I have been betrayed - AMD $5,000 Ultimate Tech Upgrade
I trusted you, bro. If you've ever bought something from lttstore.com, there's a good chance you've met our customer care supervisor, Adam. He's positive, thorough, and a venomous backstabbing snake. There's a lot of great choices in this tech makeover.
I like this. Where did you get these? And these are a great choice. AMD hooked up Adam with a $5,000 budget, and I gotta say, he has spent it extremely wisely. If you were following along from home looking for inspiration for your own setup, you'd end up with something that is A tier, a great value, and promotes AMD's technologies. What more could he do? Well, he could consider me. A non-LTT desk pad?
Can't even drink your own Kool-Aid? I'm not using that. Secret Lab hooked me up, but I got that behind you. Oh, thank goodness. Well, okay, that's great, but it does kind of kill the rest of this intro for me. You know what? We're gonna do it anyway.
To rebuild our trust, we're gonna do a role reversal exercise where it's my job to bend over backwards and make sure you're happy today. Whatever you say, I gotta do it, which might be a nice little change of pace for you. I have some ideas. We're back again with another AMD ultimate tech upgrade, and a new video means a brand new chance to win some great goodies from AMD. It's basically a tradition at this point. This time, they're giving away two Steam Decks.
You probably know what a Steam Deck is by now, but if you don't, it's a handheld gaming device with a simple interface for you to access your Steam library and a battery that's designed to last throughout those extended on-the-go gaming sessions. And it's powered by an AMD Zen CPU and AMD RDNA graphics that provide high-definition gaming, even on a handheld. So head over to our Twitter to enter the giveaway for a chance to win your very own new and shiny Steam Deck. Thanks again to AMD for sponsoring this series. I'm sure you're excited to tell us about some of the retro consoles you scored, but before that happens, we have to do the obligatory poke around in your space a little bit and make you uncomfortable. Sure.
He looks uncomfortable. So you're a big Swiftie, right? No, that would be my wife. Sure. Then how do you explain this Taylor Swift clock in your office? This is your computer, isn't it? Yes, but this is my wife's computer over here. Wow, she has a way better setup than you. I know.
I've neglected it quite a lot in favor of giving her a good enough setup that she feels compelled to game with me, you know? Wow, I was gonna say gentlemen move. Gentlemen like a fox. Yeah, it's very clear to me who gets the budget for cool stuff in this household.
But no longer will your setup be neglected. This is amazing. We've gone with a Ryzen 7 7800 X3D, just about the fastest gaming CPU money can buy.
This chip is such a great choice for gaming. I mean, sure, compared to AMD's top of the line consumer chip, it has half as many cores, but that's eight cores, 16 threads still. And it has 3DV cache, which contributes significantly to gaming performance. And of course it supports all the latest technologies like PCI Express Gen 5 and DDR5.
You've gone with a 7,900 XTX, which is the top of the line, 24 gigs of VRAM. And I love this, a practical supporting cast. If you don't need the extra features of X670E, a B650 is gonna perform the same for you.
I can't wait to build this machine. Or rather I can, cause I wanna check out those retro consoles real quick. We've got the N64, got the M classic upscaling cable, which works way better than you would probably expect. We did a video on it a while back. And then there's a couple that are kind of wrapped up here.
What am I looking at right here? Yeah, so this is a Wii we scored at a thrift shop near here for like $30. It's literally worth it just for the Wiimotes alone, considering what those are typically worth. I was still stuck on Wii we scored, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah, another thrift shop find. This was in a Goodwill down in Linwood, Washington. When I bought this, it was $40 USD and it had Mario Kart Double Dash inside of it already.
Wow, that is flipping awesome. Only one small problem. This is full already. That's okay, we've had a solution. Oh, cool, the back of a console.
One moment, please. Woo, nice. Ooh, I like it. An open front for better airflow. Is that why? No, it's just, it was cheap.
Fun fact, I'm not the only one who's at your beck and call today. Colin will also be helping and he's going to get this out of here and the new one in place while we get started building the PC. We can do it out in the kitchen.
