Modded Gaming PC Challenge - Scrapyard Wars Season 4 - Episode 3
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
5,400 words · ~27 min read
0:00
all right so you guys pretty much know how this works at this point it is time
0:03
again for scrapyard Wars but we're throwing a wrench into the rules once
0:08
more we're going to have a bigger budget $900 per team and because that gives us
0:13
enough money to build something that not only performs well but also looks good
0:17
we've brought in BS mods professional computer modders extraordinaire to lend
0:22
both me and Luca hand so a Welcome to our guests Bob and Rod and without
0:27
further Ado let's get started SC
0:35
so we're ready to call him back um we're a little late actually yeah it's
0:39
2:25 um do this can I have your phone oh
0:44
wait no you called them with Brandon's phone okay Brandon can I have your you're not going to like this text
0:49
what hey got a reply from the other guy he says he's willing to pay the full 400
0:55
so I'm going to have to take his offer sorry what whoa hold on no we just won
1:00
the lottery I do however have an XFX
1:03
reference cooler cooled card I can sell you for
1:07
260 up to you why didn't he tell us that in the first place that when we were
1:11
like begging for a better deal done deal
1:15
that fits better in our
1:19
budget dude you're a fast texter name the time and
1:25
place that is awesome so I wonder if his brother has that though cuz I hope so
1:30
remember the thing was is that his brother was dealing with it and whatever
1:34
oh I hope so we want to get it
1:38
today um cuz that card performs almost
1:42
identically so and the so so we just got extra money in our
1:47
pocket yeah if that's I'm getting a CPU Cooler or you can have more modding crap
1:52
whatever you know no I mean we're pretty good other than that is great okay well
1:57
let's let's enjoy our food knowing that we may have just pulled this out of the
2:01
fire I feel really good about our
2:04
computer hardware um a year ago when we
2:07
did the first scrapyard Wars I might not have felt as good about what we got for
2:12
our money but quite frankly with how
2:16
competitive the used Market seems to have gotten I mean we ended up buying
2:20
from someone whose entire job it is to scavenge used stuff assemble it into
2:24
systems and sell it and that combined with the way the Canadian dollar has
2:28
tanked I feel really good about what we
2:31
got considering the market conditions I think Luke and Rod are going to have a
2:37
hard time matching the RW speec of our system okay so what are you planning for
2:41
the lighting then um it's going to start dragging
2:45
everything out here well we don't all we
2:49
have right now is just that one case vanan that's a blue LED and that's not
2:53
really going to be enough yeah but we um okay well now we can probably afford a
2:58
water cooler you found the cooler 920 for what was
3:02
it uh what was it like 50 bucks 50 bucks
3:05
or best offer so we might get it for Less I think that one comes with two fans so right now we got a 120 and a 140
3:11
with this yep so honestly the blue LED
3:14
fan is kind of the odd man out but one of the categories is lighting so we
3:20
can't abandon it so I have LED strip
3:24
lighting in my toolbox oh okay and it
3:30
would definitely light up the whole case like it's like a whole kit so it would
3:33
do the whole case really bright we really needed to spend at least another
3:38
couple hours on Aesthetics today we burned over 3 hours just driving it
3:45
really hurt what I think we're going to be able to deliver in the aesthetic
3:49
Department hopefully Bob can prove me wrong tomorrow but right now I'm pretty
3:56
worried so they look kind of like that and for close up it looks like
4:02
they oh yeah so if we had like a rusted can so if we rusted can chopped it like
4:09
here so that we just had the stick and none of this crap and then like strapped
4:15
a rusted can it's having some Thunder sticks would they do stick tall off the
4:19
off the machines too they going tall off
4:23
the chassis might not be bad either but yeah I think if we totally we
4:28
got to ditch the top this the top so if we cut if we cut here where there's a
4:33
nice hopefully I don't work with bamboo a nice inside we can use a screw like
4:39
put a plug piece in of something and then we can cover the this looks like
4:43
bamboo Parts with some strapping or tape or whatever yeah all right I'm going to
4:47
