BEST Value PC Challenge - Scrapyard Wars Season 3 - Episode 4
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,697 words · ~13 min read
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scrapyard
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War this episode of scrapyard Wars was brought to you by
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dbrand so basically the more expensive
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graphics cards might be totally worthwhile even if they don't score as
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many FPS per dollar compared to a low-end
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one you know what the stupidest thing about me screwing up that formula is is
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that's exactly the formula that I used to use when I worked retail computer
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sales to help people understand how you
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know buying something that costs twice as much might effectively give them a
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way better value than if they bought something for half as much like if
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you're buying A1 th000 Computer spending an extra $100 on a graphics card that
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performs 30% better is still 30% more
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performance for 10% more budget in the grand scheme of things but I like forgot
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and the really frustrating thing right now is that even if we hadn't already
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been late to meet this guy twice so I
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feel like I really have to go meet him even if that weren't the
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case I still have to go right now I have
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no time to go and plug some more cards into an updated formula and find out how
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they compare before I have to go meet him now so I basically could end up
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stuck with a $20 paper weight by the end of this I didn't bring my cash it's okay
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it's okay it's okay hello nice meet thank you this is uh
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this is going to really help me a lot
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have money sweet I also have a sweater awesome I couldn't find a t-shirt so
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it's a hoodie that's all right it's even better cool be vot for tur up
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for sweet awesome we just heard back not
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that I'm touching that uh we just heard back from the back alley
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guy I think we've got a lead on a sound card I'm going to offer him like five
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bucks so we need to be in Richmond in an
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hour and it's going to take us about 40 minutes to drive out there so we should
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be good on time and that's pretty much it last thing we're going to have to do
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is go over and pick up some memory which I think inst ex is actually going to be
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the cheapest way there's not a whole lot of like cheap used memory so yeah I feel
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like we're doing really good we just need the graphics card and as long as
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that works and everything should be fine there then we're going to be good so
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let's go
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hey so that's the top slot so everything's good so just got out of
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free geek Vancouver I was pretty worried about that store and that ended up being
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amazing all I need left is a power supply and I've spent
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$280 I should have asked about a power
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supply 700 Watts
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oo some sketchy Brands too good I forgot I needed a power
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supply oh yeah um how much for this guy
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this one is it from one cable can I just put them together from one yeah I can
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just put them together and then it has a I need yeah I need six plus two and I
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need six which it has awesome okay so
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give me one second how much did you say 30 bucks there you go thank you so done
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I guess free geek just cleaned me out for what was it uh
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$130 I got a 550 W power supply a q6600
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a 160 GB hard drive a 775
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motherboard and 8 gigs of RAM so that
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means my final total comes to 180 + 30 so
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210 plus1 $310 so I'm $10 over the
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original scrapyard Wars budget and have a way better
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computer yes okay I keep telling myself I'm just
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going to stop looking I'm going to go back and test the cards but I keep I keep looking
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anyway I mean I just saw a 7990 list listed or a 7970 listed for
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$100 even factoring in my $20 loss on
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that card that's an FPS per dollar of
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almost .4 that would be the
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winner if I can get it and here's something totally stupid here's a 6990
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in Richmond surely this guy doesn't think he's actually going to get $180
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for that so why don't we send a text okay so after the 18-hour drive to where
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are we at right now Richmond Richmond after the 18-hour drive to Richmond give
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ever take 17 hours we're here but we're actually here 20 minutes early so the
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dude lives in one of these apartment buildings over here so I guess we just
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wait for him oh dude there's a Toys R Us over there 20 minutes in Toys R Us hi
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I'm calling about the 6990 you have listed on Craigslist do you still have
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that yeah I do but uh there's a guy is picking up uh this afternoon um if he uh
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doesn't shows up I will give you a how's that um do you know the name of
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the guy picking it up no I don't oh okay
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yeah I think um he's not likely to pick
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up though uh because he's using a
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California numbers so I I don't know it's a froud or or what oh okay um cuz I
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can come like I can come like right now because I I have made uh a promise to
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him so I will wait till two if he doesn't shows up then uh it's yours okay
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uh how much did he offer it's 180 oh okay okay I'd have to
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Fig okay um okay can you can you call me
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at two If he if he doesn't come get it by two sure yeah I will wait like half
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an hour or something like that where are where do you live well I live out in
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Langley so the sooner you can let me know the sooner I can start driving cuz
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I really need it today okay
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yeah yeah I will give you a call okay all right thank you all right thank you
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okay
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bye California
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California okay Austin's number going to
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pick up a 6990 in the
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city city of Richmond he is
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rocking a 6990
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okay interesting scrapyard Wars will be right back after these messages this
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episode of scrapyard Wars is brought to you by dbrand makers of the Precision
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Cut vinyl skins that you'll see on the phones and notebooks of our contestants
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they offer a wide variety of styles and colors and support for the coolest
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devices including the PlayStation 4 Galaxy Note 5 and iPhone 6s protect the
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body of your devices and make them look great at dbrand.com scrapyard Wars so
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we're at the guy's place um he's going to let us test the card the problem is
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is do we film it because I feel super
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sketchy at going to some random guy's house as he's testing a graphics card
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for me and say by the way can we film I don't know what do you think well I
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think our intention is to make a video
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video is very important we should push like we're asking right is it is it
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invion of privacy if we ask hold on but if we say we want to record what happens
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he goes oh well I want twice as much money for the car and we say well we
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don't have a choice record the video no no no but like if he knows like this is
