I Bought a $300 Gaming PC on TaoBao
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 พ.ค. 2024
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Have you ever wondered what Chinese consumers might be buying from their version of AliExpress? We didn't, at least not initially, but when we saw the specs and price of this Frankenstein gaming PC listed all over Taobao, our tune changed completely. What's going on inside this $300 14-core xeon beast of a computer? Who makes these parts? Why is it so cheap? And why is hwinfo64 telling us that this motherboard has specs that straight up shouldn't exist?
When we fantasy-built our own workstation equivalent to the Taobao gamer special, here's what we came up with:
Build 1:
- HP Z440 ($130) + $39 shipping within US
- Updated version of the PC we used for the latest $69 PC
- Add on E5-2690 V4 $22.22
- Add on 2070 Super for $150
- Includes 700W power supply
- Uses 2133 RAM, same as the Taobao
- Has Front USB 3 x4
- RAM and SSD were included in a few of the listings we found
Build 2:
- Dell Precision T5810 ($67) + $35 shipping within US
- Add on E5-2698 V3 $24.99
- Only does E5 V3 processors
- 2698V3 is only slightly slower than 2690V4 at CPU mark
- Includes 825W PSU
- Has Front USB 3 x1 USB 2 x3
- Uses 2133 RAM, same as the Taobao
- 16gb ram included in the model we found on ebay
- Add on a 240gb Kingston A400 for $25
- Add on an RTX 3070 OC for $200 + $15 shipping on ebay
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Monitor And Keyboard by vadimmihalkevich / CC BY 4.0 geni.us/PgGWp
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
2:06 Mystery Case
3:32 Accessories
5:15 Cable Management & PSU
6:28 They sent the wrong unit?
6:43 SSD
6:57 RAM
7:37 Motherboard (more on that later)
8:30 Firing it up and solving some mysteries
11:03 Green Internet Explorer & Ham
12:34 Gaming
13:32 A chipset only a motherboard could love
17:15 Should you get one? - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![[TH] VCT Pacific - Playoffs Grand Final // PRX vs GEN](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/G345ud5yRGA/mqdefault.jpg)
I love how items from China packed in cheap cardboard always arrive pristine, but if you ship something to the next town over, it looks like it got ran over.
I whish that Linus had talked about the packaging like he does in secret shopper 😂
I wouldn't say ALWAYS... I've seen some DESTROYED packages from China.
@@Jehty21well he's looking at it how Chinese customers would get it, so I'm not sure if the packaging for international would be different. And probably irrelevant.
The package gets shipped around to multiple distributers instead of direct, but it is the same garbage.
Bro for real😂😭
To be fair, Taobao (China) is more like a combination of Ebay and Amazon. Wish is more like Pinduoduo in China.
As a chinese that made use of taobao a lot, this comment spitting facts.
exactly, even a lot of well-known brands (such as Intel, Asus etc.) sell products here
And Temu is the Pinduoduo in North America lol
I have enjoyed taobao for yrs
Yeah it's kind of a stupid comparison to call it Wish.
This computer isn't just running "a cracked version of Windows 10 Enterprise", it's running Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC (it can be seen at around 10:00). It's a version of Windows without any Microsoft bloatware that isn't strictly necessary for the computer to run, and it's meant for servers. LTSC stands for Long Term Support Channel, and the support window is *10 years!* So this computer will get updates up to at least 2026, assuming that Windows 10 came out in 2016.
thank you so much for clearing that up, it confused me a bit when he said that
Long term service channel isn't for servers
That's what windows server is for
Ltsc is for industrial, military, and hospital equipment
There's a LOT of things Linus says that is just plain false.
That's literally the same thing. Windows LTSC is entetprise.
@@Theunicorn2012 And the IoT version of LTSC will actually get updated until 2032.
While the manufacturers surely HATE IT... I really LOVE the idea of "repurposing" old CPUs and making boards for them. ANY time we can create more use out of old hardware is VERY good for the environment AND low-cost options for people with low budgets or without other options.
Not so sure about "good for the environment" if those old components happen to be power hogs like some older AMD CPUs.
@@d0nj03 thats why west is disposing electronics to china and Africa. You know, because it costs less.
@@MrMalum That's why China is no longer going to accept that kind of crap, as part of its environmental policies for 2030-2050. ;)
@@d0nj03 This is true. I have my old home server on i5-4570, Z87 Killer mobo, and when it start handing frequently (turned out to be software issue), I've replaced it with Huanan board with E5-2680v3. The power consumption went about 2x from my previous setup (despite being rougly the same generation and age).
i have a screwdriver exactly like the one they recived for over 15 years now. my mind is absolutely blown away to see that the exact model is still in use
No need to reinvent the wheel I guess
I have that exact one as well. It's ancient and much better quality than the one Linus had.
There's so many things from 10 years and older still around 😅It's mostly because making molds is expensive. Making parts isn't. So once you have a mold you may as well keep using it until it literally breaks 🤣
@@Lex-of2wocould be from the same mold that failed over time
The Communist way - _If it work now, why do better?_
These motherboards are not only popular in Russia. Here in Brazil, the so-called "xeon kits" are the only way for Brazilians to have decent hardware, at an affordable price.
Yeah, if you look at reviews of xeons, huanans and laptop chips on desktop boards you'll always see brasilian and russian ones.
Hardware in Brazil is a shit show. And I have no idea why they still keep those insane tariffs. The domestic brands are dead anyways. For a long time now. They even manage to cut their entire country out of the AI revolution or simply allowing talented poor people to become programmers.
Thank you for telling us🙏
It's a hard to find such googlable words alone
In Pakistan as well, we have to sometimes but Xeon kits as well and just pair it with a normal GPU and run it, and pray to God it keeps working.