start trying to get through that okay I just heard back from the guy's brother
4:51
he says it's okay to meet at 6:30 nice perfect 6:30 yeah oh that's even better
4:56
yeah that's half an hour better yeah uh he says he can come home earlier if we
5:00
need to meet up earlier but I don't even know if we're going to be done here time to yeah what time is it right now it's
5:05
3:15 uh I'm going to ask where he's located okay so I'll find that out
5:10
either way we're in good shape we're going to have a video card which is better than not having a video card um
5:15
and then I'm waiting on the cooler so we should get an answer back so hopefully
5:19
direct me show me what to do while you do other more important things I was
5:22
actually trying to figure out what I could get lonus to start doing that
5:26
would uh not get either one of us hurt so we're all stried down so uh one last
5:32
thing I think we want to do is pull out pull out the hard drive cage right
5:37
here okay um because we can just open up this space it's not really needed since
5:41
we only have one SSD we can just use like double back tape or something and
5:45
stick it somewhere yeah there we go that's perfect so um okay um so this can
5:51
be gone okay the optical Bay we got to leave because it's part of the instru
5:56
the structural Integrity of the case itself for keeping it from bending and
6:01
so I just got to drill out some Ribbit so yeah it looks like um if you go to
6:05
the bottom here you got those you got these two here um and then those two
6:10
there do you want to do that and have me cut out the window you better cut the
6:14
window I would do such a crappy job of the window you want me to do at the same
6:18
time yeah yeah yeah go go H all right
6:21
yeah we're going to we got to make the best use of the labor that we have right now because we have used a lot of time
6:26
on Hardware
6:35
how freaking badass is
6:43
that we need to get a Le we can grab we can have our initials
6:48
on this guy will go right like
6:55
this uh we started actually working on the aesthetic stuff I did worry a little
6:58
bit about overall all time uh but Rod is really fast and if he gives me something
7:04
that I can actually work on I can hopefully be pretty fast so I think
7:08
we're going to be able to pull it together it fit yep I think we should win purely on the
7:13
fact that uh you know their computer is not going to be as explosive as ours our
7:18
computer is definitely going to be dangerous whether it's our computer
7:22
could literally kill their computer right and our own right it probably will
7:28
and and the building yeah so much for L Tech tips yeah so they should probably
7:33
let us win it was a good run we're like the wook and they W get that reference
7:39
all right there we go how do you turn it
7:48
on what I don't know how to turn it on
7:52
this little this whole thing but you have to push this little
7:58
tab
8:03
that's not I don't think that changes anything right really then I have to use
8:07
it like this it sounds ridiculous yeah that does sound for it not to F throw
8:11
sparks don't you yeah like
8:15
thanks I don't even care that much so I would probably be like this soide it
8:21
stand yeah I think that's the thing my elbow all
8:28
right
8:39
I didn't breathe that whole
8:42
time nice I'm sure this sounds super
8:46
dope through the mic sure that just sounds
8:51
great we've uh we' figured actually out a fair amount of things I'm pretty happy
8:56
with today's progress uh we still have some stuff we need to acquire which is
9:00
becoming a problem over time but the aesthetic stuff I think is really coming
9:04
along I think we have just about every element of design in our case uh on in
9:09
progress yeah so um yeah finish the S
9:14
tomorrow and drop some Hardware in um I'm a little worried about the cables on
9:17
that power supply like I was thinking about you know what we can do with this acrylic on the way over here and they're
9:23
just going to be ugly there's there's there's things we can do so we can cover
9:28
them were you saying we can you weren't sure if we had enough acrylic for the
9:32
back panel but I think we do I think we got
9:35
lots we can got the power supply and we
9:39
can actually snip back any wires we don't need that's true we can snip those
9:43
off get those out of the way so that eliminates that then anything that's
9:46
left um if there's any way we could put
9:50
something over them I don't care if we use a sock or something just to put like
9:55
better whatever and you know you can try
