I work in my university's e-waste centre and we give out machines, like the one you started with, for free all the time. Becasue otherwise the uni has to pay to get them recycled. So for anyone wanting a base machine like the HP maybe ask around local institutions for what they do with their outdated equipment, they might just let you have it 🙂
On top of that, check out universities on move out day. Some have dumpsters to recycle "e-waste" which can be current computers that the kids just don't want to or can't take home.
That case is actually the same case as my Graphic Design workstation in work, that hasn’t been been upgraded for a few years and definitely wasn’t bought new.
I have to say I appreciate you guys putting these videos together. I live on a fixed income and have wanted to upgrade my 2009 HP desktop for years (my steam and gog libraries are filled with games I can't play) but kept putting it off due to the costs of computers -- especially now with rocketing inflation. A modest upgrade like this one could give me access to 90-95% of my libraries. Thx!
Buy a refurbed/used OEM desktop PC and slap in at least a 4GB graphics card. Later upgrade the RAM to 16GB. Much like people did with cars in the 1990s: buy used and incrementally upgrade it. It's called "living within your means". Throughout most of American history that's what most Americans did.
@@natejennings5884 Well. That was quite the tangent. Also these days people aren't just "living within their means" people are literally choosing between buying health insurance or food. This isn't the 1960s where you could just work for a couple years and buy yourself a nice little home. People don't even have money to save because they can barely pay rent.
Living within your means doesn't count for shit if the supply runs out though. Otherwise people wouldn't, y'know, starve. I get what you're saying but sheesh, what an unecessarily snarky tangent that had no bearing on the discussion.
I still use a HP Business Elite 8200 with an i5 2400 as a NAS and Plex server. Tossed in a Quadro K600 and it'll rip and convert movies like a champ for under $80 USD.
@@DuBstep115 Some people prefer the conventional ways of doing things. I myself would much rather rip my own DVD collection than to rely on streaming services.
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Unfortunately VRM is not that well cooled in Z420 (unless you got model with water cooling, it has extra VRM heatsink). Recently I replaced a failed mosfet on dead Z420, whole PCB in power delivery part is a bit discolored from heat.
@@deano1699 yes cyberpowerpc does that they include Apevia psu that can break down all your other parts. But they break down over time so they have time for the warranty to end so they make more money for repair
My first desktop was a HP Z240, I chucked 8GB of ram in it and eventually a 1050ti and it was a pretty powerful computer for what I was used to, when gaming it wasn't anything special, but when I did the occasional video editing, cad work or photo editing, the xeon absolutely crushed it, still have it sitting in storage for use with 3D printing once I have the space
Oh, man this episode made me smile. I found one of these Z420's in the electronics recycle bin at work. My new(to me) free rig had inside, a 4C/8T Xeon E5-1620-0 at 3.6ghz, 16GB of DDR3 at 1600, a GTX 770 2GB and 240GB SSD. I added a GTX 1060 6GB (this was in 2017) and a 2TB HDD for games/storage and I was off to the races with what ended up being a rock solid gaming rig that never gave me a single problem for 3 years. With that 1060 inside, it ran Witcher 3, AC Odyssey, GTA V and other newer titles at 1080p medium/high settings with no issues. Good times!
Same thing for me, threw in an R9 380 I had an used it for a few months, then got a killer deal on a used 1080 for only $370 in 2017!! Was an Asus strix card that had a broken cooler. While the platform has moved on the 1080 still keeps up 5 years later.
@@cameronkoplin5131 the 1080 and ti are both wonders of Tech if you ask me, both monsters back in the day and even today both hold out well, the ti with its 11gb is still one i would like to have/buy today
That is not far off from my current rig (i5-33570K, 16 GB DDR 3 @2000, GTX 1060) but I notice the CPU limit hard. But finding the right upgrade for a good price isn't easy.
I was given one of these workstations and installed a 980 and an SSD a few years ago. Still runs great. Good to show that it doesn't take a lot to be able to get into PC gaming.
I paid close to 2k for my build in 2015 (monitor was 500) still have the original 980 i put in it and added a second in SLI. upgraded 40 gbs of ram. Still runs great! but it's not like i can still play all games on max settings.
Considering inflation, high prices and people being laid off - this is an amazing video for the student, the family struggling with presents for their children, fathers wanting to treat themselves without selling a kidney etc. All jokes aside, amazing video and truly helpful in these times.
@@calicancer661 you can save a bunch if you dont buy new. If you go on laptops direct (or some other websites are good but i like this one most), there are some very good deals. ive seen laptops going for under half price just because of some scratches or something, so its worth having a look in future
Too bad even 5 months ago when they built the computer it would have been impossible to do for a price they claim without having 90% of the components laying around the house from other projects
@@calicancer661 if you bought the pc because you wanted to play on it, then it was a bad choice. if you got it because you wanted a Mac with their power, OS and all the stuff then it was probably the best choice
Man, with that many SATA ports i'm thinking about getting one of these to upgrade my old unraid NAS. Plenty of memory options and a Xeon for some lightweight virtualisation. Perfect for my use case.
@@niek5526 That's exactly what I did! There was a period a few years ago when the Xeon E5-2670 was reaching EOL for enterprise customers and datacentres were dumping inventory like crazy. Picked up an 8 core, 16 thread CPU in 2016 for like $30, when that sort of core count was hundreds or thousands of dollars in the consumer space. Tracking down a cheap-ish x79 motherboard was a bit rough but in the end I had 16 threads, x79 absolute top end chipset and all the virtualisation, PCIe lanes and storage capacity I could ever want for like
It'd be slow for transfers over the network, but if you don't mind uploading things over night while you sleep, or copying over USB (it does have USB 3.0) then you'd be set. Rig up an intake fan on the front of that thing and load it up with HDD's. Edit: could even put a fast PCIE network adapter in it with at least 2.5Gbps, and a handful of 6 or 8TB IronWolf's, and it'd be a great media and/or storage server.
When I was broke a few years ago, a buddy gave me this exact computer. I put a GTX 1060 and SSD in it, it gamed quite well! Fixing up old office PC's is OP.
Back when Win7 was still in RC1 state and up to SP1; I was running it on a refurb'd Dell Optiplex 745 with 8GB (4x2GB) of DDR2 and it was a strong little workhorse for gaming and running a Minecraft server on with a low-profile 9400GT to augment the graphics in it. Only problem with that system was it used a BTX motherboard layout which mean I couldn't transplant it to a normal tower case to have the space to do further CPU/GPU upgrades with it.
as a personal experience as service engineer, the Siemens Healthineers MRI scanners were equipped with HP Z400, Z420 and recently Z440 (intel Xeon), they work pretty well as heavy-duty workstations. even the former versions are still at service without even dust cleaning service!
Until recently used one of these as a gaming PC. Quick tip, make sure you get a Z420 with a 1620 v2 (Linus is using the slightly older one), so that you are basically guaranteed a dual six pin. They also occasionally packaged these with very nice water cooling, so it might be worth it to look.
Yeah definitely, I have one of these and it has liquid cooler in it and 2x 6pin pcie power. I got it with a K4000 gpu in it! This was scored for the excellent price of FREE from a company that was refreshing old hardware and didn't want the hassle of selling them. I also managed to score a HP Turbodrive (from a different desktop acquired similarly) with 256GB SM951 M2 AHCI drive which is bootable in the z420 (unlike if you try NVME). I happened to have some spinners to add as RAID for extra capacity.
And these proprietary power supplies are basically server power supplies and reliable, and because they only fit in these weird HP workstations, they could be had for cheap.
I think the biggest takeaway is that when you're trying to build a PC on a very low budget, start looking into old workstations. And if you manage to get in touch with someone who's selling a number of them, ask for a monitor, keyboard and mouse, they might be able to get you something really cheap as well. Be aware of all the limitations, especially if it's one of those low profile ones (low profile GPUs are really hard to find right now). And also make sure that you actually want a PC for that cheap. Because if you're planning to start gradually upgrading sooner or later, you will run into trouble due to the weird form factors and proprietary stuff. Even the motherboards sometimes won't fit into regular cases and a lot of these workstations come with PSUs which don't have any PCIe connectors (meaning you need a GPU that will run just on the 75W from the motherboard).
If U need to upgrade it its waste of time. Bunch of x79 Hp models support just 25w quadro cards and even lenovo C30 and supermicro mobos that support regular cards are not without bugs.
Depending on generation, many of those office PCs have adapters/jumpers that you can buy on ebay/amazon that allow you to run standard power supplies and other stuff like that. Such as the HP Elitedesk 800 g1, and the 8200/8300 elite. Sandy/ivy bridge Dell optiplexes have a few videos on youtube that show you how to get by the proprietary stuff.
@@romevang there’s a 24-pin to 6-pin adapter you can get to use standard ATX power supplies in newer Dell Optiplexes (the ones with 8th, 9th and even 10th gen Intel CPUs) Once you get that taken care of, it’s a simple matter making other upgrades There’s a guy who built a liquid cooled Dell Optiplex, and he was able to put an RTX 3060 in it, because that 24-pin to 6-pin adapter allowed him to use a standard modular ATX power supply, which had a 6-pin power cable for the GPU
@TxBoi They are magnetized but in order to store 12 in the handle of the screwdriver, you have to use their small bits. With regular bits you can only store 6. They sell their replacement bit set for like $6
This is something to keep in mind for sure, thanks for making the video. I'm a 57 yr. old disable guy, just getting by; looking for thrifty ways to upgrade and sale gaming PC's. I'm using a DELL Optiplex 9020 right now. It does just barely what I can get by with comfortably, meaning playing some shooting games. Thanks again !!!
Man, I never realised how much I miss these budget build episodes. I really hope there's a new scrapyard wars with prices coming a bit more back to earth in the near future :D
@DounutCereal Linus has said on several occasions that Scrapyard Wars is dead (at least twice on WAN Show if I am remembering correctly). The shoots were getting too complicated and costly and didn't receive as much viewership as he had hoped for with that kind of investment. I think he said he is still interested in bring that kind of content around in some other form, but not "Scrapyard Wars".
