okay it it's in
in our recent secret shopper series agent sarah determined which pc builder
delivered the best balance of cost price
and customer service but one thing we didn't explore was
what if she had just researched the parts herself and put it together
creating her own gaming rig could she have saved money could she have gotten
more performance would she have had a good time
today we are going to answer all of those questions we have set agent sarah
out to sea with only three lifelines to get her through the process of
independently researching and building her dream gaming rig
let's see if she still thinks diy is a good deal at the end of that ordeal and
let's see if you guys think our sponsor glasswire is a good deal glasswire
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i know the CPU is quite important i know the GPU is quite important and if the
motherboard is like the number one piece that i need then i think that that would
also be important so maybe those are my top three that i should spend the most
money on i know ryzen is a good CPU
brand so i think that's where i'm gonna go but they might be more expensive than
Intel i don't know
i don't know that goes to show you the kind of mix of information sarah got
from the pc builders this one looks cool it has wi-fi and RGB
yeah that's a really easy way to spend way too much on a motherboard she's not
way off like CPU GPU motherboard that's
not a terrible list of you know your top three most important components of a
computer it's just that with the motherboard because it doesn't affect
performance it basically comes down to does it have the features you want like
is it the right form factor to fit in your case or does it have the i o that you need i don't know let's just write
down the number one motherboard for now honestly if i was buying something i'm
not familiar with like a paintball marker for example i might just google
what's the best marker for woods ball and
who cares i guess if they know anything about me or my play style or my skill
level because i don't know apparently on amazon it's
255.99 but let's see how much it is on
pc picker oh okay yeah it's 255.99
i guess i'll add that google what's next
CPU like i know we want something that's high speed does the CPU even control
speed it's central processing unit maybe it just controls
some other stuff i mean
yeah if i was a gamer and everyone told me hey you need a great graphics card
that's the most important thing for gaming i'm
i might not even realize what a big deal that is maybe the ryzen 5
5600x it's oh
it's already it's already gonna be more than half
i think of my budget oh maybe not 341.49
she's gonna blow this budget real fast at this rate it's supposed to work with
my motherboard i think so i don't know
the fact that pc part picker exists does make this process a lot easier if you
know to use it because it'll actually flag you if you pick a CPU that's
accidentally not compatible it'll even tell you if the BIOS of the motherboard
might not be compatible out of the box and might require a flash i mean usually
what's the difference what does 5600 versus
3600 versus 3700 what does that mean
that's a really fair question it really was easier when we could shop
by gigahertz i don't want to go Intel
but Intel is cheaper there's no shame in going Intel you
gotta take advantage of that supply and demand boys and girls five thirty six
hundred x okay i'll add the 3600x then
she is way overspending on motherboard and underspending on CPU right now
i'll look back into it later i think we should just get everything first i
actually support the idea of just getting everything thrown into a cart
and then playing around with it after the fact because that way at least you
can post to our slash build a pc or to the
Linus tech tips forum and people can at least kind of help you tweak it as
opposed to just going i don't feel like doing any work and just dumping the work
on someone else Corsair vengeance
i really like the white ones
are they more expensive and we're shopping for RAM by color i have a
friend who shops for badminton rackets by whatever has the prettiest paint job
and i'm just like best SSD
for gaming top ssds in 2021 a data i've
literally never heard of that company before oh no the samsung one is quite
expensive as well i trust samsung like i
i've heard the company name before and i feel like when
you can trust a company you are more likely to go with their products you
know it's funny that she would say that because samsung has a long and proud
history of kind of coming in with a very mediocre product like their earlier
optical drives for example terrible and
then just through sheer brute force making it better or competitive with
everyone else and then pushing everyone else out of the space
so eventually yes i trust a samsung product i trust a mature one samsung 970
pro but it's 250 dollars
wow that is a really expensive SSD
what are we at now 874 and we still need
the graphics card and the case and the power supply
she is in for a real rude awakening when she tries to fit a graphics card in her
budget you know you work around here and you just like see these cards being used
