In recent years, tariff tariff tariffs have become a key strategy for the
United States by implementing a sales tax on nearly everything that Americans
buy from out of country. But in Brazil,
they've been kicking that rock for half a century. How's that going for them? To
find out, I bought all of this tech from
Brazil. Now, I've never lived in Brazil, but I have. This is Ricardo, who does
some of our thumbnails, and he's going to be showing us how to survive when the
government wants a uh 93% cut on all of
your electronics. Do you shop AliExpress and just hope the seller lies on the
customs forms? Do you buy lesserk known or white label brands in order to get a
better deal? Like, what is super frame memory? And why does it also have
Kingston branding on it? We're just getting started. This is already so
difficult. Like, how do you navigate this? >> Well, you do a little bit of this, a
little bit of that. You can shop on online or you can go to a tech shop and
they're going to put something together. >> Brilliant. Then that means we did the right thing. Our friends Davyy and
Roberto actually put together not one but two Brazilian builds for us. On one
side, we've got a pretty good gaming PC by Brazilian standards. And on the other
side, we've got one of the cheapest builds that you could put together
pretty much anywhere. And as you're about to see, both of these are a little
different from what you'd find if you just fired up the new egg and shopped
the most popular components. Now, let's shop the most popular segway. Yeah,
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You've never built a PC before? >> No. >> Would you describe that as sexier than
this one? >> Well, this one has more like more swag or more mo as we say in Brazil, you
know, mean sauce. >> And the sauce starts with a Super Frame.
That brand again, B450M motherboard.
Well, it turns out ASRock sells these boards in bulk to white label brands
like Superframe, who slap their label on them and then handle the logistical
headaches of selling in Latin America. One of the headaches that Superframe
handles is doing the final assembly of these things in the ZFM in order to get
massive tax exemptions. This workaround allows some reasonably modern tech to be
legally made in Brazil, RESULTING IN PRICING THAT IS
RESULTING IN pricing that's somewhat close to what you might pay elsewhere.
But they're not typically going to stock higherend parts because even without
tariffs, not many could afford it. Moving on to our CPU, we've got
something that's familiar and yet unfamiliar. It's a Ryzen CPU with 3D
vcache exclusive to Latin America.
>> Why is that? Well, this allows them to have something that's affordable for
that market, but that is not as easy to price compare in the other more affluent
markets. Also, by having a discrete skew, they make it a little bit more
difficult for the gray marketers who would otherwise grab chips just like
game keys, for instance, from developing markets and then [music] transfer them
over to more affluent markets in order to make more margin on them.
>> Of course. Of course. >> Want to go ahead and install it? Okay, let's go. I have some experience
building computers. The last time I did was just tearing down my iMac.
>> OKAY, JUST THE WHOLE TIME. >> OH, SORRY. What did I miss?
>> We don't want to touch the pins on the bottom. If these get bent, that's bad.
You might have noticed AM4 is still super popular in Latin America just
because of the affordability both of the chips, motherboards, and of course, the
DDR4 memory. In fact, it's so popular
that ASUS has apparently been ramping up production of AM4 boards to serve the
Latin American market. Oh, wow. I'll be right over here. Hopefully, you don't
break anything. Brilliant. Now, let's talk about my system. As you might have
noticed, Ricardo has already spent over $300 on his bougie Brazilian system.
That's way out of reach for many families. That's where boards like this
Zesus from AliExpress come in. Not to be confused with Asus or the Greek god.
Step one, harvest the chipsets from retired server motherboards. Step two,
do some BIOS black magic to enable modern features like M.2 SSDs. And step
three, sell them for pennies on the dollar to developing markets. This
motherboard, plus the older generation 12 core Xeon that's installed, plus this
16 gig stick of ECC DDR4 memory, all
came to just $56. It's not the most modern thing, but as
you guys are going to see later, many esports titles will run just fine on it.
What a deal that was. And I say was because it was so good that Brazil went
and slapped a 93% tax [music] on anything off AliExpress
more than $50. Absolutely freaking
brutal. So then like what would people just have to order the parts peace meal
and just pay shipping three times to get around it? >> Something like that. Or do you have a
friend that goes abroad and you ask, "Hey, can you bring something for me in your luggage?" That's the way we do it.