@@Hortifox_the_gardener It's Brazil lol
In fact, for players in China (like me), seldom will we such computers. The Xeon CPUs were usually abandoned by western big companies, and then shipped to China as e-wastes. Some sellers will call such CPUs “i9 Level” to cheat those who are not familiar with computers. If we buy the components separately, instead of the already-built computer, it can be much cheaper and maybe more reliable. As for the NVME support, I believe the chipset and bios are modified.
Anyway, it may be good for the environment ❤
They're called foreign garbage motherboard IIRC (洋垃圾 主板)
For NVME, just bios mod would do it, especially starting in Sandy and Ivy Bridge where it has UEFI boot. Before that, only legacy boot.
Edit: oh, btw, for "why the x99 with b85 is ddr4/ddr3?". Because, after LGA 1366 and LGA 775, the IMC is on CPU, not on motherboard. Meaning, h310 can be tweaked to allow ddr3l (skylake+kabylake+coffelake has ddr3l IMC iirc). Also, 6th-9th gen mobo can be made combo ddr3/ddr4 board, so does the Alderlake (ddr4&ddr5 IMC inside)
Some Chinese vendors are doing some interesting things with the CPU and chipsets. I looked into the Erying (尔英) motherboards with integrated mobile CPUs. But then I read about the weak VRM and the IHS they made didn't conduct heat well causing overheating. I just went with a normal desktop CPU instead.
i had a similar problem with NVME. Turns out, cheap Chinese NVME SSDs can have compatibility issues (something about their chips) so BIOS just doesn't see them. You need to turn off PC's quick start in power settings and/or hibernation (can't remember off my head) and then start PC normally, by turning off and turning on, without restart (if you restart, PC just won't see the NVME). You are better off making sure that NVME has the necessary feature, though
The case is good enough. Is there a way we can buy them ?
i9级cpu！
军工级主板！
航天级显卡8g超大显存！
That’s how those sellers says
This set is quite a thing in Brazil. The cheapest way to get into gaming was to import from Aliexpress a X79/X99 Xeon kit with motherboard and 16GB Ram from around $50 and then adding a graphics card used for mining, also from China (mostly RX580s or modified RX6600Ms).
Pretty reasonable way to build a $150 entry gaming PC. Performance is not the best, but price/performance ratio is unmatched.
Só assim pra gente estar na comunidade 😢😢
I actually built a micro atx server with the x99 chinese mobo. It's solid. Paid more for the damn noctua fan to fit in the case then the motherboard itself
i would go for 10$ LGA1156 cpu+mobo combo, 10$ 8x4 ddr3 for RX580 build.
@@711jastin I mean there are potential latency issues, for a 580 2x8gb should be "fine." I'd more see 4x4gb being the reason to populate all DIMM slot and just keep 16gb going, not it matters I guess you're not overclocking DDR3.
@@drek9k2 I used to run the exact setup with gtx1080, it's fine.
That motherboard still has features like on board power buttons, post code display and vrm heatsinks, yet premium boards nowadays don't even have these features.
That's how I feel about my cheap motherboard. Love that it has an error light you can google online and just easily narrow down the parts that might be installed wrong. Like when I had a ram slot issue but luckily I was only using two sticks.
Just wanted to type exactly that: While Linus is talking in the end, the machine has the glowing postcode... mocking us! :D
Yes. Now that you have mentioned. That cheapo looking no-name motherboard has POST code. In AM5, you need to spend close to $350 to get you POST code....How ridiculous it is
yeah the 7 segment display in an entire computer cheaper than a modern board with a 7 segment display...
Motherboards have been a giant racket for years, I've had this gripe since the LGA 1155 era
In case you’re curious what the red sticker on the GPU is about,
It just says “Plug in the GPU power cable →“
Lol thanks for the translation!
Apparently, in the people's republic of china, since propaganda is more important than useful knowledge, such stickers are needed 😂 To be fair, just like the "Do not dry pets in microwave" ones in the US 😂
@@GodlikeIridium No, its just idiot-proofing, same thing western companies do. For example the peel off sticker beneath a cpu cooler
@@GodlikeIridium Seems like you might be the one valuing propaganda over useful information here. Lmao.
@@GodlikeIridium I hate the CCP as much as the next guy but this is such a stupid comment
@@GodlikeIridium This sticker is for people who have 0 idea about computers, not for people who watch LTT videos.
HDMI to VGA adapter included is essentially a memorial piece. And it's so thoughtful. Certain games i absolutely have to play on older monitors (CRT) are vga not hdmi. so the inclusion of this adapter is really like getting a stocking stuffer present. Very thoughtful of them.
Also waasnt there a video where you bought a super expensive PSU testing machine thingy ma doodad? run this PSU thru that doohickey
its More like there is a warehouse in China as big as Montana filled with uncountable amounts of VGA Adapters and micro USB ports. They cant be recycled, burning them would warm the planet about 2 degrees.. so they will slowly use and sell them over the coming generations. Bought a fridge? Here is your VGA Adapter.
Even though this "Frankenstein" of a computer might not be for everyone, it's heartening to see technology find a second life in unexpected ways.
That... that's not bad, that turned out to be even more interesting instead
Certainly better than those seller that just put 'i7' and 'GTX' for $600 while omitting the generation
Fr
If I was on a really tight budget I think I'd be stoked to have something like this, personally.
recently saved a friend of a friend from such a purchase. The i7 and "nvidia 10 series GPU" in question were a first gen i7 from 2009(2010?), paired with a 1030.
