(tense orchestral music) (gunshot) - Welcome back to Secret
Shopper, where we go undercover to find who delivers the
best value gaming experience. We're gonna be having a
look at just what arrived in the mail, we're gonna
unbox these systems, and what an experience
I'm expecting that to be, they came in everything
from a cardboard box to a wooden shipping crate. We're gonna crack them
open and we're gonna see who delivered on their
promises and who fell short. Some of them didn't promise much. Not the way dbrand, our sponsor, promises to make your phone look beautiful and stand up against incidental
scuffs and scratches. Also, you can now buy my face and put it in your pocket right next to your junk. Yup, I don't know why you
wanna do that, but you can. They're doing a limited edition drop with two LTT options,
face and sticker bomb. Check it out at lttstores.com, that's LTT stores with
an S, freaking trolls. (bright jingle) Dell, once again, was one
of the least impressive of our PC builders. And probably the worst thing
about it from a Dell standpoint was that they didn't
even manage to send us to their gaming division, Alienware. So dude, we really did just get a Dell. Packing here I would say is a B at best. It's environmentally
friendly, but in terms of the protection for the system, I would call this mediocre at best. Power cable. (tense orchestral music) And then the really cheap
keyboard and mouse that, if it wasn't a gaming system, I'd say, yeah, sure, this is fine,
this probably won't end up in an e-waste bin, but it'd
be nice if they had a step-up. Then again, maybe they do, but they forgot to sell us an Alienware so. Without asking, Dell went
with a mid-tower case, and from a cost perspective,
that makes sense. As you shrink components down, they tend to get more expensive. And as you get bigger, there tends to be just more raw material involved. So mATX is a good middle ground from a manufacturing standpoint. This is, man, there's almost
nothing that I look at about this and I go gaming though. On the back, look at this weak cooling. 80 millimeter fan. When's the last time you
saw an 80 millimeter fan unironically in a brand new computer? - [Jake] Yeah, what
about the power supply? - And what power supply standard is this? I have no idea. Graphics card, we got six
USB ports on the back. Presumably gigabit LAN, not
even the full compliment of six audio jacks. What year is it? - [Jake] So I think this is
actually the same computer that we bought for the go to
Best Buy and spend $1,000. The same idea, but maybe a
little bit more souped up 'cause we spent some more money. - Souped up, you say? - Yeah. - That does not look very
souped up to me, sir. - But look at the outside, it's so, wow, that cooler, that's
better than I was expecting. - The cooler, that's a
three heatpipe cooler with, looks like, that might even be a 92 millimeter fan, actually. The CPU cooler fan might be
bigger than the case fan. - Doesn't look like it would be fun to get out of there to fix though. - And there's almost no
other cooling in this system. There's an air intake at the front. And this power supply, why
are they, what is that, flex? - It's 80 Plus Platinum though. Wow. - Okay, all right, Dell. You know what? (claps) The system arrived in 12 days. That's 12 days days, not business
days, so I would consider that to be a pretty
reasonable amount of time. And oh my God, why does
it have a hard drive? I actually forgot what was in this thing. Oh wait, no. That's a line item for the sticker. - No. - Yeah, look, you can make
sure you get the right one. This is interesting. Remember that video we did recently on the ATX 12 volt only standard? Well, Dell has already gone
ahead and transitioned. So this proprietary power supply here isn't for no reason at all. It's actually not using the
traditional ATX connector. So all we've got here is a
12 volt six pin connector and then two more four pin
12 volt connectors up here, so the power supply only
delivers 12 volt power. That's probably how they managed to hit 80 Plus Platinum
relatively inexpensively. What is this, a GTX 1650 in here? 1660 Ti, sorry. So that is quite a bit better,
but not great for the price. - [Jake] No. - One of the things that
we put together for each of the systems is a comparable
system on PCPartPicker. - There is some things
that are actually better about this system, now,
you'll notice on this system, we actually have a proper SSD. - [Linus] Oh. - [Jake] That is not a proper
SSD, that is DRAM-less AF. - Got it. And for just 1165.98 with
a $40 mail-in rebate. That's rough. - [Jake] Not looking great, yeah. Wow, I'm actually surprised
