The AMAZING $30 "Computer Case"!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,259 words · ~11 min read
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so there are a lot of great reasons to use a test bench instead of a
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conventional case uh let's say for example you
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like the look or maybe you swap your hardware out
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really frequently or i mean those are really the main reasons
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that you might want to do it anyway we use tons of them here at Linus media group because we're constantly
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benchmarking graphics cards cpus coolers all sorts of things basically all of our
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writers have one or even two or three test benches in the case of Anthony
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but as you guys might know
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money's been a little tight around here ever since i broke that xeon platinum
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CPU so we needed some new test benches but
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we didn't have the funds for these open bench tables that we like so much
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enter aliexpress where we got this test bench
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for how much uh was actually a little bit under 30
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how bad could it be
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definitely not as good as our sponsor for today's video
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so the open bench table here is pretty much what we consider to be the gold
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standard in test benches it does have some drawbacks for example their
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radiator mounting could be vastly improved
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but it's completely tool-less it's really easy to access it folds
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completely flat and it fits pretty much all the hardware that you could want for
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95 of the testing that you'd want to do without any restricted ability to get at
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things or any restrictions in terms of cooling the problem is that how much do
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these ones cost uh 200 200 it's a lot of
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shekels so we've got a static safe packing foam
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in here not that i'm too concerned about any of these things being sensitive to
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static we've got some instructions that are
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chinese only but fairly pictographical so i think we
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should be able to figure it out we've got front usb that's a and front audio
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that's a nice feature to have for a test bench actually the open bench tables
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don't have it no they don't wow remote power button and reset switch
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all the included tools and standoffs and
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screws and everything not tools that wasn't this i misspoke uh okay we've got
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some extruded aluminum uh somethings there's five of them
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oh and wow that's it
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this is pretty flimsy
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okay so uh
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that's not the world's finest looking piece of acrylic uh it's very flecked
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and i can't fight this peeling anymore
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i've forgotten what i started fighting
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for see they can't copyright strike me if i'm way off key this is really the uh
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the quintessential aliexpress experience here isn't it it's kind of like
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aliexpress meets ikea so first up i've got uh the hard drive mounts over here
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so evidently the hard drives go in between two of these
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kind of something like i'm not sure what the orientation is
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yeah it looks like they go like that how you doing um i opened this
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upside down and now
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really
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hold it hold it up okay
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damn it Anthony oh my god
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the screws are labeled and you get they were numbered
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oh this was going to be so easy
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you screwed us so this is a spectacular example of
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waste not want knot so we've got our our bench here and you can see
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they actually cut out the hard drive holders
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from the rest of the bench in a spot where the motherboard is gonna
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sit on top of it anyway acrylic is actually a much more expensive than
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you'd probably think does it make any sense to have the numbers on the top or
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the bottom so like i look at this and i'm like oh okay i'll open it up but no it's like
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this with this blank piece of whatever it is we'll let the audience be the
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judge actually we shouldn't do that they always side against me i don't know what
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it is no matter how junior or completely unlikable someone is they always side
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with them against me when we leave it up to the audience okay
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i'm gonna put another hard drive on here for lulls i want to load this thing up like we'll we'll deck it out we'll put
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as much stuff on it as we can or two hard drives and an optical drive
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whoa did you see that i opened it up correctly
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it wasn't even hard oh wow i just
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there's not really as many pieces on this whole thing as i had sort of
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expected from looking at the like the diagram are we missing some
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this is the light version this is a universal set of instructions
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so there's a version that actually comes with uh up to a 240 millimeter radiator
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mount as well as the pci express plane there but we got the most basic version
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oh i think we did this is where the reputation comes from china it's not
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that you're not capable of designing a tool path for this it's just that you
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can't be arsed to just go double check this measurement
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oh just put a slot you'll be fine how do you misalign your own thing
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why is that a slit instead of a hole acrylic isn't one of
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those things that dramatically expands or shrinks when you're laser cutting it
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so that's pretty cool check that out so we just run these
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cables over to our motherboard and boom we've got front i o on our test bench i
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mean the thing about a test bench is that accessing the rear i o is usually
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as simple as turning it around but still i wouldn't
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say no to being able to reach it from both sides oh wait it sure does that's
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weird no it does save for the buttons and that was five which you had these
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super long ones in for and it doesn't say for the usb one that's not labeled
