BEST Value PC Challenge - Scrapyard Wars Season 3 - Episode 6
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
3,104 words · ~15 min read
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War.
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This episode of Scrapyard Wars was brought to you by Dbrand.
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All right, Scrapyard Wars day three. Our internet is down.
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Basically, we're upgrading to one gig. And I don't know how many of you are
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Canadian or have heard of Telus, but they're sort of legendarily terrible.
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And there was apparently some kind of data entry error while they were
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changing our internet. I guess they were probably typing with their faces as
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usual. So that kind of probably hampers
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me a lot more than anyone else, which really sucks because now was supposed to
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be the time that I was finishing downloads and installs. So, I guess um
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what I'm going to do now is try to install everything onto the
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board, which is actually what I wanted to do later, but whatever. This is
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ridiculous. But if it works, who cares?
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DisplayPort, no signal. Oh, good call.
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So, let's get the graphics card out of the out of the equation. Oh. Oh, I saw
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something flash for like half a second. Yes, we have video. Okay. Okay, guys.
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Ah, okay. That's kind of what I was afraid of.
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That four pin is probably not going to be enough to keep the CPU fed.
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Like I expected, my wood thing is not really tall enough because I didn't take
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into account the height of the Velcro.
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Okay. Well, that's good. It's mounted and it still posts. So, that's that's a
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good sign. So, we moved where we were,
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if you didn't notice, uh because it will hopefully be better for filming reasons
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or whatever yet, but we should be theoretically sitting at about 3 GHz and
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I think our memory is still at about 720 MHz. So, CPU is running at 3 3.24
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GHz. I must have screwed up, but I made it
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faster than I expected.
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And it's not crashing.
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Might need a bigger pilot hole, but we're going to see. The wood was not
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super happy about that. I can't wait for the comments on this. Oh my god, Luke,
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you did that so wrong. I literally have no idea what I'm doing.
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I really don't know if this is going to help me tie the fishing line at all. I
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was hoping these were grippier than my skin, but I don't know if that's true
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anymore. Oh, it does totally seem to be true.
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That's awesome. Okay, that's good. If
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this overclock works, honestly, I'd be
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happy, I think, with this overclock and the overclock that I have on the CPU,
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but I'll have about 3 hours left. So, what I need to do is save this
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overclocked to a profile. I already have my CPUs overclocked saved to a profile
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and uh hopefully doing a little bit more cable management stuff just to make it
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look better. Even though that's not a metric, it would be nice.
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Vync off. Apply.
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It did not like that.
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Okay. After the benchmark ran, it crashed. and
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I don't know why it crashed. So, what I
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need to do now is figure out if it was my GPU or if it was my CPU. And so, what
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I just did was I changed my overall total power limit from 150% to
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uh 25% and I changed my applied voltage
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from 100 mts to 50 m.
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Whoa. What?
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Okay. And my GPU is not very happy right
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now. It's not hot. I think it doesn't have
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enough voltage or something. Okay, so I turned things down and they're actually
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running faster. So at $310,
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I just got
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Damn it. Why does it keep doing that
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at the same part after like the same amount of time? Okay, so after some
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troubleshooting, I think I know what's going on. So, we instead of using our
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two like really crappy power supplies, we're using one power supply that's
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somewhat decent. And this is now powering the graphics card and it's got
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eight pins to the CPU. So, the 8 pin was
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absolutely the problem. The four pin it was enough to get it to post, but it's
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not enough to actually do anything. So, the CPU I feel like is good as long as
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we have an 8 pin. Um, we've now switched around the power supplies so that the
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graphics card has its own dedicated power supply. The power supply is enough
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to spin the fan fully up. That's good. So, we're still using the floor pin.
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It's not going to be stable whatsoever. But this is more to just see if our two
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power supplies Yes, it's posted. Okay, we're we're in business. We're in
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business. So, the only thing we basically need to do right now is get
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the uh 4 pin to 4 pin plus molex
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adapter. Okay, success. We have the one
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tiny adapter that cost $7 that we needed. So, with our new 8 pen, we can
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see that the CPU is boosting up to like 3.6 GHz or so. And it's coming back
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down. But it seems to be working. Look at this. We're stable 100%. With only
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the four pin, this immediately crashed. Oh no.
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Memory management. No,
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it didn't do anything. It's just as unstable as with the four pin. Oh no.
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Maybe it's the power supply. Maybe the just this this 300 watt supply is just
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not enough to to power it. Okay, so basically right now we've swapped out
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memory we bought with some other memory just to see if it's the RAM that's the
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problem. Um I mean this is a brand new stick. This is like the only brand new
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component in the build. So it' be really weird if this was the part that didn't work. This is longer than it was before.
