Tech Showdown - Candy Battle Pt. 3
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
4,268 words · ~21 min read
0:02
garbage. See, the proper way to prep plastic is to actually uh, you know,
0:08
scuff it up and then use alcohol. So,
0:11
the alcohol gets rid of the oils that are in the
0:16
plastic because the oil is used as a release agent in the molding process. So
0:22
when you try to paint over plastic, it
0:25
doesn't always want to stick very well because of the oils and the alcohol will
0:29
get rid of it. So little tip,
0:36
I think there's like a lot of the areas
0:39
where we're where we will be creative and some of the stuff we bought to be
0:43
creative haven't even been really on camera at all yet. Um, so we want to get
0:47
a super clean battle station, super clean build, and then uh add the
0:53
flourish and like everything that's going to make this thing creative and
0:57
unique. Tech Showdown is brought to you by Synergy 2 in partnership with G-Skill,
1:02
be quiet!, and Cable Mod.
1:06
Synergy 2 makes sharing your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers so
1:10
simple that anyone can use it. Learn more at the link below. So, I'm painting
1:16
the uh case feet right now. So, we're going to do white on the whole case, but
1:20
then we're going to do some accent pieces in in pink. So, some of the mesh
1:24
and different things. So, we thought that pink feet would be kind of a nice
1:28
contrast. So, just getting those painted ahead of time.
1:37
Oh, fish eyes didn't get didn't get prepped very good. Yeah. So, if you
1:42
don't prep something and clean it really good, uh I don't know if you can see it,
1:48
but so the black little spots that you're seeing are what's called fish
1:53
eyes. And so if there's a contaminant on the surface and you try to put paint,
1:58
especially if it's like a oily contaminant, it will separate the paint
2:03
from the surface. And so it leaves what they call a fisheye.
2:10
So, this is the front panel piece. So, what I did was cut it down. Uh, we
2:16
removed the actual door that would go here. And we're just going to make like
2:21
a filler panel to set inside here. So, this was on the front of the actual
2:26
door. And so, I took it off and it just had to be cut down a little bit. Oh my
2:31
god, it's a perfect fit. Okay, we'll
2:35
mount this in here so it's permanent. And then we're gonna have to drill a
2:38
couple holes for our water cooling lines and then some mounting holes for the
2:43
brackets for the reservoir. So our reservoir is going to Oh, I look great
2:47
with it. So our reservoir is going to uh
2:50
sit right here. And so looking at the front of the case, we'll have a
2:53
reservoir on the outside. I do kind of wish that I had gone with a white primer
2:58
if we were going to try and do any vibrant colors. But if we do go ahead
3:02
with chocolate brown for real, then it'll work just fine. That actually
3:06
looks super pro down there. All my parts drying. I mean, okay, super
3:12
pro is probably an exaggeration, but okay. One of these parts is touching the
3:16
saworse leg.
3:20
Okay. Wait, I'm good.
3:24
No, I'm using up all my pegboard. Just trying to find a spot for this to dry.
3:32
So, my power button and my reset button
3:35
are still in here. Um,
3:39
I think I have an idea for how to mask them off, though. The problem is we
3:42
don't have time to do like really tidy masking with, you know, razor blades and
3:46
stuff. We need a piece of tape to cover
3:50
what can't get paint on it. But, I think if I flex this out, then I can slip this
3:55
under it. Actually, you know what? I
3:58
think I'm going to leave the sticky side. Wow, this must be the world's
4:03
crappiest masking tape. Brilliant.
4:08
So, I think what I can do is just stick this in there and
4:13
demonstrate once and for all that there's no problem you can't solve
4:18
by flexing out and sticking it in there.
4:23
Thank you.
4:28
No, it's fine. I can work with this. Cuz that is what Tech Showdown is about.
4:33
Working with what you got in spite of Ed's best efforts to sabotage everything
4:38
you hold dear.
4:45
Can of flat brown? No, no, no, no. Three cans of the um of
4:49
the clear coat. And clear coat. Yeah. And you want three colors of brown
4:52
still? Uh I I think so. Like if we're going,
4:57
you know, shades of chocolate, then uh
5:01
we might as well go shades of chocolate.
5:05
Like I really didn't want to get into the whole like painting thing with this
5:09
project, but these guys have forced our hand a little bit. Like we can't show up
5:14
with a not painted system at this point. Oh man, I am I need Luke to get back
5:19
here with more paint. Holy crap, this painting is taking longer than I had
5:23
hoped. Okay. How long will you be there? Um, I just I'm out of primer.