Happy to see my go-to budget gaming "base" of the HP Z-series workstations covered by a much larger techtuber! Good to see, Linus & team! For anyone wondering, the Z420 is also transplantable with a ATX PSU adapter (from Moddiy) and some tweaks. The ATX PSU adapter is all you need if you're cool with a "press f1 to boot" error, but if you want a clean boot then you have to disable USB 3.0 in the BIOS, add a PCI-E USB 3.0 card to keep any USB 3.0 functionality, put a jumper on the sense pin of the yellow USB 2.0 header, and thats it. Use PWM fans on any/all headers and you'll be all set. Oh, almost forgot to mention a different cpu cooler would be needed too due to the way the stock one installs. I've done mods to these, adding a clear side panel, as well as complete transplants into new cases fully gamer'd and RGB'd out. I love these workstations! Would be awesome to see you guys evolve this system into a stronger and stronger budget behemoth in upcoming videos!
i love how he made a video one it, i used to have a e5 1650 version of the z420 with a gtx 1080 and it was still better than most modern computers on 3d mark
@@Michelino_M5 Aesthetics, personalizations and maybe airflow. Depends on the person. The question isn't whether you should or not, but just a "if you wanted to" kinda thing. Many people wonder about that so was just putting it out there.
I ran one of these for about 5 years before upgrading to a more modern machine. It was an HP z400 with a GTX 1060 (6GB) and an Intel Xeon x5680 and an SSD and some 120mm fans cable-tied to the front to help with cooling 😊. Got the PC for free from a friend's workplace and bought the GPU and CPU used. Ran pretty much every game at 1080p flawlessly.
If you made the purchases LTT did .. you would be well over $100 in shipping alone. I'm not saying it isn't still worth it, it's just definitely *NOT* a "$69 Gaming PC".
The cooler position actually makes sense. The liquid accumulates at the bottom of the heatpipes when the computer stands, boils up, and when cooled goes back down.
@@barretonaldo Copper heat pipes, but yes. They've got fluid in there at low pressure that boils as soon as substantial heat is introduced, and condenses when it reaches the fins.
I recently watched this video, and it has been of great help to me, I acquired this equipment that is no longer used in the company where I work, and I plan to update it to give it the use it deserves. Mine came with NVIDIA QUADRO P4000 . Thks a lot for your content
We just recently tore down and rebuilt an almost identical model to this computer from 2014 in one of my college classes so seeing this so soon after was really surreal. Broke my heart to find out we weren't able to buy them off the school because it would have been a hell of a deal
My buddies at tech colleges used to dumpster dive these old things 😂 The government says they're supposed to be destroyed or something but I have a handful of them in my garage that I think might be able to run Windows 98 and the college threw out in the 2010s 😂
@@theRPGmaster My buddies just wanted stuff to fool around with as engineers do on their broke college student budget. I just never grew out of that "packrat everything because your parents are cheapskates that would never buy it for you" so I end up with stuff like that and my grandma's old Pentium III Gateway laying around until I get the itch to play with it.
I did this with a Z440, only thing I ended up swapping was putting a 1080Ti in it because the quadro died. Still my daily driver to this day, hasn't let me down yet :)
What CPU is in there? Is the1080ti bottlenecked at all? I've found the same thing. Until I upgrade my display, my 1080ti system can still handle new games MAXXED out at the best my monitor is capable of (1080/60hz). So unless I decide I NEED ray tracing, then I have NO reason to upgrade until I get a 1440p or 4k or high framerate display! I mean, I've been enjoying Spiderman remastered at a steady 60fps with MAXXED settings at 1080p, which is all my TV can handle anyway. I might be 'missing out' on Ray Tracing, but after playing the game, it seems like I'd probably never even notice the Ray Tracing improvements during regular gameplay. And in most cases the screen space reflections and cube map tricks look convincing enough while swinging around at full speed :)
I did something similar with an old Lenovo with an i5 2400 (LGA1155). I installed a GTX 1060 6GB, upped the RAM from 8GB to 16GB, installed two SSDs with Win10 and Garuda Linux, and changed the case to a Cooler Master TUF.
Used that exact system in my office. I think the reason for the odd cpu cooling is there is supposed to be a duct covering the whole thing that directs the air from the cpu fan directly out the back of the case.
Yeah I learned CAD on a z420 in highschool, it did have a shroud going from the front intake across the CPU cooler and ram cooler connected to the exhaust fan. A really good budget design if you ask me.
They actually did this because the Z420 uses many of the same parts as the Z620, including motherboard (though slightly modified) and heatsink. The Z620 had the option for a whole second CPU with 4 more memory slots on a riser card which partially covers the socket for the first CPU (see this pic: media.gekko-computer.de/images/30001541_3.jpg ) , which is why they had to move the heatsink up a bit. They then simply reused the Z620 heatsink in the Z420.
as someone who barely has a budget, lost my gaming PC because I had to give it away, and has been eyeing builds for years, this video made me smile from ear to ear thank you LTT team for this. amazing content! I'm going to build a gaming PC BABYYYY
This build works because its built with a cpu that is well above the consumer market. The cpu's in these are massive and very powerful in comparison to what you or I would normally buy. Movies were very often filmed in 4k even before that was possible at home, thus computers needed to be beefy as hell to account for it. This is why they aren't hitting a cpu wall like you would normally expect. However, that being said, they did not test a cpu heavy game (anything from paradox, anno, etc). But for the budget constrained, 1080p is probably your limit on monitor anyway, and you probably cant afford a paradox game
After a long time, an LTT video reminded me of the channel that made me fall for tech and IT! Been watching this channel for over a decade and it all started because I needed to build a PC over a decade ago, and hacks like this are why I love LTT so much!
I used to use one of these for software development back in 2014-2017ish. Ended up getting it for free when the company upgraded. Great CPU, terrible GPU I had with mine. It was also always bottlenecked by the company being too cheap to put an SSD in it (something I rectified when I took it home) There is an adapter you can get to use a 24 pin ATX connector if you want to upgrade the PSU.
I've been saying it. There's a glut of cheap power on the market for 1080p gamers. And 10+ years of games that will run smooth as glass and still look amazing. So much for "high barrier to entry" for PC gaming.
High barrier for entry appears to be less about price and more about knowledge and know how. I'm pretty sure most people's idea of buying consumer electronics is getting them working straight out of the box and less about scavenging parts on the cheap. That being said, since half decent PCs can be built at this price point it would serve as a great learning opportunity for more people to jump in and build one.
@@jamiehollywood7681 Agreed. For anyone with the desire to learn, spending $50 to $100 on some cheap office PC to take apart and learn this stuff on is a good investment. Something that runs, so that after tearing it down, to the point of even removing the motherboard from the case, one can put it all back together, start it up, and see that it’s working. Then maybe upgrade it, if it was starting out with decent enough specs to be the basis of a budget gaming rig or emulation box. Or just use that new confidence, some parts compatibility info, and a tutorial, to build a rig.
I agree. I bought a 7th gen 7700k, with 16gb ddr4 ram and Rx 590 nitro with 8gb vram from a friend who upgraded to Ryzen and this machine do everything I through at it with issue. I play all my games at high or utra in 1080p with issue at all.
It is incredible what components you can get for such a low price! People write off older components but don't realise a lot of them still have a purpose!
Absolutely. Its easy to do a cookie cutter build and choose high end parts etc. Chasing the most performance one can get for smaller budgets is so much more satisfying in many ways.
The weird CPU fan offset is to be able to stack another motherboard on top. I have the z620 version of this HP unit with 2 CPUs in it. The second CPU is attached to a breakout board that slots over the top of the primary motherboard. It's the most bizarre but cool double-decker CPU configuration I've ever seen. Been working great for me for about 3 years now with several extreme upgrades of course.
@@disekjoumoer That'a bummer. I was trying to mod mine once and fried it. I was lucky enough to find a spare board for it floating on Ebay and swapped them out. If not for that it would have been toast though. Because garunteed they don't make those parts anymore. And they are not compatible with any other system like you are desctibing.
Lots of good deals on older workstation PCs. They aren't built like junky consumer HP/Dells, etc. Ebay, Microcenter, Amazon sells refurbs. Picked up a $2000 ThinkPad that was 4~5 years old for $300. And it's about 95% as fast as the current model.
That offset heatsink is actually a brilliant idea. Normally those pipes are tucked under the assembly, meaning the heat they produce has less opportunity to dissipate before reaching the main block. By exposing the pipes it allows not only for some additional heat to dissipate, but for you to improve on it with adhesive heatsinks like you'd put on a Raspberry Pi or if you're brave enough a water cooling block soldered onto the heat pipes. That design invites modification!
Some of my favourite videos on this channel are the budget builds, it's always cool to see what's possible. This is another reason we need another season of Scrapyard Wars!
@@DefinitelyAPotato of course, the problem is that they are so famous, that there might be people who want one of the contestants to win so they give them discounts that are going to break the rules. That is why they have not done a scrapyard wars series for awhile now
I’m actually in the middle of building a Z440 gaming box for someone, it’s a really decent way to go. It’s just a little newer (haswell) so no m.2 onboard but supports booting from a pcie slot m.2 adapter. Put in a 6-core 2643v3, 16gb ecc in quad channel, it has a 700w psu so I could fit a 1070. The cpu heatsink is beefier and more traditionally U-shaped heat pipes, it had a 92mm but was wide, I 3d printed an adapter to use a 120mm noctua redux instead. The chassis cooling is the worst part but I 3d printed a front fan mount/duct to get a 120mm intake fan. Not as cheap as $69, I’ve probably got about $300 total into it.
I kinda did the exact thing you did for my company 6 or 7 years ago. We had similar workstations from 2012 and they were getting slow, company wanted to buy all new machines. Instead I bought all the machines SSD drives to replace the 5400rpm disk drives in bulk for a very cheap price, and the machines ran like completely new systems after that. We got another 4 or 5 years out of the machines with the solid state drives.
Oh man, I love benchmarks from PCs like this. It's always far more interesting and impressive given the age of these parts than builds with today's new tech in them.
One thing I love about HP machines from this era is their handy green pull tabs to remove hardware. It was hard to find workstations/desktops from this time that were so easy to service.
I've been trying to tell people, HP Z series, Dell Precision T series, Lenovo Thinkstation, and Dell Optiplex's make for great budget gaming PC's, just know what you're doing when it comes to matching the CPU and GPU and the PSU.
Got myself a DELL optiplex from 12 years ago. Running on a core i3 CPU and onboard graphics [smh] but it does render g-code for my 3D print farm faster than my 2018 duel core celeron connex netbook with 4GB ram and 32GB embedded flash memory
I got one of these not so long ago, I got a T3610. I got to say it is a giant computer. I was able to upgrade the parts for it. It came with Xeon E5-1650v2 8GBs of RAM and a Nvidia Quadro 600. I upgraded it with some Crucial DDR3 32GB 1866Mhz of RAM, a Storage Bay for my 1TB and I swapped out the 600 with a Nvidia RTX A2000. It is a literal beast to play games with if you put enough time to upgrading it.
