00:16:49,759 --> 00:16:59,199 was powered by a multi-GPU approved 460 watt power supply 224 00:16:55,519 --> 00:17:01,600 hp shipped our omen with a 9k 8700 225 00:16:59,199 --> 00:17:07,439 processor with 16 gigs of 2400 megahertz RAM a vanilla gtx 1070 226 00:17:04,400 --> 00:17:09,039 a 256 gig NVMe drive they were the only 227 00:17:07,439 --> 00:17:14,079 one to ship an NVMe boot drive weren't they and two terabytes of mechanical 228 00:17:11,520 --> 00:17:20,880 storage they also threw in a decent 80 plus 500 watt power supply and they had 229 00:17:16,799 --> 00:17:22,799 a 200 canadian 150 us promotion at the 230 00:17:20,880 --> 00:17:27,199 checkout it should be noted we bought all of these systems though during 231 00:17:24,079 --> 00:17:28,640 Intel's gamer days promotion so every si 232 00:17:27,199 --> 00:17:33,039 had the same opportunity to take advantage of that i buy power jumped the 233 00:17:30,640 --> 00:17:37,600 gun smartly selling us a pre-order of the core i5 9600k 234 00:17:35,520 --> 00:17:43,840 before it was formally shipping they cooled it with an aio water cooler threw 235 00:17:39,840 --> 00:17:47,520 it in an MSI z390a motherboard loaded up 236 00:17:43,840 --> 00:17:50,799 16 gigs of 66 megahertz RAM and through 237 00:17:47,520 --> 00:17:53,280 a 240 gig SATA os drive with one 238 00:17:50,799 --> 00:17:58,799 terabytes of storage in it we got a factory overclocked gtx 1070 the most 239 00:17:56,880 --> 00:18:03,440 powerful graphics card out of the bunch and that was powered by a quality 750 240 00:18:01,360 --> 00:18:06,240 watt power supply that we got upgraded to for free 241 00:18:04,960 --> 00:18:11,600 on paper this one should be the fastest system 242 00:18:09,360 --> 00:18:21,760 for gaming origin oh origin we got a liquid cooled 243 00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:25,840 core i5 8400 with a gtx 1050 ti and 120 244 00:18:21,760 --> 00:18:28,720 gigs of SATA SSD storage with no extra 245 00:18:25,840 --> 00:18:33,679 mechanical storage for our game library the power supply is a high quality 450 246 00:18:31,600 --> 00:18:40,240 watt unit but the fancy z390 overclocking capable 247 00:18:37,200 --> 00:18:42,559 motherboard even though it's its quality 248 00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:48,559 doesn't make sense for this config our CPU doesn't support overclocking 249 00:18:44,960 --> 00:18:50,080 honestly this config is a total dog's 250 00:18:48,559 --> 00:18:55,200 breakfast finally maingear sold us the only AMD 251 00:18:53,039 --> 00:19:00,960 system in the lineup with a 240 millimeter aio cooled ryzen 5 2600x 252 00:18:59,039 --> 00:19:06,000 this could end up very interesting because we did specifically mention to 253 00:19:04,240 --> 00:19:10,480 everyone on the phone that we wanted to not only game but also record our 254 00:19:08,640 --> 00:19:15,679 gameplay for youtube they went with an MSI b350m pro vd 255 00:19:13,360 --> 00:19:21,840 motherboard with 16 gigs of 2666 megahertz RAM a 256 gig SATA os SSD a 256 00:19:19,679 --> 00:19:27,600 one terabyte storage drive and a factory overclocked gtx 1060. all this was 257 00:19:24,799 --> 00:19:31,360 powered by an evga 500 watt power supply and of note is that the 200 us dollar 258 00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:35,600 discount that was applied to our checkout due to Intel's gamers day's 259 00:19:34,080 --> 00:19:45,280 promotion was something we were able to take advantage of however that works for uh 260 00:19:41,120 --> 00:19:47,200 an AMD based configuration okay 261 00:19:45,280 --> 00:19:53,280 so which one of these is the fastest for gaming well in a 262 00:19:49,440 --> 00:19:55,600 massive surprise to no one i buy power 263 00:19:53,280 --> 00:20:00,640 and hp omen dominated our suite of gaming benchmarks 264 00:19:58,320 --> 00:20:05,600 with ibuypower edging out its closest competitor pretty handily thanks to its 265 00:20:03,039 --> 00:20:09,520 factory overclocked graphics card and the fact that its CPU was turboing 266 00:20:08,240 --> 00:20:13,039 correctly i mean you want your CPU turboing 267 00:20:11,679 --> 00:20:17,600 correctly that seems like a good idea right who knew 268 00:20:15,360 --> 00:20:22,400 main gears machine and our alienware aurora then traded blows thanks to their 269 00:20:20,080 --> 00:20:27,520 similar grade of graphics firepower in the next tier down 270 00:20:24,080 --> 00:20:31,360 and as for our origin chronos well 271 00:20:27,520 --> 00:20:36,240 it didn't manage to break 60 FPS in any 272 00:20:31,360 --> 00:20:36,240 of our gaming tests aside from cs go 273 00:20:37,039 --> 00:20:42,880 also for the sake of completeness we actually 274 00:20:40,480 --> 00:20:48,720 tested the origin machine with both the core i3 that fit within our budget and 275 00:20:46,159 --> 00:20:53,840 the i5 that they up sold us to make theirs not only the worst performer in 276 00:20:51,120 --> 00:20:59,679 the bunch but also the most expensive system that we purchased 277 00:20:57,039 --> 00:21:05,840 now on to recording videos to post to youtube now this is presumably what led 278 00:21:02,720 --> 00:21:07,840 main gear to recommend a six core 12 279 00:21:05,840 --> 00:21:12,159 thread AMD system now we never mentioned streaming so we 280 00:21:10,559 --> 00:21:16,480 were actually kind of hoping for someone to recommend using 281 00:21:13,679 --> 00:21:20,400 shadowplay because it mostly just works and comes with very little performance 282 00:21:18,320 --> 00:21:23,919 penalty if you want to just you know cut together your frag vids 283 00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:28,320 but no i think everyone kind of assumed we were streaming 284 00:21:25,120 --> 00:21:32,880 anyway on to testing we set obs to the 285 00:21:28,320 --> 00:21:35,919 same 1080p 60fps 3500 megabit per second 286 00:21:32,880 --> 00:21:38,480 cbr settings on all machines and then we 287 00:21:35,919 --> 00:21:44,159 just kept cranking the x264 in code quality until we started dropping frames 288 00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:48,480 which actually brings us back to alienware did what 289 00:21:46,880 --> 00:21:56,240 so check this out regardless of encoder quality our aurora 290 00:21:52,559 --> 00:21:58,640 dropped a savage number of frames and 291 00:21:56,240 --> 00:22:05,120 spit out rendering errors so the benchmark that we chose would run 292 00:22:01,679 --> 00:22:09,280 at 60fps like so our game was fine our 293 00:22:05,120 --> 00:22:12,960 CPU usage remained reasonable and yet 294 00:22:09,280 --> 00:22:14,000 the end recording was unwatchable 295 00:22:12,960 --> 00:22:19,200 every single time 296 00:22:16,080 --> 00:22:22,080 and this behavior persisted even when we 297 00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:27,200 switched to the nbank NVIDIA encoder which has nothing to do with the CPU so 298 00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:31,280 ivan's like racking his brain for a week on this stupid thing trying different 299 00:22:28,799 --> 00:22:35,280 settings recording to a different drive resetting and reinstalling the software 300 00:22:33,679 --> 00:22:40,799 using a different graphics card out of our inventory and even going as far as 301 00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:45,600 asking one of the key obs devs what the heck is going on here 302 00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:50,720 finally we relented and popped one of our bench boot ssds into the aurora only 303 00:22:48,799 --> 00:22:54,640 for it to immediately stop having the issues 304 00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:59,840 but then the mystery goes deeper still because we tried our alienware os drive 305 00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:06,799 in another similar spec test bench machine and continued experiencing the 306 00:23:02,960 --> 00:23:08,880 same issue so while we do not know what 307 00:23:06,799 --> 00:23:14,640 precisely is going on we've done our diligence and we've 308 00:23:11,520 --> 00:23:15,679 managed to deduce that something we're 309 00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:19,919 pretty sure is just broken in software on our 310 00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:25,280 alienware machine maybe it has to do with the high idle 311 00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:29,360 RAM usage on to the rest then our main gear machine hung in there until the 312 00:23:27,120 --> 00:23:35,200 medium quality setting that's our best result with our hp omen coming in second 313 00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:39,760 i buy power came in third as expected starting to lose frames at the faster 314 00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:44,320 preset when it came to CPU encoding and then as for the chronos 315 00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:48,559 well she did it right 316 00:23:46,559 --> 00:23:52,480 what were we really expecting on a system that couldn't hit 60fps in the 317 00:23:51,039 --> 00:23:57,039 first place so what's the takeaway from all this 318 00:23:54,720 --> 00:24:01,039 when it comes to raw gaming power for the price 319 00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:04,960 i buy power took the prize that is if you're comfortable with their 320 00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:09,360 quality tech support but that also doesn't necessarily mean that 321 00:24:08,320 --> 00:24:15,279 hp lost thanks in part to their promo price they 322 00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:19,760 