that the power supply I specced is worse than the one in here. I went for a 500 watt Gold. - Okay, all right. So credit to Dell for moving to the new 12 volt only standard. And credit to Dell for
the wiring in the case. Super clean, super clear, and
some of it is even pre-run for things that you don't
have installed out of the box, like these two and a
half inch bays up here, if you wanted to add some
more solid-state storage in the future, just run that across, and the power cables are
already running for you. - [Jake] No display. - Yeah, there's no display outputs. - [Jake] I'm pretty sure
this is a 10700K though, so you could have output, I think. - It's a KF. - [Jake] Okay, so the only
reason I didn't do the KF is because pricing online
was all over the place. - [Linus] The KF is stupid
if you're just buying the parts directly, because Intel doesn't really discount it compared to the one that does
have onboard graphics. On the subject of upgradability, the main ones are the
drives, graphics card, the SSD right here, it doesn't look like there's a secondary M.2
slot anywhere on this board. And memory. To Dell's credit, there's
four slots on here, so you could conceivably
upgrade to 64 gigs of RAM without actually throwing
away the included stick. But this included stick
is a bit of a problem in a couple of ways,
number one, one stick, no dual channel operation. What are you guys doing? And number two, this is
DDR4 3200 megahertz memory. But because this system is using
a cheaper B series chipset, it's actually capped at 2933. Although I don't know who
to thank for that more, Dell or Intel. This is weird. My eight pin connector
is just jammed in here, like it wasn't slid together properly. It's a pretty easy fix, you
just have to take the thing and slide it on properly, it's
just a really careless thing to not do in the first place. Overall expectations for
this thing, pretty low. I'm expecting it to be quiet
but not have great thermals and not have great performance. Let's move on. HP might not have much in
terms of corporate sex appeal, but what they did at least
manage to do is direct us to their OMEN brand of gaming desktops that at least tries to
have a little sex appeal. Credit to HP for their packing. They don't waste any material here, but they still manage to
have a nice thick layer of this really soft and flexible
foam in between the system and the outer box. In terms of included accessories, we've got a pretty basic package here. So your quick start guide and power cable. Is this the same keyboard? - [Jake] Look at the
cable, it's way nicer. - Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's fine. - [Jake] It's a free add-on, all right. - Okay, all right, all
right, free keyboard. Is this the same mouse? - [Jake] No, it's a different mouse. - Different mouse, okay,
well, ooh, it might be worse. Feel that click. - [Jake] It was free, it's
like a free cheese stick. - All right, all right, all right. We are off to a much
better start already here, ladies and gentlemen. - [Jake] Whoa. - Is that tempered glass? - [Jake] Does that actually
look like a regular computer? - That's tempered glass. - [Jake] Whoa. - It's not even acrylic. Dang. Tempered glass side panel. To be clear, I wouldn't be as impressed if they were a boutique system builder, but it's HP we're talking about here. How long did it take to get here? - Well, this one's a little interesting. Now, like last time, they
canceled our order again because we used Google Voice to call. But this time, they didn't tell us. We didn't get an email or
a phone call or anything. - I don't think they told us
last time either, actually. - They just canceled it. I was like, oh, everything's
here except the HP one, and I go online. Had to make an account to check the order. And then it shows it was canceled, I'm like, what the heck? So it turns out they're actually
out of stock on this model and we had to buy it from Best Buy, which means we don't
really have a good date for how fast it would've came. But... - Your mileage may vary. - [Jake] Yeah. - We've got two front USB 3 ports, front audio, power button. I really like this case. - [Jake] Yeah. - [Linus] It's not over
the top or anything, but just pretty stylish. - [Jake] Black cables. - [Linus] Yeah, I'm liking it. - [Jake] They used the stock cooler. Thank you, HP. - Yeah, why reinvent the wheel, right? One button for internal access. Pop that tempered glass side
panel off just like that, dang. Looks like a standard ATX power supply. So big plus there. Pretty mediocre rear IO, so six USB ports. Two of them are 10 gig