Oh my god I love you for making this, I’ve never owned my own computer and I think I’m just going to get this so I have something to use before I put the money down to get the parts for your $500 build. It’s amazing you guys are considering people at every income range. Again I love you guys for this.👏🏾❤️🙌🏾 Edit "three months later" - I just ended up getting a I7-12700K/3070 Ti build, came to the conclusion that I wanted uncompromised performance. Probably gonna save up for a 40 series for the future too. I started school so I need something reliable.
@@elijahevo6859 I don't know how it works these days, but back in the early 2000s a $500 budget build part list would be good for like a week. I think the best they can do is give general advice, like don't spend too much of budget in one place. $69 PC + $420 GPU would probably have power supply problems.
@@DoctorWhom I build and flip multiple budget systems a month, it's not about everything changing constantly, they just got shit deals and not only that it wasn't speced for best price to performance, it was doomed before it was even bought
Its too bad they only do videos like this every 20 videos with $5,000 PCs or $10,000 random ass projects that are pretty useless. But u know, the ppl love mindless entertainment
Your segment on social engineering, and specific examples of what to look for was just excellent and engrossing content. Not that I didn't already enjoy your content before, but giving those social tips beyond the tech stuff was just really great and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I have seen so many youtubers get the money and forget their roots. This is the type of material that is balanced not to forget not all of us are winning the grind. Keep it up!
So I just did this for my kids today. I did NOT change the CPU or GPU, and it came with a 150GB SSD. The workstation arrived yesterday and today I bought all the peripherals, keyboard, mouse, headphones and monitor. All in, tax and shipping, $291. It probably will not hold up to AAA games but I'm still amazed at how much I got for so little. Thank you so much for this and it's preceding video. I was in the process of saving up about $8K to build my 3 kids gaming machines, but now I can do it for around $1K!!!
If you go to your local transfer station and ask, the owner might let you take electronics out of the e-waste bin, since it costs more for them the heavier it is. Offices will also sometimes just dump their old computers in there if they don't want to deal with selling them.
I have this exact PC. Ive added memory to get to 16GB , used some old 850 Evo SSD's for the drives, and used an old GTX 750 TI, and put fresh windows on it. It works surprisingly well.
I used to have a computer like this as a daily driver at work, and I souped it up so that I could play games before we opened in the morning. I didn't have an SSD, and I only had 8GB memory, but I did install my own ebay 750 Ti and was able to play Overwatch very comfortably on that rig! It is amazing what you can do with very little cash if you are willing to limit your game library a little bit.
I got one of these about 2 years ago when everyone got stuck at home, first one was super cheap and terrible but I liked it enough that I paid for a decent one after words and put a e5-1650 v2 and a gtx 670 in it. Power supply mod is pretty easy and you can get a adapter off Amazon. It was pretty sweet for what it was, didn't need to run a heater in the room thru the winter nights when I ran folding either lol. However, I had many many memory errors with both of mine that I eventually got sick of and needed up building a replacement on black Friday last year.
I've got the big brother to the Z420.. a Z800 with *dual* Xeon x5675 6 core cpu's @3.07 ghz. (24 cores total w/hyperthreading), and 64 gb. of DDR3-1333 Registered DIMMS. It also has onboard SATA/SAS RAID with about 9 TB. total storage across 4 drives. Primary drive is a 1 TB. Samsung 870 EVO SSD., and a Nvidia GTX 285 graphics card. Runs Windows 10 Pro with a few speed mods. Not much for gaming, but a hell of a workstation, and the platform for driving my Hauptwerk 4.2 organ software! Total investment including purchase cost of the Z800: about $475! 😉 Performance is rock solid..
This is great, I'm running a Z440 with an RX580 (soon to be decommissioned now my post-silicon shortage parts come in a few days) and it's been great! That was more $140 USD for the system, the GPU and a 1tb SSD but yeah! Only upgraded because VR is getting a bit much to ask from it
I have to say it is so nice to see LTT finally coming down to earth a bit and focusing more on what normal people can afford... Most of what they showcase seems to be cutting edge, cool, but exclusive to deep pockets and the well heeled. It's refreshing. Keep it up. Bat for the little guy, dudes and dudettes!
@@NavinF I agree - I was being general not specific to this specific price of this video. I meant more take for example the recent vid on the AMD Threadripper
@@NavinF Adult enthusiasts with jobs can but lots of people can't. Even as someone with a 3090ti my old pc was a pile of spare parts I got from several people for free back in college, and I would start out a kid who just wants to play some games like Linus was talking about on the same thing, spare parts that get the job done for cheap.
I mean, for the last 2 years, it was impossible to build a budget gaming PC because of the insane GPU prices. Linus mentioned in a WAN show how he was so excited in building budget PCs again after GPU prices started going back down.
A friend of mine had one of these. You can get 18 pin to 24 pin adapters for these systems. If you transplant it to a new case you will probably need to chop off the cooler mounts off of the case as it does not mount to a backplate
@@LLCooLM595 well yes but we didnt upgrade the cooler along with the case. The stock cooler screwed into the case so we had to get creative with an angle grinder
@@karsnoordhuis4351 ohhhh, interesting. I bought my board separate, never saw it in an original machine. Wonder how/ why they decided to tie it into the case 🤔
budget PCs are honestly so cool, theres not a worry if you break something or mess something up because its easy and cheap to fix, recently got a $200 NZD PC with 16gb ram, i5 4440 and gtx 750, upgraded the 750 to a rtx 2060 super and it runs games great, does have a slight bottleneck on some demanding games but am going to upgrade to a i7 soon
For the next 69 dollar pc build he should use his (approximately 69 dollar) ltt screwdriver to break into a best buy and just steal all of their computer parts
@@lDarkfoxxl bro my pc lasted for 10 days only and when I booted it I get a black screen and a loop of blue screen of death that's why I switched to laptop
@@mrfudgefan i bought one on black Friday and within a year now it has micro stutter especially when i plug in Razor products and it tries to download the official firmware. My desktop i built i used for 10 years and upgraded some of the stuff, i had to leave it and give it away because i moved states and took a plane
@@mrfudgefan i built my pc when i was like 10 and its still running fine now 6 years later. graphics are lacking a bit but its working perfectly fine lol
I have a Z420 here as an ESXi host. I dropped in a bigger xeon, bumped it to 128GB of DDR3, bought the front fan and front DRAM shroud for it to keep things cool. It also has the Intel ME setup so you can turn it on/off remotely. I built a new box I've moved into, so the Z420 is looking for a new home if anyone in Northern VA is interested. It's a great box.
i just baught one because of this video. i paid 80 uk pounds for a 32 gig one. it was sold has used , but it was brand new, plus had a 1tb hdd and a 120ssd and a hp mouse and keyboard. cheers guys.
About 4 or 5 years back I picked up a Z800 for 100USD. That thing was a beast and fun to play with. I ended up reselling it to a work buddy for the same after doing some slight upgrades when playing with it and sold him my rx 580 8gb GPU for $100 later down the road. The GPU worked fantastic with it.
In the UK our energy prices are skyrocketing, and a gaming enthust could easily spend a significant portion of their PC costs just to run it for a year. Are you guys planning a video soon on suggestions for performance per watt at different price points? I am hoping to upgrade soon to a PC after several years, but am at a loss with what to get with all the power hungry hardware these days.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if pure DC systems make a resurgence with energy prices creeping up. Get an HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX power supply for your PC, a couple used solar panels, and a 24V 50Ah lifepo4 battery. That's roughly $100 for the PSU, a few hundred watts of solar for another $100 and ~$400 for the 1.2kWh of batteries. With the battery alone; you could run a 6700xt and a 5800x3D for 3.5 hours. A high refresh rate display would drop the run time to roughly 3 hours.
Get a 3060 laptop. Runs close to a 3060 desktop , just a 5 to 10 % difference. The laptop system draws like 170 watts while gaming , less than a desktop 3060 card can draw alone.
@@batt3ryac1d Optimal solar gain hours in Britain are on average 4 hours daily throughout the year. Thats 1kwh/ meter^2 per hour. That's plenty for practically all households in the UK who average 8.5kWh of energy use per day.
I LOVE these videos. This is what I do all the time: try to find older decent hardware and beef it up to play games on it. it's almost like cheating the Pc market system by getting good enough materials at low budget prices.
This is literally how I grew up. Finally being an adult, having a job and buying myself a 2k PC for once felt REALLY incredible though. It's just so flashy, lol. Yaknow? Anyway, PC's do get tons cheaper when you completely ignore stuff like RGB. A decent, pretty, tight RGB setup is almost half the cost of a decent PC. You also really don't need to spend money on stuff like water cooling. Those things are all such wastes of money, imo. Never needed it.
The HP workstations were great had a refurbished HP xw4400 Workstation (Core2Duo E6600 2.4GHz, 4GB, 80GB, DVD-RW, Quadro FX 1500). Worked well, also for gaming back then (around 10 to 12 years ago). Rocksolid machines for a good price. Awesome server/router capabilities (but for a router I choose a bananna Pi today at 10W).
I have a Z420 that first went to a GTX 1050 and it was completely usable for gaming. Weirdly the nvidia gaming drivers didn't like the Xeon at all. Had to stick with the studio drivers or the machine would only reboot successfully every 5th time. Now upgraded to a GT 1660 Super, but frankly the 1050 was fine.
I had one of these with a 1060 6GB, back when 10 series was the new thing. It was a capable machine! Ran things like Witcher 3 and AC Odyssey at 1080p mostly high settings.
I had the same rig for over a year with a E5-1620, GTX 1080, and 64gb of ram. Ran great there was some bottlenecks on highly single thread bound tasks but honestly not bad at all. That little E5-1620 then migrated to an old EVGA x79 dark where it spent over the next year and a half dependably pushing 4.8ghz on all cores.
Gotta love HP for giving the finger to any kind of industry standard for consumer convenience. 24-pin power? Nope. Normal fan connectors? Nope. BIOS that doesn't freak out the moment ANYTHING is not as expected? Nope. Dell and Lenovo are up to the same shenanigans by the way, as are most manufacturers of these business PCs. Almost all of them come with weird power supplies, strange connectors and will not start properly if some random cable isn't plugged in.
The only dislike about this is HP. For that price and all of those SATA ports I can think of other ways to make it more useful. Some of the older Intel chips are still useful but there is no shortage of shoddy developers especially in the gaming world.
You can nab a dell optiplex sff PC with an i5 or i7, 16 or 32gb or ram and an SSD for $95-$135. There's just barely enough room to fit a low profile single slot GPU will just barely fit above the goofy proprietary PSU. As long as you don't draw over 50 watts it seems just fine. I have helped several people set them up and they have been chugging away. You can get a solid work and gaming machine for around $200-240. the radeon rx 6400 low profile cards seem to fit just fine and out perform anything else in the price range. We found two of them "used" when they were just in a damaged box for under $100.