9:58
to paint the wires themselves but as soon as you spray them with spray paint
10:03
you're going to have a chemical reaction and they're just going to get gooey so the insulation on the wiring is going to
10:07
just turn gooey on you now if you didn't touch it it might look okay from
10:12
afar so it's something we probably don't want
10:17
to do but um okay I'm going to start by tearing down the power supply then okay
10:22
yeah and then we can we can snip anything back yeah I'll have this done
10:25
in about 5 minutes so okay all right
10:28
sorry who you hear back okay so this is a CPU Cooler guy yeah so uh he says yes
10:34
it works with for and as well as as well
10:39
as in oh I can't oh yes it works for get okay so I live
10:46
close to Joyce station okay that's actually pretty close to where we need
10:49
to go for the video card anyway okay so if it's for just about 4:30 right now so
10:55
should I tell him a time and say can we meet up at like whatever time let me let
11:01
me get a closer let me get a closer ETA for you but yeah we should be able to
11:04
make it part of the same trip did I think too let's do blue and
11:07
silver on it we'll do a design actually dude since we're going to do like racing
11:12
stripes or whatever on here like uh let's put a racing stripe on that power
11:17
supply racing stripe done that'll be K
11:21
racing stripe too or is that overdo no you know what that's Bingo that's
11:25
exactly what we need to do okay so if we carry the theme so if we go RAC and
11:29
stripe on the outside RAC and stripe on the power supply RAC and stripe on the
11:33
SSD it ties it all together super easy
11:36
this kid wants what 50 bucks for that thing or whatever so and I'm sure we
11:41
could probably get it for 40 okay so
11:44
just let me do the
11:58
talking
12:02
a lot of laughing going on we'll see how much you guys are giggling when you lose
12:06
yeah
12:11
no we need that
12:16
okay I mean is it really a surprise when I'm Victorious though do you mean with
12:21
or without cheating like you know is it
12:24
you've been following me this whole time do I seem like the kind of person who
12:27
would cheat uh wow so there's going to be our
12:33
window nice I like the blue color yeah
12:37
we just leave the plastic
12:42
on oh my God it's 5:00 is it really holy
12:46
crap okay time flies man mine is speaking oh
12:52
okay you know what I've actually tracked down most of what I need I think but do
12:57
you have any CPU coolers
13:01
see see how he comes straight over here instead of going over to the other team
13:06
I don't know it wasn't trying to get me to come over there that's the Loyalty he
13:09
was kind of just like that's the right
13:16
there what do you mean what's so cool about it it's cool and awesome I don't
13:20
even know what I'm looking at I'll get out of here actually what am I looking at trust
13:25
me it'll be awesome we can't tell you that okay looks good would you go pick
13:29
this up yeah that's great huh yeah yeah we're going for a rustic uh abandoned uh
13:35
you know Woodyard type nice looks good
13:38
done a wood case before I actually did a case out of uh old crappy pallet
13:46
wood okay look at that dude that's going
13:49
to be so awesome once that's
13:52
painted bam okay everything left is
13:56
going to be like a I hope that paint
13:59
will work over plastic on its own I
14:02
believe it does so we have to or cut around or
14:07
something but yep all right rock on can you wet
14:12
sand with alcohol no um just want to use
14:15
water that will be
14:21
awesome
14:28
ouch
14:32
shoot we have to go it's 5:45 crap we're
14:36
going to have to leave this sitting just like this yeah we got I mean we definitely got to get this stuff okay so
14:41
our UTA is saying we're going to be about 11 minutes late for our rendevu
14:45
with the video card guy but there's another wrench in the plan we are out of
14:50
gas so I'm going to have to stop
14:53
somewhere on the
14:56
way we're going to have to message him and let let them know that we're running
14:59
about 15 minutes late which should still be okay but we're
15:05
going to have to let the then we're going to have to let the uh the CPU
15:09
Cooler guy know yeah I was just going to Scrapyard Wars will return after this
15:14
message from our sponsor this episode of scrapyard Wars is brought to you by
15:18
dbrand makers of the Precision Cut vinyl skins that you see on the phones and
15:23
laptops of the contestants they may not be bulletproof but they look really cool