@@itsTyrionscammers doing scammer things, lying by omission is still lying at the end of the day
shout out my uncle who paid 800 dollars for an i5-6400 and a gtx 750-ti in 2023
I was pleasantly surprised by this. As long as they are honest with what they are selling I really can't say anything bad about this, just the fact that they are reusing old parts to make functional machines and selling them at a decent price then more props to them.
it gets around many import duty's in country's as its used hardware.
I hate old parts mixed with new parts. I like 100% new. so they all die simultaneously.
@@fynkozari9271 you probably are not paying a 10x markup in parts as well.
they never do though@@fynkozari9271
They are a domestic marketplace so there's no point in overselling the products.
Well, here in Brazil, these Chinese X99 kits are extremely common. This movement started almost two years ago due to the inflated prices of hardware in Brazil, with high taxes. Importing these items from China comes with much lower taxes. While a kit with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 would cost around R$ 1,650.00 (CPU + MOBO + RAM), a kit with Xeon costs around R$ 530.00-three times less than the price in a third-world country. The choice becomes very obvious.
is there like a specific term to this upcycling of these chipsets? i want to read more about it but can't find much sadly, or i'm not searching with the correct terms
Shanzhai Zhuban "山寨主板" (Cottage Motherboard), Yáng lèsè "洋垃圾" (Foreign Garbage)@@nekoni4414
Shanzhai is usually used for knock off products, Foreign Garbage refers to story of ex servers part out.
It also applies things outside of motherboard, you name it, "New rx 580", some chips that turns out to be out of specs, knock off phones (fake iphones), and game consoles.
I have to ask, Brasil is third world? How? Really? Idk, I keep seeing such mindblowing stupid shit in the States on one hand I do understand I have an allegedly functional society and economy with not too many houses exploding from bad infrastructure, at same time, I mean I see people living in tents. Also you get used to getting shot fears, I probably won't be shot due to not doing crime, but if it happens not much I can do about it. We do have Medicaid tho, so, if you are poor enough you can ironically get healthcare.
Brazil is second world because of it developing economy (in schools now it would be called an NEE)
Brazil is second world because of it developing economy (in schools now it would be called an NEE)
11:50 and people still wonder why the first thing I do when I set up a new computer for a family member is format the HDD and install a clean OS even if it comes preloaded
My mom and I are Chinese living in the United States, and my mom ships things over from Taobao sometimes. She bought tons of Chinese snacks and things, and one time, i chose out parts for a keyboard! Every time it arrives in pristine condition, since my mom has friends who owns a warehouse that can ship things over. For the keyboard nerds out there, the kit was a CIY GAS67 keyboard kit, a KTT Kang White switches, and a macha keycap set to match the green on the keyboard kit. It cost less than $40 in total, plus shipping. It's a good deal for those who has the time and patience to research and wait for the shipping.
Wow, that's super cheap. The barebone GAS67 itself cost that much in my country
Do you have a link for that?
@@ulfricstormcloak7142 um, I’m not sure, I used the taobao app on my mom’s phone and looked for the cheapest one. Plus, you will have to get it delivered by a different carrier because taobao doesn’t ship outside China
@@ulfricstormcloak7142 这都是习以为常的事了。而且你要知道，我最近刚花了62美元配了电脑，由E5+P106 6G组成，可以玩LOL\PUBG\GTA5，这在世界上任何一个国家都是难以置信的吧
This is all commonplace. And you have to know that I just spent 62 US dollars on a computer, which is composed of E5+P106 6G. I can play LOL\PUBG\GTA5（HIGH QUALITY）. This is unbelievable in any country in the world.
@@ulfricstormcloak7142 yeah the chineese kid's working 14hr shifts approve :)
Ok shoutout to the guys who make chipset up-cycling possible. That is genuinely cool as hell and a pretty big W for the environment
Haha, trust me they don't care about the environment, it's just a way of poor countries to deal with issues.
Yeah, communist countries absolutely do not care about the preservation of nature
@@reuven2010 recycling only works when its value for money, so I guess its a good thing
True!! Such an awesome repurposing of old tech
Yeah, as long as you don't consider what happens to the rest of the board after they remove the single chip from it.
This was a fascinating video about how choosers can be repurposed and how there is a whole community behind doing these modifications. Thanks for doing the leg work!
That was a really interesting look into this second tier market and the ingenuity that goes into combining used parts to get incredible bang for the buck.
I bet that CPU is used by some datacenter in NA, and then sold to HongKong and imported into mainland China. Now Linus bought it home after almost 10 years later.
There are datacenters outside of the US as well.
@@one_step_sidewaysto US Americans there is nothing outside the US.
could have but more likely South Asia or Russia.
@@one_step_sideways hahahah, Yeah, there are no datacenters in China! North Americans believe, outside their border it is just Europe, narcos, jungles and deserts that they can use as battlefields 😂
@@rafaelcferraz I know you guys want to believe there are lots of server CPU's deployed outside NA and Europe but that isn't the case. AWS, by itself, deploys more CPU's than Asia, Africa and Australia.