My experience with dell other than their absolute horrible approach to proprietary hardware has always been somewhat posistive, their great pcs for the price but a hassle when you need to upgrade them
This is pretty much what I've been using these past five years. You can buy a convertor mobo ribbon cable so you can replace the non-standard PSU with a larger ATX one that'll drive a modern GPU. Without it, my 1080Ti was just too much for the old girl. Actually, before I learned about the cable I had a separate psu sat on top of the case, just powering the GPU. Messy but it worked. Pre-Covid craziness I also managed to get a six core 3.5GHz Xeon for peanuts and it has been a loyal beast. It's only this year that it really has started falling apart.
I did something similar to a Precision T3500. Upgraded the W3505 to an X5675, upgraded the 2X 2gb to 6x2gb and got a PNY SSD. Haven't touched the 550ti it came with yet but it's a work in progress
dude I'm literally in the same boat as you. recently acquired a precision t3500, and also managed to find an x5675 processor. purchased some hyperx ram (will start with 12gb total for now, 3x4gb), but the pre-installed gpu was just some early model quadro so that'll definitely need upgrading, and still waiting to get an ssd. love the fact that it uses a standard atx psu and 24-pin cable. the only downside is how astonishingly heavy the case is 😂
@@yearninetyseven yeah the case is extremely heavy lmao but it was really nice to see just standard off the shelf parts in there. They've definitely taken a step backwards on that front unfortunately
OMG! This was literally my PC for the last 5 years! I got it off someone recycling their "build machine" after getting a newer one after using it for a few years. This ran a ton of my games for years without any hiccups until I tried playing Guardians of the Galaxy and Final Fantasy VII Remake on it... Finally was able to afford building a new computer when prices shifted in May ^_^ This video feels like a tribute to my years of "budget PC gaming" and I highly appreciate it.
Fair play Linus!, I also ride mountain bikes, and everyone is still reviewing 5 grand pushbikes, I built mine from a 2nd hand £50 eBay find, with lots of smaller & cheaper but v relevant upgrades, so I know it can be done on a budget, as for PCs I wouldn't have said it could be done for $69, or even twice that
Haha... I checked our local auction sites and found the HPZ420 selling for $1,690 and HPZ440 going for NZ$1,900 -- a far cry from the amount Linus paid in this video.
Second hand pc parts in NZ is always a scam. Lots of those PC'S get dropped off at e recycling places, next thing you know, they list them on trade me for multiple hundreds of dollars.
This is cool. For my first tech internship in IT, we used these machines and I had to rip the ram out of them for salvage. Cool machines but holy crap HPs proprietary nonsense is really stupid. The board won’t even boot up without all the fan headers plugged in.
I have a z620 w/ 2 cpus, 1060 6gb and 88gb of ECC ram. You guys should try to find one of them. I still throw all kinds of crap at it and it surprises me every time. Addition: in the spirit of the video, I got it from the scrapyard I worked at. Saved so many PCs from there at scrap price that I barely had a paycheck lol
@@LEM620 just the 1 that I use and a z420 I gave to a buddy. Sorry man. If it's any consolation my 620 didn't come with any drive trays so it looks pretty bobo when you take the side panel off haha
well csgo was released over 10 years ago, not that surprising. and you generally dont need a modern cpu for games. im daily driving a xeon 1620 v3 from 8 years ago and it doesnt bottleneck my 2060 in any game.
You know whats twist? This actually isnt 69$ Pc. They described it as office pc but in it its 2011 x79 xeon with quadchanell. Reall office Pc from that period is i5 2400 with 4gb Ram in sff 220w case.
@@nikolakarovic5964 wrong, it depends what kind of office. if you need to use cad or ANY other software than notepad or similar, they used these. i also have an old office pc and it has a xeon 1620 v3.
So I actually have this pc and am using it to write this comment. It was given to me from a credit union that didnt need it anymore. Long story short, it does have the xeon processor like the one in the video but I am stuck with an eleven year old gpu, the AMD Radeon R9 270x, which is really just a rehashed version of a 13 year old gpu. I need to upgrade it, but for now it runs some games at around 60 fps like Fortnite and other fps games. If anyone wants to know it runs Roblox at 100 - 120 fps, mind you I havent made any adjustments to it unlike linus. This computer is defiantly a viable option
so... when we gonna get a $420 PC build?
Coincidentally that's about the amount I've dumped into my PC including upgrades.... Which is an HP Z420 like in the video.
We need a $420.69 PC bulid..
🤔
The wish pc was that
Hehehe hahahahaha funny numbers xd!!!!
I work in my university's e-waste centre and we give out machines, like the one you started with, for free all the time. Becasue otherwise the uni has to pay to get them recycled. So for anyone wanting a base machine like the HP maybe ask around local institutions for what they do with their outdated equipment, they might just let you have it 🙂
Are you saying many universities can afford to set up an eSports league LAN Center full of repurposed obsolete workstations?
Great tip!
On top of that, check out universities on move out day. Some have dumpsters to recycle "e-waste" which can be current computers that the kids just don't want to or can't take home.
I’ve gotten generators and pumps the same way, generator probably didn’t have 10 hours of use.
@@handlemonium imagine what great players could be discovered by such projects who otherwise may never be able to play the games.
Love the fact that you went with a z420 for the $69 PC build. Very nice.
"Blazing fast" must have been on purpose ahaha
@@TehScareM8 blaze it
Oh yeah, 69420
That case is actually the same case as my Graphic Design workstation in work, that hasn’t been been upgraded for a few years and definitely wasn’t bought new.
epic
I have to say I appreciate you guys putting these videos together. I live on a fixed income and have wanted to upgrade my 2009 HP desktop for years (my steam and gog libraries are filled with games I can't play) but kept putting it off due to the costs of computers -- especially now with rocketing inflation. A modest upgrade like this one could give me access to 90-95% of my libraries. Thx!
Did you upgrade?
I guess we'll never know.
Wellllll?
So he complains about no money and then buys dozens of games that he can't even play?
@@vortukagaming consider the following: piracy
Whichever writers worked on this did a great job meeting that price point. Honestly thought sub $100 windows 10 gaming machines were dead.
Buy a refurbed/used OEM desktop PC and slap in at least a 4GB graphics card. Later upgrade the RAM to 16GB. Much like people did with cars in the 1990s: buy used and incrementally upgrade it. It's called "living within your means". Throughout most of American history that's what most Americans did.
@@natejennings5884 yeah you can find some ex office PCs with decent i5 and i7 chips.
@@natejennings5884 Well. That was quite the tangent. Also these days people aren't just "living within their means" people are literally choosing between buying health insurance or food. This isn't the 1960s where you could just work for a couple years and buy yourself a nice little home. People don't even have money to save because they can barely pay rent.
Living within your means doesn't count for shit if the supply runs out though. Otherwise people wouldn't, y'know, starve.
I get what you're saying but sheesh, what an unecessarily snarky tangent that had no bearing on the discussion.
@@natejennings5884 outside we make do with much worse still do in fact
I started out with a rig like that, replaced the CPU, GPU and Motherboard over a year or so and its pretty powerful...
It's a PC of Theseus.
So you basically got a new PC :D
@@Raress96 Hence the ship of Theseus reference.
I've also got a pc of theseus, only thing I havent replaced is the motherboard
PCeus
I have an office hp too, but the mobo screw holes are not in the same position than standard mATX, and so are the holes for the PSU 😔
Bonus point: usually business centered workstations are pretty solid and can last a long time. They really put an extra effort in the parts.
I still use a HP Business Elite 8200 with an i5 2400 as a NAS and Plex server. Tossed in a Quadro K600 and it'll rip and convert movies like a champ for under $80 USD.
@@TheNiteNinja19 "rip and convert movies" Wait what year is this?
@@DuBstep115 Some people prefer the conventional ways of doing things. I myself would much rather rip my own DVD collection than to rely on streaming services.
Unfortunately VRM is not that well cooled in Z420 (unless you got model with water cooling, it has extra VRM heatsink). Recently I replaced a failed mosfet on dead Z420, whole PCB in power delivery part is a bit discolored from heat.
@@deano1699 yes cyberpowerpc does that they include Apevia psu that can break down all your other parts. But they break down over time so they have time for the warranty to end so they make more money for repair
My first desktop was a HP Z240, I chucked 8GB of ram in it and eventually a 1050ti and it was a pretty powerful computer for what I was used to, when gaming it wasn't anything special, but when I did the occasional video editing, cad work or photo editing, the xeon absolutely crushed it, still have it sitting in storage for use with 3D printing once I have the space
Oh, man this episode made me smile. I found one of these Z420's in the electronics recycle bin at work. My new(to me) free rig had inside, a 4C/8T Xeon E5-1620-0 at 3.6ghz, 16GB of DDR3 at 1600, a GTX 770 2GB and 240GB SSD. I added a GTX 1060 6GB (this was in 2017) and a 2TB HDD for games/storage and I was off to the races with what ended up being a rock solid gaming rig that never gave me a single problem for 3 years. With that 1060 inside, it ran Witcher 3, AC Odyssey, GTA V and other newer titles at 1080p medium/high settings with no issues. Good times!
@@deano1699 lmao
Same thing for me, threw in an R9 380 I had an used it for a few months, then got a killer deal on a used 1080 for only $370 in 2017!! Was an Asus strix card that had a broken cooler. While the platform has moved on the 1080 still keeps up 5 years later.
@@cameronkoplin5131 the 1080 and ti are both wonders of Tech if you ask me, both monsters back in the day and even today both hold out well, the ti with its 11gb is still one i would like to have/buy today
That is not far off from my current rig (i5-33570K, 16 GB DDR 3 @2000, GTX 1060) but I notice the CPU limit hard. But finding the right upgrade for a good price isn't easy.
what system do you currently run, or upgrade to?
I was given one of these workstations and installed a 980 and an SSD a few years ago. Still runs great. Good to show that it doesn't take a lot to be able to get into PC gaming.
the fact that there were 69 likes
you can mod the bios to boot nvmes on these machine too, fuckin sick
I paid close to 2k for my build in 2015 (monitor was 500) still have the original 980 i put in it and added a second in SLI. upgraded 40 gbs of ram. Still runs great! but it's not like i can still play all games on max settings.
Considering inflation, high prices and people being laid off - this is an amazing video for the student, the family struggling with presents for their children, fathers wanting to treat themselves without selling a kidney etc. All jokes aside, amazing video and truly helpful in these times.