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not just some random couple guys who want to build a computer like what if he decides like he wants to raise the price
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or something I just really don't like recording like people's houses or like
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in I don't like recording in places where people don't like let me which I
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guess well that's why you're asking and we don't have to tell them that we're
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shooting a YouTube video either we can just be like hey uh like can we just
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document this oh I forgot the money wait
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can we catch this that might be a little helpful in buying a graphics
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card so now we know Austin after that
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card part of me wants to snipe it just to totally him but the other part of me
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is actually not even sure if that's that
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great of a card so we can plug this into the formula so $ 6990 out
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$180 would be approximately a 6970 time 2ish so that's
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57 so let's say times 1.8
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those games should scale like pretty well so about
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102 so if he's paying 180 bucks for
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that oh that is a that see that's a better performance index than I'm
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getting
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36 damn it Austin Well if I can snipe it
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I'm going to all right so looks like everything
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works so we're here testing out the 6990 everything looks like it's running great
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on Diablo II so we're pretty much good there um now pretty much all that's left
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for today is we need to go pick up some memory and we'll be good to go so we
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might just have this build ready boom so
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we successfully have an S XFX radon 6990
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this is a huge car look compared to me
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so yeah I think we're looking good right now um so at this point we pretty much
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just need to go to int ex and pick up 4 gigs of RAM which shouldn't be a big
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problem um that's the only kind of slight question right now is how much
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RAM do we actually want to get um so 4
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gigs is going to be a lot cheaper but we might have some stuttering issues I
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think Far Cry 4 is the thing that we're kind of a little worried about right now so it's going to be like do we want to
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go for it or not I kind of want to play
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it a little risky so I think we might go with 4 gig of RAM especially if they end
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up making me pay for tax which I don't want to have to do so but most important
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thing we have an awesome graphics card so we're set
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mostly I've got to say now that we've got this beefy graphics card I'm feeling
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way better at this point we really only need the memory and that should be like
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the easiest thing ever to get so putting
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in work right now especially considering how cheap this was I mean this was like
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a $600 graphics card maybe $700 graphics card just a few years ago we got this
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thing for less than 200 so I don't know
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I feel like if we win this it's going to be because of this card if we lose this
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it's going to be because of this card but I think we're going to win this because of this
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card so we've had a troubling morning we
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got our graphics card that I thought was a great deal turns
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out that according to my corrected
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calculations it was actually not a very good deal and we got some very useful
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Intel on what our competitors are doing so Austin is going high performance and
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he's going dual GPU which I really wish
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I had looked up the 699 I looked up almost every other dual GPU solution
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yesterday by keyword this one's been listed for a month and Austin offered
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asking price he's getting a 6990 for 180
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bucks which by my calculation is going
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to cream me so we're on our way back to the
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office we're going to test what we have
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make sure it's running I am going to do
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some shopping try and find a better graphics card deal and if I can find
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something that'll allow me to eat the $20 I wasted then I will go out and get
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it before I meet the uh the back alley
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guy again at 4 today dude the NX is right there it's right in
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that okay so do you want to drive over there or do you just want to walk it
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what let's go get our memory now dude I'm feeling pretty pumped I really think
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that we're actually doing really good here 8 gigs of RAM is way too that's
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crazy for a scrapyard War system we got crazy it's pretty crazy we got to save
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money dude this is price of performance it's a serious business we got to we got
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to go for the 4 Gig let's see if there's any other 4 gig just in
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case okay
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20 30 five there you go she got the 4 Gig
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stick of the Corsair memory so won't be super fast won't be a ton of memory but
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it should be just enough to get through number is 162 be out okay awesome man
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appreciate it we're
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good root beer all right we have
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officially all of our parts right now so to recap we picked up the case and one
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of our power supplies for $25 this morning we went to a computer shop we
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got our CPU our motherboard we've got
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the heat sink we got another power supply and we got got a hard drive we
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got the graphics card just now and we just picked up the $30 kit of 4 gig
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memory as as on the spot flying it out right here so we have all the parts and
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we bought them all today and everything went pretty well actually it is 238
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right now so not only do we have over 2 hours left but we get to enjoy a
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delicious root beer M well you do you're too cheap to
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get me one oh yeah so I accidentally I just bought this out of the scrapyard
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Wars budget so all the parts we bought plus like $2 for root beer
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oops this tastes pretty sweet though I think it was kind of worth
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it okay I'm a little nervous right
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now there we
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go what is that
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did this guy sell us a dead graphics card
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anyway so the good news is that we found
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a lead on a graphics card that even
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if I have to throw away the $20 I spent
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on this will put me back out ahead or at
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least even with Austin for FPS per
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dollar but I haven't heard from the guy in about half an hour so I'm really
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hoping I hear back soon the bad news is
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our power supply we hoped would work is dead which means that our 400 watt
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backup power supply is only
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borderline capable of even supporting a
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7970 if we get it there's also more bad
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news it looks like our 6850 might
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actually be dead which could also be good news because that gives us $20 back
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in our pocket if we can get a
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refund um I'm liking Austin's chances but never count Luke out I mean he might
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show up with some completely Bizarro thing next time on scrapyard Wars Austin
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gets a tenis shot Luke gets captured by Vikings and lus runs over a dog