Being honestly I kinda like that they found a way of making money repurposing old chipsets, it helps bringing down e-waste. And honestly those “old” xeons are amazing more plex transcoding and running a Minecraft server 😂
For Unraid media servers, Xeon/Chinese X99 combos are cheerful and cheap.
hahaha， 我的电脑只要62美元，由E5+H81+P106-6G组成,可以高品质玩LOL\PUBG\GTA5\GENSHIN
@@Theunicorn2012是的，我花了70美元组装了E3+P106的游戏主机，能够畅玩CSGO\PUBG，尽管我的银行卡里躺着200万左右的现金，但这种捡垃圾的组装电脑真的让我很兴奋Yes, I spent 70 US dollars to assemble an E3+P106 game console, which can play CSGO\PUBG. Although I have about 400,000 US dollars in cash in my bank card, this kind of garbage-collecting computer is really useful. I am excited
This was such a good video once again! These are the ones that get me super happy about the existence of LTT! Thanks! ❤️
This was actually a really great video to watch. I’d love to see more vids about the weird stuff you get from like Taobao and other China domestic sites. Cool to see what the gamer fam uses across the other pond
I am currently tinkering with one of these X99 boards, got a whole combo with 16 GB of RAM and a Xeon E5-2640 v4 for €54. For that price, this little machine seems to be able to handle quite a bit while having a max TDP of just 90 W for 10 cores/20 threads. Meanwhile the best deals i could get here in Europe were 6th gens i7s for €170 from eBay. Seeing 8.5k multicore in R23 from a system that costs less than a nice pair of shoes is wild. Aside from using it as a beefy virtualization machine, I want to see how it fares with game streaming with Moonlight/Parsec, so I'm gonna put a nice GPU in there. I will edit this comment once I do so.
would love to hear how it does with emulation paired with a decent gpu, if it could run some ps3 emulated titles at 30, that would be very impressive.
Doesn't it consumes a lot of power?
@@raular5513 another good thing about server boards are that they are made to be "energy efficeint" you dont need to worry about power really unless you put something like an rtx 3080 in there
i picked up one of these repurposed board combos myself, definitly alot cheaper option than picking up anything else. but havnt ran it yet as the cooler i got dosnt actually support the socket...
poor one core performance comparing even with new i3/ryzen 5 5500 processors
That last acknowledgment about availability of office towers in your domestic market is very important. It's my same criticism in the ltt don't buy low end gpu video as well. Not every country has good entry level pcs, often needing to import second hand products to even hope of affording a computer. Aliexpress been a huge deal in accessible entry level pc for many European and Asian region in the last 7 years.
What do you want them to do with a GTX 980 or Radeon 380 that you haven't seen before?
Bah, no point to go so old on GPU.
ATM you can get an RX580 for around 60 ish dollars (USD) which is very good on a budget!
@@reuven2010 my point is even more relevant with 10 series and rx500
@@reuven2010 Used RX580 8GB/ 1060 6GB in my eurotard country atm is 70-100Euro ofc its definitely been mined on 90% of the time
Hell im lucky with my country having a good used market compared to my neighbours that have only old laptops and almost no pc parts in their used market to point i sometimes get stuff and send to my friends from here for their builds
People here are flipping the systems with 580/1060's quite a lot and old office pc market here is non existent due to government regulation of recycling / destroying any used pc from their offices.
I worked in IT for one of the gov places for a tad bit and they have goldmine of old pc's just collecting dust but will not part ways with them due to contracts/policies and to be honest it was hard to watch systems with mid range gen 3/4 intels going into the grinder.
There are not that many massive privately owned companies here and most that are use IT service providers that do all maintenance type of work and hog these old systems for themselves and actually resell them for quite a bit after minimal cleaning.
Old ThinkCentre, Optiplex and ect systems with stuff like i-630 and ect are listed here in our Amazon equivalent of mass reseller for minimum of 100Euro
However if you have connections you could get a hold of one for like 40-60Euro or maybe less if lucky with same spec from some dude
So boards like this from Aliexpress are somewhat compelling but at that point you might scrape up new mobo+cpu+psu combo for like 200Euro and grab some used mined card and pray it works for pc build and not risk reseller respecting the warranty
But on tight budget you could do it due to the fact they have sockets for cpus that are flooding the market and are really cheap due to most of the boards dying faster than the CPU's.
or the parts are so dam expensive thanks to import duty's taxes and even tariffs. so say we pay 1000$ for a high end pc it would be like 5000 for them. of course they look to find cheap hardware that can still preform.
I'm currently using a X99(C612) board with two Xeon E5-2696 v3 CPUs, 128GB of DDR3 RAM, RTX 2080Ti (modded memory chip to 22 GB for better llama model inferring) and an extra 4-port 1Gbps network card. Cost about 5000 Yuan, built with the help of my friend in China. Pretty cool 😎
36 cores and 72 threads. I imagine you would have a lot of sleeping cores while gaming. but still impressive. would be good for a single pc family gaming setup. sure that would need some extra steps to route keyboards, controllers and workspaces
I went with the Machinist X99 boards for my homelab mainly because they sell as bundles with the CPU and ecc ram on eBay. I now have a 3 node proxmox cluster with high availability fail over and 36 TB ceph SAN and a reasonable 430W idle power draw for the whole rack. When I was running a threadripper in the stack, thay specific node on it's own was drawing 450W idle. Since I only really run game servers with a small number of users, this was perfect for me and a great use case for this retired hardware.
May be able to do it cheaper with other used server hardware, but each node requires only one purchase/shipping per bundle and I was able to use off the shelf 120mm cooling so my homelab is also QUIET. Used server gear is often noisy as hell which is a no go in my humble condo.
The RAM is not from a price of network gear but clearly labeled as coming from a Cisco UCS system. Likely a B200 or C220 server. Peel off the red sticker and lookup the part number starting with "UCS-MR-..."
it sometimes surprises me how little Linus knows about enterprise IT
Good video. Just one thing, the computer was 2000 Yuan not Yen (is the Japan currency). While Yuan (officially Renminbi is the China currency)
1:00
I'm guessing he didn't know how to actually pronounce it so he went with "Yon."
@@HendltonFair, probably was that
I think you messed up your parenthesis placement.
2,000 yen as of writing is US$13.38, should be around 10-20 dollars in the usual exchange rate, that would be a truly impossibly cheap laptop, only enough for the acrylic case here.
You charge 170 dollars for a damn pillow???? Linus Theft Tips
170 dollars?!