and one's Type-C though. so that's nice. The Dell had Type-C on the front though, which this didn't, so give or take there. Nothing special in terms of audio. Ethernet, at least it has Ethernet, I guess, that's not saying much. Oh, really? Again with the single channel memory. What is this? - [Jake] Oh, and it only has two slots. - HP, what are you doing? You go and design a motherboard, you go to all the effort
to design a motherboard with two memory slots and you
only populate one of them. It's HyperX though. You gotta get the HyperX in there. Another strike against HP is
that they're using a last gen, so a ninth gen Intel Core
i7 processor, it's a 9700. I mean, to be clear, that's still fast CPU for gaming and everything. It's just, why last gen? Maybe they got a deal on
them, I don't really know. We've got 512 gigs of a
significantly better SSD, although we'll have to see
if that actually translates into any usability improvements. One terabyte drive,
this custom motherboard that they didn't even bother
to put a chipset cooler on, which is probably fine, but why? And then a 750 watt 80
Plus Platinum power supply. I'm really pleased to see a
totally standard configuration that allows you to upgrade
pretty much every component of this system, including
even the front switches and LEDs are not only
using standard pinouts, they're even labeled. So if you were to throw
an aftermarket motherboard in here or something like
that, you could totally do it. It's standard ATX. Except that, wait, did I lie? No, I didn't, the 24 pin connector is just in the weirdest frigging location ever. I was like, is it ATX 12 volt only again? It's down here. Who puts a 24 pin down there? Again, to HP's credit
though, they didn't go and do a proprietary power supply with a four inch 24 pin cable,
they just cable managed it. So you could go and you
could swap this motherboard if you really wanted to. Kudos, 100% kudos. Another nice thing is that
A, this is an RTX 2070 Super, a much faster card than
what shipped in the Dell and we squeaked in just under our budget. And B, they've got this
great GPU brace included that means the odds of this
coming free during shipping look very, very low. Pretty standard blower style
card, nothing special there, but I mean, I'm pretty happy with this. 92 millimeter fan, ooh, hold
on, I might've spoken too soon. Filtered intake on the bottom though. No. Look at that, magnetic filtered intake. - [Jake] What? - Easy cleaning. - [Jake] Whoa. - Yeah, right? - I wish it had another exhaust at the top or something
like that, but it's not bad. At least you got this fresh air coming in from the bottom, the front is solid. So you got fresh air coming in from, ooh, these are really small
feet for a bottom intake. - [Jake] Don't put this thing on carpet. - Oh yeah, really don't,
because your power supply intake is on the bottom too and that
looks really restrictive. Come on, HP, you guys gotta
know better than that. I've got reasonable
expectations for this one. What HP got right is the
modularity of the components. Any one of them could be swapped
out if something went wrong in the future and you weren't
covered under warranty. But what they got wrong is a last gen CPU running single channel memory in a case that honestly I have
pretty low expectations for in terms of thermals. That could come back to bite them, and we're gonna keep a close eye on that in our performance testing. $110 price difference. That's not bad for assembly and warranty. IBUYPOWER coming up next. - [Jake] Whoa. - [Linus] Hey, wow, an RGB keyboard. - [Jake] That looks terrible. - That might not actually be RGB either. - [Jake] It's just rainbow all the time? - Yeah, it might just be
red, green, and blue things. I'm not convinced the key
switches actually feel much better than the Dell, check out
how the backspace wobbles if I press a key over here. Look how far down the Y
key is compared to the T. I have never seen anything like that. - We got addressable RGB. And what looks to be a bunch
of addressable RGB fans. - Those are expensive. - [Jake] Yeah. - Which I'm sure we
discovered when we tried to match the spec in PCPartPicker. Got the manuals included for our just off the shelf components
like our X570-P motherboard from ASUS. Got a power cable and the
Zeus E2 optical gaming mouse for gamers. This is the least horrible
feeling mouse so far. You can tell iBUYPOWER
learned their lesson about cheaping out on
foam many, many moons ago, because this is about as good as it gets. (Jake sings) Step one, removing the side
panel like this or like that. Step two, removing the foam packaging. Step three, check your connections. There should really be
a QR code for a video that I can watch to show me,