Underrated comment I spent 500 on a mac m1 I kind of get buyers remorse but idk shit about computers
@@calicancer661 you can save a bunch if you dont buy new. If you go on laptops direct (or some other websites are good but i like this one most), there are some very good deals. ive seen laptops going for under half price just because of some scratches or something, so its worth having a look in future
💀
Too bad even 5 months ago when they built the computer it would have been impossible to do for a price they claim without having 90% of the components laying around the house from other projects
@@calicancer661 if you bought the pc because you wanted to play on it, then it was a bad choice. if you got it because you wanted a Mac with their power, OS and all the stuff then it was probably the best choice
This computer is cheaper than mw3
Bruh how
No it isn't MW3 is 60 but that is 69
It is also a dlc
Yeah its 99 cents cheaper
@@SirBritishTGits 69.99 not 60
Old-ish office PCs are a gold mine. With a tiny amount of work they're basically the fastest PC your non-enthusiast friends/family have ever used.
Man, with that many SATA ports i'm thinking about getting one of these to upgrade my old unraid NAS. Plenty of memory options and a Xeon for some lightweight virtualisation. Perfect for my use case.
@@niek5526 maan thanks for that idea
@@niek5526 I'm personally using an old Optiplex and running TrueNAS. For generic home use, anything in this weight class is going to do well.
@@niek5526 That's exactly what I did! There was a period a few years ago when the Xeon E5-2670 was reaching EOL for enterprise customers and datacentres were dumping inventory like crazy.
Picked up an 8 core, 16 thread CPU in 2016 for like $30, when that sort of core count was hundreds or thousands of dollars in the consumer space. Tracking down a cheap-ish x79 motherboard was a bit rough but in the end I had 16 threads, x79 absolute top end chipset and all the virtualisation, PCIe lanes and storage capacity I could ever want for like
so right! for $200 my dad picked up an old z230 hp workstation, and he said it was the fastest pc he has ever used! and it was very snappy!
The 10 SATA slots would make this an interesting basis for a ultra budget storage machine.
Yeah, would make for an awesome cheap server
Especially with access to ECC RAM
Had the same idea, also some basic Plex or other media server would be cool variant for it as well
It'd be slow for transfers over the network, but if you don't mind uploading things over night while you sleep, or copying over USB (it does have USB 3.0) then you'd be set. Rig up an intake fan on the front of that thing and load it up with HDD's. Edit: could even put a fast PCIE network adapter in it with at least 2.5Gbps, and a handful of 6 or 8TB IronWolf's, and it'd be a great media and/or storage server.
I was thinking the same
When I was broke a few years ago, a buddy gave me this exact computer. I put a GTX 1060 and SSD in it, it gamed quite well! Fixing up old office PC's is OP.
Back when Win7 was still in RC1 state and up to SP1; I was running it on a refurb'd Dell Optiplex 745 with 8GB (4x2GB) of DDR2 and it was a strong little workhorse for gaming and running a Minecraft server on with a low-profile 9400GT to augment the graphics in it.
Only problem with that system was it used a BTX motherboard layout which mean I couldn't transplant it to a normal tower case to have the space to do further CPU/GPU upgrades with it.
as a personal experience as service engineer, the Siemens Healthineers MRI scanners were equipped with HP Z400, Z420 and recently Z440 (intel Xeon), they work pretty well as heavy-duty workstations. even the former versions are still at service without even dust cleaning service!
Until recently used one of these as a gaming PC. Quick tip, make sure you get a Z420 with a 1620 v2 (Linus is using the slightly older one), so that you are basically guaranteed a dual six pin. They also occasionally packaged these with very nice water cooling, so it might be worth it to look.
Yeah definitely, I have one of these and it has liquid cooler in it and 2x 6pin pcie power. I got it with a K4000 gpu in it! This was scored for the excellent price of FREE from a company that was refreshing old hardware and didn't want the hassle of selling them. I also managed to score a HP Turbodrive (from a different desktop acquired similarly) with 256GB SM951 M2 AHCI drive which is bootable in the z420 (unlike if you try NVME). I happened to have some spinners to add as RAID for extra capacity.
And these proprietary power supplies are basically server power supplies and reliable, and because they only fit in these weird HP workstations, they could be had for cheap.
@@trevorharte4300 lucky.
Do you think that that gpu paired with a GeForce 1060 could play elden ring online?
I found one of these on eBay for $130
I think the biggest takeaway is that when you're trying to build a PC on a very low budget, start looking into old workstations. And if you manage to get in touch with someone who's selling a number of them, ask for a monitor, keyboard and mouse, they might be able to get you something really cheap as well.
Be aware of all the limitations, especially if it's one of those low profile ones (low profile GPUs are really hard to find right now). And also make sure that you actually want a PC for that cheap. Because if you're planning to start gradually upgrading sooner or later, you will run into trouble due to the weird form factors and proprietary stuff. Even the motherboards sometimes won't fit into regular cases and a lot of these workstations come with PSUs which don't have any PCIe connectors (meaning you need a GPU that will run just on the 75W from the motherboard).
Research the specs on the PCI slots. Not all dell machines supply a full 75 watts through the slots, for example.
If U need to upgrade it its waste of time. Bunch of x79 Hp models support just 25w quadro cards and even lenovo C30 and supermicro mobos that support regular cards are not without bugs.
Depending on generation, many of those office PCs have adapters/jumpers that you can buy on ebay/amazon that allow you to run standard power supplies and other stuff like that.
Such as the HP Elitedesk 800 g1, and the 8200/8300 elite.
Sandy/ivy bridge Dell optiplexes have a few videos on youtube that show you how to get by the proprietary stuff.
@@romevang there’s a 24-pin to 6-pin adapter you can get to use standard ATX power supplies in newer Dell Optiplexes (the ones with 8th, 9th and even 10th gen Intel CPUs)
Once you get that taken care of, it’s a simple matter making other upgrades
There’s a guy who built a liquid cooled Dell Optiplex, and he was able to put an RTX 3060 in it, because that 24-pin to 6-pin adapter allowed him to use a standard modular ATX power supply, which had a 6-pin power cable for the GPU
Yo the salty butter on the inside of microwave popcorn bags slaps
Love my $199 z440 with 128gb of ram
How you doing laundromat king?
@@9HighFlyer9 me good
oh wow, what gpu and cpu?
A z420 is better than a z440 in gaming but in workstationing the z440 is better
@@killthechick Why is that ?
I love how Linus accidentally called out his own store's pricing comparing the PC to the screwdriver 😂
It's a good screwdriver though.
@Classy Days a $70 screwdriver better be the most life changing screwdriver I've ever layed eyes on
@@xxProjectJxx It's the screwdriver for people who only shop online and don't know how to hardware store.
@@classydays43 guarantee my klein tools screwdriver will work just as good for a fraction of the price with a lifetime warranty as well lol
@TxBoi They are magnetized but in order to store 12 in the handle of the screwdriver, you have to use their small bits. With regular bits you can only store 6. They sell their replacement bit set for like $6
This is something to keep in mind for sure, thanks for making the video. I'm a 57 yr. old disable guy, just getting by; looking for thrifty ways to upgrade and sale gaming PC's. I'm using a DELL Optiplex 9020 right now. It does just barely what I can get by with comfortably, meaning playing some shooting games. Thanks again !!!
Look into Dell Precision or the HP equivalent workstation the next time you decide to upgrade.
Lenovo S30 Workstation is also another great workstation to turn into a low cost gaming PC.
Uncle ur bigger than my dad haha
Play ultrakill
You should put a 1050 ti low profile int here used
Man, I never realised how much I miss these budget build episodes. I really hope there's a new scrapyard wars with prices coming a bit more back to earth in the near future :D
I miss scrapyard wars a lot.
@@G-C-G me too
Scrapyard wars is what brought me to ltt.
@DounutCereal Linus has said on several occasions that Scrapyard Wars is dead (at least twice on WAN Show if I am remembering correctly). The shoots were getting too complicated and costly and didn't receive as much viewership as he had hoped for with that kind of investment. I think he said he is still interested in bring that kind of content around in some other form, but not "Scrapyard Wars".
@@BryceCassagneres and the fact him and Luke get recognized too much
Happy to see my go-to budget gaming "base" of the HP Z-series workstations covered by a much larger techtuber! Good to see, Linus & team! For anyone wondering, the Z420 is also transplantable with a ATX PSU adapter (from Moddiy) and some tweaks. The ATX PSU adapter is all you need if you're cool with a "press f1 to boot" error, but if you want a clean boot then you have to disable USB 3.0 in the BIOS, add a PCI-E USB 3.0 card to keep any USB 3.0 functionality, put a jumper on the sense pin of the yellow USB 2.0 header, and thats it. Use PWM fans on any/all headers and you'll be all set. Oh, almost forgot to mention a different cpu cooler would be needed too due to the way the stock one installs. I've done mods to these, adding a clear side panel, as well as complete transplants into new cases fully gamer'd and RGB'd out. I love these workstations! Would be awesome to see you guys evolve this system into a stronger and stronger budget behemoth in upcoming videos!
What do you mean transplantable? What component would you be swapping?
@@Michelino_M5 transplanting the entire system into a new case
i love how he made a video one it, i used to have a e5 1650 version of the z420 with a gtx 1080 and it was still better than most modern computers on 3d mark
@@CoalitionGaming Ah, got you. But why would you want to do that? Esthetics?
@@Michelino_M5 Aesthetics, personalizations and maybe airflow. Depends on the person. The question isn't whether you should or not, but just a "if you wanted to" kinda thing. Many people wonder about that so was just putting it out there.
I ran one of these for about 5 years before upgrading to a more modern machine. It was an HP z400 with a GTX 1060 (6GB) and an Intel Xeon x5680 and an SSD and some 120mm fans cable-tied to the front to help with cooling 😊. Got the PC for free from a friend's workplace and bought the GPU and CPU used. Ran pretty much every game at 1080p flawlessly.
I think this type of video is way more interesting, than just another high end PC. So great job
I know Hugh, and you're right. Hugh's end is not very interesting.
@@qwkimball Hugh showed me his end...
@@NoSteps Giggity
@@qwkimball I hate my smartphone
@@cybernd6426 I hear ya, doad...uh, dude.
It's good to see this kind of content become possible again.
If you made the purchases LTT did .. you would be well over $100 in shipping alone.
I'm not saying it isn't still worth it, it's just definitely *NOT* a "$69 Gaming PC".
@@THE-X-Force $100 in shipping alone? bro you living in fantasy land.
@@THE-X-Force if you watch the video, you will see they found one with local pickup available.
they bought local on marketplace and amazon which is free shipping
The cooler position actually makes sense. The liquid accumulates at the bottom of the heatpipes when the computer stands, boils up, and when cooled goes back down.