And an 80$ screwdriver.
Edit: 70$
You ain't gotta buy it goofball
It's possible Tanner was having trouble getting into the bios with a USB keyboard because he was trying to use the USB 3.0 slots. Depending what controller it uses and how it communicates with the chipset USB 3.0 may not be active until the desktop. It's like this on a few of my AM3+ motherboards and is disclosed in the motherboard manuals.
here in brazil hardware is expensive and companies tend to hold on to old computers until they become useless, so importing these frankenstein motherboards and computer parts in general is a pretty good deal
taobao(mainland china) and taobao(worldwide) are 2 completely different things, imo taobao(worldwide) is just another aliexpress
I didn't know that
I thought it changed the currency ( estimate conversion )
Yeah taobao mainland is awesome they also sell legit products.
Taobao worldwide is useless. Much more limited number of products and it still has some hoops you have to jump through or complications in certain countries, there's no reason to use it over aliexpress
@@AlmightyBeing It's easy to use the main taobao with an agent. they speak english and do everything for you
the taobao worldwide is just an oversea version with better shipping policy
Wow! I LOVE that motherboard and background on it!
The AliExpress Xeon X79 and X99 kits are widely used here in Brazil. They are super affordable and perform great! I'm using a Machinist X99-K9 motherboard right now with the same E5-2680 V4 processor you show paired with an RTX3060. I have another PC with an X79 motherboard with E5-2667 V2 and GTX1070 that I built about 2 years ago. Both booting out of Gen 3 Lexar NM620 NVMe drives (also from AliExpress)
Sim, os kits x99 são bons demais, porém os americanos simplesmente veem que eles são oriundos da china e já assumem automaticamente que eles não rodam nem a calculadora, usei um kit x99 por 1 ano e meio e nunca deu problema
@@luamebe Estou montando um estúdio e vou utilizar um X99 aqui para edição de audio, video e até pra jogar. Vou colocar no meu canal agora no inicio do ano a montagem e a solução de alguns problemas que eu tive... se você tiver interesse, da uma passadinha la!
Here's something I'd like to come back, Scrapyard Wars. I absolutely love the whole series and I think it would be interesting to do in today's market.
I think Linus said something in WAN show about Scrapyard Wars is coming back. Not sure if it's 100% correct.
@@ecalz2100He did indeed
These kinds of motherboards are quite popular with the home server crowd. It gets you cheap and easy to find platform for older server CPUs that have literally zero value for actual commercial applications, but are still really really good if you want to run your own server, for example, to learn and experiment with IT systems that need a ton of RAM and cores to function properly - networking sims (like GNS3), different flavors of virtualization, databases. In such applications the compute power of a single core is (almost) irrelevant if you are not actually planning to run whatever you tinkering with in a high-load environment, but you still need a lot of parallel computing ability and RAM to get by.
You can, of course, buy old enterprise-grade server. But, they are incredibly loud, to the point where it's genuinely uncomfortable to even be in the same room while they're operating, and huge and the motherboards in them generally won't fit in any consumer case - so no easy fixes for those problems are available.
Indeed. I am using a retired Dell Poweredge T620 as a NAS in my home, filled with second-hand SAS drives. They are relatively cheap, but use a lot of power😢.
@@liups2339 I've been looking to upgrade from my T410 to a 6 series. Luckily I have a dedicated room in the basement for computers, so noise and heat are non-issues. I picked up one of these Chinese boards so I could put one of my server CPUs after an upgrade. Runs win10 steady as a rock with a 1070ti for graphics.
@@liups2339 Yeah but imagine if we advance in power generation like fusion reactors to provide electricity that power draw problem wouldn't exist :(
indeed power efficiency would be a problem. They can't beat those low power Intel NUC for example, if you care about monthly bill electricity cost@@pauloazuela8488
i love it every time alex jank adapter is brought up
The RAM sticks there, especially the UCS (Cisco) ram stick isn't (likely) from networking equipment. It's from a blade server (equivalent would be something like a Dell PE (PowerEdge) M1000e Blade Enclosure, with the actual server being something like the Dell PE MX750c. The MX750c is the actual compute part.
I love these videos where you guys find 'odd' hardware. They are my favourite videos from you!
Modified BIOS is common for older chipsets like B75, Z77, B85 and Z87. Adding nvme boot support is pretty easy as well. Still have an old Sandy Bridge system kicking around because I was able to get nvme boot running onmotherboard from that era.
Xeon V3 bioses can be modded to 100% uptime turbo boost, limited only by max tdp limit in cpu itself. Also undervolting often can be done only with bois tweaks. Also some bioses can be tweaked to open memory timings overclocking.
Samsung 950 Pro is oddball, they have option rom for legacy boot@@JohnSmithTH-cam
by the way, really love your reviews, non biased and informative
I work for a recycler and we sell ECC/Server RAM in large lots to Chinese buyers. Was wondering what they were doing with those things.
If it going to China - 99% it would be repurposed and sold on taobao or aliexpress back with higher price tag.
LTT needs to get a European distro, I was going to purchase a hoodie when the shipping was added and only 10$ cheaper than the hoodie itself I said no way!
Don't know if that would even help. I'm on the west coast United States, was gonna go for the 10 dollar mousepad but shipping was 20 bucks. Just said forget it
it's not any better in canada...
@@inhumanguy they need to sort their logistics out worldwide, it seems!
@@armando1is1great So many lost sales in bad logistics, they need a decent logistics partner to rectify it. I can literally get a $2k guitar (5kg) shipped and insured from the USA to Ireland for $30 USD (removing in import costs). A hoodie/mousepad should be $10 max.