15:28
try out their configurator at dbrand.com Linked In the video
15:32
description
15:35
shoot do we have enough time to finish this mod
15:41
Bob um when's it got to be done end of
15:44
day tomorrow 5:30 tomorrow yep we'll be done on oh crap
15:52
okay we've got a 3D 3D program running
15:56
all right let's uh let's do this thing
15:59
and mosy we've got our video
16:03
card we still have 23 minutes before we
16:09
have to wrap up for the day and all that's left is to meet up with the guy
16:14
who has our CPU Cooler we're getting an antec cooler 920 that's an all-in-one
16:19
liquid cooler and we have all of our
16:22
Hardware ready to go at that point so we
16:25
got to head back to the office and tomorrow
16:29
we have the whole day to build which Bob
16:32
insists is going to be enough and we are going to finish but I do not share his
16:39
confidence okay so what did we say 40
16:43
yep so I'm did he ever confirm that no
16:47
but that's what he's getting is 40 bucks okay so if you're going to be that
16:52
guy then you're going to be that guy I tell you what I'm I'll give you I'll
16:55
give you the I'll give you the 10 to have in your back pocket it's not
17:00
necessary so you're getting it for
17:03
40 all right on hey I'm Bob hey nice to
17:06
meet you hi hi oh hi did you get our
17:10
message yes so is 40 bucks going to work for you oh sure cool awesome all right
17:15
oh I actually have okay cool oh it's
17:19
okay I'm yeah I'm familiar with uh buying Hardware on the street corner you
17:22
know yes everything's here everything's good to go let's pay the man and we are
17:28
we are four 4 minutes to the deadline thank you okay thank you okay let's take
17:35
our let's take our water cooler our Ace in theole water cooler that we're going
17:38
to overclock our 2500k with and uh yeah
17:43
that's the last piece of the puzzle that's the last piece of the puzzle we have everything we need mission
17:47
accomplished yes Friends mission accomplished all the
17:52
hardware I think well we're 1 minute
17:55
from pencil's downtime today and we are done we are
18:02
done actually on ncx I found some ssds
18:06
that were just as cheap as they are on Craigslist so people need to figure out
18:10
and start selling used things at discounts and not be and try to sell
18:14
them at full price I am cutting out our front panel
18:19
to fit our sweet gauges so we want this
18:23
to drop flush so it's not interfering with like our torch um there's a guy
18:29
with a 240 GB v300 for 80 bucks which is
18:34
still available we've got an 840
18:38
Evo which is still available which is 90
18:42
bucks and it's a 250 gig and then the power supply we've got for
18:51
$45 the energy Hazard inside sticker
18:55
which actually might have been a good idea to keep on because you know fire is
18:58
like type of energy thermal energy maybe
19:02
should left it but I think for the aesthetic it's better with the
19:05
warnings fire is all the you
19:09
need it's kind of true fire is all the warning you
19:15
need these were the ones that were only $4.99 yeah but if you had two more of
19:20
these caps you could drill the caps and
19:23
a case foot I'm getting everything cleaned on
19:27
the case for paint to it here right you can't have any dust oils fingerprints
19:33
grease sticker goo the thing is if there's still a little grimy it's
19:37
probably okay but I don't want them to be like
19:45
disgusting well lonus might be fine claiming that he needs to build the
19:50
computer for a uh immigrant girls
19:53
orphanage for the challenged and elderly
19:57
um I kind of feel feel bad when I haggle people because like I don't need to save
20:03
$5 on a power supply but for the contest I do but
20:09
like especially like if I was like 15
20:12
and trying to sell my power Suppy so I could buy a new computer component like
20:16
that five bucks is actually pretty impactful so like it's pretty to haggle
20:21
with people and then like I kind of feel like I should hide
20:25
my car when I drive up cuz like
20:29
oh yeah I drive like a relatively new car and I really need that five bucks
20:33
off that power supply that's so much with like one bolt so we maybe we have
20:38
to put I got enough room I could put a wood block and screw it in this way too
20:43
and then come all the way through long screws all
20:47
right
20:55
top okay so we want to allow our piston
21:00
Rod to go together but they've got an extra lip right here where they connect
21:06