'cause this is one thing, what about all the other connections? So good effort, could be better. Pretty basic front I/O,
a couple USB 3s, audio. Power button, that's about it. Wow, there's three fans taking in air from the front and just a tiny vent here and a tiny vent along
the bottom to feed them, that middle fan's gonna be
doing basically nothing. Steve from Gamers Nexus would not approve. Nice magnetic removable
mesh filter doodad. Not really much point having
a filter on an exhaust, but hey, it looks nice, so there's that. Having this little sticker
here is a small investment for iBUYPOWER to make in making
sure that their customers don't accidentally plug
into the (gasps)... - [Jake] Oh no, it's a paper sticker. - Now I can't even put something in my USB port without
jamming paper in it. - [Jake] Oh, there's glue all over it. - It's horrible. (Jake laughs) All right, let's see if I can step up my sticker removal game here
and do a bit of a better job. Maybe it's all my technique. Nope, it's actually that bad. - [Jake] Oh no. - It's leaving residue. Oh my God, this is, what a
stupid thing to get so wrong. - [Jake] You could have
bought plugs for two cents. - There you go, iBUYPOWER. Now you're stuck with that. The rear of the case aside
from this horrible residue looks pretty good though,
we've got a good mix of USB 3, including 10 gigabit, we've
got four 10 gigabit ports. This is another pretty
expensive little trick that can save you a lot of
shipping damage over the years. What it does is it supports
your graphics card, which is normally one
of the most susceptible to shipping damage components, and also the radiator back here, and braces them against the side panel so they won't come free during shipping, and it looks like it worked just fine. There's a lot of fans in
here for the price though. - [Jake] And they're ARGB. - Addressable RGB, you say. And they even managed to put
dual channel memory in it. Also with RGB, this thing's gonna light up like our Christmas tree. - [Jake] Let me take a look, all right. - It's got an RTX 2070
Super, this is an MSI model, and assuming we can get
enough air into the case, it should do fine with this cooler, even though it's re-circulating
the hot air inside. And then it's actually got
a single 120 millimeter AIO that's got iBUYPOWER branding
that's gonna be taking that warm air and cooling the CPU. Fortunately, the Ryzen 7 3700X
doesn't run particularly hot, so my expectations are
that it's gonna be fine. 650 watt 80 Plus Gold power
supply, that's an Intel SSD, that's a 660p 512 gig. No hard drive in this one,
but given how much better the specs are, the fact that
I'm getting an ASUS motherboard instead of some random
one with only two slots or nonstandard connectors on it. It's looking like a
pretty good value so far. In fact, compared to our PCPartPicker, it came in $77 less expensive. - [Jake] The PCPartPicker is missing- - Wait, and this one doesn't
even have RGB fans on it, Jake. - [Jake] Yeah, so if you add
the RGB fans which I found, there's Cooler Master
ones that are 16 bucks, they're even more expensive. - Yeah. Should we turn this one on
even though we didn't turn on the other ones, I wanna
see how much it glows. That's very RGB. - [Jake] And it's cheaper. - We can't show you guys. Look, you gotta watch the next part, we gotta, it's an expensive series, we're buying a lot of computers. That's why we need dbrand to sponsor it. Oh, we're doing a custom sticker thing, there's a Linus face, you
know about this, right? It was gonna be the Linus face skin and then another one
that's way cooler but- - It wasn't that much cooler. - That's subjective. We'll let you guys be the judge. With four day shipping, that's incredible, and the best specs we've seen so far, this is iBUYPOWER's race to
lose at this point, I think. I was bringing this out to repack it and I noticed something. This panel's dented. - I don't think it's dented, it's bulging 'cause there's too many cables back there. - Ooh. No cables. - What do you mean,
there's cables right there. - That's not to put- - [Jake] Oh yeah, all right. Well, look at it without- - It's dented. - [Jake] Oh, you're opening it before you even see the computer? - Well, just, I wanna know, (mumbles)... CyberPower, look, I'm a
detective, not a genius. All right. Got a mouse. Those are some reasonable if, ooh, these side buttons are
mushed (indistinct) stick. Wow, wait, these buttons
are totally broken. Probably the best keyboard
we've seen so far. It's not amazing, to be clear, but- - [Jake] It was free. - Got our WiFi antenna in
there, this one's got WiFi, got the WiFi, I mean,
the other ones had WiFi, but that's fine. These guys, they copy