>> Or don't. Not legal advice. [laughter] >> Yeah.
>> As for Ricardo's RAM, he's going to be using DDR4 just like me, but he's going
to be using much faster DDR4, unlike me.
3200 mega transfers per second versus the 2133 of my generic server memory.
Now, Davi and Roberto did suggest that faster RAM might actually be a
worthwhile upgrade even for my system, but a brand name like Super Frame might
be out of reach for this customer. So, we also grabbed this Ninja Gaming DDR4
Hurac for $11 less. Now, $11 difference
might seem pretty small, but that's like $50 Brazilian and could be the
difference between buy now or realistically buy now pay later. You
were saying BNPL is like super common.
>> Yeah. I mean, since I I grew up, this is just regular adulting, the way you buy
stuff. In Brazil, that's like common. You can even like do it with your lunch.
>> Are the interest rates lower maybe then? >> So, that's a tricky thing. Usually they
say you don't get any interest in those purchases. However, if you buy anything
full price, you get 10% off. >> Oh, so it's like halal mortgages where
it's like, oh, you're not paying interest. You just pay a fee.
>> Yeah, that's the only way you can buy, you know, a fridge or do anything,
right? You need to buy installments. >> All right. Now, it's time for you to installments some RAM.
>> Oo, no pressure, right? No pressure. >> No, no, you'll need some pressure.
[laughter] >> There we go. >> Nice. At my very limited budget, even
though this would more than double my memory bandwidth, I'm still going to see
if I can get away without it. And let's move on to our storage. We're both using
the Kingston NV2. We didn't order any storage from Brazil, but Kingston's a
big brand there. Now, it's time to talk case and cooling. And once again, you
get way better stuff than me. Another
super frame part. This time, it's actually a really compelling looking
case for the equivalent of $85.
Not to mention glass. It's not even
acrylic. Then you got this 360 mm also
RGB AIO cooler for just $55.
>> I want I want it for me. >> Does it have enough sauce? [laughter]
>> No. Yeah. Enough sauce. Enough sauce on this one. >> All right. You want to get started on
that? >> Well, I show them what I ended up with.
Meet the Gamer Ninja eraser for $29.7.
What makes this eraser? Well, let me
tell you. First, it erased how much money I had to spend because this case,
not to mention my Gambia Borious heat sink cost less than just Ricardo's
cooler. And I haven't even shown you guys the best part yet. It has an LED
switch on the front that changes the color of the lighting behind this
included doodle board. How long's this chalk marker been sitting? Reminds
>> of college, right? Oh man. No.
>> I'll keep you in here along with all my other PC building stuff. Brilliant. Oh,
there they are. These are all my SSDs for the Linux challenge. I thought I
lost them. Right. Tech sack. So many pockets. Just don't lose things in it.
How you doing over here? >> Well, I'm going to need your help. [laughter] >> Okay, fair.
>> I'm a Mac user. >> Here's what you're going to do. This
right here. Just like that. Boom. Meanwhile, in Lionus land, I don't even
know if these are comp. Oh yeah. Okay. >> There we go. Okay. So, you can do it
just like that. >> You got your own syringe though. You get a fancier one than me.
>> Oh, that's lots. >> That's a lot. >> Oh, yeah. Okay, >> you're good. That's perfect. Okay. Yep.
Oh, >> I've never done this before, man. You got to tell me. >> Okay. So, is that is that in? Did you do
it? >> Yeah, I got it. But I don't know what are the next steps. I need to attach
this guy, I assume. >> Yeah, let's do that. >> So, I just need to glue this guy on top
of the processor. >> Okay, sure. Yeah, the thermal paste.
>> How would you say that? Contact those two. [music] I don't know. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just put it put it
on there. >> Okay. And then I put this guy right there. >> Yep. Trying to glue stuff over there.
Okay. I'm going to put this in. It'll be exciting.
Oh, let's talk about the power supply.
Normally, we kind of gloss over the power supply because for your popular
North American brands, they're pretty much all going to be at least [music]
good enough. So, your choice pretty much comes down to how much do you want to
spend on extras like modular cables or
super high efficiency ratings. This time, I actually don't recognize either
my BRX 650 watt or Ricardo's Dux Pulse 800
watt. So, I felt it would be a really good idea to get our Labs team to take a
closer look at these before we use them.