5:29
The multi-tononality of our color scheme
5:33
is probably the only thing that saves this chocolate idea. So, I need to get
5:38
literally everything taken apart where we
5:42
were pretty screwed. Okay, so I'm officially out of primer, which means I
5:47
have to find something else to do. I'm going to start with the monitor
5:51
disassembly. So, in terms of color scheme for the
5:55
monitor, frankly, I don't have a ton of options. We're going with uh with gold
6:00
and chocolate. So, what I was kind of thinking was
6:07
gold for this thin bezel frame. Then we
6:11
do a brown desktop wallpaper.
6:14
Then we do uh I mean for this standing I
6:18
don't know. Um, like we could go gold
6:23
all the way and then maybe I could mask off like a like a jagged line and we
6:28
could have uh brown come out the bottom or something like that. But I mean,
6:34
every every time I add, you know, masking, I'm adding more complexity to
6:39
something I'm already not going to have a lot of time for.
6:42
Is Luke back? Yeah. Hey. Hey, man.
6:45
I have a wide mix of news for you. Uh
6:49
oh. What is this? All good though, right? Um, mostly.
6:54
Uh-huh. Start with the good
6:57
and then tell me the better. Um, I got a lot of track.
7:02
Okay. There weren't a lot of trains that you could put things in.
7:06
Check this out. I got the logo off.
7:09
So, we're going to be able to put that back on after we paint. Cool.
7:12
But I got like this. So, we have a little station,
7:15
which I think is cool. Um, I got this,
7:19
which we can unscrew the top off of it and just use that bit.
7:22
Cool. So, that could like be pouring off like the GPU or something if we want.
7:26
Um, I got a little thing. So, if you want to have a pad on top of the computer.
7:29
Dope. Okay. Um, this I think we could just like put
7:33
some on it or something. I don't know. And then there's only like
7:37
two that you can actually put things in, which is a little sad. Nope. I think we can live with that.
7:41
That'll be the thing that pulls them. Uh, that's a caboose. Oh, does that
7:46
push? No, I don't know.
7:53
Does it matter? We We need one of the stack. All right.
7:56
I can get that later. Might be cool.
8:00
Um little firet truck. Sure. And a little ambulance.
8:05
Oh lordy. Okay. Yeah, we need that. Yeah. Uh
8:08
our team needs an ambulance. Yeah. Okay.
8:13
I don't know if this is going to I don't know if this is going to translate to
8:19
like foil wrapping,
8:22
but I'm sure going to It looks okay.
8:26
Wow,
8:30
this is tacky, dude.
8:38
Oh god. No, I'm not. I'm worried about me. Keep painting. I'm worried about us.
8:42
Keep painting, man. Don't you ever think about us? Oh my god. You have the primer, right?
8:46
Only in therapy. No.
8:49
Are you serious? Yes.
8:55
Synergy 2 is designed to be easier and more seamless to use than Synergy 1.
9:00
Features include sharing from anywhere with automatic control of any other
9:06
computer without reconfiguring, SSL encryption to protect your keystrokes
9:10
from attackers, dynamic networking so it
9:13
detects the best route based on your setup, and being able to always run in
9:18
the background on all your operating systems so you can set and forget. And
9:23
it even works across VPNs and tricky home networks. If you get the pro
9:27
version, you can get access to other cool features, too, like clipboard
9:31
sharing, dragging and dropping files, copy pasting, lock screen
9:35
synchronization, and lots more. You're not kidding right now.
9:39
No, I'm not. Oh, that's bad.
9:50
I will go get primer.
9:55
Should I do Ace Hardware? Or should I just go to Home Depot?
9:59
I don't know. Okay. Is there anything else you can do
10:03
in the meantime? Uh, yeah. I can keep working on the
10:06
monitor. I'll find Don't worry. I'll find things to do. Okay, cool.
10:10
I swear I could have strangled Luke when he came back without primer. My level of
10:13
impress went from here like here. I
10:19
cannot believe he came back without the primer.
10:24
Well, I got sick this morning, which was not good. Um, and I'm tired and I have
10:30
to like go around the city and stuff and forget primer, which was like
10:35
the main reason that I went to the store. So, that was pretty bad. So, Luke
10:40
and I couldn't help noticing um while we
10:44
were checking out their super boring
10:47
generic candy color scheme over here that they have four tables.