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The memory may have been the issue. We may have got some defective brand new
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memory. Wow. The only other thing we can
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think about is trying this RAM in a different slot. So I'm go ahead and
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start the stress test. So, it only lasted like 5 seconds before.
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Wow. Is this going to be stable? Was it literally just changing the slot in the
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motherboard? I'm a genius, dude. High five. Yes. Okay, at this point, let's
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tear this stuff down. Oh, no. We should probably play a game. Let's play a game. Okay. Download.
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Yes. Uh, which one thing with this build, something is weird with this
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motherboard. It freaks out every sing Oh, no.
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So, we have to go return this memory because it's broken. and it just fell out. That's awesome. 2:00. We have less
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than 2 hours to make sure this works and build the whole computer, get benchmarks
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ready. We do not have another opportunity. If this does not work, we
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might just be out of it. Oh man, coming
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down to the wire. Scrapyard Wars will be right back after
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these messages. This episode of Scrapyard Wars is brought to you by
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Dbrand, makers of the precision cut vinyl skins that you'll see on the
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phones and notebooks of our contestants. They offer a wide variety of styles and
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Galaxy Note 5, and iPhone 6S. Protect the body of your devices and make them
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look great at dbrand.com/scrapyard wars. Okay, she posts is a good sign.
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Well, either our motherboard has two dead PCI slots or our Sound Blaster
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Odigy 2 is dead. Fortunately, we grabbed
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a couple sound cards at the time. So,
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let's go ahead and try another one. So, our internet's down at the office this
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morning, which has made progress a little slower than I'd like. But, there
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is good news. I've got Windows 7 installed. My graphics card seems to be
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working for the most part. Uh although I haven't run anything 3D yet because I
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don't have drivers for it at the moment. Um there's some bad news though. Both my
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Ody 2, which I had high hopes for, and
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my Sound Blaster Live are dead. So I
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will have to accept that I will be
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running a system that only has HDMI audio. Oh. Oh. Whoa. Oh, he said, "Oh,
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we're up. We're up. Internet's up." Yay. So, this
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is exciting because
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I am many hours away from competition
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crunch time and I've got almost all of my benchmarks installed, all my drivers
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installed. I can start getting baseline readings and then tuning things and
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finding out how it goes from there. Okay,
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76.5 FPS average. I'm feeling a little tense
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today. It's 12. I haven't started my build yet. And this initial Cinevenge
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run is really ugly. Like if those guys
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ran out and got a 3770K or something
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like that, they'll be pulling off triple
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my score thanks to the improved architecture and hyperthreading. And at
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least unlike Austin, I'm not running around picking up components now because
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I'm fairly certain they did not go out for lunch. So, for the benefit of our
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competitor over there, I'm going to do a quick run through of all the awesome
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components that I've got over on my side. First,
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this gaming grade motherboard. Oh, yeah.
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Oh, yeah. Look at that.
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So many games. That's a gaming sound. Can I play Pac-Man?
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It can be Pac-Man.
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Oh, no. No. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
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Next up, we have the finest power supply
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ever made. I mean, it was a miracle that I was even able to find these, let alone
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afford it with my budget. Next up, this genuine USB 2.0 4 port
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expansion card and 56K modem. Going to
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need one of these. I don't want to tell them about that, though. That's my secret weapon. Massive cooler for like
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wicked overclocking. Intel 750 series
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PCI Express SSD. We didn't even pay for
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that. And this put Put the 750 series
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SSD down again.
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Yeah, that doesn't really sound right. I don't think that's a 750 series SSD.
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Blah blah blah blah blah. I'm just standing over here lying about what
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computer parts I have. My name's Lionus. My voice isn't quite that high.
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Let's put one of our 750 series SSDs away for now. Now you have two. I always
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had two. So, this is actually broken.
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Fortunately, we have so much extra
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hardware that literally half of our
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parts could be broken and we would have no problem whatsoever. So, I'm just
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going to go get another one. All right. So, just in case, I brought some of our
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extra extra hardware that isn't the stuff that we actually need. You know,
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right now, just installing our bolt-on Hemi.
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They're lying to us. And we were so honest with them about the computer that
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we're building. You mean you don't believe that I have a Hemi?
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Well, I did believe you.
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I wanted to believe. I was just moving stuff around to try to
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do cable management and the computer froze up. Hopefully
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that's not actually a problem. It's probably just random
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old hard drives and stuff.
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My computer straight up doesn't boot properly anymore.
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I have no idea what happened. It blue screened randomly and now it doesn't
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properly turn on. So, I'm pretty disappointed.