in projects and you're like oh they can't be that expensive
yeah 30 80 pretty pricey 1660 super six
Gigabyte that's 749
that's why gamers are so mad right now because a 1660 is costing what a
freaking 3080 is supposed to but shipping is for you
what i have no idea how i'm gonna do this uh
maybe the SSD is 250. maybe i could find a better SSD
for that price this one is 119 i don't
know if i would have gone with SATA you can get some really good value m.2
drives these days but i do agree with saving some money on the storage maybe i
could downgrade the motherboard here what does does the motherboard just
connect to the pieces it's like the puzzle piece that holds everything
together 84. or 113. if it doesn't have wi-fi then i
have to get a wi-fi connector sarah you can get a wi-fi dongle for like seven
dollars this looks way more sensible given the
other constraints on the build like the GPU shortage
169 dollars but at 750 watts
power supplies are few and far between right now too especially any that are
high capacity enough for mining we are under budget right now
but my case has to be less than 50 dollars i mean you can get
cases for under 50 bucks i might have balanced the budget a little differently
they're small cases for small pieces and big cases for big pieces i don't know
the size of my my pieces my components do i get like a
really big case just in case or do i just yolo and pick a case and
hope everything fits i feel like at LMG we just yolo we don't
yolo what does that even mean ah that one's
ugly that one's ugly actually that one's not bad cool case is just not a priority
when you're this far over budget part picker doesn't have it
or do they just order from other people i don't understand she thinks pc part
picker is an actual store does pc part picker not have cases you see part
picker not have pieces they don't have anything what are we at here
okay i i only need to go down
85 dollars and 92 cents with the motherboard change and dropping
to an 870 evo SSD this is looking reasonably well balanced
with the only thing that's out of whack being of course the graphics card but
what is sarah supposed to do about that i'm on the ltd forum i'm gonna post the
parts that i've picked for my new pc hopefully
somebody can suggest how we can get my budget down to fifteen hundred dollars
no fifteen hundred dollar pc should have a 1660 super and an a a 520 board okay i
agree but like it's not helpful what is she supposed to
do about it madison oh those are my best
zoomer friends over here
is this seriously madison doesn't she have work to do
flush your money down the toilet and flex on the haters this person replied
with quite a long post uh they said i understand the urge but unless you look
out at getting a card at msrp um this is frankly a bad idea now that
is a pretty helpful response unfortunately we gotta make a video so
you would think working in this office you just pick up a thing about computers
here or there but the wing of the office she works in
actually has very little computer conversation that takes place in it
i'd strongly recommend getting a b550 board instead of an af520 the chipset is
better and you can get them for the same price okay is it b550f
this video is proof that manufacturers could do a way
way better job of improving clarity for the average consumer i think it's more
expensive but this one for sure has wi-fi
and it doesn't have those ugly orange axes why are you so obsessed with wi-fi
sarah okay i guess i'm downgrading my case again just buy a dongle now the
funny thing is she was so determined not to go Intel but if she'd gone Intel she
could have used onboard graphics while she waited for a decent deal on a
graphics card i wish that AMD had their best apus available here like isn't that
ridiculous all the motherboards still have like video outputs so where do i
start off from where we left off i
essentially need to figure out how to assemble it i've heard a lot that
building a computer is like adult lego if all the pieces were made by different
manufacturers and there were eight different sets of instructions that
don't really match up so yeah sort of we'll see how this goes here we go
i don't know what parts i need to be gentle with and what parts i can be
rough with so i'm just gonna be gentle with everything the a520 board is fine
if you need to save a buck but one thing you're really missing out on is of
course pci express gen 4 which might end up important for gaming in the future
but for now she's not really giving up any performance
i think it's safe for me to grab it from the bottom yeah just
one hand all over it um
motherboard
okay um so with this i know the CPU is the
next step uh just from watching our videos every once
in a while so i will grab that
she found the CPU that's better than some of the rg rig reboot contestants uh
this is the AMD ryzen 5 3600 xt
i don't know what any of that means other than this is the processing unit i
think what it means is we didn't have a 3600 x in the warehouse so we grabbed an
xt and i also know from illustrating the
stealth CPU shirt that these little guys
have triangles and i know the triangles
line up with the triangle on here uh but i don't see one