10:52
And meanwhile, we're scraping by with two. So, we've liberated a table. That's
10:57
how we do in Canada. Hey, buddy. Actually, we'd probably just
11:02
ask for it. But they're American. They wouldn't really like get it, you know?
11:06
Hold on. Let me just get this hanging first. Yeah, it's good. Okay.
11:12
So, everyone knows I just likes pink, right? And everyone knows Steve from
11:17
Gamers Nexus is going to be like picky on the actual computer.
11:22
But what these guys don't know is Central Park.
11:31
Okay. What about it? I'll explain it in more detail later. Okay. I super don't get it.
11:38
What? I don't I have no idea. So, we're almost
11:42
done getting everything painted. We need to adjust the RAM to monitor a side
11:46
panel. And once we have everything under paint, we got to run and grab a couple
11:51
things that we couldn't get yesterday. And then we'll be back here and we have
11:55
to lay a second color of paint on our tabletop. And we want to try to get that
11:59
done about 4:00, which lets us let the paint set up a little bit, let us pull
12:03
the tape, and then be done for the day and let it cure.
12:17
I bet you did. Pretty good. Pretty darn good. So, it's
12:22
going to it's going to be a little bit closer on the second coat as well
12:25
because right now we have a lot of that white popping through. So, you're going
12:28
to see that it's really close.
12:37
It's just the shaking.
12:41
We've actually done pretty well. Uh we
12:44
just have uh we So, what we're going to do now is we're going to bond this
12:50
little insert panel right here that we
12:53
cut. We're going to bond it into this
12:56
piece and let that sit overnight so that it's good and strong. And uh when we
13:01
come back in the morning, it'll be locked in. It'll be solid. And then we
13:04
can scuff it and paint it. This
13:08
um that's the mark that I made when I
13:11
kicked out my foot to try and keep it from falling. Okay.
13:15
Oh, there. Oh, okay. It got that gold on it from the
13:21
floor. Yeah. So, Luke, this is coat number three of the monitor. This is the point where
13:28
this gold either starts to look good or uh we give up hope on it.
13:33
Okay, cool. Yeah, cool. The biggest surprise for me today was
13:38
how well the gold turned out. I um I was
13:43
Oh, I was pretty worried when I saw the first coat cuz like you can never judge
13:48
paint by the first coat, but it's a
13:52
clue. That looks pretty all right. Yeah. Okay.
13:56
Yeah, I'm actually down with that. Okay. Could maybe use like one more coat, but
14:00
it's definitely coming together. Well, hey, one more coat is a hell of a lot easier there. Easier than, "Oh my god,
14:05
blow it up. It's terrible." That whole thing that we were kind of
14:08
told we couldn't do. I think they're going to go pretty far with that.
14:13
You know what though? I honestly am not worried about that.
14:17
You guys were told to do that. Well, we assumed based on that we had
14:21
parts provided by sponsors.
14:26
So, no, we weren't explicitly told we couldn't.
14:30
I was you were okay. Well, I wasn't.
14:33
I was told by you. Okay.
14:39
You know how we observed that their system is like really safe? Like
14:43
actually like boring? Yeah. I'm worried that they did that on
14:47
purpose. What do you mean? I'm worried that uh that we're looking
14:52
at sort of a a fraction
14:56
of Well, don't look at it then.
14:59
Is this a bad time to mention that I don't really know how to mask and I'm just kind of winging it?
15:04
Uh, I already knew that. Oh, okay.
15:10
If I hadn't already known that before today, I would have known it from
15:13
watching you do it.
15:17
So, there's that. I mean, it was based on your masking skills that I decided to
15:22
do all the painting rather than hand off at some point. might have just uh
15:26
damaged the finish on one of the most important parts,
15:30
the frame of the monitor. Hold on. Let me see if I can retouch it while it's
15:34
still wet, I believe.
15:41
So, Luke, crazy thing. Um,
15:45
I'm out of stuff to paint mouse. All right, done. Uh,
15:50
unless you want me doing something else, but you're going to have to kind of disassemble it for me.
15:53
Did you do the keyboard? Uh,
15:58
I'm going to assume that I did, but I can't find it.
