- One of our favorite pastimes
here at Linus Tech Tips is buying weird technology off AliExpress, waiting the requisite 4 to
12 weeks for it to arrive and opening it up for all of you. Because I mean, let's be honest, it's an adventure every time. Which raises the question, Linus, how is it even possible that
you guys haven't thought to build an entire computer with nothing but parts off AliExpress? Well, we did. And we're doing it. What the hell is this? And why is it brought to you by GlassWire? With GlassWire you can keep
track of the weird stuff that's connecting to your PC,
even when you're not using it and you can see if a strange
device joins your Wi-Fi, and block it instantly. Get 25% off today using
code Linus at the link in the video description. (upbeat music) The ground rules for our
little experiment today were pretty simple. Build a pretty powerful gaming rig without spending so much money that you could have bought it somewhere other than AliExpress. We went for the best bang
for the buck components that we could find and in
cases where there was a tie we went with the more AliExpress option. We don't actually have all of the parts that we ordered back on June the 3rd because, as I alluded to before, shipping time was anywhere from
around a week to four months to after five months
just canceling our order out of nowhere. But you don't wait to build your PC because your fans didn't arrive. So we just grabbed a handful of fans we had kicking around that
looked kinda AliExpressy, and we're gonna get this going. We actually have to build our
own case which of course means that we get some very
AliExpress instructions. Oh, they must have printed this with their definitely
legit version of Autodesk. - [Andy] Education, like
education like version. - This is a virtual water
cooling computer case. Good cooling function, has
a good DIY transform space. Fantastic. - So it offers for $5 the
option to customize it? - Yeah.
- But. - But.
- They didn't customize it and just gave us our money back. But Sarah had already created the design and we own a laser cutter, so. (Linus chuckles) - Nerd. They included gloves. That's actually very
important for an acrylic case because otherwise it is
going to look disgusting by the time you're done. I think there's about a 95% chance that I'm gonna finish building the whole rest of the
computer before you do that. Not because you suck,
because that looks terrible. Over here I'm gonna begin
with the motherboard. This is the, BATTLE-AX
B450M-HD from Colorful. This puppy was 87.54 with shipping, which is not actually a great
deal since MATX B450 boards can be had for like 80 bucks on Newegg, but it was the best we could do for a motherboard from AliExpress. We're actually off to a pretty good start in terms of fit and finish. Fits. - Nice. - It doesn't come out or anything - So far I have peeled off one of these. I think the longest
part of this whole thing is going to be just removing
the stupid protective tape. - Our CPU is a really funny one. Now, obviously this is a B450 board so we're going to be putting
a regular old AMD CPU in it. That doesn't sound
particularly AliExpress, until you consider that this Ryzen 7 2700 is $10 cheaper than
according to PCPartPicker that has ever been sold for. The seller offers a lifetime
warranty and from the listing, it seems like it might
be refurbished, or not, we don't know. You know what, no, this looks brand new. - Ha! - Like it doesn't come with a cooler. That's probably that $10 price delta. - [Alex] Oh. - Now RAM, I'm expecting to be able to find some
very, very Chinese RAM. This comes with a little tiny broom. Curiously, the broom is
probably the most Chinese thing about this memory because it's
clearly using micron chips which to my knowledge are
not manufactured in China. So only the module assembly
is probably done there. Superior quality, lifetime warranty, factory wholesale professional service. What is 163.com? - [Andy] A website that
you can go on there and look at news and they
also have their email service. - So this is just like a free email? Oh yeah, I'm sure that lifetime warranty is gonna work out great for ya. 10 Bash, shsh. Wow, it's actually rated
at 3,200 megahertz CL16, that's not bad. But then 16 gigs of RAM
for about $60 and change is about par for the course
off sites like Newegg, so the lesson here is don't
buy RAM off AliExpress. Not because this isn't gonna
work, it'll probably work, with micron chips, but just 'cause why. - So far the instructions
are actually not too bad. So I feel like this is gonna
go relatively smoothly. The biggest thing is if
you're not experienced putting stuff like this together it would be really easy
to like over tighten one of these screws and just
blow up all the acrylic. So, just be careful of
that and it should be fine. - Is this just completely
not the same thing you ordered at all? - I'm so confused. - [Linus] Did you order two coolers? - [Alex] I'm going to go see
if we have the actual cooler. - Okay, bye-bye. Hey, we got the SNOWMAN. This puppy will run you
just under $40 with shipping and that's if you select
the with deer option. But I'm not actually sure, oh, it's a, with a
