This only helps my case AGAINST pre-builts... #Alienware

today we have yet another troubled pc in the studio this one comes from my friend's dad who uses the system for work he actually renders videos for clients on a regular basis but recently this system stopped working entirely it is turning on there is power but no video signal whatsoever it's just a completely black screen can't even get into the bio so today i'm gonna run through a number of troubleshooting steps to see if i can actually get this thing to work and also identify what the problem is because if not well i'm gonna have to end up building my friend's dad a new computer today so what is this thing anyway well it's a pre-built it's from dell you can see that it is one of their alienware gaming pcs i don't know the exact model number actually we can just look right here can't we we can just turn it on its side careful kyle this isn't your computer can't abuse it like all your other systems all right so let's see model d23 m002 okay so i don't know why i read that because i'm not even gonna look it up right now so it really doesn't tell me anything what does tell me something is this sticker right here it's an intel core i7 8th gen inside so that indicates oh that actually lines up because david's dad my friend's name is david his dad told me that this is about a two-year-old system which lines up with 8th gen so we've either got an 8700 or an 8700k in here one of the two i'm not exactly sure what graphics card we have in here so why don't we pop the side panel off how does this work what does this do oh yes okay wow alienware so so innovative with their side panels not really okay so interesting looks like we've got power supply here a hard drive i think this is a one or two terabyte hard drive there is there is supposed to be a 256 gig m.2 nvme drive in here but it's not in here right now because i actually left it at david's dad's house so he's gonna bring it to me later depending on if i reuse it for a new system or if i get this one working the ssd's not in here but that shouldn't affect our troubleshooting for today we also have oh god why is this plugged in go away also go away two-hand time i haven't really seen too many computer cases that have a power supply that swings out right here it's kind of cool but does limit the airflow on top of the cpu cooler here so anyway 8th gen core i7 processor we'll check out exactly what model that is in just a moment we also have 16 gigs of ddr4 memory not sure what speed we could probably just look right now 2666 okay close enough we got a pretty basic stock cooler here nothing too fancy and i was trying to find some printing on the motherboard that would indicate what chipset were rocking but i don't really see much other than this alienware logo i can't even tell what what board partner this is we do have a hint though there's a single 4-pin connector for our cpu which leads me to believe that this is a non-case skew i feel like if we had a case skew in here that was unlocked and stuff we'd at least have a full eight pin but i'm going to take a wild guess and say that we have an 8700 in here and that this is either a kind of low end z370 board or more likely uh one of the non-overclocking supported chipsets for this generation we'll confirm all this once we're in the bios if we can get into the bios at some point today that is let's take this little bracket off and hold on two hands again so it's definitely a blower style card i should have probably unplugged it first blower style card the most attractive pcb you've ever seen okay so no indication here as to what board partner this might be this could just be a reference design oh you know what i actually do see something printed on the pcb here microstar so this seems to be an msi graphics card but no indication anywhere of what exact model this is so why don't i actually pop this on to one of those test beds right over there we'll find out what this is and also if it works this is i guess our first troubleshooting step of the day does the graphics card still work you know what actually before we do that we should probably just verify that the system is in fact not working so i popped the gpu back in it's all slotted and powered on i also removed the cmos battery and then replaced it so we've cleared the cmos completely and now we're ready for a test boot so power's good power supply fan is not spinning gpu fan is spinning so gpu's getting power cpu cool fan you can see he's getting power no video though no video bro okay test bedtime okay quick little test bed setup here this is our original graphics card which we're about to find out what exactly it is and if it works i also put my own 8700k in here with an intel stock cooler on top of an asus rog strix z370g gaming motherboard which i already know is working as well we've got 16 gigs of g-skill sniper x ddr4 memory as well and we're pretty much ready to test boot so let's see how this goes it's plugged in right good come on baby give me a sign okay graphics card is working we know 100 without a doubt it is not the graphics card let me connect the keyboard so i can see what gpu this is all right for some reason i wasn't finding the gpu model in the bios so i popped a drive in that had windows already installed and lo and behold we have a gtx 1070. all around pretty high end system then we've got an 8700 or 8700k we haven't confirmed that yet but along with a gtx 1070 this is probably roughly a 1500 build probably cost even more than that with the alienware premium attached to it but uh yeah pretty pretty beefy system here let's see what we can do with that cpu i'm actually going to take the processor out of this system now pop it into our test bed and see if that works we'll also be able to confirm exactly what chip it is you know chances are it's probably not the cpu that's failed rarely ever is it the cpu but it could be the motherboard so once we just confirm that the cpu works in my motherboard then we'll test this motherboard next moment of truth what are you besides really dried up thermal paste dang that could use a reapplication look at all that dust too gnarly dude you are 8700. 