Liquid?
@@hails2991 he is probably talking about a vapor chamber
I was going to like this, but 69 likes? Nah. Just know, i like this comment
@@barretonaldo Copper heat pipes, but yes. They've got fluid in there at low pressure that boils as soon as substantial heat is introduced, and condenses when it reaches the fins.
bro is using lava lamp to cool his PC
I recently watched this video, and it has been of great help to me, I acquired this equipment that is no longer used in the company where I work, and I plan to update it to give it the use it deserves. Mine came with NVIDIA QUADRO P4000 . Thks a lot for your content
We just recently tore down and rebuilt an almost identical model to this computer from 2014 in one of my college classes so seeing this so soon after was really surreal. Broke my heart to find out we weren't able to buy them off the school because it would have been a hell of a deal
Well the good news is.. its very cheap to replicate.
lol they made me do the same thing.
My buddies at tech colleges used to dumpster dive these old things 😂 The government says they're supposed to be destroyed or something but I have a handful of them in my garage that I think might be able to run Windows 98 and the college threw out in the 2010s 😂
@@ffwast That's awesome. If nobody was safekeeping old tech, people in 30 years would have no retro machines to enjoy.
@@theRPGmaster My buddies just wanted stuff to fool around with as engineers do on their broke college student budget. I just never grew out of that "packrat everything because your parents are cheapskates that would never buy it for you" so I end up with stuff like that and my grandma's old Pentium III Gateway laying around until I get the itch to play with it.
I did this with a Z440, only thing I ended up swapping was putting a 1080Ti in it because the quadro died. Still my daily driver to this day, hasn't let me down yet :)
Z440 is a lot better tho, how much did you pay for it ?
What CPU is in there? Is the1080ti bottlenecked at all?
I've found the same thing. Until I upgrade my display, my 1080ti system can still handle new games MAXXED out at the best my monitor is capable of (1080/60hz). So unless I decide I NEED ray tracing, then I have NO reason to upgrade until I get a 1440p or 4k or high framerate display!
I mean, I've been enjoying Spiderman remastered at a steady 60fps with MAXXED settings at 1080p, which is all my TV can handle anyway. I might be 'missing out' on Ray Tracing, but after playing the game, it seems like I'd probably never even notice the Ray Tracing improvements during regular gameplay.
And in most cases the screen space reflections and cube map tricks look convincing enough while swinging around at full speed :)
@@StreetPreacherr i'd expect a 1080Ti to get bottlenecked by an old Xeon lol. but maybe not
I did something similar with an old Lenovo with an i5 2400 (LGA1155). I installed a GTX 1060 6GB, upped the RAM from 8GB to 16GB, installed two SSDs with Win10 and Garuda Linux, and changed the case to a Cooler Master TUF.
@@StreetPreacherr tbh I have an rtx 3080 ti and I never use ray tracing anyways
Used that exact system in my office. I think the reason for the odd cpu cooling is there is supposed to be a duct covering the whole thing that directs the air from the cpu fan directly out the back of the case.
yea ur right most office pc's usually have really weird ducting
Yeah I learned CAD on a z420 in highschool, it did have a shroud going from the front intake across the CPU cooler and ram cooler connected to the exhaust fan. A really good budget design if you ask me.
@@Doom_976 at my school we had bbc micros didnt even have fans or color screens!, wow do i feel old !!
They actually did this because the Z420 uses many of the same parts as the Z620, including motherboard (though slightly modified) and heatsink. The Z620 had the option for a whole second CPU with 4 more memory slots on a riser card which partially covers the socket for the first CPU (see this pic: media.gekko-computer.de/images/30001541_3.jpg ) , which is why they had to move the heatsink up a bit. They then simply reused the Z620 heatsink in the Z420.
I have the same pc and you are right should be a plastic shroud directing the air flow out the back.
While my $300 laptop can barely run Roblox
Also worth noting that if you're near a Micro Center, you can get a 240GB SSD for free (if you're a new customer).
Yeah, I use a usb to sata cable for my laptop with one of those drives, and I made my whole family separately redeem a free drive lol
as someone who barely has a budget, lost my gaming PC because I had to give it away, and has been eyeing builds for years, this video made me smile from ear to ear
thank you LTT team for this. amazing content!
I'm going to build a gaming PC BABYYYY
what do you mean by you had to give your gaming PC away.
@@bloon_snipe8998 yeah I think it is time for a dubious internet story that cannot be proven or disproven.
@@somedude9316 im confused
@@bloon_snipe8998 probably a child and their parents made them give it away
@@magnotec. to like family or poor
between this and the scrap yard wars, it's really cool to see what the used market has to offer when you simply need a rig to run.
This build works because its built with a cpu that is well above the consumer market. The cpu's in these are massive and very powerful in comparison to what you or I would normally buy. Movies were very often filmed in 4k even before that was possible at home, thus computers needed to be beefy as hell to account for it. This is why they aren't hitting a cpu wall like you would normally expect. However, that being said, they did not test a cpu heavy game (anything from paradox, anno, etc). But for the budget constrained, 1080p is probably your limit on monitor anyway, and you probably cant afford a paradox game
The original $69 gaming PC build was the first LTT video I ever watched. Glad to see the concept being revisited.
After a long time, an LTT video reminded me of the channel that made me fall for tech and IT! Been watching this channel for over a decade and it all started because I needed to build a PC over a decade ago, and hacks like this are why I love LTT so much!
I used to use one of these for software development back in 2014-2017ish. Ended up getting it for free when the company upgraded. Great CPU, terrible GPU I had with mine. It was also always bottlenecked by the company being too cheap to put an SSD in it (something I rectified when I took it home) There is an adapter you can get to use a 24 pin ATX connector if you want to upgrade the PSU.
I've been saying it. There's a glut of cheap power on the market for 1080p gamers. And 10+ years of games that will run smooth as glass and still look amazing.
So much for "high barrier to entry" for PC gaming.
High barrier for entry appears to be less about price and more about knowledge and know how. I'm pretty sure most people's idea of buying consumer electronics is getting them working straight out of the box and less about scavenging parts on the cheap. That being said, since half decent PCs can be built at this price point it would serve as a great learning opportunity for more people to jump in and build one.
Never has been. I pay about 500$ every 4 years and have kept up a pretty powerful PC.
@@jamiehollywood7681 Agreed. For anyone with the desire to learn, spending $50 to $100 on some cheap office PC to take apart and learn this stuff on is a good investment. Something that runs, so that after tearing it down, to the point of even removing the motherboard from the case, one can put it all back together, start it up, and see that it’s working. Then maybe upgrade it, if it was starting out with decent enough specs to be the basis of a budget gaming rig or emulation box. Or just use that new confidence, some parts compatibility info, and a tutorial, to build a rig.
@@jamiehollywood7681 knowledge is easy to obtain now a days. Not a barrier of entry IMO.
I agree. I bought a 7th gen 7700k, with 16gb ddr4 ram and Rx 590 nitro with 8gb vram from a friend who upgraded to Ryzen and this machine do everything I through at it with issue. I play all my games at high or utra in 1080p with issue at all.
It is incredible what components you can get for such a low price! People write off older components but don't realise a lot of them still have a purpose!
These budget builds to me are way more impressive than any super ultra build that can run something at like 200+ fps
i agree.
Absolutely. Its easy to do a cookie cutter build and choose high end parts etc. Chasing the most performance one can get for smaller budgets is so much more satisfying in many ways.
I have this exact computer. Im glad you guys are showcasing how capable it really is.
The weird CPU fan offset is to be able to stack another motherboard on top. I have the z620 version of this HP unit with 2 CPUs in it. The second CPU is attached to a breakout board that slots over the top of the primary motherboard. It's the most bizarre but cool double-decker CPU configuration I've ever seen. Been working great for me for about 3 years now with several extreme upgrades of course.
Had one as well. Truly insane riser card setup for the second CPU and RAM. Totally unrepairable if the motherboard dies, though, like mine did.
@@disekjoumoer That'a bummer. I was trying to mod mine once and fried it. I was lucky enough to find a spare board for it floating on Ebay and swapped them out. If not for that it would have been toast though. Because garunteed they don't make those parts anymore. And they are not compatible with any other system like you are desctibing.
@@biblesforbreakfast pretty sure aliexpress sells those aswell just look for intel xeon
That sounds intriguing, I'll have to look into it. Curious, what were the extreme upgrades you made?
Lots of good deals on older workstation PCs. They aren't built like junky consumer HP/Dells, etc. Ebay, Microcenter, Amazon sells refurbs.
Picked up a $2000 ThinkPad that was 4~5 years old for $300. And it's about 95% as fast as the current model.
That offset heatsink is actually a brilliant idea. Normally those pipes are tucked under the assembly, meaning the heat they produce has less opportunity to dissipate before reaching the main block. By exposing the pipes it allows not only for some additional heat to dissipate, but for you to improve on it with adhesive heatsinks like you'd put on a Raspberry Pi or if you're brave enough a water cooling block soldered onto the heat pipes. That design invites modification!
Some of my favourite videos on this channel are the budget builds, it's always cool to see what's possible. This is another reason we need another season of Scrapyard Wars!
Yeah, I miss scrapyard wars. I understand covid killed it but still, that stuff was fun
@@DefinitelyAPotato of course, the problem is that they are so famous, that there might be people who want one of the contestants to win so they give them discounts that are going to break the rules.
That is why they have not done a scrapyard wars series for awhile now
@@boltlighting They should do it with less known hosts, or even just off probation new hires. I bet it would be a blast.
If the power supply ever dies, you can find adapters on amazon and ebay for regular ATX supplies for
It's time for another one of these!
I used to work for a 2D animation company and we had most of these machines. The HP machines were really nice to service
I work in a CAD office and its full of Z440s. 128GB of RAM but only 4 cores at 3.5GHz max, interesting combination
@@kkrampus Wow
I work as an employee in SI and always recommend HP Workstation as they are user friendly(easy to open, no hardware incompatible bs, etc)
I'm convinced Linus hiked the price up to make it $69
Show me ANY source for the 69$ there isn't. This is like a 500$ pc still.
@@Sharpstoned They literally show everything they buy in the video, did you even watch it?
@@Sharpstoned A classic case of watching the video on mute with your eyes closed. I get it
Prices are double on ebay, can't see any for 69
@@jeremyhillaryboob4248 i stopped watching when they claimed the pc was 69 dollars when that is clearly a lie.