Lionus' unit is a pretty inexpensive option, and in our testing, it couldn't
sustain anywhere near its rated 650 watt output, capping out around 400 watts
instead. As for Ricardo's Dux Pulse, it's more than double the price, and
while it isn't a top performer, it should comfortably do what it says on the box. In our brownout test, both of
these power supplies turned off lower than the standard and recommended 12 to
16 [music] millconds we typically see. We also looked at the voltage regulation
and voltage ripple results, and you can find those in the LT Labs companion
article linked below. >> Okay, what do I do with a modular cable? What is it good for?
>> One benefit is you only use the cables that you want. So, you don't have to
have any extras. So, it can look a little bit tidier, but I can understand
how for a lot of people that might not be that big of a deal. >> That's not bad at all. Some of the PSUs
I shot for Labs, they have all the cables attached and it's so cumbersome
to move around. And I can see the benefit for sure. >> Well, that's going to be me because I
did not get a modular power supply. >> Sorry. >> I also paid less than half as much as
you did, though. So, uh Cardo is doing pretty good over here, though. Can I
help you? >> Yeah, of course, please. There you go. This way. Okay. Gotcha.
>> Yeah. So, we pull that fresh air in from the outside. >> Sorry about these ones. And then how do
you usually go? Do you do go like underneath? >> You go however look sauce to you.
>> Oh, now look at that. So clean.
>> So fresh. So clean. >> This is like a perfectly chromulent
modern motherboard. But I guess the budget is just the problem.
>> We have rich people in Brazil be able to afford these.
>> Fair enough. >> Yeah. But like the regular Joe, he'll have trouble. It's nice to have cable
management loops in even such a budgetoriented case, but I got to say,
did they have to put all of the loops right in front of the pass through
holes? So, they're like right there. Also, this is a rookie power supply
manufacturer mistake. Why is the sticker upside down? Super Frame makes another
triumphant appearance here. Epic
graphics card special edition. While we
could spend another $100 on an RTX50 for
a more up-to-date [music] feature set, this is already a ton of money to spend,
and that 50/50 might not perform as much
betterer compared to this as you might think. See, for starters, the raw
performance uplift over the last couple of generations has not been as much as
gamers were used to seeing in the past. And for another thing, the 50/50 uses
only eight PCIe lanes, half as many as
the 3060. If we were putting it in a modern system, that doesn't really
matter because those eight lanes on the 50/50 are so much faster. But if you're
using an older motherboard, your GPU is
going to fall back to the older speed for its lanes. So, the fact that it only
has eight of them and they're going to be operating at a quarter of the speed
that that GPU expects means that you can run into performance bottlenecks.
Meanwhile, the 3060, it's Gen 4 and it's
going in a Gen 3 board, but at least it has 16 Gen 4 lanes, so it's getting half
the speed it expects as opposed to a quarter. Meanwhile,
for my system, I get a Radeon RX 580
from 2017. This is the card that doesn't end. Yes,
it goes on and on, my friends. While
it's almost 10 years old, it can still play many of the titles that are popular
in Brazil, like League of Legends and even Valerant with some asterisks. It is
worth noting that we went with the 8 gigs of VRAM version. Yes, I know. Well,
thank you, Tech Media. 8 gigs is not enough for 2026, but listen, when the
other option is 4 gigs, we take [music] the 8 gigs. Fun fact, one of the reasons
that these are so commonly available is that these cards, especially the 8 gig
versions, were extremely popular with crypto miners. Those GPUs and uh that
rea's been through some stuff. Can't speak to the reliability, but still a
perfectly chromulent gaming card. Hey, nice. Not bad.
>> Not bad. >> Once again, all this goes back there, though. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> So, a little bit better. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's good. It's good. You just
built a computer. >> Oh, my first PC.
>> It's the PC building World Cup. >> Yeah, >> Brazil won. [laughter]
>> Well, that's the only thing that we're going to win because the Yeah, the soccer team.
>> What are the odds this turns on the first time?