Linus was confused by it supporting NVMe. I had an HEDT Broadwell chip (since consumer desktop didn't exist for that generation). As far as I know, Broadwell was the first generation to natively support NVMe. My i7-5820K supported it, and I'm not surprised that this random Xeon supports it. It's a super interesting generation with a lot of unique and weird in-between stuff which makes it feel modern even though it's basically just Haswell.
CORRECTION: Anywhere I said Broadwell in here, I meant Haswell Refresh (generation names are confusing)
Haswell refresh was the first intel generation to support NVMe. I know because I had an i7 4790K in a Z97 ASrock Extreme4 with an NVMe SSD in 2014. It only had a PCIe gen 2 x2 link though.
Also, the 5820K was haswell refresh, not broadwell. The broadwell HEDT chips were called the i7 6800K/6850K/6900K/6950X. Actually, broadwell had some non-HEDT consumer chips as well, the i5 5675C and the i7 5775C but were not very impressive. Intel also made broadwell mobile processors.
@@urgay1992 You’re right, my bad. It was Haswell refresh that first supported NVMe. I was confusing the generation names (and they’re architecturally almost the same anyway I guess). But thank you for the correction.
Old Xeons are super solid if you can get them at this price. V2 and later are even overclockable
@@urgay1992 The mainstream desktop Broadwell i7-5775C and i5-5675C had huge 128MB L4 eDRAM which helped quite a bit in some games. It was kinda like the spiritual predecessor to AMD 5800X3D
we need the tiktok shop build now
Ooh, another time where I clicked on a "background noise" title and ended up discovering something really cool! Thanks for the info about the parts harvesting.
1:38 bro callex RMB "Yen" 💀
amazing to see such a CPU in this setup... it cost about $2 in Xianyu (a second hand platform) in China, but E5 really have enough cores for heavy use except gaming.
That clip with the angle-grinder cutting out chips is wild :D
Now people really love watching videos about budget-built PCs on Bilibili, most of which involve used parts from the market. It's also tons of fun to see when people try their luck to buy those already malfunctioned RTX GPUs at a very low price, and then to see whether they can fix it or not.
The thing about your conclusion on the cost effectiveness of such a product is that it kind of assumes you live in a country that's friendly to the West and thus tied into the West's supply chain.
That's not necessarily the case in places like China and Russia where you're seeing an increasing stranglehold on new technologies, but still have a glut of old hardware mixed with some newer stuff (like DDR4 or NVMe M.2 drives), thus cobbling together a new platform out of a mix of old chipsets, newer components, and essentially homebrew firmware can actually make a lot of sense.
The X99 B85/H87 thing boils down to connectivity. The DDR4 memory capability comes obviously from the CPU itself. Intel never intended B85 for these 2011-3 chips but apart of that these connect over DMI 2.0 as well and have only fewer USB and SATA 3.0 ports vs. X99. So I don't think there's more than just some firmware trickery needed to get these chipset running with 2011-3 CPUs.
I have bought from TaoBao once, that was because I needed to find a rare watercooling part that wasn't on sale anywhere else. I used their official overseas shipping program and everything was hassle free and the item shipped without delay or mishap. Part of a metal bracket I received was bent around 45 degrees but I don't know if that happened because of poor shipping handling or if it was like that from the start. Either way, I unbent it and I'm a satisfied customer, the biggest hurdle for me was making an account on their platform because their system bans a lot of overseas users trying to make accounts.
8:43 I always forget that Linus is jacked
I've personally gotten some great stuff from Taobao. I had it shipped to my friends in Hong Kong, and then they shipped to me in Canada.
Next-level Pimsleur Mandarin you've got going there.
I'm surprised you missed the opportunity to plug the LTT screwdriver, when talked about that cheap piece it came with :)
some additional information from a Chinese friend here
Typically Taobao is more like a giant grocery store, we would not prefer to buy any electronic gadgets from it (not for any tech enthusiast) unless it is a store opened by a very famous influencer. (like LTT, it's not common for influencers in China to set up a website just for spelling merchants)
There is another platform called Jindong we use to buy tech stuff, and big companies' official store is often set up in JD as well (eg. intel, Asus, gigabytes, Ugreen, Seagate, western digital, and so on)
And we prefer to build our computers than buy an already built system like this because there are lots of sellers who use almost broken parts to build systems and sell them at a high price for profit (like this time) once a customer gets tricked they quickly close their store change a name and start selling again
and this happens on all platforms
I'm not sure if you are tricked or not this time
That old Xeon CPU in China is called garbage(costs around 60～70 bucks each, which is around 10 dollars) because it's most likely to be used in rough conditions, and also GPU probably came from a mining farm
it's not just used parts, it's a bomb that will explode at any second
14:07 Just a correction, LGA1150 supported m.2 storage.
Had a Msi MPOWER Z97 for many years and that had an NVME storage slot 😊
It'd be neat to do a series with some of these products exploring what old recycled hardware can do. With so many cores and a relatively modern gpu, its be a neat option for a home lab with maybe a plex server, piholes, NAS, etc. Only thing that'd put me off it is the sketchy power supply (which presumably could be replaced with a discount or ebay unit unless it uses weird standards) and the preloaded os which would be a nonissue if you replaced/formatted the ssd and loaded some linux distro or proxmox on it.
brand new 30 USD 1000W power supply from china, drives my dual 2680v4s and a 5700xt, along with those power sucking 15W each 4x ddr4 ecc rams, no problema
Yeah, fun hobby if you don't mind having a corner of the house to use it in that's double-gypsumboarded and has automatic fire extinguishers. Good times.
