so there are a lot of great reasons to use a test bench instead of a
conventional case uh let's say for example you
like the look or maybe you swap your hardware out
really frequently or i mean those are really the main reasons
that you might want to do it anyway we use tons of them here at Linus media group because we're constantly
benchmarking graphics cards cpus coolers all sorts of things basically all of our
writers have one or even two or three test benches in the case of Anthony
but as you guys might know
money's been a little tight around here ever since i broke that xeon platinum
CPU so we needed some new test benches but
we didn't have the funds for these open bench tables that we like so much
enter aliexpress where we got this test bench
for how much uh was actually a little bit under 30
how bad could it be
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so the open bench table here is pretty much what we consider to be the gold
standard in test benches it does have some drawbacks for example their
radiator mounting could be vastly improved
but it's completely tool-less it's really easy to access it folds
completely flat and it fits pretty much all the hardware that you could want for
95 of the testing that you'd want to do without any restricted ability to get at
things or any restrictions in terms of cooling the problem is that how much do
these ones cost uh 200 200 it's a lot of
shekels so we've got a static safe packing foam
in here not that i'm too concerned about any of these things being sensitive to
static we've got some instructions that are
chinese only but fairly pictographical so i think we
should be able to figure it out we've got front usb that's a and front audio
that's a nice feature to have for a test bench actually the open bench tables
don't have it no they don't wow remote power button and reset switch
all the included tools and standoffs and
screws and everything not tools that wasn't this i misspoke uh okay we've got
some extruded aluminum uh somethings there's five of them
oh and wow that's it
this is pretty flimsy
okay so uh
that's not the world's finest looking piece of acrylic uh it's very flecked
and i can't fight this peeling anymore
i've forgotten what i started fighting
for see they can't copyright strike me if i'm way off key this is really the uh
the quintessential aliexpress experience here isn't it it's kind of like
aliexpress meets ikea so first up i've got uh the hard drive mounts over here
so evidently the hard drives go in between two of these
kind of something like i'm not sure what the orientation is
yeah it looks like they go like that how you doing um i opened this
upside down and now
really
hold it hold it up okay
damn it Anthony oh my god
the screws are labeled and you get they were numbered
oh this was going to be so easy
you screwed us so this is a spectacular example of
waste not want knot so we've got our our bench here and you can see
they actually cut out the hard drive holders
from the rest of the bench in a spot where the motherboard is gonna
sit on top of it anyway acrylic is actually a much more expensive than
you'd probably think does it make any sense to have the numbers on the top or
the bottom so like i look at this and i'm like oh okay i'll open it up but no it's like
this with this blank piece of whatever it is we'll let the audience be the
judge actually we shouldn't do that they always side against me i don't know what
it is no matter how junior or completely unlikable someone is they always side
with them against me when we leave it up to the audience okay
i'm gonna put another hard drive on here for lulls i want to load this thing up like we'll we'll deck it out we'll put
as much stuff on it as we can or two hard drives and an optical drive
whoa did you see that i opened it up correctly
it wasn't even hard oh wow i just
there's not really as many pieces on this whole thing as i had sort of
expected from looking at the like the diagram are we missing some
this is the light version this is a universal set of instructions
so there's a version that actually comes with uh up to a 240 millimeter radiator
mount as well as the pci express plane there but we got the most basic version
oh i think we did this is where the reputation comes from china it's not
that you're not capable of designing a tool path for this it's just that you
can't be arsed to just go double check this measurement
oh just put a slot you'll be fine how do you misalign your own thing
why is that a slit instead of a hole acrylic isn't one of
those things that dramatically expands or shrinks when you're laser cutting it
so that's pretty cool check that out so we just run these
cables over to our motherboard and boom we've got front i o on our test bench i
mean the thing about a test bench is that accessing the rear i o is usually
as simple as turning it around but still i wouldn't
say no to being able to reach it from both sides oh wait it sure does that's
weird no it does save for the buttons and that was five which you had these
super long ones in for and it doesn't say for the usb one that's not labeled
and for whatever reason this one uses a hole instead of a slot yeah like they
were they were confident on that one so this is actually a cool design for
the button though so it's anchored along the outside here and then there's just
these flexible pieces of acrylic that actuate the button
and that's actually got a pretty decent little click to it cool yeah
that's really neat oh right the holes are bigger you want to come see the big
hole while i put it in hey
this really is not anything special i've gotten some pretty amazing stuff on like
deal extreme for 30 bucks even though we paid 30 bucks on aliexpress this thing
can be had for 16 bucks on cowbell why did we pay 30 dollars for it on
aliexpress because i didn't know it was on tavo wasn't until i followed the
taobao link on that uh that their instruction sheet so we actually bought
rebranded chinese crap
from a rebranded chinese crap marketplace
we're several levels deep right now this is like soulja test bench if it goes
like any more levels deep that is not pretty
so interestingly they've actually removed
the most material for our drive mounts
from the area that has the least support from the feet
this this obviously isn't a thing
but then wait yeah yeah everything goes on the other
side really
okay well back to the drawing board like
we're not we're not missing something here are we i mean we might be but i
don't think so this too is a protective layer hey
so that's good it makes a little more sense now so we can go ahead and put some pci express
doodad jigs on here so these are actually very similar in their design to
our open bench table one just
cheaper and crappier now where does this go there's like these big
gaps between the standoffs and the top here
why okay and then do you know what screws that uses brilliant doesn't say here's
another bizarre one so there's that weird gap and then these holes are
hexagonal instead of round why
are they to distinguish them visually ah
okay hey something makes sense we learned a thing
so the hexagon ones are for the
uh the drive cage things and they can either be three and a half inch or five
and a quarter inch so here's the other two hex ones this one is barely even
in you can see there's a gap here and then there's another set one two three
here three and a half five and a quarter brilliant okay
now i'm just gonna fix that i put the drives in wrong uh
in fairness to it that's
more solid
all right um hold on i got okay i'll get these so put the standoffs where they go
and i'll screw them in from the bottom by the time we go through all this hassle though we could have done it
luke's way why would they put the legs right where the holes are okay at least
they got this aligned correctly
no see if i was learning i would have kicked it
hey that's a legitimate strategy to help
prevent damage i'm not kicking it i'm catching with my feet
look here i'll give you a demonstration
okay so if i were to accidentally drop this cooler if i'm
like oh see look how much of its momentum was arrested before it hit the
ground one more time
here it's fine i'll demonstrate for you again like oh no oh
so once your motherboard's on like this
then you get your power supply and honestly
this is so stupid so it just goes on like that oh
you guys are going to have a full appreciation for this once i tip it back
over
we have to take the board off
in order to mount the cooler because the hard drives go right under where the
CPU socket is and it doesn't even have a cutout anyway
yeah and it's not like it has these uh stock cooler it's a beefy stock cooler
we don't want this for uh like uh
who in the world would buy this wow
just like that sucka you like that i like these more
yeah those are awesome and this doesn't have them well it's about what you'd
expect from just a piece of acrylic it does get some more
structural rigidity from having the motherboard like mounted to it
but not as much as it as we'd want it to have
i mean is this it do we just fire it up at this point
i mean we can if you want to let's do it we need to plug in the front panel there
we go let's see if the reset reset switch
works um
it does technically have a power led in there
so there you have it this is the geek studio
16 test bench as long as you can get it off taobao 30 bucks off aliexpress
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today so thanks for watching guys if you
disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it
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