Scrapyard Wars 7 Pt. 2 - NO INTERNET
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
3,737 words · ~18 min read
0:00
they've got two thousand dollars to build the best bang for the buck pc but
0:05
they have to do it without internet they've got three days to do it and on
0:10
the fourth day we find out who the winner is in this edition of scrapyard
0:15
wars brought to you by dbrand
0:21
day two first order of business
0:24
is to make our sponsor face palm and cringe at
0:29
the same time by attempting
0:33
to remove the dbrand skin that's on my daily driver blade stealth
0:38
and remove the skin that's on
0:42
the unit they sent with their new camel pattern for me to use and then put this
0:46
back on there without destroying anything
0:49
oh wait my justification for this um i'm demonstrating how dbrand skins
0:54
can be removed from your devices without leaving any residue
0:58
because i don't want to reinstall all my crap on another laptop this is not this
1:02
is not going well this is not going to be reusable um
1:07
okay okay fresh idea just uh
1:11
everybody oh wow yeah
1:15
fresh idea aw crap
1:18
swap the boot drive i just wasted 15 minutes
1:23
but possibly gained myself back 20.
1:26
that my friends is time management
1:31
please turn on no i don't regret it this was theoretically a good way to save
1:36
time it just didn't work out that way
1:39
and you can't regret things that you could only have known in hindsight i had
1:43
no way of knowing this would happen and it worked initially it wasn't until
1:49
i put the cover on what why did putting the cover on briquette
1:54
crap we gotta go build a computer so let's
1:58
just let's just go um i'm just gonna use this one and
2:03
the brand will never work with us again and maybe i deserve it
2:08
i don't i don't want to buy stuff from best buy but one of the computers there
2:13
the a10 7800 for under 200 bucks
2:18
is a pretty good deal it's not like it's not exactly a crazy processor but
2:23
at that price point i think
2:26
it's pretty damn good for price performance kind of stuff the the
2:30
difficult part right now is i can't check
2:33
they've got a complete tower with an
2:38
apu eight gigs RAM two giga oh wait i need an SSD
2:43
crap okay anyway they've got like open box and then
2:48
they've got final clearance and when it's on final clearance it looks like if
2:53
it's final clearance and open box there is some room to negotiate
2:57
269 for CPU motherboard
3:01
RAM case power supply
3:05
that's not bad a parts store let's go to a memory
3:09
express or something and see what they
3:13
have to say the interesting thing about this
3:16
challenge is that it's making us try new strategies
3:20
and ones that you might not think of like it's crazy how different best buy
3:26
looks and walking around in that store there's nothing to indicate that there's
3:31
a deal to be had in any way you have to go and talk to somebody
3:36
actually we might not have to go all the way to memory express
3:39
i think canada computers took over all of ncix's old leases
3:44
so theoretically there's a canada computers here
3:48
and it would appear that
3:51
this lease was legitimately so terrible
3:55
that uh nobody wanted it nope this ncix
4:00
still holy crap
4:04
wow these guys just straight up came over
4:08
here like oh well they're closed let's just put our sign on that you know what
4:13
let's go there very interesting store um
4:18
almost zero overlap with what ncix used to sell
4:21
and the first thing they told me when i walked in the door was no if you're looking for computer hardware go to
4:25
mimex okay
4:32
do you have any used power supplies
4:35
what what size uh like 500 600 this might be not a bad
4:41
idea but i'm trying to see i don't see the other
4:45
cable harnesses so let's do one graphics card
4:49
875. yeah yeah
4:53
yeah i might uh i might go for that
4:57
30 bucks okay 875 watts 30 bucks
5:01
probably gonna end up coming back and getting that but i want to make sure that i can get the rest of my build
5:05
before i start actually buying things and he said he can hold on to it for me it looks like it's been sitting in the
5:09
back for a while it's probably okay if you go down the ramp beside us uh behind
5:14
us there's a store you'll see lots of graphics cars okay
5:17
he might be able to help you out hi there um i know you guys are more cell
5:21
phone focused but i'm trying to ask around to see if anyone has spare
5:25
computer parts um i know this is more cell phone based
5:29
but hi i know this is more cell phone based but
5:32
i'm looking for individual components for a computer
5:36
it's only tuesday so i'm not at this point yet
5:39
but there's still time
5:42
okay so they've got a pretty clever strategy for dealing with open box stuff
5:47
here basically because they're a system builder as well
5:50
they negotiate with people who are buying systems to include their open box
5:54
hardware inside the system that way whoever buys the system gets a small
5:59
discount but they don't have to discount it as
6:03
much as they would have to if they were just selling open box hardware
6:06
because they would have to open something for a system and they would have to test it and make sure it's
6:10
working anyway so that's great for memory express's
6:14
business but it does nothing for us because they have literally no open box video cards or