I may have moved past this era of computing in my main PC but my kids are still running old X58 systems I built many many years ago. X79 motherboards are still being made as well as these X99 motherboards, and they sure do provide another world of computing outside of the Intel P/E core and Ryzen genres. At some point I'd like to build one of these X99 systems with the DDR4 ECC memory, speedy 6 core (E5-2643 v4 or E5-1650 v4) or 8 core (E5-2667 v4 or E5-1680 v4) Xeon, and see how well it runs with something like a 5700XT or 2070 Super.
My untested and unproven opinions/theories on this X99 thing are that those high clockspeed 140 watt CPUs I'd want to use will heavily tax the meager CPU power provided from these bargain basement boards, and I even wonder how well the 120 watt E5-2680 v4 shown in this video would have clean power at all times. Definitely would want a better PSU to even try it, and would also want to run a beefy top-down cooler to get some cooler air over the VRMs. I might even go so far as to even run the top case fans as intake to bring in as much cool air as possible.
There are some boards that have dual power plugs, AsRock Extreme9 for example. Funny enough, I’m looking to sell mine but I can easily see how someone would love to set up a render machine on it. Even the extreme 6 supports 3 gpus at 8x, the extreme 9 supports 4 at 8x, and the extreme 11 supports 4 at 16x. (All at gen 3 though)
"Velly good" 4:40 caught me off guard
my xeon from aliexpress has been thriving for a year, really love it
I spent as much on my second-hand E5-2690V4, 2 years ago as they spent on the whole system (the sub 300 price that is). Mine is in a Precision T5810 and was my gaming machine all through the pandemic. Worked well enough paired with the rx 580
I would love to have some 2690v4's, my dual socket 2680v4 runs maxed out at 2.88Ghz, I believe 2690v4 can boost a bit higher to 3.1-3.2 Ghz right? If it didn't cost 3x the money than my 2680v4s, I would have gone for that, anyways they both have the same amount of cores though
5:00 I surprised they didn’t promote their own screwdrivers.
A sub 20 min ltt video is something I can't complain about
To be precise Linus, should have mentioned that Cisco also makes servers, and that memory most likely comes from a Cisco server rather than a switch since these usually don't require that much ram, even really high end ones with removable/expandable memory
I‘m honestly shocked as well seeing how well the E5-27XX v4 CPUs handle games. Especially when backed with a RX 5700 XT or something similar.
I honestly have a hard time getting the fans to ramp up (not including the one that now doesn‘t know what it has to do after I installed some Noctuas) in games even though I run them cranked.
It‘s funny how 300€ or dollars can get you 8 cores at 3.5 GHz, 32 GB of DDR4 RAM and a decent GPU nowadays if you are willing to get into the used parts market.
Yeah for sure, you can get an rx580 from ali for somewhere around 60$ which would allow you to game pretty decently on a budget, i am happy that they can somewhat game despite having low currencies and etc/
I only buy used hardware nowadays, only exceptions being PSUs and mechanical hard drives. You have to think about it like cars. You will pay a hefty upcharge if you buy new.
These are always some of my favorite videos
I have been running a Chinese 'X99' B85 board with a 2699V3 (18c/36t) with all core turbo unlock and 32gb 2133mhz in quad channel for over 3 years, its currently paired with an R9 290 but can handle a faster GPU, it has NVME support too.
It is mostly used for productivity and was as good as my 3700x on that front.
I wouldn't build such a machine now, but 3 years ago it made sense but it also makes sense to keep using it rather than replace it.
That'd make a killer home server with hardware transcoding support ngl
I have one of those no-brand "Machinist" style motherboards that supports my i7-3770 and DDR3, yet has an NVME slot. Cost about 50 dollars, and works great, if you can stand having half the SATA ports being 2.0. I was surprised at such a thing, and was only looking for cheap used boards to slap together a NAS type of system out of existing parts.
That's fine, but that is some early days i7. What do you use it for, web pages with no logic in CSS? Space War? Emulating Exponential Systems' PowerPC offerings?
I honestly wasn't expecting that much performance for the price!
I brought a dual socket 2680v4 and a 5700xt miner card, 64 Gb of DDR4 2133 ecc RAM and 1TB pcie gen 3 storage system in china, the whole set costed me about 1900 yuan or about 300 bucks in USD, I would not buy that system whatsoever given that it lacks in terms of GPU power, RAM, Storage and pcie connections (mine has 2x pice x16 and 4x pcie x8), so I don't know what you're talking about
@@TomiWebPro are you joking?
It's recommended to buy parts seperate from taobao. There is some official flagship online stores such as asus, deepcool etc, but that's about same price as global. I'm neighboring country of china and it's pretty beneficial. I could buy anything from taobao and it ships within 10 days via local cargo company.
I have one of these x99 Mainboard from AliExpress in my secondary PC and its been working great for years
8:32 Some motherboards have specific USB ports for keyboards, if you need in the BIOS. This is usually the first 2.0 port on the rear IO.
First time I heard abt this, thanks for sharing 👍
Would be cool to buy one of these just as an emulation station. We will use our higher end pc's for the AAA stuff.
Using Xeon's and those modded motherboards for gaming is pretty popular in Poland. You can get Xeon's as cheap as $5, the motherboards are like $50. These make killer budget gaming pc's paired with like an RTX 3090 and 64 GB's of RAM.
igen
I love custom motherboards from recycled parts, just goes to show how much a little tinkering can do.
In custom boards like this, it's created an entire secondary market.
We need more recycling markets like these.
Say that with one of these 3 years in, and you'll have some notes! That said, I'd kind of like to see dynamic/static reschedulers etc. come out and pull magic and/or recompilation of Star Rail running on game boxes. (Leaves the ol' i5 to run fan art stuff and the Ryzen 9 for something I'd care about. Dwarf Fortress!)