8700 confirmed okay let's test her out let's see if she still kicks okay we've got david's dad's cpu in here the 8700 is installed and we're ready for another boot see if it works all right here we go now if this works it's gonna be a good sign for david's dad because the cpu and gpu are the two most expensive parts in this system and it looks like we're good okay so it's definitely got to be the motherboard because what i what i didn't show you guys on camera earlier is that i already troubleshooted the power supply so i took one of those thermaltake smart units that i that i've had which i know for a fact works and i used that to power the system earlier and it's still black screen it wasn't working if this was really the problem then that unit should have fixed it but it did not which tells me we've got a motherboard issue oh also i forgot to mention i swapped out the memory sticks as well these are david's dad's sticks that were in that system so i just thought i would troubleshoot both of those at the same time and that seems to work as well too i'm gonna take the motherboard out and connect only my components to it and we'll see if we can boot so i'm gonna use my 8700k my one of my graphics cards my power supply the only part that won't be mined will be this motherboard so if it doesn't boot if we still get black screening we know for a fact the motherboard is to blame let's do it all right we've got our little setup here we're pretty much ready to rock although i don't know how to turn this on because i couldn't find the traditional front panel connector connector on the motherboard instead i found the only cable here that i thought could possibly be our power and reset and stuff is this guy so this is the only plug in here that i didn't recognize and nothing else here could be our power and reset like you've got usb 2 and 3 some sata cables fan connectors but this is the only one i don't recognize this is hd audio and if i look at if i try to find the the connector for this on the motherboard and look at what's printed next to it here it is right here it says led connection or led connector it could just be the leds on the case or it could be like a combo connector with power and reset and things like that hard drive led so i am not exactly sure how to do this maybe the system will just turn on because otherwise i don't know what pins to short and i don't want to accidentally short something i'm not supposed to so i'm just going to turn the power supply on and hope that turns on the whole system ready let's do it that did not do anything dang it dang it okay i did see a clear cmos jumper here let's see if that actually turns the system on we can clear the cmos at the same time not a bad idea okay i definitely heard it clear that's good we'll put it back oh is it going the system's definitely on right the gpu fan is not spinning but that could just be because it's a zero rpm fan but usually the gpu fan spins up right when you start booting and then it eventually stops but oh i think we're in a boot cycle here that could very well mean that uh board's dead yeah i think it's safe to call it guys the motherboard is officially toast so this is a little tricky because technically everything else in the system besides the motherboard is working perfectly fine it doesn't quite make sense to build david's dad a completely new system from the ground up when only one component isn't working so let me get on the phone with david's dad and find out what he wants to do [Music] all right we figured it out i just spoke with david who was relaying all the information to his dad and we know what we're doing now so apparently david's dad has been sort of wanting a faster cpu for rendering video for a while now and it makes sense because as decent as the 8700 was two years ago there's been a lot of options released since then that absolutely crush it when it comes to multi-threaded performance so not only are we swapping the motherboard but we're gonna upgrade the cpu as well in fact we're gonna change platforms completely shifting from intel to amd ryzen to be exact and the processor we're going to use is none other than the ryzen 9 3900x that's actually be quite cooler but underneath it is the ryzen 9 3900x which we'll be using for david's dad's new build now i can already hear the screams a 3900x inside of that talk about overheating so we're actually going to change the case as well in fact we're just going to use this case because perfect for what we need it's got really good airflow this is the purebase 500dx from be quiet it's got more or less a fully mesh front panel really good ventilation at the top as well with dust filtration a spacious interior for everything that we need and overall it's just kind of the perfect case for what we're doing here you know when i got to this point i was like okay well we're going to replace the motherboard the cpu and the case and then we can just reuse all the other components and then i thought well the power supply the power supply that's in here i haven't exactly seen what it is but i can already guess that it's probably not sufficient for a 3900x and a gtx 1070 or if it is it's maybe not the most reliable or the most efficient at any rate i'm going to crack this open really quick let's just see if we can we can figure out what kind of psu this