this glitter bombed Dell Optiplex is not
only a real product you can actually buy but it's just a small part of an entire
hidden and plain sight industry of refurbishers who seem to be bulk buying
retired office PCS dazzling them up and
then offloading them to wannabe Gamers I have so many questions right now are
people actually buying these who are the companies building them is it possible
that they're a legit good value and why
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treasure box first popped up on our radar and a back to school flyer earlier
this year but other than having a little chuckle about the creative idea of
throwing glittery lipstick on Pig computers to blow away debtstalk we
didn't pay them much attention that is until we saw them in the next week's
flyer and the one after that and the one after that and then upon further
inspection we realized these things are everywhere in some shape or form Amazon
Walmart Newegg Best Buy some site called you buy based out of the country of
Jordan now most of them aren't explicitly marketed as gaming PCs but
given the aesthetic and the imagery it's pretty clear what Market they're going
after and truthfully why not we've shown
multiple times that a cast off office
computer with some strategic upgrades can be an unbeatable value for Budget
Gamers maybe these are too so to find out we bought a couple of them starting
with the best treasure box brand unit that we could find 4th gen core i7 32
gigs of RAM a one terabyte SSD RGB
lighting and a fully licensed copy of
Windows 10 for the low low price of just
300 US dollars Secrets will be fine
inside your head I actually really like the way they've done this finish I
assumed it would be like spray bombed or something like that but it actually
appears to be like almost like a grip tape type of texture
pretty good in person oh it's not sticking very well here but you got to
give them credit for being completionist about it they not only do the top and
front but also the sides and bottom actually looks kind of sharp doesn't it
oh wow that is the genericist memory
ever just bear dims no stickers whatsoever with SK hynix packages on it
it even looks like very clean like
almost too clean to the point where they might even be sourcing this stuff new
that doesn't make any sense I would think given that it's older like there
is so much used DDR3 on the market that they wouldn't bother to Source new
sticks but it might be as simple as they're just peeling the stickers off
whatever it is they happen to find and then throwing them in to genericize them
why would they do that because then they would have difficulty claiming warranty
from whoever they're getting these sticks from what about our SSD okay it
may be a terabyte but it is certainly nothing special King fast not exactly
um the leader in performance ssds
oh okay there we go
oh mother are you bleeding oh yeah it
was here and it was so sharp that I didn't even
slide be right back this is great though even
a cheap SSD can make a world of difference to the responsiveness of a
system the SSD that I paid in blood to identify turned out to be a king fast
F10 one terabyte not the world's fastest
SSD and because it doesn't have a dram cache there are cases where it could
actually end up being slower than a mechanical hard drive but
with light desktop use those cases would be few and far between and it would be a
substantial upgrade over whatever mechanical storage might have been in the system also because many businesses
shred their storage devices when they donate or liquidate PCS it's likely that
there wasn't anything in here in the first place since we've got a better look at the
motherboard now seems like a good time to look at that there is a PCIe 16x slot
down here that could be used for GPU expansion but because this is a slim
chassis you'd be limited to cards that are half height but full length as long
as they don't have a bulky dual slot cooler that would interfere with your SATA ports over here that's curious
there's an RGB strip in the front but I don't actually see what's powering it oh
wow it's two separate RGB strips in there hey wait a minute
the front of the case only has two cutouts for USB ports but the system
itself has four oh crap I just powered it on they stick it over them as best as
we can tell the only reason to do this might be because there are versions of
this chassis that only have two front USB ports and this way they would only
have to stock one version of this front bezel sticker but then we found listings
for treasure box PCS that do have all four ports cut out so we're really
really not sure what the deal is with that time for some USB port surgery and
ideally I won't cut myself again this is a very sharp knife Jerry rig
everything lttstore.com uh Brandon just don't get too close to this hey yeah
sure oh failed the second one though
look at that clean almost as clean as
the Windows install on the treasure box PC I was actually really impressed to
see that outside of VLC and the games and applications that we've installed
this machine contains no bloatware like antivirus or freemium games or anything
like that uh does this ever load like is
this no I'm surprised it's still up honestly unfortunately this is about as
far as we get Beyond light games from like 10 years ago this thing is going to
struggle to do pretty much any gaming and given the marketing there are almost
certainly parents or grandparents who have ended up with disappointed kids
when their new computer can barely run Minecraft
but if we adjust our expectations a
little bit the treasure box is actually looking like a pretty okay value I mean
sure it's based on an older platform and it doesn't have the latest bells and
whistles like USB type-c but
as long as you're not trying to run applications it doesn't support day to
day the responsiveness of the system is actually pretty okay thanks to that
basic SSD boot drive now you could build
one yourself for cheaper we ended up pricing out all the pieces inside for
anywhere from 185 to 240 dollars
depending on promos and availability but
not everyone has the technical know-how or the desire to do that and for peace
of mind it comes with a one year warranty I had some doubts about that
warranty actually being honored but if user reviews are anything to go by these
guys mostly stand behind their product I
would be interested to test that ourselves though can we give it a shot maybe post a little note in the video
description with how it goes yeah we'll do that okay cool but as we showed
before these machines are everywhere and not all of them come from that same
company meat the techdale PC for
um Dale this one doesn't have a catchy name
like treasure box but they've certainly gussied it up a little bit we've got
this uh what appears to be like a blue vinyl sticker whatever this is I guess
we'll figure that out later they've also added a like a some stickers on the top
oh interesting that's just to make the
case look less scuffed and beat up there's a little lip here
see there's a sticker and you can actually see the like beat up case in
