So here we are, a long, painful seven months
after we first teased the concept
of building the first ever Linus Media Group gaming lounge.
And ironically, pretty much everything else
about this space is done.
So we've got our side table here.
This just arrived.
It's still got all the protective stuff on it.
We've got our board games table here.
This is actually a bit of a placeholder, but whatever.
We could play board games.
We've got the media lounge.
That is like, it's fricking awesome.
And the one part we haven't actually started on yet
is the actual LAN gaming center.
Fortunately, everything's here!
Those are, oh, yeah!
Oh my God.
So it's time for us to finally build the first real system.
Except that we had a small problem.
We were having trouble getting the Core i7 processors
that we had intended to use.
It was from our prototype system way back when.
So we figured, you know what?
Well, we're only running RTX 2070s anyway.
Would AMD really be that much
of a performance compromise here?
Let me hold this.
Well, there's only one way for us to find out.
The MOS Grande backpack is the perfect companion
for laptops of up to 17 inches
since the bag is water resistant and padded for protection.
Also, it has an orange interior.
Check it out at the link below.
So before we get
to building our actual final spec rig,
I guess a bit of a haul video
is kind of in order here, isn't it?
Man, this is a lot of hardware.
Every system is getting a G903?
No, it's actually worse.
We went a little further than that.
We went even further over the top?
Those are extras.
Every system is getting one
of Logitech's Pro Wireless Gaming Mice.
Okay, as if half the people that are gonna be using it
are even skilled enough to know
the difference.
Everyone's getting a G513 Carbon
with their Romergy linear switches.
Everyone's getting a G935 headset.
And thanks to Logitech's recent acquisition
of Blue Microphones, a Yeti Nano mic.
Because, you know, the built-in headset mic.
I mean, we've got it.
It's not like it's not a super high-end headset,
but we're gonna use an off-board mic, you know, whatever.
Then moving into the systems themselves,
we're running Ryzen 2700.
We're gonna be using the Ryzen 2700X processors.
So yes, we lose a little bit of single-threaded performance
compared to the 8700Ks we initially spec'd,
but we can probably overclock them a little.
And quite frankly, in the e-sports titles
that we'll be running for the most part,
I don't expect it to make a difference.
Although, we will be testing that out today.
And then cooling them,
we're gonna be using H100i RGB Platinum Water Coolers
from Corsair.
We're gonna be pairing them with 16 gigs each,
a DDR4 2666 megahertz RGB RAM from also Corsair.
Every system gets an MP300 480 gig boot drive.
Do we have hard drives for these?
Yes, and Optane.
Oh nice, everyone's getting a Brio 4K Pro webcam.
So everything's gonna be stream ready.
And Optane, all the Optane.
All the Optane.
Oh wow, okay.
So that's pretty cool.
That means our 480 gig SSD is gonna handle OS duties
and any critical applications.
And then our hard drives are actually
gonna have accelerated caching
so that the games that are played most frequently,
even if they are on magnetic storage,
are still gonna load faster
than if they were just on a hard drive.
Also pulling cooling duty,
Corsair sent over a whole bunch of their Lightloop 120 fans.
First, let's talk about what they're gonna be driving.
So ASUS sent over 12 of their VG279 gaming monitors.
So these are 1080p IPS with three millisecond response times
and they run at 144 hertz.
So these are basically, you're kind of no frills,
but still looks really great gaming monitor.
They don't have G-Sync,
but now that NVIDIA has enabled G-Sync on FreeSync displays,
we're not expecting that to be a problem
for our GeForce RTX 2070 graphics cards.
The whole thing's gonna be hooked into
ASUS's TUF Series B450M Plus gaming motherboard
and installed in a Crystal Series 280X case from ASUS.
And the only thing new,
is that this is the first time
Nintendo has launched the QCAM Corsair.
For power, we've gone way over the top.
See Sonic sent over
their Prime Titanium at 1,000 watt modular power supply.
I told them like 750 plus.
This is literally three times the power we actually need,
but cool.
Thanks, I guess.
Actually, a couple of things I forgot, minor details.
Aquantia sent over their 10 gig Nix.
actual gaming experience, but while installing games
off our Steam caching server,
which you can check out the video about up here,
this will definitely make a difference
while we're pulling down from all these machines at once.
So that's gonna be sick.
And these chairs from Maxnomics.
So we haven't actually reviewed one of their chairs
in quite some time, but this is still my daily driver
in my office, actually not quite this one,
but a similar model.