6:20
power supplies which means we'd be paying full retail
6:23
and it turns out even a gtx 1050 at full retail price is freaking expensive
6:30
i don't know how we're gonna find a good deal on a graphics card
6:35
oh i left my water bottle in there someone's following me oh thank you i
6:38
appreciate that whatever system i'm going to end up with
6:42
is probably not going to have an SSD and it just occurred to me that AMD
6:47
has a software called sensemi or something like that that lets you use an
6:51
SSD to accelerate your boot hard drive
6:55
10 bucks okay is that how much you would charge anyone who came in and wanted to buy it
6:59
i would probably give it away okay well i'll pay you ten dollars then
7:04
so for better or for worse we've got a 64
7:07
gig SSD this definitely gives us enough to install an os install fortnite
7:13
and run the whole thing off SSD or in the event that we get a system that
7:17
already has a hard drive in it i think i can use it to accelerate the
7:22
hard drive so one way or another we were going to need an SSD and at 10 bucks the
7:27
price is right right thank you good sir pleasure doing
7:31
business with you and take care you're going to need that ten dollars
7:35
yeah yeah you don't want to just leave that there okay
7:39
excuse me uh do you know this is a
7:43
maybe a slightly offensive question to ask you what do you know where memory express is
7:47
honestly i don't know okay i just moved here recently so oh
7:52
okay yeah no worries yeah but andy here might know because he lives here
7:55
yeah okay where's that the one that got all the
8:00
ncis at birthday it got replaced by canada computers okay okay okay sweet
8:05
okay thank you duh okay so i'll go there do you know where memx is though as well
8:10
so go to both memory express the nearest one's enrichment it's like number two
8:14
number three road okay good enough perfect thank you very much
8:17
sweet gee squad just forever helpful
8:20
this season of scrapyard wars if you hadn't figured it out already is brought
8:23
to you by dbrand their new nintendo switch skins are available now and you
8:27
can also order tempered glass screen protectors these things look great and
8:32
they're scratch resistant to keep you from damaging your device learn more at
8:36
the link below uh hi uh question for you
8:41
do you guys deal in second-hand hardware at all
8:45
uh yes you do really oh okay um do you have anything
8:49
that's kind of like older gaming system me
8:53
okay so uh uh uh yeah i do
8:57
what exactly are you looking for you know what i'm really close uh i might
9:01
just pop in i'm just gonna park we're just gonna
9:05
have to get out and look for it could call them oh
9:08
did you see their dad what's computer den
9:12
interesting this isn't the same place but we could pop our heads in
9:17
no oh no this is it they just must have
9:20
changed their name from cloverdale computers to computer den all
9:25
right okay so this power supply
9:29
is nothing special um
9:32
it's it's an acer it's an acer special is what i would call it no pci express
9:38
power connector um
9:42
it's a 2600 not a k so we wouldn't be doing any overclocking
9:47
and how firm are you on the 5.99 price
9:50
for this guy i i don't want to be like i don't want to be rude or anything but like that's
9:56
not worth anywhere near the sticker like not even close a
10:00
fraction of it yeah like 500 gig hard
10:03
drive worthless okay we're getting that's closer okay
10:07
good we are speaking the same language then yeah okay
10:11
okay because i said can i can i poke my can i poke my head
10:15
around at any of these other things like what like what do you what do you what
10:18
do you got going on here i mean some of this stuff is
10:22
pretty pretty bad um yes yes oh let's go with that word um
10:31
all right okay so tell you what we will um i'm going to go i'm going to
10:35
go scout a bit more um but
10:38
keep that in mind there's potential here negotiable okay
10:42
all right you guys have been fantastic
10:45
thank you very much uh we will we will talk again
10:51
okay sounds good okay take care
10:56
so the situation there is they've actually got a couple of
11:02
v2 xeon it's like pretty old but
11:05
it's got a pretty high clock speed so it turbos to 3.7 i think they had it
11:10
labeled but i'd have to double check that and then they've also got a second
11:13
gen core i7 so that would be uh it's a 2600
11:18
and the labeled prices are way off like way off like they wanted
11:23
like 900 for the xeon thing and like 600
11:27
for the core i7 box and these are without graphics cards or without useful
11:30
ones but when i was like
11:37
all of a sudden things got quite a bit more reasonable
11:41
we might we might have a lead here i do want to scout around a little bit
11:46
more though if we can get a good deal on a tower then the next order of business
11:50
is finding a graphics card and on the surface this seems simple
11:55
but in practice it
11:59
turns out it's actually really hard if you know anybody who knows anybody who
12:03
has something that that would be super cool thank you that works okay okay
12:07
sounds good thanks hi do you guys deal in used parts at all
12:11
cheapest best one that i have that would all handle gaming would be the MSI
12:15
GeForce gtx 1050 ti and their 289.