maybe that they really could make the triangles bigger hey
there's probably no good way of doing this other than just trying to line it
up best as possible we mean no good way of doing it no no there is a good way
oh i did it and then this
must go down that seems pretty secure wait
let's check why it's on there
yes i think next is the RAM
but i'm not sure what order they go in in the slots it does look like there's
two slots here that are open oh that's so cheating because we built on this
board before press oh my gosh i don't want to break it i'm
i'm so scared by this every time
press
oh i got one click but not two two okay wow why does she check things
like this you don't have to like heave on the RAM and try and shake the
CPU out of the socket it's in i i really hope i'm doing this in the right order
i'm kind of just going off uh what is she doing now what what uh
what i remember from watching our previous videos even if it wasn't in
right that wouldn't tell you oh that's nice we found one that still has the
pre-applied double compound on it that'll save her some trouble fragile oh
my god uh should i put it face down maybe yeah
okay here wait let me put it here
um it doesn't look like there's any thermal paste in here
she's looking right at it there's no instructions
is there supposed to be instructions is this
this can't be the thermal paste hey there we go oh i touched it
i think why i'm gonna look this up
i'm just gonna assume that this already has thermal paste or is already thermal
paste should i touch it and we're not supposed to touch it stop touching it it feels
like it doesn't belong there
this little little doing here we'll clip both of them in
i got this i don't think she got this i believe it
would have to go somewhere on here so maybe i want it to be facing that way
i can't even i can't even breathe i'm just like i'm
so tense right now oh man i want to help so bad
because like it's not hard but it's tricky
you know what i mean the distinction once you've done it it's like swamp
swamp here we go she hasn't done it before so it's not swamp film here we go
it's it's this it's stuck
oh okay wait oh okay you gotta watch out for that ladies and gentlemen if your
thermal paste is suctioned onto your CPU and you just
pull your CPU cooler off you can pull your CPU out of the socket and then it
can fall and bend pins now we gotta figure out how to clip it
in no without breaking it the other clip on fur
first i'm gonna break it i'm so scared i'm
gonna break it i'm so scared you're gonna break it too i got tiny fingers
should i use something to like pry it down i feel like you're not supposed to be
able to do that what you need to use
is a lifeline right now oh wait wait wait wait wait if you put the clippy
thingy down if you know this isn't the hardest part
right i push it i did it oh my god i did
it wow there was no point
i'm like a good luck charm
all right well that's that's one of your three that's one of your three hints
that's really not what i would have used it on i have my case and i'm gonna lay it down
flat
hopefully that doesn't do anything bad uh
wait oh yeah she keeps watching being so aggressive
please it's probably fine i think this is fine okay
wait let's do my my test and see if this is improperly
okay it it's in
do i need to take this out is she about to start disassembling the
drive how oh
is this not gonna work did i buy the wrong SSD
it'll force it in
i don't want to break it no
i just want to know what i need to do one into your SSD
and the other into your motherboard why is she not watching lightness tech
tips come on we have a video on how to
install an AMD cooler for example i kind of hate this doesn't this look tacky but
it's not supposed to be there like that this spot right here
looks like it fits a power supply unit wait did she just
decide we're gonna put the power supply in the five and a quarter inch base what
is even happening i'm wrong it doesn't go here it goes here
because this needs to be facing outwards and this doesn't allow that
which means it go this way ah yes assuming that we want to blow this part
i would want it facing out oh no she's now she's overthinking
it but then that would make this upside down i'm going with my gut and saying
the fan needs to be facing towards and not downwards
because most of the airflow is going this way either way is honestly
yeah this is right is it bad to plug in things into the
wrong yes places yes it is
am i gonna destroy this computer by accident maybe i think oh shoot no this
matches that one so
i'm gonna try the scariest part of this is that you can actually get it in there
i proved that when i did my blindfolded build they should have just done a
10-pin pci express connector just to
not have this happen after examining
it's wrong but this one
this one maybe nice let's try it so this one says uh power led plus and
this one says power led minus and i can see here
that this is plus p led and minus p led
so i'm gonna assume from that that the
plus one goes here
and the minus one goes here gigi serum
damn
oh stop wobbling wiggling things hey it didn't really click but it's in well why
don't you check and see if it's in by shaking the computer and seeing if it falls out but no don't oh this cable