That's what he said. Okay, you know what? Let's not use any of that. Maybe it'll make it into a Floatplane exclusive lmg.gg/floatplane. The point is, Adam, where do you want to build this computer? This, no offense, is a very small desk. There's plenty of space in the kitchen. David, would you believe this is the first time I built a computer in a kitchen? I know that's not true.
It's the best place to build a computer. There's always counter space. It's supposed to be clean. At least you pretend to have not gamer hygiene when I come to your house. Some people had some gamer hygiene going on.
Try to make it look lived in, but not too spic and span, you know? Yeah, I mean, Riley, I mean, clearly nobody lived there. I realized something just now. You haven't actually instructed me to build the computer. So what is it that you want me doing? That's a good question.
I mean, I don't get to build computers very often and I love doing it. So I like to take the lead here for sure. Feel free to advise me. I mean, we got the master here.
Yes, sir. When's the last time you built a computer? Oh, God, like back in 2016, I think, I put a RX 480 in that bad boy way back in the day, right when it first came out. It was supposed to be $200, but it ended up being more like 250 because that was when the whole mining explosion happened. That mining wave, yeah.
The first one. Yeah, not this time. We thought that was as bad as it could get. It was not, ladies and gentlemen. First thing I usually do is the CPU.
So might as well get the hard s*** out of the way first. I am going for Primo customer service today. Your CPU, sir. Oh boy, you think I can do it? I mean, if you can take care of some of the demands that reach our inbox, I'm sure you can handle this.
I love our customers. Me too. I usually do the RAM next, so why don't we do that? Very wise, sir. We've gone with DDR5 6000 at CL32. This is pretty much the sweet spot for seventh gen Ryzen.
And you've got 32 gigs of RAM, which is enough for gaming today, enough for gaming tomorrow. I can't speak to the day after tomorrow, but it doesn't matter because I think the world freezes over or something. Yeah, that does happen in the famous documentary the day after tomorrow. Your slots are prepared, sir. Oh, thank you, sir. Look at that.
It's like I've done this before. Your M.2 standoff, sir. I don't think it matters which slot we're using because Adam, being wise, has gone with a gen four drive that uses high quality NAND, a WD black, but knowing there's no performance benefit in gains to gen five, which is why you chose this, right? Allegedly.
Adam has chosen capacity with a two terabyte drive rather than speed, which means it doesn't matter which of your M.2 slots we use. That's what I was getting at with all of this. Yeah, let's see the one with the heat sink. Perfect. Adam, you're a very different person than I. I would have Linus do everything.
I would bring out the Swiffer. No, I actually love doing this, so, you know. Andy he had me paint his basement. You know, I could just put on a little maid outfit and start cleaning except that, like, the place doesn't really need it.
So yeah, I'll just stand here and look pretty. Okay. Did your last rig even use NVMe? No. V16, yeah. Is this the first time you've done an M.2 drive? Well, I did it in my wife's computer when I built that, but, you know, this is the first time I've done it for me.
Wait, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop! Okay, all right, I do have to interfere. We probably haven't broken it, probably. Oops, well, that might've.
So, this is a cool little tool-less mechanism. Ah, I see what's going on. Yeah, go ahead and screw that in and then, no, no, no, just leave that alone for now, he's recovering. Okay.
Don't worry, you're doing great. So then now, all you do is you just flippy-doodle this little plastic thing. I was wondering what the plastic thing was.
Yeah, it was to help you. That's new, right? It's not, I'm not crazy, cause that wasn't a thing the last time I built one of these. It's pretty new, yeah, okay, go ahead and try again.
Put down the screwdriver. Wow. Perfect, flawless. Hey, that's nice.
It's nice when you know that it's a thing. Heat sink, got the peel, love it. You guys ever whisper sweet nothings at the plastic that you're peeling? Does anyone not? No.
Oh, we seem to be divided on this issue. What do you mean sweet nothings? You have to. Collin. Who are you people? Do we wanna plug in the power supply and do a cute little test boot? I think you're the first to suggest that. It's a very good idea. Let's do it.
I feel like I'm the only one that actually follows your advice, Paul's advice, Bitwit's advice. Paul's advice, sure, but Bitwit's advice, he's got that Lyle guy on the channel. You gotta be careful. That's true, that's true. Actually, if we were really smart and followed all of my advice, we would have done this earlier.