16:04
If we use a bag to mask it off, we tie
16:07
it nice and tight, then I think I can probably spray around it and hit the
16:11
frame. Holy crap, it does look ridiculous.
16:15
It looks crazy. Some mad scientist lab.
16:18
Today was a blur because I was doing the
16:21
same thing over and over and over again and I was on paint fumes.
16:29
Well, that's what today is going to be like. Um, so I mean sample size of one,
16:35
but other than me spitting on it just now making lightsaber noises, finish on
16:40
this looks pretty good. I'm I'm really
16:44
happy. So, I'm going to start hitting this with paint. My goal for today is to
16:48
finish painting things so that tomorrow I don't have to look at another can of
16:52
paint. Speaking of which, what am I doing? I'm
16:56
going to finish taping off this power supply and then I'm going to finish doing some of the stuff that we were
17:00
talking about to those tubes. Yes. And I need that thing.
17:03
Yes. Ah. Ah. Yes. The thing. The secret weapon. Ah. So, turns out that I had a
17:11
Threadripper block on my desk the whole
17:14
time. I don't know where they're gonna get one.
17:18
If the competition was two days, I think that would look awesome.
17:23
You know what I mean? I like it. I'm I'm like pretty pleased
17:28
with how this turned out actually. Iron Man. Yeah, man. Too bad that's not the team.
17:34
I can't get any paint on where it is anyway. So,
17:40
you good? Mhm. Okay. Yeah, I contained it. You don't look
17:45
that good. Yeah, I know. I've like filled my mouth
17:48
twice in the last 10 minutes. Pretty gross.
17:52
Yeah, I know. All right, that needs to be primed, too. So, just the block and the feet of the
17:57
monitor and then we're done priming. Okay. So, are we good for primer then?
18:01
Yeah, we're good. But if I did send you to go buy more
18:06
primer, that's what you would buy, right? Yes.
18:16
Oh my god, I hate this nozzle.
18:22
Also, it's leaking at the bottom. Freaking brilliant. I'm trying to
18:26
imagine a way that I could be more pissed off by having two bad spray cans
18:32
in a row. I think it looks chocolatey.
18:37
I'm not going to get after them for the color. I think it looks chocolate.
18:41
I don't think I could be more mad right now.
18:47
While you and that color have had their differences,
18:51
together something great has happened.
18:55
Captain, pause.
19:00
What?
19:16
Um, my hand my fingers are Oh.
19:21
Uh, well, our card's dead.
19:29
Okay, you can use theirs. Yeah. Okay, we have another one. I just
19:35
have to do all of this over again. So,
19:40
our GPU can't be air cooled anymore. Um,
19:46
cuz we ripped off the fan header.
19:50
So, which is like ridiculously on here. What I'm trying to do right now is get the
19:54
block part off of it cuz then you could just paint this. You
19:57
just swapped the other card. Yeah. Yeah.
20:01
I'm trying to salvage some of this. Okay.
20:06
um sort of I laid it out on the ground
20:10
but like sorry right now I am trying to
20:13
get a rough idea of how this whole train track thing is going to be able to come
20:18
together. I'm pretty unsure but I'm
20:23
going to try to make it work. I'm still painting. Thanks for asking.
20:34
You know what? Yeah, let's diarama it up for a little bit here
20:37
just to make sure what I need to buy. We need to sanity check this. I don't
20:41
want to go back to toy traders if we don't have to. So, I actually don't mind
20:45
our idea at this stage. We got the train, we got the town, we
20:49
got the theme. Um, I think the system is
20:52
going to end up looking pretty sharp. I still have some deep concerns about the
20:56
water cooling because I haven't figured out how I'm going to make the
21:01
limited amount of tubing that we have work with the fact that I now have to
21:05
integrate a reservoir and pump.
21:08
Um, but my only concern at this point is the
21:13
legs. Our plan for the legs completely fell through and we have no backup.
21:18
People bought some candy from the candy train and are going to go to the park, I
21:24
guess, cuz they're not there yet cuz they're by the candy train. Um,
21:29
that that that's a dog. Um,
21:33
it's a candy dog. Candy dog. It's a black licorice dog.
21:37
It's not a black lab. It's a black licorice dog. Um, there there's a tree.