picture of a deer, sure. (Linus blowing raspberry) That's better. This weird, so each of these fans actually has five conductors, and then two of them are just
terminated with heat shrink and just hanging off over here, and the other four are hardwired into a single 4 pin power connector. So you don't need a wire adapter or anything like that to mount
it, which is pretty cool, but I also just, I wonder
what that wire was for? This says right on the
package AMD and Intel, but this is clearly an
AMD only mount right here, and I don't see any other accessories. It's a good thing we
went AMD for our system. How little would you have to pay yourself to justify assembling your own case versus just paying a little bit extra and getting one that's already built? - I don't know, like
for something like this, I prefer to build it
myself because then I know that like it's all built correctly. I'd say it mostly just
depends on if like you think this looks cool for some reason. What is a bit interesting
is that all of these, they kind of slide into
like the 80/20 rails that we have here. And then they like have little notches that hold it together,
except for the bottom one, which instead of sliding
in, just lays on the bottom. - [Linus] Oh, I understand why. It's so that there's additional
intake room on the bottom. It's a foot. - Oh yeah, I see. - [Linus] That's not
a great approach, but. - They also could have just
had this come down further. - They definitely could have. The last piece we can assemble before Alex is done with
the case is the SSD. At 60 bucks this can be
anywhere from a great deal all the way to a total rip off, and we have no way of knowing because the website for
Goldenfir's 512 gig NVME SSD says (Linus coughs) "The PCB color, flash chips type, flash chip number may different
depend on each batch." One thing I really do wanna know is if this is a DRAM-less design, so that's why I'm peeling
the sticker off here. And it is, so it's not great. Dang, I think I lost the bet. I lost the game. - [Alex] I'm gonna do it tool-less style. Where does this go in? - Hey, so I won then, nice. Man, I love working here. Not from the work, the work
is, you know it's work, but I love you guys. All right, let's ah, let's go ahead and put this I/O field in. Does it only stick in from the one side? It definitely doesn't grab as well as it did on the other side, but it's in. Ah. Hey, fortunately, we've got that ah, that other cooler, the Alseye that we thought was for this build, but actually we don't know
what it's for, we can use this. - [Alex] Yay. - That worked out. Also RGB. Okay. Now I'm good, Alex, no zip
ties required, it's beautiful. Hey, there it is. This motherboard has two fan headers including the CPU header but it does have an RGB header onboard. - [Alex] Oh sick. - This lack of fan headers
has unexpected consequences, so I had to string together
one Molex to 4 pin, and then two Y-splitters in order to get the four fan connectors that I need to plug in all
the rest of my fans here. The best part is that we're
not really saving any money. The only thing I know for
sure is that the power supply is either gonna make this
less stable or more stable. Now we're not sure yet if this is 800 watts or 1,000 watts. We do know that it is non modular, and we are expecting it to have all of the cables
and connectors we need, and wow, be incredibly classy. This is, don't hate the
game, hate the game player. You ready for the weight comparison? 1,200 grams. All right. Hmm, 1,900 grams. Also the cables are
supported by the table. - [Alex] Also, that's an 850. - Also it's an 850 watt power supply. Dare me to plug this into an RTX 3090. - [Alex] No! - Theoretically it'll run it. - [Alex] Actually it won't. - So much for my theory about it helping with the structural rigidity at all. This I'm expecting to actually be fine. Once again, Colorful is the only real like decent brand over in
China that I can think of that we don't also have
access to either in Europe or North America, so, this was the most AliExpress
thing we could find. As for why we went 2000
series instead of 3000 series, well, like I said, we waited
a long time for these parts and the 2000 series was
relevant when we ordered this. In fairness, I don't think
I can get the card out without tearing apart the case. But truthfully, that's not saying much. Oh. After some scrubbing it looks
like the laser did go through. I don't know, there, how's that? Can you see it?
- [Alex] Yeah. Can you see this shirt? lttstore.com (Linus laughs)
Got 'em. Okay. Alex?
- [Alex] Yeah? You're done goofed. It's keyed, it only goes on one way. The last thing I wanna see before we try out the whole
AliExpress gaming experience, yeah, there's peripherals too guys, is if adding this other side panel helps the rigidity a little bit. Theoretically it should. This is now a box instead of
a, whatever we had before. It's better. It's a lot better. Now it's like, hey, you know, it's not even coming apart at all. Yeah, that's our case right, yeah. Remember my theory about the air intake under
the power supply there huh? All we got is this
little sliver right here. The rest of it, the acrylic goes all the way down to the table. Oh, these are Lair RGB fans. - [Alex] Oh.