each other's company name. And then do they copy each
other's documentation? They only show one cable here. And then they go, yeah, check this one. Okay, what about the other ones? Connect your display, use
this, not that, perfect. Connect all your other crap. All right, not bad. They've got a sticker on the I/O. - [Jake] Better not be crappy. - Packing materials not
as good as iBUYPOWER, similar grade of packing
material here, but not as thick. And that does make a difference. So you can see at the
back, these screws go right to the edge of this foam. So a sharp hit here would hit
the screw, transfer that force to the case, and potentially dent it. - Yeah, it's the same right here too. - In fact, it got dented. See how that screw is
sticking out at a weird angle? - [Jake] That's really dented too. - Yeah, it's rough, in
fact, this one's dented. This one's really dented. This one's a little dented. Why, guys, you, surely, you
gotta know this stuff, right? Don't you do test shipments? I'm gonna give it its best chance here. Okay. - [Jake] That looks like
a plasticky sticker. - Hey not bad. - [David] It left, the bottom came off. - Oh wait, the side broke. Aww, dang it. Okay, not perfect, but
way better than iBUYPOWER. I'm gonna just give it a little wipy wipe, there you go, all right. - [Jake] Front panel is dented in too. - Is it really? - [Jake] Yeah. - Oh, that's pretty rough. - [Jake] It took a beat. - [Linus] Oh, wow, yeah, it got kicked or something, look at this. - There's nothing obvious about it, but it is pretty crumply in there. - Yeah. In terms of case design,
I've got pretty high hopes for this one. Even though it does have
a solid front panel, meaning no ventilation. What it also has is a vent
over on the side here that, depending on the internal
layout, could be all right. Pretty basic front I/O,
two USB 3s, both Type-A. Power, reset, headphone, microphone jack. And then rear IO is, well,
it's whatever you get on the motherboard, right? But reasonable mix of USB
3, USB 3 10 gig, and USB 2. For whatever reason, they didn't just go with a motherboard that has built-in WiFi and instead added a WiFi card, is that really a savings, guys? - [Jake] 12 regular days. - 12 days, okay. All right, not terrible, not terrible. - [Jake] What is that plastic? - Tempered glass side panel. CyberPower took the same
approach to internal packing with one of these
expanding Instapak doodads. I figured out why they went
this route for the WiFi, it's 'cause they're actually
using a little mPCIe WiFi card. So those legitimately are cheaper, and then you just get
one of these back panels and run the wires like this. In terms of cable management, it's fine. I do not understand their
approach to cooling here though. I'm a little confused. Where is the air supposed
to come into this case? So you got a solid front panel here. No air coming in there. You got these exhausting,
but not directly, right? And there's a gap like that. So they're gonna be just recirculating air from the back panel here, and I don't know what they're doing. This is exhausting. This is exhausting, they went push-pull, even though it doesn't make
that much of a difference, you're usually better off
with one higher quality fan than two mediocre ones in push-pull. To their credit, at least
the specs are pretty good. We've got a Core i7-10700K. We've got 16 gigs of dual channel memory, so that's a plus today, apparently, now that half of our contestants
haven't gotten that far. 3000 megahertz. They're using a Z490 chipset motherboard, so the RAM will actually run
it at that speed, that's good. But our graphics card is an RX 5700 XT, now, that's gonna do pretty
well compared to the Dell, I think, but HP and iBUYPOWER are, well, let's look at the name. It says challenger, it doesn't say winner. I haven't been pulling the
back panel off all of them, but this one, I had to, A, to get a look at the 650 watt 80 Plus
Gold power supply and B, because CyberPower were the only ones to go with a two and a
half inch SSD boot drive. So they went smaller and
they went two and a half inch instead of M.2. Not that I'm expecting it to
make any difference for games. Except it can now 'cause of DirectStorage. Way to go, CyberPower. To CyberPower's credit
though, they managed to come in $20 lower than if
we just bought these parts on PCPartPicker. This one did include the fans
properly, so that's good. And then technically, if we
sent in a $30 mail-in rebate, we could beat it, but
who's got time for that? So I've got pretty high
hopes for this one, except for that GPU choice and cooling and that our case was
dented out of the box. Now for the fun one.