12:18
289. got it i understand
12:21
we've got some older pci cards we've also got a fairly
12:26
good selection of agp cards
12:30
rather than making me feel old though this whole experience makes me feel
12:35
a lot closer to the younger generation with their
12:39
snapchats and their twitter grams and all that
12:43
than to the older generation that you know actually does look for information
12:48
in here there you are hey do you or anyone you
12:51
know have a graphics card you're looking to sell a 530 that's not worth 50. all
12:56
right thanks anyway so we're on our way to surrey micro net
13:01
and i just realized i left my water bottle like my nice vacuum insulated
13:06
water bottle at the computer den so one way or
13:10
another we have to go back there it'll either be to make a purchase
13:15
or it'll be for like the walk of shame hey i said i might buy
13:19
something i'm not going to by the way i need my water bottle bag piece so
13:24
technically oh wow someone's calling who's this oh wow this might actually be
13:28
something hello uh
13:32
hello i'm just returning a call academy's call
13:36
yeah i have an answer here uh oh
13:39
is the ASUS turbo gtx 1070
13:43
aj
13:46
it is is that like a secondhand card or is that brand new
13:50
uh this is like out of the box and if it's working probably there's no problem
13:55
with this one uh oh okay so um
13:59
would there be a discount because it's not new yeah just come over here
14:05
um okay what's your address so i tell ed look we're in
14:10
central city which is a lot better than it used to be but like
14:13
don't leave anything valuable in the car or walking away i'm like is there
14:16
anything valuable in the car he goes well
14:20
you know that battery is worth a few hundred dollars
14:24
nothing of value in the car even my dualshock 2 controller is borderline
14:28
here okay so in summary he's got a gtx
14:32
570 and a Radeon 6870 each for under a
14:37
hundred dollars plus tax so 95 bucks
14:41
unfortunately at least according to the shopkeep because i can't verify this
14:45
online he figures that the 6870 is about
14:48
equivalent to a modern 750. unfortunately i haven't heard back from
14:54
buddy with the used 1070 since i told
14:57
him that i really need a price before i drive all the way out there but it is
15:02
used so there's at least some haggling to be done but
15:06
like if he makes me drive all the way out there just to find out that he wants
15:10
at or near retail for this thing that's going to be a real waste of time
15:14
okay so
15:18
if bro who won't give me pricing over the phone
15:22
needs me to go there we've got to go all the way to
15:27
43rd and fraser which is oh no
15:32
yeah that's really far that's like 45 minutes at least
15:37
canada computers now open we made it it's gonna be weird walking into an old
15:41
ncx location uh looking for SSD power supply and
15:46
graphics card sure probably just SSD and graphics card though sure
15:52
for SSD don't get too excited i want your worst thing that you have
15:56
our main leads right now are uh the computer that was forgotten in
16:01
the back of the warehouse in best buy that we're getting a ludicrous deal on a
16:05
power supply from some random dude that got pulled out of an alienware in
16:10
crystal mall the derpiest least expensive SSD i've
16:14
like ever seen from canada computers 44.88
16:19
dollars yeah 44.98 dude
16:23
that's awesomely horrible this looks like the worst SSD i've ever
16:27
seen we have no that's perfect okay that's absolutely perfect okay so canada
16:33
computers we found a 128 Gigabyte mushkin SSD looks like it's probably not
16:38
very good but that is perfect for me and it's 44.88
16:42
which is actually a really good deal so far out of all the different places i've
16:46
been to also we found a 1063 gig again
16:50
really junky 1063 gig but it's only 320
16:54
bucks so those two things put together is quite cheap and a 1060 should easily
17:00
be able to handle fortnite and everything else that we're throwing at it in this competition because we're
17:03
just doing 1080p so that's not too bad that put together with the 30 power
17:08
supply that we found in crystal mall and the platform from best buy with the a10
17:15
is a pretty cheap pretty good setup
17:18
because we're looking at like it's a 44 30 like that
17:24
600 ish dollars so we were just leaving
17:27