Had the power supply here, plugged into ground so that we could ground ourself before handling any of our sensitive components. I suppose that's true. With that said, the humidity is extremely high right now. We're not on a carpet.
My concern level is extremely low, especially after that collab with Electro Boom, where he showed how hard it is to kill a component. Oh yeah, that was very informative. I'm sorry, it's automatic.
I just, computer stuff appears in front of me and I start assembling it. I'll just, I'll be ready. Wait, sorry, I need a more butlery posture.
Colin, can you come over here and just slap his hand anytime he reaches for a computer? Yeah. Hahaha. Ah.
Ah. Meanwhile, over here, Colin has cleared this bookshelf and securely anchored it to the, no, he has unanchored it. I remember the details now. Good work, thanks. And this is a great time to talk about how we're gonna get networking over to the media console here. You could run a wire, but running wires all over the place, not really the vibe I'm getting in this place.
So how about you use Powerline? It uses your power lines in your walls to run networking. And while it's not gonna do the two gigabits that they claim here, that's very theoretical. It'll be fast enough and most importantly, predictably low latency enough to be great for gaming. Wait, isn't that the router right there? Doesn't the networking come out here? Oh, so it's a great way to get networking, low latency gaming to your PC in the other room.
What's that Colin? Oh, I see. So you're worried that because of the shape of this plug, these aren't gonna both fit at the same time. That's okay. This particular Powerline adapter has a pass through. So we can do the full 15 amps of this circuit, just through it.
And as long as we don't put any really gross, noisy devices on the circuit, it shouldn't interfere too much with our networking. And I'm not worried about the overall power because this is retro consoles. I didn't even see like a new Xbox or PlayStation.
No, I'm allowed to unbox things. I'm allowed to unbox things. The thing is, I understand theoretically how to do all of this, but because I don't do it nearly as often as you, it's just not automatic. Yeah, no, no, I get it, I get it.
We all saw that when you were doing the SSD. Yeah, I know. What the crap? GPUs have actually reached the point where they are comically large. Oh, geez.
This looks novelty sized. Look at it compared to the motherboard. It dwarfs it. Look at it compared to a totally normal sized human hand. That's what my wife tells me.
I have to say that's a lot bigger than even I was expecting. So it'll fit, probably. Let's hope.
AMD's X3D chips don't come with a cooler in the box because the assumption is that you're going to want them to boost as high as possible with their precision boost overdrive. And if you want it to do that, well, you're going to need some decent cooling. You have gone so far beyond decent. This actually seems kind of extravagant given how practical everything else has been so far. The nice thing is that I won it at a Christmas party instead of having to pay money for it.
You've been holding this for, was this a year ago or two years ago? Two years ago. Two years, it's still brand new. Yeah. Have you just been waiting for your upgrade? Oh yeah, I've been playing long game, friends. Oh no, Colin, what's happened? A cat has chewed through the cable. Actually, oh wow.
That is much worse than I, oh crud, it's the Wii U. We'll have to call the ambulance. Wii U, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. No soldering iron, no Moretz, but what I do have is enough tape and ingenuity to get us limping along today until we can make a more permanent fix. This is definitely not my finest work.
Is it a fire danger? Ah, it is probably not a fire hazard. Well, you know, I had a dream last night about a short circuit that caused a fire in my house. I'm not even joking.
Oh, hey, well, that's good. But really for real though, do replace this. Oh yes, of course.
Which nuts? With these nuts. Got them. This is ready to go. Fantastic, all we gotta do is fire it up. Yeah. And I guess we need a monitor.
Where do I put screwdriver? Oh yeah, this is JFP, which is jumper front panel one. Jumper front panel one. And then you're gonna wanna do the top row, the right most two, you wanna bridge them. Yeah. Boop, there it is, yeah, you're good, you can let go.
It's a momentary switch, so you just momentarily. Very good. Hey, guys. Well, hey, that's great news. Now we can go ahead and move forward with the build.
Keeping with the pragmatic theme, we've got the Phanteks G360-A case, three RGB fans in the front, got the tempered glass side panel, reasonable price, about 125 bucks. So nice case, but not overkill. And tons of airflow.