(drill whirring) I mean, can you imagine someone
buying a $1,500 computer and thinking, wow, I should spend $100 on a shipping crate for it? Watch it be the most banged up one. - Just be broken inside. - I'm broken inside. In fairness, this would
be very important if this was a $6,000 machine with 80 pounds' worth of hardline water cooling in it. What even is this? From Origin PC, $50, thank
you for choosing Origin PC. Welcome to the Origin PC
family, what are you guys doing? - It's a Visa reward. Yeah, it's a virtual credit card. There are, the OmniCard
reviews are 1.7 out of 5 stars. - This is our first
boutique builder of the lot and I'm already feeling the
more one-off newness of it. This box is double folded and
there's actually a slit here that was made with a knife after the fact. Origin is using a single generic case and then just resizing it a little bit for shipping depending on
what case the customer chose. Packing material I would say is like, I'd say that's a solid A minus. - [Jake] Dude, it came in a crate. - Well, no, I mean, oh, right,
yeah, I forgot about that, okay, the packing material is an A plus. Oh, got an included mousepad. - [David] A pretty nice one. - [Jake] It was free. - Yeah, it was free just
like the Visa debit card, prepaid debit card. This does actually feel pretty nice. Not that you'll need one
'cause you're gonna be waiting for the LTT mousepad, lttstore.com. Where'd my free T-shirt
go, oh, here it is. - [Jake] Oh, this actually
feels pretty good. - Got a, oh, it's Gildan. Smells like these guys just
got acquired by Corsair. (Jake laughs) Got a Corsair thumb drive in
there with your presumably OS, 32 gig thumb drive though, free, except that you paid for it. Got some modular cables,
this is the first unit to have a modular power
supply included for free, except that you paid for it. Their packing is ridiculous. This is probably at the
point where the packing is 10 to 15% of the cost of this computer. - I'm looking for imperfections
there, I'm hunting. - You're not gonna find them. Got pretty basic front I/O,
headphone/microphone combo jack, don't like to see that on a desktop, I prefer to see discreet
jacks on a desktop. - [Jake] At the front? - USB 3. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most headsets have a separate- - [Jake] But like, it
doesn't look like that. I'm still mad. - Tempered glass, tempered glass
is now apparently standard, I guess I shouldn't have
been quite as impressed when HP had it, but still. I have to remove my eight
pin PCI Express connector in order to get this foam out. - [Jake] Oh, we got a code for Fall Guys. - Let's dial it back and focus on some positive things here though. Cable management. It's great. The best we've seen so
far, looks fantastic. The cooling configuration. Unconventional, but better than
some of the stuff we've seen for sure, I would bet money on it. We've got two intakes here at
the top, here at the front, an exhaust right here. The one thing I might've
changed is this front one, I'd have probably put it over here so that you're bringing nice
fresh air across the GPU. They managed to put dual channel
memory in, 3000 megahertz. But what I don't know is, even though this is a Z490 series chipset motherboard, so we should have support
for 3000 plus megahertz RAM, we are not running a K-series processor, this is the weakest CPU out
of all the systems so far. Just a Core i5-10400 six core, not overclockable or anything like that. So that's, has the
potential to hold them back, or at least it would if we
weren't running a GTX 1660 Super, this is also the slowest
graphics card we've yet seen. This is interesting. I figured out the $50 gift card. - [Jake] What? - There's a current special offer, free shipping plus $50
rewards card with AMD Ryzen... - [Jake] Remember when we tried
to buy Ryzen for this thing? And it was too expensive. - Well, maybe it would've
been the cheapest option is they just gave you $50 off. (groans) - All right. Storage, we got a 250 gig
Seagate Barracuda SSD, they don't specify exactly what kind, but it's not M.2, 'cause
there's nothing under there, so I guess it's a two and a half incher. Probably hiding down here in the bottom. And then we've got a one terabyte Origin PC approved hard
drive, and it turns out that is a Seagate Compute
hard drive as well. I mean, there is nothing else much to really say about this puppy. It arrived here in immaculate condition. How long did this one take to arrive? - [Jake] 24 regular days. - Are they really that backed up? How do we factor in Fall Guys? One Gildan T-shirt. One mouse pad. - [Jake] A lot of the other- - $50 Visa card. - [Jake] Some of the other ones, you got free games with the GPUs though. - Why don't we say 1400 bucks? That is a whopping $360 more than putting this together yourself. So you can pay yourself 150 bucks an hour to assemble your own computer. We're onto boutique builder number two, J? - [Jake] 14 days. - [Linus] 14 days to arrive- - [Jake] That's reasonable for a computer. - That's reasonable, I think that's fine, especially if it's a custom built affair. A-grade foam here,