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So, we just went from our game benchmark
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acting weird to our computer completely not turning on to our computer turning
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on, but now Windows is freaking out and super unhappy. I moved the graphics card
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down one slot because uh FreeGeek Vancouver said that that top slot wasn't
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working. I had no problems with that top slot working, but I'm just trying to
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minimize issues at this point because there's about 3 hours to go and I really
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want to be running all of the benches that I have to run and know what my
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scores are going to be before I walk into the final. So, I'm in the process
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of building my troll system, which has all of the worst of every component that
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I have. Like, this is like legit like one of the most stressed moments of my
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whole life. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but like I'm super
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hardcore stressed right now. Oh man, did do we actually do it? I don't I don't
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want to get my hopes up right now, but like this looks good. This is the only
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CPU intensive test. If it finishes this, that's pretty much means that we're
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good. Nothing else should hit the CPU this hard for this long. All right,
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we're in business, dude. That's awesome. Connect it up. Oh, look at that. Like
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butter. Wow.
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This work.
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Yeah, I think that works.
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It's perfect. It's actually not that bad. Everything else has just been like
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typical sort of like random computer problems like dead memory or like not
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having the right adapter or whatever. But if it works together, we did a great
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job. It is terrible. But you just literally told me to do this like 5
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seconds ago and I agreed. What have we done, dude? This is not cool. What have
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we done? You your idea. 30 seconds ago
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you were taking credit. Like this is all Austin Ed. We're such a great team. Then
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we actually see what it is. Like I have nothing to do with this.
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This is the greatest thing ever. Thermal paste looks fine.
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There's a lot of it, but it looks fine. Oh my god. Yeah, there's still gunk in
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the CPU socket, that could super be what it is. Oh, wow.
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It's currently 2:26,
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meaning assuming it's 2:30, we've got an hour and a half left. So, if that was
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the problem, I think I'm still doing okay. If that wasn't the problem, I
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could be totally screwed. At this point, my computer doesn't make it through Fire
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Strike. If I completely fail a benchmark,
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I'm done. So, right now we're testing CPU overclock only, no GPU overclock. We
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just did a successful Fire Strike run completely all the way through with no
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overclock. Now, we're testing 3.24 on
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this guy. I can't believe it just crashed.
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I feel like sick. Like, I don't feel
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good at all. If that just crashed because of the overclock, that's fine.
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If that just crashed for any other reason, I'm screwed.
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So, as of right now, if I apply literally any amount of overclock to my
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CPU, my memory, or my graphics card,
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even one at a time, I can't ruin a benchmark.
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150 gigs. That's not right. Oh, it is 15 gig hard drive. Oh, no. It's not big
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enough. We only have 15 gig hard drive and there's a 200 gig SSD. We're going
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to have to install Windows from scratch cuz we don't have any way of finding
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Windows. No, we have a We don't have time, dude.
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Uh yeah, I've got it. Give me a sec. We have a flash. You have a flash drive? I
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got it from Lions. Oh, you should have told me that. I did. Oh, just now. And
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upstairs, too. Thank you. I'm going to be slightly late. So, slightly late. You
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don't have an operating system. You're also live. Okay. Okay. So, our CPU
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temperatures are well within reason. And we're going to do some stability testing
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at 3.2 GHz and go back and work on our troll system. Here we go.
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That sounds good. Um, I don't know if our troll system is going to end up
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working. I have tried to get it to post. I've tried two separate motherboards and
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honestly, we're at the point now where I don't have a ton of extra time to spend
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on it. So, I'm still going to go over there and like be working on it from
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time to time, but I'm probably better off focusing right now on my main system
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because I only have an hour and 40 minutes to dial in a GPU overclock and
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mod the case and build in it. Those are the three main mods. Make the
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motherboard fit, make the power supply fit. I guess that's only two.
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With a couple of drill holes,
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um, we can make this work. Now, here's
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something that I actually had sort of forgotten about. We need to make sure
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that this baby is going to fit here,
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which so far is looking like a bit of a
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no-go.
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I've never trusted this kind of standoff, so it's fine. But I'm going to
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tape over them just in case. I cannot afford to kill any more components at
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this stage in the game. So, apparently
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overclocking my CPU but not applying voltage kind of worked. Overclocking my
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GPU and not applying voltage, no, not
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even like a little bit. Barely got into that binch at all. So, we're going to
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reset the graphics card overclock. Just run it at stock. Whatever. So, there's 9
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minutes left. I'm just going to set it to the last overclock that worked. You
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can do it. Believe in yourself.
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Come on.
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Wow. Done. Hands down. It's 4:00. Minus
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stop. I'm done.
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Okay. Okay, so Windows is installing right now. Basically, after this, we
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need to install our benchmarks. We need to install our Hi, what's up? It's 4:00.
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Next time on Scrapyard Wars, Austin becomes a wizard. Lionus doesn't have to
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cheat, but he does. Luke's house burns to the ground. And that's all. Come see
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it next time on Scrapyard Wars. Yeah.