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and for whatever reason this one uses a hole instead of a slot yeah like they
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were they were confident on that one so this is actually a cool design for
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the button though so it's anchored along the outside here and then there's just
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these flexible pieces of acrylic that actuate the button
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and that's actually got a pretty decent little click to it cool yeah
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that's really neat oh right the holes are bigger you want to come see the big
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hole while i put it in hey
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this really is not anything special i've gotten some pretty amazing stuff on like
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deal extreme for 30 bucks even though we paid 30 bucks on aliexpress this thing
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can be had for 16 bucks on cowbell why did we pay 30 dollars for it on
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aliexpress because i didn't know it was on tavo wasn't until i followed the
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taobao link on that uh that their instruction sheet so we actually bought
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rebranded chinese crap
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from a rebranded chinese crap marketplace
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we're several levels deep right now this is like soulja test bench if it goes
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like any more levels deep that is not pretty
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so interestingly they've actually removed
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the most material for our drive mounts
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from the area that has the least support from the feet
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this this obviously isn't a thing
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but then wait yeah yeah everything goes on the other
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side really
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okay well back to the drawing board like
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we're not we're not missing something here are we i mean we might be but i
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don't think so this too is a protective layer hey
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so that's good it makes a little more sense now so we can go ahead and put some pci express
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doodad jigs on here so these are actually very similar in their design to
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our open bench table one just
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cheaper and crappier now where does this go there's like these big
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gaps between the standoffs and the top here
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why okay and then do you know what screws that uses brilliant doesn't say here's
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another bizarre one so there's that weird gap and then these holes are
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hexagonal instead of round why
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are they to distinguish them visually ah
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okay hey something makes sense we learned a thing
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so the hexagon ones are for the
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uh the drive cage things and they can either be three and a half inch or five
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and a quarter inch so here's the other two hex ones this one is barely even
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in you can see there's a gap here and then there's another set one two three
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here three and a half five and a quarter brilliant okay
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now i'm just gonna fix that i put the drives in wrong uh
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in fairness to it that's
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more solid
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all right um hold on i got okay i'll get these so put the standoffs where they go
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and i'll screw them in from the bottom by the time we go through all this hassle though we could have done it
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luke's way why would they put the legs right where the holes are okay at least
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they got this aligned correctly
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no see if i was learning i would have kicked it
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hey that's a legitimate strategy to help
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prevent damage i'm not kicking it i'm catching with my feet
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look here i'll give you a demonstration
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okay so if i were to accidentally drop this cooler if i'm
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like oh see look how much of its momentum was arrested before it hit the
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ground one more time
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here it's fine i'll demonstrate for you again like oh no oh
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so once your motherboard's on like this
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then you get your power supply and honestly
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this is so stupid so it just goes on like that oh
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you guys are going to have a full appreciation for this once i tip it back
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over
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we have to take the board off
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in order to mount the cooler because the hard drives go right under where the
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CPU socket is and it doesn't even have a cutout anyway
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yeah and it's not like it has these uh stock cooler it's a beefy stock cooler
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we don't want this for uh like uh
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who in the world would buy this wow
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just like that sucka you like that i like these more
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yeah those are awesome and this doesn't have them well it's about what you'd
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expect from just a piece of acrylic it does get some more
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structural rigidity from having the motherboard like mounted to it
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but not as much as it as we'd want it to have
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i mean is this it do we just fire it up at this point
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i mean we can if you want to let's do it we need to plug in the front panel there
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we go let's see if the reset reset switch
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works um
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it does technically have a power led in there
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so there you have it this is the geek studio
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16 test bench as long as you can get it off taobao 30 bucks off aliexpress
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today so thanks for watching guys if you
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disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it
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no no it's fine it was just the acrylic hard drive holders
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oh hit that like button get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy
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the stuff we featured at the link in the video description i mean to be clear
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like at 16
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compared to 200 like yeah it's not got the
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you know the rigidity but uh i mean you could buy a bunch of these for that
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while you're down there you can check out our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community
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forum which is definitely worth a join
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oh