although these thumbscrews, you can see they did get
pretty close to the edge. Nice magnetic filter on the top. No fans there though, so we're
gonna have to have a look at what the cooling
configuration is like in here. Three USB 3s and a Type-C,
but also a headphone, microphone jack and
power button right there. Illuminated Maingear logo on the front. It's a handsome chassis. Not a lot of air intake here,
just this one side here. Bottom is pretty much right
down flat against the table, so we'll have to see how that holds up. And rear I/O, well, this is
where we see how Maingear has moved to address the
more entry-level market. Origin went and cheaped out on core specs. You get a worse graphics card, you get a worst CPU, that sort of thing. And to be clear, Maingear's
specs are still not competitive with what we got from HP, Dell, iBUYPOWER, those guys, CyberPower, for that matter. At least they costed down,
tempered glass panel, in ways that I mostly think makes sense. So we went AMD. And instead of blowing a
bunch of money on a crate and a high end motherboard, we went with a B450M PRO-VDH MAX motherboard, so it's an mATX board, you do tend to save a little bit of money like that. Four sticks of memory,
that's really weird- - [Jake] Are they four gig?
- But we can talk more about that later. And we went AMD for
our CPU, which honestly I was expecting more of them to do AMD, third gen Ryzen is such a great value. Compared to Origin, they managed to get a much better
graphics card in this system, this is an RTX 2060 Super. But I'm still expecting it
to get beat up pretty badly by the machines with 2070 class cards. And cooling makes a fair bit more sense. We're looking at two 120
millimeter intakes up here at the front. We've got just a stock cooler. Spending money on an AIO for a system in this price point really
doesn't make a ton of sense, especially when you consider that they don't perform that well. And then a single looks like
LED-lit 120 millimeter exhaust. This is weird, hold on a second, can I have a look at this RAM
first, what is going on here? Who ships four gig sticks anymore? (Jake laughs) It's 3200 megahertz CL16
four gig HyperX RAM. - [Jake] Why? - I don't know. I wonder if Kingston was just... - [Jake] They have extra, oh. Why would you do that? What are you, pardon me, why
did you just throw the RAM? - I was gesturing. Probably fine. - [Jake] Geez. - All right, all right,
all right, all right. Like Origin, Maingear didn't
include crummy peripherals, assuming that either
you would have your own or you wouldn't be buying an
Origin or a Maingear system. This is not as nice as
the Origin mousepad. - [Jake] Important stuff. Very descriptive. - Oh, okay, yep. Original bracket for the CPU socket so you can install
different coolers on it. - [Jake] That's a nice touch, wait. - Got an RGB controller here. - Okay. But what do you think the DIY option cost? - Ooh. I would say they're probably taking pretty similar margin to Origin. - [Jake] So this one was 1,399 USD. $1,012. - Oof. It doesn't feel like it though. - [Jake] It's a, I know, 'cause Ryzen. - They cheaped out on the right stuff. I mean, although I
shouldn't say that, I mean, this B450 board might not last as long as that higher end Z490- - [Jake] Less expandability. - But you can upgrade to Zen 3. - [Jake] That's true, you totally can. - Oh, what is up with this side panel? - [Jake] Hey, gentle. Putting the wrong side panel on. - That explains it. Well, we saw everything today. The good. The wood. The worst than wood, the cardboard. All of them arrived in one piece though. So stay tuned for part three, where we're gonna be intentionally
bunging up the systems in all the same way and contacting each and every one of these
manufacturers' tech support to see who can solve
our problem the fastest. Speaking of tech support,
you gotta contact dbrand if you ever need some tech
support with your stickers. They're probably not gonna help you, because they're going to be like, well, we make videos that are
so simple, an ape could do it, and they're on our website. But hey, it's worth a shot. They've got the limited edition
LTT drop running right now with both the face and
sticker bomb options. I can't believe they called
the good one Anthony tier. I guess they really know
how to simp for Anthony. You can pick, anyway, you can pick them up at lttstore.store. How many URLs did they buy? If you guys are looking for
something else to watch, you can go check out part one,
which we've already uploaded, or you can go check out the
last time we did this a couple of years ago, it might put some of what we're talking
about in context here when we say like, oh,
these guys got a lot better or they got a lot worse.