>> Come on. One thing the Brazilians have is faith. So, you got to be a bit
Brazilian here now. >> Okay. All right. I believe. Let's hook
these things up. Oh, we have some more stuff, though. We have monitors. I
assume this one's yours. >> Ah, come on. H Yeah, he gets the super
frame. He always gets the super frame.
What's up with that? >> I'm the guest. >> 1440p
180 Hz IPS panel for 130 bucks.
>> Not bad. >> Not bad. I mean, as long as you're
making North American income, I guess that would be very expensive in Brazil,
I assume. Wow. This has a lot of inputs
for a budget monitor. Two HDMIs and two
DPS. >> Don't break my monitor.
>> Well, I'll leave you to do that and I'm gonna assemble mine.
>> Now that's glossy. That looks so sad next to yours.
>> Ooh. Yeah, maybe. I guess size does matter, right?
>> It even has a really small vasa pattern. It has no DisplayPort and no DVI. only
has VGA and HDMI. And it's especially
funny because HDMI is the one that costs more to implement on your product. But
if you're going to have just one All right,
75 Hz. That looks decent,
>> right? >> Yeah. You've obviously got some upscaling on. And honestly, it looks
like you might even have a little bit of frame gen on. In terms of the experience
of gaming on that versus what I'm about to do here, >> this is decent for sure. [snorts]
Oh my. Okay. >> Oh jeez, that looks bad. You barely have
any shadows on that one. >> Listen, Mac guy, how many shadows does
your Mac have? Fair enough. Oh wow, I am
not getting that many fewer FPS compared to Ricardo, but my game is running at a
lower resolution and much lower details.
This looks like low everything.
low everything and image sharpening and
FSR upscaling. >> There's not a lot of NPC. Is that due to
the power of the computer or no? >> No, you just are in the middle of
nowhere. Super resolution. [music] No frame gen. Wow. Okay,
>> you can do that. >> You've even got ray tracing on. That is
pretty darn impressive. RTX 3060. Still
a D card. Hey, if we're being real though, my system was never designed to
handle Cyberpunk. Why don't we try something a little more esportsy? 12
cores only at 2.2 GHz, but damn, 12
cores. >> I've definitely sold that processor for like 1,500 bucks in servers before.
>> Check out this keyboard,
[laughter] >> man. I can barely tell the difference between T's and CTS with how bad the
color is on this display. It's unbelievable. Did what the Come on, man.
Actually leg killed. That was not my fault.
Oh my god. That was my fault. Oh, it's so Oh, it's so hitchy.
Hitch, please. I'm only getting like 60
FPS. He's getting triple my average FPS
and almost quadruple my 1% lows. That
makes for a much better gaming experience. Oh no.
Do you see that? How it's not tracking what I'm doing at all?
Yeah, fast movements. It's losing it. >> See it? Yeah,
>> mine it doesn't even matter whether I'm moving fast. This is brutal. So, what I
thought was actually the system lagging sometimes is just the mouse losing
tracking so I don't turn. This is so frustrating trying to play with this. A
better mouse would solve a lot of my issues right now though. Like 60 FPS,
75, 100 FPS. That's playable. Very
playable. And I'm dead.
Okay. >> Okay. Exactly. Not great, but okay. And
maybe that's okay. Sometimes you just got to work with what the piggy bank
allows. And both of these PCs delivered a pretty playable experience considering
the budget that we had to work with. Yes, Ricardo's performs anywhere from
two to four times better, but it also cost about three times as much. And
considering the policies that Brazilians have to work around, you got to admire
the tenacity and the the the can do spirit and the uh what's the the word
that the visitor told me? >> Gambia.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, with all context of all of that, it makes sense why these parts
were recommended. I can't say that I would necessarily recommend these parts
if you're living in North America, at least not at the moment. But hey, who
knows? If uh US policies keep tracking the direction they're going, maybe we're
going to end up in a similar situation.
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PCs also exist in North America. And while some of them are similar, like
these uh old Xeon combos, some of them look a fair bit different than what's
being thrown together in Brazil. Don't believe me? Well, I challenged four tech
YouTubers to build a PC for under $1,000. And you guys can check out what
they ended up with. Where does the video