the crankshaft so I'm going to come in and take this extra e in of probably
21:10
pretty hard casting off
21:20
it there you go hot
21:25
metal we'll shoot this really quick just some nice light
21:52
so we got some uh Stone accent paint it's black with a little bit of uh kind
21:57
of a brown in it and we've kind of done an overall Brown texture coat kind of to
22:02
emulate rust and harsh conditions so I
22:05
want to throw some accents onto it with the darker color so I'm just going to
22:09
throw some streaks like right across
22:13
it and uh so now it looks like it's really been
22:18
around for a few years which it has it's pretty old chassis plan today is to get
22:23
the system hopefully get a power supply and SSD and do everything we possibly
22:27
can in in terms of Aesthetics I'm not sure we're going to get to 100% in terms
22:31
of Aesthetics but we'll get as much as we can so we're picking up a power
22:35
supply at 330 it's currently 110 um I'm trying
22:41
to get on the laptop so I can figure out
22:44
when we're picking up the SSD and the
22:48
system the guy said and I quote later
22:53
I'm at work around noon I will text you when I'm there and ready I have to take
22:57
care of some shipping this morning first so it's 1:0 now he
23:01
hasn't messaged me yet little bit worried about that I've tracked down two
23:06
more tiki torches well technically 61
23:09
more tiki torches but we only need two and we can use the caps on there as feet
23:13
for the case so we might end up going to
23:17
get those but I'm getting a little bit worried about the component stuff I've
23:20
got an email from one of the guys apparently the SSD guy can meet us
23:24
around two or three so that's good
23:27
actually we'll try to miss him so I'm trying to schedule things out
23:31
so we can most optimize our time in the workshop um the system guy wants us to
23:36
pick it up relatively soon he doesn't really have a Time power supply guy
23:40
wants us to pick it up at 3:30 and the SSD guy wants to either deliver or have
23:45
us pick it up or I'm still trying to figure that out from 2:00 to 3:00 so I'm
23:50
hoping to line it up so that we either get the SSD or uh receive the SSD or go
23:56
get the SSD at like 230 is and then go
23:59
get the system for 3:00ish and then get the power supply for 3:30ish and be back
24:05
here by hopefully 4 and then keep working we still have an hour of flux
24:08
time from last night possibly an hour and a half considering they went half an
24:12
hour over but we'll have to grill them about that
24:15
later okay so here we are day three
24:19
we've got to be finished our build at the end of the day and um I think uh Bob
24:25
went out to dinner with the Enemy last night and got potentially some
24:29
useful Intel they didn't like come out and say anything obviously because they
24:33
didn't want me to know what was going on but they were trying to do the whole
24:36
code speak thing you know and but they
24:40
had to show each other some texting and whatever so what I gather from that is
24:45
that they don't have all their Hardware
24:49
yet so they actually had somebody
24:52
deliver something here to the shop for them last night they are still in need
24:57
of something and what I could get from the code speak is that they were
25:05
uh not sure that their deal was going to go through or not even and so they were
25:09
going to have to scramble to find something else meanwhile we've got the
25:12
heat cranked in the warehouse to uh speed up our paint drawing times and we
25:17
are pretty much ready to get rock in here okay um so one thing I do want to
25:24
do is get that Hardware fired up at some point here this one's ready Maybe
25:28
actually see it won't take you too long to bench stuff right H it'll take me a
25:33
while yeah if you want to do that I'll go ahead and just handle all this stuff
25:36
for now and then we'll
25:41
regroup so I was pretty nervous about us not being in paint yet uh last night but
25:47
we're hitting the paint booth first and I still hear metal fabrication sounds
25:51
over there so we've got all our hardware and we've got our fabrication done we're
25:55
in paint I'm feeling pretty good about where we're sitting right now
25:59
so um basically this is like I just I
26:02
need something to set stuff on when I paint it so this is just a quick and
26:07
dirty little stand out of some
26:12
cardboard we have a Samsung SSD right which means we can install
26:18
Samsung's SSD magician software to
26:22
utilize RAM as a cash now the
26:26