It actually came with the stand-offs pre-installed, which is nice. Yeah, it's very handy, but also risky because if it comes with ones that don't match your motherboard installed, then you can scratch the back of the board. There you go. Sick.
I think I stole your screwdriver. Wait. Nope, this one's mine. You know what? With Colin and Adam otherwise occupied, I guess I'll just find this to do. Check this out for our reigning frugality champion. This is a pretty extravagant desk.
The Secret Lab Magnus Pro, A, has way more room for activities like moving your mouse at all, and B, has all kinds of great features, built-in cable management, built-in power distribution. It raises, it lowers. He's got the add-on dual monitor arm thing.
Let's see if I can move it into place myself. Well, okay, it's a little heavy. What exactly is our plan for input switching here? Because we've got one M cable. Oh, one of these. Inputs one to four.
All HDMI though. Do we have converters for the not HDMI consoles? Like- We sure do. I don't know most of them. I get it.
I get it. Everything's right in front of me. Fine. Smart guys.
The N64 though. Yeah. What about the N64? There is a little janky adapter that I have for that.
Yeah. No, not that one. No! Wow. It's so light. A million RetroTINK owners just died. Yeah, I know.
This is really cool. Terrible. Their sales pitch is a bit over the top.
PC gamers are able to upgrade the graphics card. Well, console gamers have been limited by locked hardware. Not anymore. This is not a GPU upgrade for your console, but what it is is a way to take older consoles and upscale them for modern displays in a pleasing, yet not totally awful and inaccurate manner.
And it works not only on games, but also on low resolution video content. So what we're going to do with this is we're going to adapt the output of our GameCube with this retro prism, okay? Then we're going to put this here. Actually, if we were really smart, what we would do is we would take this and put it on the output of our HDMI switch since everything that's going into it is either a retro console or a woefully underpowered modern console. Wow.
Great job, guys. Look at it. It's all orientated correctly and only a small amount of wall ended up on the table.
Yes. Nice. It'll buff out.
Of the wall or the table? The table. Oh, yeah. I mean, the important thing. I realized as I was about to tell you guys about the GPU that I never really showed you the power supply. It's an EVGA 1000 GT. It's 80 plus gold.
It's modular. It's a really nice unit and it should be a great pairing for the 7,900 XTX from Asus, but it's not over the top. It's even going to look just like simple and clean when we're done.
This GPU is big enough to kind of hide these cables or at least draw the attention away from them. It's all in the hips. Hold on. Whoa, watch out.
Okay, don't move. Do you see the little fingers on the bottom of the PCI slot back there? Do you see the tiny surface mount components next to them? It is so easy to be trying to position the card, moving it back and forth and knock off some of those components. Adam didn't, which is good, but, oh. Here's why he was accidentally almost doing it. The height of this card is such that I don't know if we can actually slide it back into place without hitting those and knocking them off.
We literally don't have a spare millimeter here. Holy crap, this might not fit. Ah, I'm just going to make sure it's possible without killing it and then you can do it. Okay. Okay. Yes.
It can be done. You want to do the honors? Okay. Woo.
It's got a little bit of RGB. Sick. Yeah, it's got enough.
And you know what? It didn't impact the budget much. Well, especially because you won the AIO with the RGB fans and like, those are really nice RGB fans to be included with a case. And it even posts.
Now what's up with this? I thought we were G710 plus buddies. We were, but you know, I've had that keyboard for damn near 10 years at this point and I think it's just time for a little bit of a change, you know? All right. Hopefully my wife never says anything like that to me. OC Explorer mode? What am I even? Expo, there we go. Bup, bup, bup.
Here we go. Well, that applied perfectly. All we need now is a Windows installer. While Colin's putting in these cable management things to hopefully keep the cats from chewing up the power and HDMI cables back here, we can put things on the shelf. Taylor deserves to be front and center here.
Adam says that this will not fit on the shelf and that assertion has been challenged here. Hey, there it is. Oh God. I'm so happy right now. Don't worry, Adam. We're gonna put your games on the shelf too.
They're just not gonna be as prominently placed. I know. Adam, maybe I was confused before but I never actually saw a computer here. Was your work laptop what you were just gaming on? That's just my personal laptop. Oh, oh wow.