probably i shouldn't move that yeah i should move that
oh the fact that it was that easy to pull out maybe it doesn't mean it was
improperly
okay that was a good snap not a bad snap
you can never really tell
it's in it's in i have
successfully installed the GPU i guess we don't know that until we get the
computer running let's just guess so
uh i have kind of realized this cable is
in the way and i could remove the graphics card to
kind of slide it down the back here but i'm trying to decide if it's worth
the hassle for me because the last time i tried to remove a GPU it really didn't
turn out for literally anybody involved in that
but i really want
i think if i just if i just push this okay she found the clip okay it made a
click now pull oh that's yes wow i did that yeah wow
why wasn't it that easy the first time
we're gonna go back now and do this once more
and this is lined up please just push it in straight now push
there we go uh i'm gonna
i'm gonna see what i can do about this there's our SSD still just hanging there
i have no clue what to do with this manual
duct tape duct tape i'm grabbing duct tape
duct tape fixes everything
yeah yeah there we go double sided i don't want that to be visible i can't
see it i realized i have this little plate thing that's supposed to go
here i'm gonna try to get it in now cringing
out my face and see if that works that i didn't even no you can't put it in oh no
i i i was supposed to put it in beforehand it's too late it's not gonna
work at all who cares about that stupid
silver backplate anyways i pressed the power button and it turned on
uh there's a light which is good we got lights we got fan spin
my CPU cooler looks like shrimp looks like um
that doesn't help me here
no it says no dp detected i think this is what i was talking about okay AMD
doesn't have proper top tier apus here
in north america all the motherboards have video outputs
this is the kind of confusion you end up with i have received a hint
i don't think this goes into the motherboard it goes into the graphics card
oh no that says dp butts like clenching just watching her
like jam things into things
like there's a lock on the cable does she
know this is this is the hardest part is figuring out what's wrong oh she's
got to do this just give it a quick power cycle displayport does not hot
plug as well as some other interfaces so i have a computer if it doesn't
compute is it a computer i mean
according to my last logic
it is not a computer right now because it's not computing
at all uh so you see when i turn it on here yes
we've got RGB everywhere
good that's the first step but then
am i magic or what i didn't even have to touch it
i don't even got magic fingers today this is just magic presents
all right see you later
you're welcome thanks and select proper boot device how do i
do that whether you're installing with the UEFI Windows or whether you need to
enable csm in the BIOS or whatever it's
really frustrating for even semi-experienced builders her google foo
is quite strong download tool now
okay it's been at 97 for like
two minutes but does that mean i did something wrong
or does that just mean the computer is well i guess that still means i did
something wrong reboot
the computer restarters you told me it would be fine
i feel as though i belong here
i'm coming all right yes i think i did something wrong
uh so this is actually not my fault uh i blame
new guy uh
right now what we're doing is we are
reinstalling Windows so i'm choosing the boot device which is your Corsair
voyager thumb drive where the hell is your course oh there it is and we're
just gonna take a fresh go at that okay it should be fine
i have my good luck dinosaurs no no
i'm the good luck we determined that these are lucky but you're lucky so
you're also a dinosaur
uh lttstore.com
i did it
i built a computer now all that remains to be seen is if
she feels like it was worth the additional stress compared to having
someone else build it for her it was a struggle you have no idea how much of a
struggle it was i had way more fun
trying to build my own computer than i did making phone calls or trying to buy
one online which was easy yes but i
really think that this is just something that you need to do in your lifetime
build a computer it's fun i feel like i've learned a lot next time i build a
computer i'll know what i'm doing basically maybe
now it's cheaper to buy a pre-build if you can get a GPU
at a regular price or a price that you're not
worried about paying for then i 100 would recommend building your own
computer truly it was worth it what a great conclusion
did she nail it or what yes it's stressful and yes it's way more
difficult it's a lot easier just buy a pre-built computer
but it's rewarding you'll learn something it can be fun in like a
stressful anxious kind of way but now is
probably not the right time to do it unless you manage to get your hands on a
GPU out on your msrp nailed it sarah
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Linus if you guys enjoyed this video maybe check out our last round of secret
shopper where agent sarah got absolutely
bamboozled by dell though in her defense that was entirely not her fault