canada computers and we accidentally found a memory express
17:31
which is like right this way so memory express was super helpful they had
17:36
really similar prices to canada computers which is not surprising uh i
17:40
was able to find a 500 watt power supply for 55 dollars so
17:45
probably going to go with that 875 that we found at that place in crystal mall
17:48
and a 1066 gig for 400 bucks it might be worth
17:54
going with the six gig versions again i'm gonna have to try to rack my brain
17:57
on these things and kind of figure out which one i want to go with more and
18:03
i have no idea i like i i don't know so
18:06
we made it to sfu surrey i talked to it help desk which was the plan and he
18:10
didn't have anything or have any leads but he directed me to the computer
18:14
science lounge which also didn't end up working out
18:18
super well turns out they kind of semi-closed the
18:22
lounge at like four we got here at like 4 40 so most people were gone people
18:27
that were there didn't have anything it didn't have any leads and
18:30
all thought we were crazy so for us we're gonna end up buying everything
18:35
from stores i don't feel like that is in the spirit
18:39
of scrapyard wars but maybe i'm just failing and Linus is
18:44
doing really well i'm kind of hoping that Linus has found
18:48
some random person that was walking down the street and is like yeah i'll give
18:52
you a gaming computer for 35 bucks
18:55
i'm kidding we're gonna go back to the computer den
18:58
and i'm just gonna negotiate a deal on one of those towers
19:03
and i get get my water bottle back
19:06
that's so that's that's where i'm in a bit of a tough place and it's hard to
19:09
negotiate when you're okay well that's sort of far away
19:13
a long way away the two three hundred buck mark that's
19:19
about it anything higher than that is just knots
19:22
it'll never go anywhere i mean i i can't ask you to take a loss
19:27
on it because maybe someone else will come in and pay more but yeah i don't know what you paid for it the only thing
19:32
is sometimes you get the odd doofus that comes in and
19:36
we'll buy that for a lot more money
19:39
and i don't want to take away that opportunity
19:43
um no we got some you know hillbillies
19:46
living around here but but i'm i'm not a i'm not a doofus so i
19:51
can't pay i can't overpay for it yeah um
19:54
at a cheaper price and the other one will just tack the other money onto it
19:58
so i'll uh tell you what
20:01
you you you sound like you need a good
20:05
night's sleep so why don't we talk too much tired yeah no she told me she was
20:08
sick already too so she's sick too sick and tired all right
20:15
all right so we'll we'll talk we'll talk tomorrow see if uh see if you guys can
20:19
can help me out here all right you too thank you
20:24
i had really hoped those were just like salvage machines i i don't want these
20:28
guys to like lose money on it to sell it to me but
20:32
like it's if that markup is based on what they
20:35
paid like that's pretty rough i don't think they're going to sell it for that either so
20:39
everyone's sort of in a rough position right now
20:44
i thought we were going to close out today with a tower
20:47
we're going back to the office after another full day of shopping
20:51
having yielded nothing with a dbrand skin your nintendo switch
20:57
and switch accessories are now slightly more durable not to mention more
21:01
adorable than ever before dbrand uses high quality authentic true
21:06
texture 3m vinyl on every one of their products they feature unrivaled
21:10
precision so they measure many times to ensure they have a factory fit for your
21:15
product and not only do they look great but they protect against incidental
21:19
damage and scratches their customer service robots are easy to work with and
21:23
wonderful and their products are affordable and ship worldwide check them out today at the
21:28
link in the video description next time on scrapyard wars and at this
21:34
point i have pretty much accepted that there is a
21:37
most excellent chance that i'm going to lose this thing
21:41
honestly i'm thinking of just showing up there but that's a super pushy dick move
21:46
i doubt like literally two dollars is gonna break the
21:50
bank and this one's on a three dollar sale so i'm probably gonna go with this
21:53
one yeah i think i'm gonna need a graphics card