I’m actually in the middle of building a Z440 gaming box for someone, it’s a really decent way to go. It’s just a little newer (haswell) so no m.2 onboard but supports booting from a pcie slot m.2 adapter. Put in a 6-core 2643v3, 16gb ecc in quad channel, it has a 700w psu so I could fit a 1070. The cpu heatsink
is beefier and more traditionally U-shaped heat pipes, it had a 92mm but was wide, I 3d printed an adapter to use a 120mm noctua redux instead. The chassis cooling is the worst part but I 3d printed a front fan mount/duct to get a 120mm intake fan. Not as cheap as $69, I’ve probably got about $300 total into it.
I kinda did the exact thing you did for my company 6 or 7 years ago. We had similar workstations from 2012 and they were getting slow, company wanted to buy all new machines. Instead I bought all the machines SSD drives to replace the 5400rpm disk drives in bulk for a very cheap price, and the machines ran like completely new systems after that. We got another 4 or 5 years out of the machines with the solid state drives.
Oh man, I love benchmarks from PCs like this. It's always far more interesting and impressive given the age of these parts than builds with today's new tech in them.
One thing I love about HP machines from this era is their handy green pull tabs to remove hardware. It was hard to find workstations/desktops from this time that were so easy to service.
The one thing I hate about those hp workstation pcs is there stupid proprietary power supplies
I've been trying to tell people, HP Z series, Dell Precision T series, Lenovo Thinkstation, and Dell Optiplex's make for great budget gaming PC's, just know what you're doing when it comes to matching the CPU and GPU and the PSU.
Love my 9020
Got myself a DELL optiplex from 12 years ago. Running on a core i3 CPU and onboard graphics [smh] but it does render g-code for my 3D print farm faster than my 2018 duel core celeron connex netbook with 4GB ram and 32GB embedded flash memory
my optiplex 7010 still kicking
I got one of these not so long ago, I got a T3610. I got to say it is a giant computer. I was able to upgrade the parts for it. It came with Xeon E5-1650v2 8GBs of RAM and a Nvidia Quadro 600. I upgraded it with some Crucial DDR3 32GB 1866Mhz of RAM, a Storage Bay for my 1TB and I swapped out the 600 with a Nvidia RTX A2000. It is a literal beast to play games with if you put enough time to upgrading it.
Oh my god I love you for making this, I’ve never owned my own computer and I think I’m just going to get this so I have something to use before I put the money down to get the parts for your $500 build. It’s amazing you guys are considering people at every income range. Again I love you guys for this.👏🏾❤️🙌🏾
Edit "three months later" - I just ended up getting a I7-12700K/3070 Ti build, came to the conclusion that I wanted uncompromised performance. Probably gonna save up for a 40 series for the future too. I started school so I need something reliable.
they... dont care about every income range and their 500$ budget build sucks
@@elijahevo6859 I don't know how it works these days, but back in the early 2000s a $500 budget build part list would be good for like a week. I think the best they can do is give general advice, like don't spend too much of budget in one place. $69 PC + $420 GPU would probably have power supply problems.
@@DoctorWhom I build and flip multiple budget systems a month, it's not about everything changing constantly, they just got shit deals and not only that it wasn't speced for best price to performance, it was doomed before it was even bought
@@elijahevo6859 Doomed how? You are just saying they paid too much? I don't understand your criticism.
Its too bad they only do videos like this every 20 videos with $5,000 PCs or $10,000 random ass projects that are pretty useless. But u know, the ppl love mindless entertainment
Your segment on social engineering, and specific examples of what to look for was just excellent and engrossing content. Not that I didn't already enjoy your content before, but giving those social tips beyond the tech stuff was just really great and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I have seen so many youtubers get the money and forget their roots. This is the type of material that is balanced not to forget not all of us are winning the grind. Keep it up!
And he has the class to NOT do it in front of the house we bought for him.
@@Shalmaneser1 Wouldn't bother me.
So I just did this for my kids today. I did NOT change the CPU or GPU, and it came with a 150GB SSD. The workstation arrived yesterday and today I bought all the peripherals, keyboard, mouse, headphones and monitor. All in, tax and shipping, $291. It probably will not hold up to AAA games but I'm still amazed at how much I got for so little.
Thank you so much for this and it's preceding video. I was in the process of saving up about $8K to build my 3 kids gaming machines, but now I can do it for around $1K!!!
Next time shop locally. Its absurd to spend more on a shipping opposed to what the PC itself cost. I've "built" better PCs for 300 bucks 6 years ago.
If you go to your local transfer station and ask, the owner might let you take electronics out of the e-waste bin, since it costs more for them the heavier it is. Offices will also sometimes just dump their old computers in there if they don't want to deal with selling them.
what's a transfer station?
@@saudade_firefly a site where recyclables and refuse are collected and sorted in preparation for processing or landfill.
I have this exact PC. Ive added memory to get to 16GB , used some old 850 Evo SSD's for the drives, and used an old GTX 750 TI, and put fresh windows on it. It works surprisingly well.
I love that after all these years Linus still has that sparkle in his eyes when he sets up a sponsor moment.
I thought you were about say "when he's building pc" lmao
Did we saw the same crappy sponsor spots that looked added after the fact?
I own two z400 workstations I purchased refurb and they are solid working machines. Easy to upgrade, the cabinets are fantastic.
I used to have a computer like this as a daily driver at work, and I souped it up so that I could play games before we opened in the morning. I didn't have an SSD, and I only had 8GB memory, but I did install my own ebay 750 Ti and was able to play Overwatch very comfortably on that rig! It is amazing what you can do with very little cash if you are willing to limit your game library a little bit.
I got one of these about 2 years ago when everyone got stuck at home, first one was super cheap and terrible but I liked it enough that I paid for a decent one after words and put a e5-1650 v2 and a gtx 670 in it. Power supply mod is pretty easy and you can get a adapter off Amazon. It was pretty sweet for what it was, didn't need to run a heater in the room thru the winter nights when I ran folding either lol.
However, I had many many memory errors with both of mine that I eventually got sick of and needed up building a replacement on black Friday last year.
this 69 usd pc is actually better than the laptop i'm using rn . . .
Gaming laptops are, and always have been, a scam.
You are not alone, my 500$ Lenovo laptop is in shambles rn
@@arandomdudeontheinternet4199 Do we have the same laptop?
@@RealElevenTimes mine has 4GB ram and intel pentium n3710 guad core
@@arandomdudeontheinternet4199 Okay not the same. Mine's 8GB, Ryzen mobile something.
I've got the big brother to the Z420.. a Z800 with *dual* Xeon x5675 6 core cpu's @3.07 ghz. (24 cores total w/hyperthreading), and 64 gb. of DDR3-1333 Registered DIMMS. It also has onboard SATA/SAS RAID with about 9 TB. total storage across 4 drives. Primary drive is a 1 TB. Samsung 870 EVO SSD., and a Nvidia GTX 285 graphics card. Runs Windows 10 Pro with a few speed mods. Not much for gaming, but a hell of a workstation, and the platform for driving my Hauptwerk 4.2 organ software! Total investment including purchase cost of the Z800: about $475! 😉 Performance is rock solid..
This is great, I'm running a Z440 with an RX580 (soon to be decommissioned now my post-silicon shortage parts come in a few days) and it's been great! That was more $140 USD for the system, the GPU and a 1tb SSD but yeah! Only upgraded because VR is getting a bit much to ask from it
be more like me... Go blind in one eye, never have a need for VR, live a cheap life.
hey dude love your drumming
I have to say it is so nice to see LTT finally coming down to earth a bit and focusing more on what normal people can afford... Most of what they showcase seems to be cutting edge, cool, but exclusive to deep pockets and the well heeled. It's refreshing. Keep it up. Bat for the little guy, dudes and dudettes!
Normal people can afford a little more than $69 lol
@@NavinF I agree - I was being general not specific to this specific price of this video. I meant more take for example the recent vid on the AMD Threadripper
@@NavinF Adult enthusiasts with jobs can but lots of people can't. Even as someone with a 3090ti my old pc was a pile of spare parts I got from several people for free back in college, and I would start out a kid who just wants to play some games like Linus was talking about on the same thing, spare parts that get the job done for cheap.
I mean, for the last 2 years, it was impossible to build a budget gaming PC because of the insane GPU prices. Linus mentioned in a WAN show how he was so excited in building budget PCs again after GPU prices started going back down.
Viewers often like used part builds, but sponsors who help pay the bills want the spotlight on new hardware.
A friend of mine had one of these. You can get 18 pin to 24 pin adapters for these systems. If you transplant it to a new case you will probably need to chop off the cooler mounts off of the case as it does not mount to a backplate
It uses the regular built in 2011 socket cooler mount, so you could bolt any 2011 compatible cooler to it just fine 🤘
@@LLCooLM595 well yes but we didnt upgrade the cooler along with the case. The stock cooler screwed into the case so we had to get creative with an angle grinder
@@karsnoordhuis4351 ohhhh, interesting. I bought my board separate, never saw it in an original machine. Wonder how/ why they decided to tie it into the case 🤔
@@LLCooLM595 i still wonder the same thing. Then again, these kind of machines are filled with non standard oddities like that.
budget PCs are honestly so cool, theres not a worry if you break something or mess something up because its easy and cheap to fix, recently got a $200 NZD PC with 16gb ram, i5 4440 and gtx 750, upgraded the 750 to a rtx 2060 super and it runs games great, does have a slight bottleneck on some demanding games but am going to upgrade to a i7 soon
upgrade that i5 4th gen...
For the next 69 dollar pc build he should use his (approximately 69 dollar) ltt screwdriver to break into a best buy and just steal all of their computer parts
I like how the pc is better than my thousand dollar laptop
same here
Laptops aren't good for very long.
@@lDarkfoxxl bro my pc lasted for 10 days only and when I booted it I get a black screen and a loop of blue screen of death that's why I switched to laptop
@@mrfudgefan i bought one on black Friday and within a year now it has micro stutter especially when i plug in Razor products and it tries to download the official firmware. My desktop i built i used for 10 years and upgraded some of the stuff, i had to leave it and give it away because i moved states and took a plane
@@mrfudgefan i built my pc when i was like 10 and its still running fine now 6 years later. graphics are lacking a bit but its working perfectly fine lol
I have a Z420 here as an ESXi host. I dropped in a bigger xeon, bumped it to 128GB of DDR3, bought the front fan and front DRAM shroud for it to keep things cool. It also has the Intel ME setup so you can turn it on/off remotely. I built a new box I've moved into, so the Z420 is looking for a new home if anyone in Northern VA is interested. It's a great box.
Southern Maryland here, how much you thinking for it?
i just baught one because of this video. i paid 80 uk pounds for a 32 gig one. it was sold has used , but it was brand new, plus had a 1tb hdd and a 120ssd and a hp mouse and keyboard. cheers guys.