And I'm super excited that when we're here
for hours after work, we are gonna be sitting
on something as comfortable as their classic office chair.
We got the black one, right Jake?
Yeah, and it's embroidered.
Oh, that looks awesome.
As the kids would say.
I'm not a kid anymore, I'm not saying it.
I just wanna hear you say it.
It's lit, it's lit, yeah.
Lit AF.
Lit AF, thank you.
Thank you.
See, I knew you were gonna say it.
Damn it, I said it.
Okay, so while Jake puts together a couple of the chairs,
which we're gonna need for our head-to-head
mano-a-mano gaming session,
I'm gonna put together one of our final AMD-based rigs
so we can find out when we put it head-to-head
against our original Intel-based prototype over here,
how much, if any, performance we're leaving on the table
with our 2700Xs.
You know what, I think I'm gonna mix things up
for this build.
I'm gonna start by getting everything ready in the case.
Then I'm gonna put together my core platform
on my motherboard here.
I haven't even gotten as far as putting the fans
into the case, and we've already found a problem.
Because we changed from an Intel board to an AMD board
sort of midway through this project,
we might've overlooked a small compatibility issue.
Now, it's nothing sort of game-ending here.
We still have room for our triple-slot graphics card
and our 10-gigabit NIC, but what we are looking at right now,
is we're gonna have to figure out how we're gonna do this.
What we are losing is the ability
to put in our Optane module,
because this board only has a single M.2 slot.
And yeah, there's no additional one on the back
or anything like that.
Yeah, that's a little disappointing, actually.
Hey, so Jake, how are we arranging the fans on these things?
Because we can either design it for optimal airflow
and have two in, two out,
or we can have our light loop rings all visible externally,
and it can look bad-ass.
And then it'll be like highly positive pressurized.
But they're all filtered.
Two in, two out.
Two in, two out?
Yeah, you gotta.
Better than the system's overheating.
He's not gonna do it.
I just wanted to check something real quick with you, though.
However I build this first one,
that's how we'll have to build all of them, right?
Well, I could always just fix it.
All right, I guess this one is done now, hey?
Not bad?
Pretty good, man.
I mean, I have this exact same chair at my desk, so.
Oh, yeah.
Avivo sent over their,
so they don't actually sell a complete desk.
They just sell-
Oh, I think they do.
Do they?
Yeah.
Well, that's not what we got.
We needed a big one, right?
That's not the one that I bought the other week either.
Yeah, they sell just like a standing, sitting,
like leg assembly.
So that's what we're gonna be putting
these custom dbrand skinned MDF tabletops on top of.
I'm actually super stoked for how good that's gonna look.
Those things are really heavy.
Please be careful.
So this is a pretty cool little piece
of kit.
This is a Corsair Commander Pro,
and it plugs in using SATA for power and then USB for data.
And then it's got all your LED ports here.
You've got up to six fans that you can plug in directly.
It's got temp sensors right here,
and then two USB internal headers
in case you have a motherboard that only has one,
and then you're taking it up with this thing.
Well, this way you can plug your front panel USB 2
into this or any other accessories like, say for example,
one of Corsair's own CPU coolers,
which we are probably gonna need to do in this case.
So we're gonna replace our existing fan hub with this guy.
Yeah.
Cable management.
Man, I tell you the adhesive that they used
to hold the original LED and fan controllers in,
it's ridiculous.
I should barely get that thing off.
Sounds like something a beta male would say.
Ah, holy crap.
Ow.
Like look at my fingers.
What are you gonna cry to?
You know what?
You take it off.
Show me how it's done, alpha guy.
Oh man, that's pretty on there.
Holy .
It was really loosened a lot.
Uh-huh.
Why did they put that much adhesive on?
Look, I love you guys at Corsair.
Great, great people sent us a lot of hardware
for this project.
Okay.
Yeah, we're going full RGB ringness here.
It's taking me as long to do the RGB wiring
as it would to build a normal computer.
Of course, it'll be all worth it.
But like, we've got the two, we've got the Commander Pro,
we've got the RGB hub,
we've got the leads for all the strips and all the fans,
two power leads for the whole thing.
I think we're finally ready to put a motherboard in it.
Look at the chairs though.
But the chairs are done.
God damn it.
You know, the funny thing is
I've always just kind of used whatever.
Like, brand loyalty is not a thing for me.
But because the community's perception of me as some kind of,
brand loyalty is not a thing for me. But because the community's perception of me as some kind of,
But because the community's perception of me as some kind of,
fanboy one way or the other is so strong.