All laptop all the time. Yes. Laptop gamer. It's not the best bang for the buck. So I'm a little surprised.
Oh, well, I knew that eventually I was going to get an upgrade, right? And so around Christmas last year, I decided to buy a laptop because I was like, oh, well, after I get my upgrade, I'll still be happy that I have a laptop because then I can take it with me places and blah, blah. But you knew that we had only done like 20 upgrades and we have like a hundred people. You were really... I was, yeah.
Gambling. Oh yeah, a hundred percent. Now, to be fair at that time, I didn't know it was a randomized.
Oh, so you were just counting on us just thinking - you do a great job and I see I was just counting on seniority at some point kicking in. Ah, yeah, not how it works. No, no, I know that now. Now, how do these come off? Can we check the instructions? What, check instructions.
Oh, okay. You're right. So how silly of me to suggest that. I mean, I'm sure that is the thing you have to suggest sometimes. I have to suggest it very often. Once you say that, they always look at the instructions and then everything goes perfectly, right? Absolutely.
I've never had that interaction go south for me, not once. I think these are the same ones that I have in the LAN room. These things are fricking awesome. No, this seems to be a revised version that overclocks higher. They're 1440p. They support HDR, but they don't have full array local dimming.
So it's more HD - aren’t, but they're pretty bright. So they look great in SDR. Really nice gaming monitors and really good value. Wait, where's the, yeah, where's the VESA things? They're out here. I am VESA man.
I have two extra arms growing out of my neck. What's the problem? How did you manage that, Colin? So the adhesive on these. Very powerful. Very strong.
Actually had a similar issue at my house on a recent shoot. It wasn't Colin. So this is only his first strike. Well, luckily your boy knows how to patch drywall.
All right, see you later. Before you put that on, we should roll out the desk pad. Oh, for crying out loud.
Don't you dare. Okay, good. He has his hand on the other one. I could never. Linus, you know me. Well, I thought I did.
I thought I did until I saw, oh, Jesus. I kicked a piece off of your radiant heater. No, that's supposed to come off.
Oh, good. That looks nice. That's fricking awesome. A real upgrade from your old one honestly, your bezels were huge. I know it only displays one color, unfortunately, but still a big upgrade from the old one.
Thanks, dad. Yeah, right there. Perfect.
Oh yeah. Where are you planning to put the computer? Cause I'm a little bit worried about the display port cables reaching. Immediately to the right of the monitors, like on top of the desk. Okay, see, I saw like a hanger. Secret lab was very kind. They sent us all the accessories for free, but I'm not going to use a hundred percent of them.
Oh, well that's easy. Oh, is this a new chair? Yes, it is the Ikea Markus. The Ikea Markus. I just marked it with my ass. I'm turning it on.
There was so much value for the 5k. You managed to buy a thousand dollar GPU and then still do the whole setup out. Multiple consoles, you know, game consoles, TV consoles, all different kinds of consoles. We have to console him for his wall being destroyed, right? Ah, yeah.
Thanks for that, David. This will probably need a reboot. That sounds like MarkoKart! Hey, is the GameCube working out there? Okay, we'll have to go check on that. Is this going through the M cable right now? Cause it's definitely smooth.
But if I was at a reasonable distance from it, like not bad. There is some artifacting on the fast moving textures there in the corners, but. Oh, I do see that. Yep. Yep, you're not wrong.
It's not the kind of thing that's going to bother me too much, but let's play some Mario Kart, bud. These controller extensions are apparently part of the upgrade. So that's awesome. Cause I was kind of wondering about that.
I have a confession. I have never played Mario Kart Double Dash. What? What? I've played a bunch of Mario- It's the best one. A bunch of 64, a ton of Mario Kart DS, a fair bit of Wii. I can't figure out what buttons.
What the hell is this button layout? I never had a GameCube. This is probably my third time holding a GameCube controller. So one moment, please. I'm impressed by how well that chain link is handled. Okay, I don't know what any- Oh my God, you have two people on the cart.
Yes, you do. How do I hop? You can't hop in this one. What? You just drift. How do you drift then? L or R. I see, okay. So here's the real question though.
How is it that I'm beating you? Good question. I haven't played this in quite some time. I haven't played this ever. 13 seconds off the winning NPC.