there I was wondering why they would bother to do that and they've got a cut out for where the original Windows KOA
went
paddle too they actually vinyl the whole thing it's just way more subtle maybe
there's treasure anyway um
now there's dust it's a sort of uh but dead skin cell
treasure I think only 256 gigs but this
one was cheaper I have never heard of hajjan Apparently that is a house brand
for techdale um they call this the most powerful SSD
I think not we've got not one not two
but three different types of RAM in here I have no idea what the meaning of these
two x's wiped into the dust are but
we've actually got a GPU in here
n30 not the most powerful thing in the
world but it should manage CS go at the very least more compact RGB controller
but oh there's definitely RGB let's go
ahead and fire this thing up not as nicely put together as the other one
but I gotta say even if it's only a GT 1030 it's probably going to make a
pretty big difference to have a discrete GPU of some sort in here oh that's cool
look at that RGB strip here and an
infinity mirror RGB strip only 16 gigs
of RAM this time third gen processor and
only a 256 gig SSD but we also have a
500 gig hard drive and this machine was only 300 Canadian dollars
it's not strictly advertised as a gaming PC but it comes with this
multifunctional RGB backlit gaming three in one combo so I think it's fair to say
that CS go should probably at least launch on it oh wow I have never seen a
keyboard whose RGB is controlled via remote before
first time for everything we're actually not 100 sure of the price for this one
because since we ordered it the page has completely disappeared and the guy who
has the invoice isn't here right now so you're going to see an on-screen correction if I didn't get it right
what is this is this a is this a USB thumbstick oh this is a wireless
dongle for what oh it's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth yeah there's the WPS button
okay that makes sense okay yeah sure that can go in the front why not oh that
actually looks pretty cool not bad and it turns out that the remote
is actually for the oh wait oh for the oh for that oh okay
wow it's all RGB
oh do like the shiny lights oh this is not
a good keyboard in case you were wondering but I'm
getting it's on dip to 30 there felt it
about 60 FPS I mean it's
not the greatest gaming experience though In fairness techtail doesn't
advertise this as a gaming PC even
though clearly that's their intent and they do have a history of selling gaming
PCs that are in the thousand dollar range and still use a GT 1030 meaning
that the gaming experience isn't going to be much better however yet again it's
not technically a terrible price if you take into account things like the legit
copy of Windows the ease of setup and the warranty through whatever platform
you purchased it on this one would even be able to play some games at low to
medium settings without too much hassle a fact that techtail has included in the
description without too much Hyperbole and because both of the machines we
looked at are using industry standard or at the very least Dell standard Parts
either of them can be maintained or upgraded with better gpus down the line
turning them into surprisingly competent little gaming
boxes it's no wonder these things are so popular but we still haven't answered
the biggest question where are these things all coming from
China India no Toronto Ontario Canada that's right
both Advanced skytech Global maker of
the treasure box and techdale are headquartered within 20 minutes of each
other and a little bit farther down the street you'll find high-tech Bay yet
another Glam furbisher as we've started calling them we can't be a hundred
percent sure why there's such a high concentration of these companies in that
area but we do have a couple of guesses first up is that Toronto and its
surrounding suburbs is the business capital of Canada so the regular supply
of machines like this likely greatly outstrips the local demand meaning that
they can easily export them to other regions second is that Markham in particular is
a tech Hub that contains the Canadian headquarters of countless big names like
ASUS AMD and also our friends over at
infinite cables finally one of the defining characteristics of the PC
industry is the Shameless copying that takes place between competitors so my
best guess then is that word about how effective a quick coat of paint or
sticker as it were got out pretty
quickly leading to almost immediate copycatism and given a little bit more
time I'm sure many more of these companies are going to be popping up
near business hubs around the world as an advocate for keeping E-Waste out
of landfills I'm actually pretty happy to see these machines finding their ways
to new homes and I also feel like it's worth giving a shout out to Microsoft's
role in all of this every one of these companies claims some form of legitimacy
by being part of the Microsoft authorized refurbisher program skytech
and high tech Bay are both listed on Microsoft's website and techdale we
think is probably purchasing these licenses from a Microsoft authorized
refurbisher member which makes them legit now none of that means that these
guys won't take your money and run when it comes warranty time but overall it
seems like there's a fair number of happy customers out there and like I
said before I think that's a really good thing to be clear I don't think that
Microsoft is providing cheap Windows 10 licenses to these guys out of the
goodness of their hearts some money is probably better than the no money that
they'd be making if refurbishers did what they used to do and simply pirated
Windows but legit Windows adds peace of
mind for would-be buyers keeping these things out of the landfills and honestly
I doubt this program really moves the needle for Microsoft compared to the
work it takes to maintain so I'm glad they're doing it the question remains though should you buy one well this is
Linus Tech tips so obviously our first choice would be to Cobble something
together ourselves from hand-picked used parts
if you need a very simple PC that requires no knowledge to set up or build
and you don't have much of a budget and maybe you need some semblance of a
warranty this could be a good choice I would at least consider the extra 100
bucks for something brand new like this unit from HP even if it's just to ensure
that I'll have support for future Windows updates but Windows 10 still got
a lot of life left in it and in this price range an extra hundred dollars is
a lot of money that could have been used for a GPU upgrade I was expecting to
dunk on these things for the somewhat misleading marketing and general
cringiness of them but given that they've basically just commercialized
but we've been advocating for for years I guess I can't go too hard on them at
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Linus Tech tipsy.com Linus detectives if
you guys enjoyed this video you might enjoy some of the more detailed guides
we've done on how to find and buy a cheap workstation on eBay and turn it
into a sleeper gaming monster