It feels a little bit naughty building an AMD system.
See, check this out.
This is what I love about this case.
This side, like, look at that.
It's not look clean or what?
And then this side, in typical Linus fashion.
I'm like getting pretty close here, actually.
I just got to pop the power supply in, wire that up.
And then I need my graphics card, network card,
and then I'm good to go.
I don't know who would use this
but maybe if you're like an NBA player or something.
Well, I wasn't sure if I could do it,
but after giving it my best effort,
I think I've succeeded in making the contrast
between my cable managed side
and my non cable managed side, even more stark.
Good job, Linus.
It's a real shame about that video card saggage.
That's actually not that bad.
It's not great.
I was expecting it to be a lot worse.
It's a lot worse than that.
I'm also a little upset about the one yellow accent.
Can you just get the T out of there?
Finish the T off.
So it's just off gaming.
Gaming.
It's the gamers.
You have to do this, like this.
Yeah.
Like this.
Otherwise it's not, you don't get the white out.
Look, look how beta his writing game is here.
Look at that.
It's gorgeous.
Thanks to Aki for sending these mouse pads.
Excel.
Mouse pads.
Very nice.
With the braided edge.
This is the moment we've all been waiting for.
Nice.
Okay.
So my NIC is showing up.
My 16 gigs of RAM's all showing up.
My hard drive is not showing up.
Oh, it might be a SAS drive.
I just grabbed something off the shelf
cause our drives didn't actually arrive.
Okay.
I will figure that out later.
But we still have a couple of things to do here.
So I'm going to set our DOCP.
So that's AMD's XMP equivalent,
which should configure our RAM to its optimized settings
and then install Windows.
So this is it.
Ish.
Finished AMD system versus the old concept Intel system.
On a test bench.
I mean, really the point of all of this is to find out
how much we compromised by going AMD.
So I think we're two and two right now.
Aren't we Jake?
Does that, does that sound right?
Okay.
Also.
I'm pretty sure that while I was pretty far behind before
you're dead again.
And my kill count is pretty close.
Oh, oh, would you look at that?
Am I out ahead now?
Huh?
Cause I remember you talking some smack
about how you're like a young, hip gamer or some .
Ah.
Oh, nice.
Haha.
Spawned right behind you.
You like that?
Performance wise.
Oh, it's, it's not making a difference.
It literally doesn't matter.
Uh, what are you at in terms of FPS?
Oh, like around 300, 250.
250.
It really depends on where you are on the map.
Yep.
I'm anywhere from like 150 to 250.
Okay. We're here.
This is me.
It's me.
It's me. It's me.
Okay. So let's just look down the, look down the thing.
I just want to know what the FPS difference is like.
Okay.
Mine's higher.
What?
Yeah. Yours is quite a bit higher actually.
Do you have anything in the background?
No.
I mean, remember CSGO is a notoriously Intel favoring game.
Right.
So yes, there's a difference, but like, I didn't feel,
I didn't feel for a second.
Like I was affected by the difference.
And you know, when we're talking 150 versus 240 FPS,
I'm, I'm all right with it.
Okay. Well, I'm gonna try a different game.
GG.
You can't alt tab out of this game.
Yeah. I won.
Okay.
Man, I haven't played on 1080P in a hot minute.
It's a little different than 1440P ultra wide.
Yeah. Like it's, it's like a 10 FPS difference.
Well, remember CSGO was behind.
So I was thinking about it for a second,
but like CSGO was behind in the context of like,
160 versus 240 FPS.
Like it's not.
I don't even, it wasn't that much.
I feel like it was like 30.
No, it was a little bit more.
Oh, there's two.
Crap.
Okay. Well, sorry.
Oh, we got wrecked.
Oh.
That wasn't bad.
No, the frame rates are good.
I mean.
Yeah. Dang it.
You did more damage.
All right. All right.
So you're better at the game that only you play
and that I don't play.
So, okay. That's good.
That's good.
Well then that's our takeaway.
Jake isn't actually that great at video games
in spite of being one of the young kids.
Actually, depending on, you know,
what game you're playing,
you might even get a better gaming experience
with the 2700X,
which did surprise me in Apex Legends anyway.
And that's like a hundred bucks cheaper.
No regrets then.
Now we just have to build 11 more.
That's my regret.
That's my only regret is doing it 11 times.
Having this idea.
All right.
So I guess all that's left now,
other than preparing ourselves to do this 11 more times
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