unfortunate thing is we don't have a lot of RAM in our system but we still have
26:31
$60 so if I can find a deal on another 8 gigs of RAM I might want to get it
26:36
today I gave you 20 yesterday so don't mess up our budget yeah I still owe you
26:41
20 right okay okay so I have 40 bucks I
26:44
have $43 people are asking about 50 for
26:48
8 gigs of DDR3 so I would have to spend
26:51
effectively everything you'd be left with
26:54
$22.75 again for the rest of your mod do
26:57
you need need anything else the only thing I'm concerned about
27:02
is paint should we need one more can of
27:06
paint so if I could offer okay here's another thing I got a guy who's made an
27:10
offer on the antech case oh yeah yeah yeah um should I take the offer on the
27:14
antech case even though that's kind of gray which gives us another 15 bucks or
27:19
10 10 bucks 10 bucks well I mean that's another kind of paint if we need it I
27:23
don't know that it's worth the risk of the paint and then the time we're going to lose tracking the hardware down
27:27
because we actually do have quite a bit to do and we got to allow for drying
27:31
times just because I can get it painted yeah okay and we got to go we don't know
27:35
how long it's going to take yeah and then that pulls me away okay I'll you
27:39
know what if he's down the road and he'll take 35 bucks or something and I
27:42
can get the antech case done then I'm going to try he wants how much 50 he
27:46
wants 50 I don't think he's going to take 35 but we'll see I got a lead on
27:52
our case I told the guy I got someone coming tonight so if he doesn't come get
27:56
it today he can't have it and then I've got a couple people asking 50 bucks for
28:00
8 gigs of RAM one of which actually has identical RAM here's a listing for
28:05
40 maybe I can offer this guy uh maybe I
28:09
can offer this guy 30 oh this one's close wait is
28:15
it oh this one's close this one's like a
28:19
10-minute Drive okay well that that came loose
28:23
eventually ew there's some there's some stuff in here
28:28
you can see there's like yellow gunk
28:32
let's get this shoddy tubing off here
28:35
replaced by some real tubing
28:40
fantastic come on I was right about the
28:44
water having evaporated from this thing it's completely full of
28:48
Gunk what are we going to do no wonder
28:51
when I tried to dump out the rat it wasn't going it's totally clogged
28:57
up now what I hope is that it's just here
29:00
in the barbs or something let's go see
29:03
if it's my Fork I guess no one can really get mad at me
29:10
right okay there we go and we're getting water out now that we've unclogged it
29:15
look at this there's freaking pebbles in my
29:19
radiator this side is still not clear
29:22
I'm sure Bob won't mind me using his uh Allen key set to do
29:27
this
29:32
good thing I was planning to take this apart cuz if I had found out during
29:35
final assembly that our water cooler didn't work and it was completely
29:41
clogged like no amount of turning it off
29:45
and turning it back on again was going to fix that Bob you ready we uh got to
29:49
leave 1 minute ago okay you ready let's do it all right let's go I'll grab my
29:55
food find my phone we're doing Linus's
29:58
OCD things now where Linus really feels
30:02
like a modern system with a 2500k and an r9290 should really have 16 gigs of RAM
30:08
not 8 gigs of RAM we're spending pretty much the rest of our budget on another 8
30:12
gigs of RAM where are we out on painting we are doing actually pretty good really
30:17
so the let's see I have a few small
30:21
misscellaneous things completely done I
30:25
have all the fabrication is 100% % done okay um
30:31
they're still fabricating I just have to sand all the parts and just start
30:36
blasting them with paint we're literally like flying through this section of the
30:40
paint stuff there you are please count them I I feel more comfortable if other
30:45
people verify my counting 15 205 30 all
30:50
right all right as long as you're doing business with you thank you very much we
30:54
got a competition to win so uh so Bob
30:58
final count after I paid back the 20 bucks I borrowed from you yesterday is
31:04
$5.70 I got to say I'm feeling pretty damn confident about the modding part I
31:10
really am because I think with smoothing out the insides and everything and just
31:16
going with a good silver color and then whatever we do for some accents man I
31:20
feel pretty good it's it's hard to beat that I think we're going to have
31:26
it