You know what this tells me is I just need to play this more and now I can. Hey, it looks really good though. Yeah, oh my God, it's beautiful.
Of course all the real gaming happens in here anyway. Come on. How much of a step up is this from the old setup? This is fricking awesome.
I don't know, that laptop was pretty nice. The laptop is okay. I'm sure it was fine. Sandra will enjoy it. Exactly, exactly. Why are you sitting in the setup? Well, because I'm adjusting the monitors, okay? I'm providing good customer service.
There, now it's ready for him, there. Luckily you're literally almost the exact same height as me. While Adam's installing some games on his computer, I am going to unbox his new espresso machine. David has challenged me to say everything I know about coffee while I unbox this.
I know it comes from beans. I know that some like it dark and some like it creamy and some people put sugar in it. I know that it smells a lot better than it tastes. I know that when we did an LTT coffee roast, I was very transparent with our audience that I don't actually drink coffee. I know that this is not an ice cream scoop. Anything's an ice cream scoop if you want it to be.
Yeah, I mean, I could eat ice cream out of it, but I think this goes here. I've seen them working at Starbucks when I order a hot chocolate and someone else orders a coffee. Oh yeah.
Oh yeah, there we go. Put that in there. Got other, got the musical instruments that come inside with it.
Is this like a good one or? I don't know, I don't drink coffee either. Adam's the big coffee nut. He's behind that wall.
It takes a C13 power cable. You can take your coffee that you didn't consume this time and you can put it in here for reuse. It'll mix it into one. Kind of like regrinding for shooting plastic parts and injection molding. You just reground coffee. So that's a good coffee thing or a? Oh, it's a, I mean, look, it'll be my first ever espresso machine.
I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert on it, but it is highly recommended amongst people who are snobby about coffee. You went on Reddit basically. I pretty much went on Reddit. This is gonna be an hour and a half. Do you have Baldur's Gate on here? I do.
Do you have like a high-speed USB external drive? No. Right, brilliant. Oh boy.
Sorry, there's a faster way to do this. We managed to download less than 3% of the game in the time it took me to get this SSD out. Sick.
Let's shut her down. Yeah, cool. This is the dumbest thing we've done this week.
No, this is smart, Linus. Download speed too slow. Rip the SSD out of a laptop that already has the game installed. Let's go. As long as it goes back together better than the wall does.
Steam apps, common. Baldur's Gate 3. All right, let's see this install speed. Here we go, paste. Whoo, one gigabyte a second, baby. And of course, after our brilliant idea, there's a 25 gigabyte update.
Okay, it's not as bad as we thought. Battle.net was running in the background. It's only six and a half minutes. Let's go. We got this.
I downloaded a cat piano app. Yeah, the other one's coming over here to investigate. Okay, anyway, I think Baldur's Gate is done. And then because there's no tutorial, you can have instructions for how to play the damn game on this monitor.
Holy banana sacks. Your 1% lows are over 100 FPS. Oh God, I don't remember how to play. But look at how smooth the camera movement is.
Yes, it's very smooth. What settings is this running at, though? Good question. I would imagine probably the same ones.
Oh, that's part of why it's so smooth, triple buffering, gotta love it. Turn that off, see you later. Oh, ultra.
Okay. Ultra all the things. Sure. Cool.
Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo. See you later, Vsync. 1% lows of 290, 300 frames per second. Are you kidding me? That's crazy.
Well, I'm quite happy with that. I honestly couldn't tell you which of these room transformations I like better. The living room looks freaking awesome. And there's so many options for games, both retro and modern. I mean, this is obviously a gigantic W and honestly, the whole rest of the thing just looks so much better than when we started. But then that desk Adam started with, going from a laptop on a desk that barely even holds a laptop to a deluxe battle station like this, man, the way it cranks through Baldur's Gate, there is no question that he got one of, in my opinion, the most efficient AMD ultimate tech upgrades.
Not a dollar wasted. If you guys enjoyed this video, hey, massive shout out to AMD. Go check out their products. We're gonna have them linked down below.
And of course you can go check out previous AMD ultimate tech upgrades. Maybe the one with my wife, there's wrestling.
2023-10-26 12:58