put up a surprisingly good fight when it came to gaming performance 323 00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:24,720 and there were aspects of this system that don't directly impact gaming but 324 00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:29,600 are certainly benefits like the NVMe boot SSD versus a cheapo SATA one in the 325 00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:35,840 i buy power rig not to mention the carrying handle the excellent i o and 326 00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:37,840 the handy easy hard drive upgrade slots 327 00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:42,559 now their tech support was far from perfect but they weren't dismissive or rude to 328 00:24:40,799 --> 00:24:47,039 us and they did eventually solve the problem 329 00:24:45,360 --> 00:24:52,240 after those two we would have a tie for second 330 00:24:49,840 --> 00:24:57,039 if alienware could get their pre-loaded os figured out 331 00:24:54,400 --> 00:25:01,120 and also if their pre-sales and after sales support weren't both abominable 332 00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:05,760 across the board now i'm sure alienware would say that we 333 00:25:03,360 --> 00:25:10,000 got unlucky but here's my response to that between all the call transfers that 334 00:25:08,159 --> 00:25:15,120 we went through i'm pretty sure we talked to probably half a dozen people 335 00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:17,679 who worked there and every single one of 336 00:25:15,120 --> 00:25:22,960 them was worse than both of the people that we talked to at main gear 337 00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:26,880 so there's just no contest here main gear comes in third 338 00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:31,760 speaking of no contest origin pc 339 00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:37,360 they did do some things well their staff were polite competent and helpful 340 00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:43,200 but at the end of the day this was a pretty simple transaction 341 00:25:40,080 --> 00:25:46,640 wii u fifteen hundred dollars give you 342 00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:48,320 us gaming pc send and while they did a 343 00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:55,039 good job of taking our fifteen hundred dollars i would argue that they didn't really 344 00:25:51,120 --> 00:25:57,760 hold up their end of the bargain 345 00:25:55,039 --> 00:26:01,840 is this a gaming pc well it's a gaming pc but certainly not 346 00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:05,200 for fifteen hundred dollars so 347 00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:09,200 i guess that i guess that's it right are we done 348 00:26:06,799 --> 00:26:13,279 for this season for this season oh lordy are we doing this again 349 00:26:10,559 --> 00:26:16,960 boy this was time consuming but uh we really hope that you guys have 350 00:26:14,960 --> 00:26:20,559 enjoyed it i know ivan's been tearing his hair out but i mean was it fun at 351 00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:23,440 least yes it was 352 00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:28,080 you know you know you know it was actually it was a lot of fun to go through this um maybe we'll do something 353 00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:33,279 like this that's similar in the future leave us a comment in the video description uh with with what you guys 354 00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:38,880 would like to see us secret shop you know 355 00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:42,320 lynum tech investigator and stoy ski and 356 00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:42,320 all that good stuff so uh 357 00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:50,159 now it's time for our sponsor 358 00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:53,679 mastra the mass drop sennheiser hd 6x 359 00:26:50,159 --> 00:26:55,360 headphones sound fantastic and 360 00:26:53,679 --> 00:27:00,880 why shouldn't they they're based on sennheiser's legendary hd 650s with 361 00:26:58,080 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that button but if you 371 00:27:35,919 --> 00:27:41,679 liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out the link to 372 00:27:39,919 --> 00:27:45,520 where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is 373 00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:49,600 our merch store which has cool shirts like well not these 374 00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:52,559 and our community forum which you should totally join