I'm running a couple of Z800 workstations, they're really quite useful. Only downside really is that they are a bit thirsty on electricity.
I have the Z820 and Z840, the Z840 is a complete beast, but yes you are correct the power consumptioin is scary.
the dual socket configurations isn't it?
@@Crixer234 Yes, two CPUs. They are a bit slow to boot because of all the RAID configuration stuff before it hands over to Windows.
16:19 this says more about the price of your screwdriver than the PC
id love to see scrapyard wars come back, especially as a channel superfun between all of the departments you have
That screwdriver better unscrew the screws it self
About 4 or 5 years back I picked up a Z800 for 100USD. That thing was a beast and fun to play with. I ended up reselling it to a work buddy for the same after doing some slight upgrades when playing with it and sold him my rx 580 8gb GPU for $100 later down the road. The GPU worked fantastic with it.
In the UK our energy prices are skyrocketing, and a gaming enthust could easily spend a significant portion of their PC costs just to run it for a year. Are you guys planning a video soon on suggestions for performance per watt at different price points? I am hoping to upgrade soon to a PC after several years, but am at a loss with what to get with all the power hungry hardware these days.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if pure DC systems make a resurgence with energy prices creeping up. Get an HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX power supply for your PC, a couple used solar panels, and a 24V 50Ah lifepo4 battery. That's roughly $100 for the PSU, a few hundred watts of solar for another $100 and ~$400 for the 1.2kWh of batteries. With the battery alone; you could run a 6700xt and a 5800x3D for 3.5 hours. A high refresh rate display would drop the run time to roughly 3 hours.
Get a 3060 laptop. Runs close to a 3060 desktop , just a 5 to 10 % difference. The laptop system draws like 170 watts while gaming , less than a desktop 3060 card can draw alone.
@@davisbradford7438 one problem with that. They're English they haven't seen the sun since they lost India 😆
Get a laptop lol. Or a console. Basically, anything that is designed with watt limitation in mind.
@@batt3ryac1d Optimal solar gain hours in Britain are on average 4 hours daily throughout the year. Thats 1kwh/ meter^2 per hour. That's plenty for practically all households in the UK who average 8.5kWh of energy use per day.
I LOVE these videos. This is what I do all the time: try to find older decent hardware and beef it up to play games on it. it's almost like cheating the Pc market system by getting good enough materials at low budget prices.
This is literally how I grew up. Finally being an adult, having a job and buying myself a 2k PC for once felt REALLY incredible though. It's just so flashy, lol. Yaknow?
Anyway, PC's do get tons cheaper when you completely ignore stuff like RGB. A decent, pretty, tight RGB setup is almost half the cost of a decent PC.
You also really don't need to spend money on stuff like water cooling. Those things are all such wastes of money, imo. Never needed it.
Also because you use these machines you save electricity and you have to pay less edit: for electricity.
@@theBabyDead Exactly.
@@vidmantaskvidmantask7134 Yep, this is why the only thing RGB are the fans and keyboard.
The HP workstations were great had a refurbished HP xw4400 Workstation (Core2Duo E6600 2.4GHz, 4GB, 80GB, DVD-RW, Quadro FX 1500). Worked well, also for gaming back then (around 10 to 12 years ago). Rocksolid machines for a good price. Awesome server/router capabilities (but for a router I choose a bananna Pi today at 10W).
Would be interesting to see how this build performs if you slapped something like a 1070 in it to simulate an upgrade on this starting platform.
I have a Z420 that first went to a GTX 1050 and it was completely usable for gaming. Weirdly the nvidia gaming drivers didn't like the Xeon at all. Had to stick with the studio drivers or the machine would only reboot successfully every 5th time. Now upgraded to a GT 1660 Super, but frankly the 1050 was fine.
I had one of these with a 1060 6GB, back when 10 series was the new thing. It was a capable machine! Ran things like Witcher 3 and AC Odyssey at 1080p mostly high settings.
I had the same rig for over a year with a E5-1620, GTX 1080, and 64gb of ram. Ran great there was some bottlenecks on highly single thread bound tasks but honestly not bad at all. That little E5-1620 then migrated to an old EVGA x79 dark where it spent over the next year and a half dependably pushing 4.8ghz on all cores.
Pretty solid with a 980ti OC. About 70-100ish FPS on most games Med/High mix. 1680v2 8c
Gotta love HP for giving the finger to any kind of industry standard for consumer convenience. 24-pin power? Nope. Normal fan connectors? Nope. BIOS that doesn't freak out the moment ANYTHING is not as expected? Nope.
Dell and Lenovo are up to the same shenanigans by the way, as are most manufacturers of these business PCs. Almost all of them come with weird power supplies, strange connectors and will not start properly if some random cable isn't plugged in.
The only dislike about this is HP. For that price and all of those SATA ports I can think of other ways to make it more useful. Some of the older Intel chips are still useful but there is no shortage of shoddy developers especially in the gaming world.
You can nab a dell optiplex sff PC with an i5 or i7, 16 or 32gb or ram and an SSD for $95-$135. There's just barely enough room to fit a low profile single slot GPU will just barely fit above the goofy proprietary PSU. As long as you don't draw over 50 watts it seems just fine. I have helped several people set them up and they have been chugging away. You can get a solid work and gaming machine for around $200-240. the radeon rx 6400 low profile cards seem to fit just fine and out perform anything else in the price range. We found two of them "used" when they were just in a damaged box for under $100.
My experience with dell other than their absolute horrible approach to proprietary hardware has always been somewhat posistive, their great pcs for the price but a hassle when you need to upgrade them
This is pretty much what I've been using these past five years. You can buy a convertor mobo ribbon cable so you can replace the non-standard PSU with a larger ATX one that'll drive a modern GPU. Without it, my 1080Ti was just too much for the old girl. Actually, before I learned about the cable I had a separate psu sat on top of the case, just powering the GPU. Messy but it worked. Pre-Covid craziness I also managed to get a six core 3.5GHz Xeon for peanuts and it has been a loyal beast. It's only this year that it really has started falling apart.
I picked up a ThinkCenter M-82 for around $75 last year. I'm using it as a server, not for gaming. But it's great.
I did something similar to a Precision T3500. Upgraded the W3505 to an X5675, upgraded the 2X 2gb to 6x2gb and got a PNY SSD. Haven't touched the 550ti it came with yet but it's a work in progress
dude I'm literally in the same boat as you. recently acquired a precision t3500, and also managed to find an x5675 processor. purchased some hyperx ram (will start with 12gb total for now, 3x4gb), but the pre-installed gpu was just some early model quadro so that'll definitely need upgrading, and still waiting to get an ssd. love the fact that it uses a standard atx psu and 24-pin cable. the only downside is how astonishingly heavy the case is 😂
@@yearninetyseven yeah the case is extremely heavy lmao but it was really nice to see just standard off the shelf parts in there. They've definitely taken a step backwards on that front unfortunately
You got a better PC than I had like 8 years ago.
And better than what my parents run, as it's my old rig...
OMG! This was literally my PC for the last 5 years! I got it off someone recycling their "build machine" after getting a newer one after using it for a few years. This ran a ton of my games for years without any hiccups until I tried playing Guardians of the Galaxy and Final Fantasy VII Remake on it... Finally was able to afford building a new computer when prices shifted in May ^_^
This video feels like a tribute to my years of "budget PC gaming" and I highly appreciate it.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake PC port is very bad so I would say it's not your PC's fault it's the games fault 😅
Fair play Linus!, I also ride mountain bikes, and everyone is still reviewing 5 grand pushbikes, I built mine from a 2nd hand £50 eBay find, with lots of smaller & cheaper but v relevant upgrades, so I know it can be done on a budget, as for PCs I wouldn't have said it could be done for $69, or even twice that
Haha... I checked our local auction sites and found the HPZ420 selling for $1,690 and HPZ440 going for NZ$1,900 -- a far cry from the amount Linus paid in this video.
Second hand pc parts in NZ is always a scam. Lots of those PC'S get dropped off at e recycling places, next thing you know, they list them on trade me for multiple hundreds of dollars.
Sorry to hear about that, Bruce.
Yep. Lowest price on TM was about $350 but yes they are a rip off here.
This is cool. For my first tech internship in IT, we used these machines and I had to rip the ram out of them for salvage. Cool machines but holy crap HPs proprietary nonsense is really stupid. The board won’t even boot up without all the fan headers plugged in.
What HP is currently selling under Z line will be interesting too. Z2 and Z4 have i7 and i9 10th gen processors so in years time they will be great.
I have a z620 w/ 2 cpus, 1060 6gb and 88gb of ECC ram. You guys should try to find one of them. I still throw all kinds of crap at it and it surprises me every time.
Addition: in the spirit of the video, I got it from the scrapyard I worked at. Saved so many PCs from there at scrap price that I barely had a paycheck lol
Do you still have any? I would buy one off of you lol
@@LEM620 just the 1 that I use and a z420 I gave to a buddy. Sorry man. If it's any consolation my 620 didn't come with any drive trays so it looks pretty bobo when you take the side panel off haha
I'm genuinely amazed at how a $69 PC can run games properly and even keep up with 120 fps on CS:GO. This is an eye opener
well csgo was released over 10 years ago, not that surprising. and you generally dont need a modern cpu for games. im daily driving a xeon 1620 v3 from 8 years ago and it doesnt bottleneck my 2060 in any game.
@@nikoheino3927 Good point. Even though the game is 10 years old, I'm still surprised at how well it managed.
You know whats twist? This actually isnt 69$ Pc. They described it as office pc but in it its 2011 x79 xeon with quadchanell. Reall office Pc from that period is i5 2400 with 4gb Ram in sff 220w case.
@@nikolakarovic5964 wrong, it depends what kind of office. if you need to use cad or ANY other software than notepad or similar, they used these. i also have an old office pc and it has a xeon 1620 v3.
@@nikoheino3927 Yeah not in 98% of office but in 2%.
This is actually pretty cool, and it has amazing performance for the budget.
the fact that it's a $69 gamer PC and they used a Z420 (with of course 420 in its name), is hilarious to me.
So I actually have this pc and am using it to write this comment. It was given to me from a credit union that didnt need it anymore. Long story short, it does have the xeon processor like the one in the video but I am stuck with an eleven year old gpu, the AMD Radeon R9 270x, which is really just a rehashed version of a 13 year old gpu. I need to upgrade it, but for now it runs some games at around 60 fps like Fortnite and other fps games. If anyone wants to know it runs Roblox at 100 - 120 fps, mind you I havent made any adjustments to it unlike linus. This computer is defiantly a viable option