(energetic music) Most of them didn't
really get better so far. Yeah, no.
I'm confused that origin would sell a PC in that price point but use a wooden crate to ship it. I get they are a boutique builder but for a PC around that price surely there are better places to spend that money...
Skip to 31:33 for the content we all came for.
Dell is truly an outliner.... in a way.
I appreciate how all of the PCs, even from the dedicated system integrators, have atrocious airflow.
I'd love to see them relocate the guts into nice airflow optimized case and see what performance was left on the table. Only advantage of these poor airflow cases is that the dust accumulation should be pretty low? Except for Cyberpower who's running exclusively exhaust fans...
I'm still curious about Dell. Did they pay for the warranty that they turned down? Or did the get all that extra warranty for free?
That Dell PC is just sad for $1500. I mean think of what you can get for $1500. A Ryzen 5 3600 for $200, a 3070 for $500, a good airflow case with three fans like the Lancool II Mesh Performance for $100, Vengence LPX 3200 CL 16 RAM for just $70, Crucial P1 1 TB M.2 NVME for and a good 80+Gold 650/750W fully modular PSU for $200 combined. Add an MSI B450 Tomahawk for $120 and you're not even at $1200 yet. You could even through an AIO cooler and top mount a 240mm radiator with the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240 mm and you're still at $1280 pre-tax/shipping.
Even if you subsitute the 2070 Super for the same price, it still beats these other machines. Props to ibuypower for a pretty decent machine though for $1500 all things considered. My friend had a pre-built from them and it lasted forever with about a pound of dust when we opened it.
I'm waiting for the obvious WAN Show follow up to say that Dell contacted them and pointed out that they were upsold the warranty et al, despite the fact that they adamant that they didn't want it and that they will improve staff training yadayadayada...
Origin's interesting. Their sales guy was super pleasant and the caller liked the experience, but the system was woefully underpowered. Still, it arrived in a crate with a super clean build, so a first time buyer might feel like they're getting something super premium.
I'd almost want LTT to have the "I want a gaming/streaming computer but I don't know what to buy" types try out the different systems. Have them stream some some random normal games and rank them, then compare to what the actual performance benchmarks are. Does having an AIO in a clean build rather than a fan in a more standard looking build make it feel like you're getting a better experience (even though these CPUs are fine with the fan)? What about M.2 versus standard HDDs? Does RGB coming out the wazoo feel more premium (and can they set it up properly)? Basically, what is the placebo effect with computers?
Otherwise, the systems were all varying degrees of properly assembled with the exception of the CyberPower case getting Office Spaced in transit and iBuyPower's terrible choice of a paper sticker on the IO shield. There were some mismatched pieces and odd corners cut for cost, which you'd normally expect from a pre-build, along with some really bad RAM decisions. Performance with all the choked airflows is going to be interesting. Still, I'm guessing that the hierarchy of performance is going to relatively follow what you'd expect based off of the individual pieces.
Finally, they are focusing on the shopping experience AND the hardware. Last time they did this, they downplayed the large jump between the different systems , especially for the cost.