21:42
I don't I don't know what um It's a lollipop tree. It's a lollipop tree. Uh, yeah. And then
21:48
there's some shrubberies which are probably going to be jube jube shrubberies. I don't know. Every
21:53
previous tech showdown, the setup has been that Lions and I go shopping in the
21:57
morning before Tech Showdown actually starts and buy all of the stuff that
22:02
we're going to use because we know the theme and then the entire duration of
22:05
Tech Showdown is us implementing that theme. That's it. We have one shopping
22:10
trip and we make it work. And with this tech showdown, we decided to sit there
22:16
and try to visualize it or sit there and start taking things apart while trying
22:21
to think of what we should do. And I think the best thing for us would have
22:24
possibly been to just go to the dollar store and go to the other store and see
22:29
what we can find like we did in previous episodes. I could also be totally wrong
22:32
about that. I don't know. I just think our theme isn't super great. Okay. So,
22:37
I've got all my tape uh
22:40
put back over the white area so that I can just stay stay with the same pink
22:45
area that I had before and uh tried to get it as close as I can to the same
22:50
edge so that um it doesn't look wiggly
22:53
or anything like that. So, uh it doesn't have to be super perfect, but I'm going
22:58
to go ahead and just roll the pink back over the top of this. You can maybe see
23:02
on the camera there's some light areas and dark areas. And so you'll get that
23:06
just on your first coat. And so on the second coat and then if you go with like
23:10
a third coat, um it'll darken up more and more each time. So it'll it'll um
23:15
become more solid.
23:35
That is better. But just magnetic.
23:40
So those just drop on. Now we have our pink and white mouse to
23:45
match and they are ready to lock into place.
24:08
Oh, except for it won't it won't look right on the inside corners when we go.
24:20
Wow. So, this is an awesome fact. only 60 calories, contains 20 servings at 60
24:25
calories. We have to put our steel uh
24:29
bendable rods into our lollipop. So, I
24:33
got to cut the uh dowel off. And now I'll have to drill a small hole in to
24:37
fit the uh steel rod just right. Third
24:41
one.
24:52
Yeah, sweet pink. A little lighter, but not too bad. Okay.
25:05
A lot of pain on this part.
25:17
keyboard is all pink keys, white keyboard
25:22
and uh with the white PCB cover underneath. We should get a nice sweet
25:26
glow from the uh
25:30
car. This might be a trick. What? This might be a trick to get this to stay.
25:36
Oh, why am I so long? Oh, that's right. I left it long, though.
25:40
Oh, dang it. Okay, so here's the little box I made.
25:45
Um, the adhesive is still a little bit on the sticky side.
25:50
Oh, nice, dude. What? That's awesome. Does it? Oh, dude, that does look good.
25:55
Isn't that sweet? Yeah, that's sweet. All right, I up, too. It bubbled up and
26:00
looked horrible. Really? Oh, yeah. Huh?
26:03
like you guys. Oh, not quite. Actually, Colton actually
26:07
thought we did do it for a living. Oh, no. We don't.
26:11
We have day jobs, man. Yeah. I said something about working on
26:15
servers and stuff, and he's like, "You what?" Like, yeah, both of us do this as
26:21
kind of a professional hobby, I think, is the best way to describe it. We try
26:25
to achieve professional results, but both of us work 5 days a week. And uh
26:31
we're up here all week on vacation. That's a really bad ugly contrast.
26:36
We could pull we could paint them. The the problem is durability of paint, but
26:42
wow. That's that's hideous.
26:45
Um we could just pull this front cover
26:48
and just blast the whole thing. Yep. Yeah, I'm going have to do that.
26:51
I have to fix a couple of these heights, but that's hideous. Um okay, so yeah,
26:56
keyboard, mouse, monitor, tower. Bob's
27:00
an OCD freak, which makes working with him sometimes really challenging,
27:04
especially since I'm not at all. And he
27:07
gets easily distracted. But, uh, you know, having someone who's
27:12
an OCD freak on a case modding team, it's pretty
27:17
valuable because everything gets put exactly the way it should be on the
27:21
finished product. And that sound means it's the end of the
27:25
workday and the end of the show. Tune in next week when the boys will assemble
27:29
their final builds and present them to the three celebrity judges. Will I,
27:34
Justine, be tickled pink? Will Central Park leave its mock on Riley? And will
27:40
Steve Burke of Gamers Nexus be impressed by things that Steve Burke of Gamers
27:46
Nexus would be impressed by? All will be
27:49
revealed next week on the final episode of Tech Showdown.