Like you were talking about. (upbeat music) ♪ I picture myself pretty in a limousine ♪ ♪ My face on the cover of every magazine ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Sexy, sexy ♪ ♪ That's all I want ♪ ♪ Sexy, sexy ♪ ♪ That's all ♪ ♪ Sexy, sexy ♪ ♪ That's all I want ♪ LED lighted mouse pad, oh. Oh, my God. Look at this graphic. What even is this? Did you know this had like a
giant like undead dragon thing on it? - [Alex] Yeah. Thick and smooth,
waterproof and comfortable, I think that about describes it. I've got a keyboard with
Zhejiang blue clicky switches. (keyboard clicking) But when you press it it does definitely have
the ca ca ca sound. - [Alex] Yes. (keyboard clicking) - That's not a bad onomatopoeia for it. You know, this is far
from the worst like cheap AliExpress gaming mouse
that I've encountered. A PMW 3360 sensor. - [Alex] Yeah. - Compatible with all
kinds of motherboard, Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 operating system. Dang, this is $27? It actually feels like pretty good. - [Andy] Yeah. Rubber grip, like ha! This is a little less
confidence inspiring, but hey, at least it's
got a braided cable. This is the most hardcore braided cable that I have ever encountered. AliExpress gaming time. We ready boys and girls? Give it the old reach around here. Oh, is that plugged into the wall? - [Alex] Did you hit the power button? - Oh, yeah, there we go. Oh no, I don't think it
plugs in all the way Alex, 'cause of a clearance
issue with the acrylic. It's like almost, it almost goes in. Oh wait, I think the mic is,
wait, what just happened? Computer reset. We are rebooting sir, okay. Forget it, we're just
not gonna have audio. All right, well, one thing down already. - [Alex] Oh, is it just
giving audio to the monitor? - No, I checked. Yeah, it is supposed to
be RGB, what's going on? Oh, hey, there it is. Oh wow, that's really not very bright. I mean, in the dark,
we'd be able to see it. You have to come and
get a closeup of that, I doubt you'll be able
to see it otherwise. Wait, did this just reboot again? What the crap? I don't think it was from
plugging in the front panel audio, I just rebooted again. I'm back on the sign-in screen. - [Alex] Do you think
it's the power supply? - I think there's a very solid chance it's the power supply, yes. Yeah, it makes sense, as
soon as we'd start to pull from the GPU, this thing
probably just can't keep up. I mean, do we have
hardware in folk, do we? And that my friends, is why
you don't buy your power supply on aliexpress.com. In fact, there's really no good reason to buy any of this stuff
on AliExpress, is there? - [Alex] Not really. I mean, if you absolutely
had to have this case, I guess it is unlike
other cases on the market, and so, that would be the place to get it, but everything else here is available for the
same price and or less on reputable sites like
Newegg, Amazon or Micro Center. And you don't run the
risk of waiting you know, four months or even never
for your product to arrive. So there you have it,
Aliexpress, it's a thing. And that's about the strongest endorsement that I can give to it. Unlike our sponsor, FreshBooks is the all in
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stuff you have to clarify. You can only get 50% off on a paid plan. If you guys enjoyed this video you might also enjoy our allwish.com PC, which, last time I checked is actually our top
viewed video of all time. So.
- [Andy] Wow. - You know, what was our agenda for doing an all AliExpress PC? Gee, I wonder. I've been accused of making videos for
views before you know. - [Alex] Wow. - I'll let you in on a secret, you don't make videos to not get watched. - [Alex] Full Taobao PC? - What's a full Taobao PC? Bring this hand up to cover myself and I whacked the bottom of the table. - [Alex] Oh sorry.
- Really hard. No it's okay. Ow. Like I dented my hand. All right.
I love these kinds of videos! I did not realize colorful made motherboards. TIL, I guess.
Also, the finished PC looks kinda cool in an ultra janky and stupid way.
What's the name of the song they used in the middle? I must know XD
He bought an 170V-240V PSU and claim it's broken and not working in Canada......I also saw a comment with 700+ likes mentioning that disappeared under my nose.
I don't know what to say.