is okay got it loose let's take a look oh one-handed struggles all right dell it's just a oem sort of dell psu as far as we can tell doesn't look like it's 80 plus if it is it's not listed here unless i haven't seen it yet but we are at 460 watts yeah that's just not going to cut it so we're going to replace the power supply as well with uh with this guy over here cx650m nice little semi-modular unit from corsair 80 plus bronze certified five-year warranty and i just i just couldn't i couldn't live with myself if i put the original ram inside of this otherwise now beautiful system so we're going to upgrade the ram as well i was just thinking just using this this g-skill flare-x here i mean this is this is already good to go i mean i might as well just give him this system right maybe swap out the gpu with the one that he already has but this is the flare-x ddr4 3200 speed this is a nice bump actually coming from 2666 on these nastiest decks right here so that'll be actually nice this will improve performance not just aesthetics which is even more important and then i'm just going to use the be quiet cooler you know why not dark rock pro 4 hells to the yeah because we can i was gonna i was gonna go with the wraith prism rgb but i heard david's dad isn't a huge fan of rgb so we're gonna we're gonna leave that alone and just go with the dark rock pro 4. yeah we'll still use the original graphics card that's fine blower style fan that'll actually keep the cpu a bit cooler because it'll be ejecting all the hot air out the back of the case and of course we'll populate the case with some fans maybe put two fans up here a couple of over there and uh yeah see what else for the motherboard uh i'm just gonna use the existing board that's in here which is the msi b550 tomahawk mag tomahawk or whatever the hell they're calling it now pretty nice beefy board and also ford's compatible with the upcoming generations of ryzen processors so yeah that's that's going to be cool if he ever wants to upgrade that 3900 x down the line he can although that should last him a very long time and i think that's it i think that's it i'll put links to all these parts down the description below in case you're interested all of the all the new parts not not the old parts and yeah that's pretty much it let's build david's data brand new rig mostly mostly new [Music] all right the build's good it's looking good here it is yeah all right i think it looks great obviously there's the green pcb on the gpu which we can't really do much about but i highly doubt david's dad's gonna care i can't imagine him going to v1 tech and buying a custom gpu backplate but i will say the system does look a lot nicer than well an alienware pre-built so uh yeah i'm really happy with how it turned out for the most part pretty blacked out apart from that producer and yes i know i know i said earlier that david's dead didn't really want rgb and and here it is just littered with it but you can easily turn it off look how good it looks with the rgb though but if you don't want it you can just press this button until it turns off and that also turns off the led strip that's pre prefixed to the top of the case as well so now it's really blacked out and it will be even more so once the side panel's on so it looks really good and i mean it's just it's just a beast now with a 3900x and the gtx 1070 is still great david's dad isn't gaming or anything but he still does need a decent gpu of course for hardware accelerated rendering in adobe premiere pro speaking of which i actually ran some tests i just did a quick test it was a 10 minute 4k render h.264 30 kilobits per second uh just one pass didn't do double pass just one pass i did it for this system as well as for pretty much the the what would have been the alienware pc of course its motherboard is broken so i used this motherboard instead but still the 8700 with these 16 gigs of ram at 2666 and the gtx 1070 as well and the results are pretty telling this system the alienware kind of fake alienware pc rendered the system in 15 minutes and 19 seconds whereas the brand spank a new pc render the same project in just 9 minutes and 13 seconds so going from 9 minutes to 15 minutes that's around a 66 percent difference in terms of render time so it actually took the alienware pc 66 longer to render the same file or the same project so that's a huge savings especially if this is something that david's dad's going to be doing regularly multiple times a day perhaps that's going to add up to a tremendous amount of time in the long run so really happy with the results there as well but that's it guys let me know what you think about this system i really do like the uh the 500 dx it's a great case as well as the dark rock pro 4 and i'm saying goodbye to them now they'll be leaving the studio for good but i find joy knowing that they won't collect dust and will actually be put to good use so thank you for watching this video stay tuned for more tech content coming at you really soon toss a look before you go and get subscribed for more tech content on the way also check out bitwit.tech our merchandise store if you see anything you like feel free to pick it up it's a great way to help support the channel and what we do here at bit which till next time guys thanks for watching and i will see you all in the next video that's a wrap that's a wrap [Music] you

Channel: Bitwit

Views: 1,592,243

Keywords: bitwit, bitwit kyle, how to build a pc, computer, gaming pc, alienware gaming pc, alienware pc bitwit, is alienware good, is alienware bad, alienware pre-built, alienware gaming computer, dell alienware pc, best alienware pc

Id: Gllei-p0ork

Length: 15min 43sec (943 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020