Is common here in Brazil cheap builds with Xeons using Machinist and other AliExpress mobo's, some builds costs us 3x less than a regular build with an i5
Absolutely love that competent systems can be built out of older parts. I feel like used hardware hasn't had this much staying power previously
This video was somehow so good, funny and infomative!
I appreciate that Linus has actually made an effort to better the content put out, exactly why criticism is so important
I used to have a Xeon from China which was adapted to run on 775 socket (very old hardware update attempt) and it was quite flawless, I only needed to install the BIOS to have the processor being supported. So it looks like they've taken that to another level with this kind of pre-built computers... And yes, they are quite popular in post-USSR countries when you may not have enough money to step up and buy whole new computer but you want something more robust than you already have) Anyway, there's definitely a market for such computers, just reinstall the Windows as soon as you get one
May I ask you how did you find that? I have a bunch of old 775 socket motherboards which would benefit from an upgrade...
@@mek101whatif7 775 is pretty old and IMO it's not worth bothering with such upgrade anymore. But if you still want it, you can probably find pre-modified BIOS'es for your motherboard from ideafix modder. If your motherboard isn't in the database, then it probably wont support s771 Xeon. Those old Xeon's itself cost pennies now
Aside from that, x99 motherboard+V3 Xeon+Ram packs on Ali all cost less than 100$ and are enough for most 1080p games with something like RX5700 or 2060.
@@mek101whatif7 The specific modification method involves grinding a notch in the CPU and rotating it 90 degrees for installation on the motherboard. Additionally, two specific CPU contacts can be swapped by covering them with a layer of PCB or by soldering. The person who discovered this method is a genius.
it was with sticker, 771 to 775 sticker@@user-ng2dg3kf8d
i got my kiddo a xeon chip mobo and ram combo from aliexpress nrly 2 years ago for £70, chucked a rx 570 8gb in it with an old case and my old storage and away he goes.
he's been happy playing the games he wants ever since. one of the best PC buys ive ever made, ngl.
I'm still rockin my 1060 OC and it does surprisingly well, obviously not the fastest or the best but it still surprises me when I try a modern release on it and it still plays well
Linus I would love to see you guys do a video review on the sub-$200 "gaming" pcs on Amazon that look like someone took an office workstation and slapped RGB on it! That would be VERY interesting to see!
It would not be interesting. It's just what you said, an office pc with RGB.
A investigation about those sellers and their sketchy practices tho, that would really be a good watch.
pretty sure he already did a video about those
@@Deses I see your point, but I never meant their actual capabilities anyway... I meant sorta what your talking about with them being marketed as gaming pcs but it being essentially a scam.
they already done that in past.
Yen is the Japanese currency, Chinese currency is Yuan, or Renminbi.
This build is amazing. 300 dollars and you got ana amazing server xeon 14 core. A great GPU and all the extra parts refurbished that is in pristine condition and cheap
I built a gaming pc for my nephew with a Machinist “x99” and a Xeon off of Aliexpress and it was actually pretty decent. Had no Overclocking features to speak of, but did just fine for $100 with 16 GB of DDR4 and a 2670 v3. Plays pretty much any game well, with an RTX 2080. That’s where I blew most of the budget 😂 well spent. Also it supports M.2 NVMe drives, so it’s actually not bad at all for the price.
I actually encountered these Boards on ebay in the past for X99 and Z97. The Frankenstein Boards have been H61. Now they are B85? They at least do Haswell now...
If you are interested in this kind of mainboards I recommend taking a look at the huananzhi x99 qd3 or qd4, which is very well made and has basically no flaws. The qd3 is even more weird, as it supports ddr3 on the broadwell ep cpus. Which was normally no thing. There is just a handful of special OEM CPUs having dual ddr3/4 memory controllers. My recommendation for a cpu would be the E5-2696v3 and running it with some cores disable but alle Core Turbo Mod. If you are lucky it might turbo to 10* 3.8GHz. A bit cheaper is the 2667v3. The broadwell chips are not so interesting as you can not get an all core turbo unlock.
Huanan Qd4 is a good one, but it doesn't have sleep mode. Not a big deal but is a flaw
I have 2697v3. It is cheaper than 2696v3 but not very different in games. And QD4 good motherboard. Wich I have)
Since LGA 1156 (DESKTOP) and LGA 2011 (SERVER), the memory controller is on the CPU. But before that, the IMC is on mobo. I still remember ga g41m combo that has 2 DDR2 and 2 DDR3 slots.
Basically it's possible to have combo ddr3/ddr4 for those x99, since IMC still have ddr3 support.
Skylake is the same, still have ddr3 IMC. So does the alder lake and raptor lake, still have ddr4 IMC.
Only one Chinese company made lga 1700 DDR4 combo DDR5 mobo tho, ONDA.
The whole redoing chipsets idea is kinda cool to me as someone whos using repurposed computers on the cheap… i think its great environmentally too
wait till u see the Russian USB C PD charging mkt,
those guys make exact replicas of Anker chargers (using the same chipsets ismartware) for making stuff like 4 port 100watt chargers (100W each) for 10-20$
17:44 Linus says there will be links to good options for Liquidated PCs down below. There are no links. Good to see you guys are still just as on top of things as always.
They didn't post the link to the "liquidated hardware" sources they referenced towards the end of the video! I was really looking forward to checking that out! Other than eBay and Facebook Marketplace, I don't really know where to start looking for that kind of stuff tbh.
At least the parts are being used! And not going into e-waste landfill, well done to them, insanely cheap too
1:44 it yuan, not yen. Yen is Japanese currency
I'm russian and it's 100% true we have huge community for old Xeons, i thought i was common in other countries as well😅