- Hello, my friends and welcome.
Today I've been challenged
to build the tiniest gaming PC I can
by our friends over at Xbox Game Pass for PC,
who wanted to sponsor a video
to help promote their brand-new game, "Grounded,"
in which you are an incredibly tiny character
in a very large world.
So my first thought is to not focus on the performance,
but really to try to get the smallest system that I can
that will still run the game,
which is where I had the idea
to buy this Lenovo ThinkCentre PC
with a Ryzen 5 processor and decent integrated graphics.
Now, my thinking is that this will be my best option
to get the smallest PC I can, however,
the ability to play the game is a little untested right now.
- So I found out the concept and it turns out,
it had to be really small, which meant not a lot of power.
So of course that meant that we had to put a lot of
creativity into it, to sorta amp it up,
and naturally, that was on me to figure out.
So, I'm thinking that what would be the coolest
for this is if we essentially built a diorama,
you're sort of looking
at a chunk of grass with some dirt,
maybe there's a little fake puddle or something like that.
So if we're looking down at our base,
so if we had an Etch A Sketch, right,
so we could take the glass right out, and in theory,
I guess we could fit a monitor inside of there?
- My only concern, we have to make sure this's small, right?
It's gonna be a really fine balancing act
between cool and small,
but I think if it comes down to it,
we need to lean a little bit more on the small side.
All right, so it is now time to test the PC
to see if it will even work
and if I can even play "Grounded" on it.
So the only thing different
between the last time we spoke and now is
that I have now upgraded this to 16 gigs of RAM,
which, especially considering that we have those integrated
Vega graphics, means that that extra bandwidth
should make a big difference.
- It'd be helpful if I could make sure the heat sink is
actually fully attached to the processor.
- [Wes] I got you.
- Yeah, if you just put your finger right there,
thank you, appreciate it.
Oh no, I'm at nine FPS.
Hold on, lemme check my settings, wait, wait.
- Hold on, I gotcha.
- So, sometimes when you're doing a project,
you have to do what is known as a Plan B
when your first plan doesn't work.
I also probably should've mentioned
that I have a $2,000 budget for this video,
which is a good thing
because I can now buy some more components
and build a PC that actually will work better,
on the downside, I have sunk $500 into this PC,
which I now realize I cannot use for this project.
Wes, can you tell me what you've been working on?
(uplifting instrumental music)
- All right, so we've cut the mesh
and we've secured it to the inside of the box.
I would say it's plaster time.
(uplifting instrumental music) Plaster time!
(uplifting instrumental music)
While this first layer dries though,
we have the next thing, which right here,
we want a little fake footprint with some fake water in it.
So, I have an old boot, (laughs)
and we're gonna cast this in plaster
and then put it down there and see what happens.
(uplifting instrumental music)
- So, a day of furious work later,
we've actually made some real progress.
So this actually looks really cool though.
- [Wes] Thank you. - When you first showed me this,
I was so upset with the idea that my portion of this build
had been a complete and total failure,
but thankfully, I've rectified that.
So I have a few components here.
Okay, so we have Ryzen 7 3700X, 16 gigs of RAM,
as well as an X570-I Gigabyte board.
So I have a Noctua NH-L9a cooler,
so this is not the most powerful cooler in the world,
but the thing that I really wanna be careful of
is actually if we sort of mock it up.
The motherboard doesn't have a lot of space,
so something like this, right?
So when the board is living like this,
we're basically gonna have to route the PCIe riser cable
around here, we still need to get that exactly sorted,
but, the thing is, I wanna make sure this is no taller
than it needs to be because we don't have
that much space in the back.
- [Wes] So we have the power supply in there.
- [Austin] Which is a... - [Wes] 650...
- 750, it's a Corsair SF750,
So it has a small form factor power supply,
that saves us a lot of space on the inside
and we can sort out all the cables and modulars
so it's all nicely routed.
- Yep, I kept everything elevated
so we have all this cooling underneath.
- Another major component here is our ZOTAC RTX 2070 SUPER.
Now this is important because this is one of the most
powerful small graphics cards you can get.
So if we really wanted to go really tiny,
we could've gone ITX, we would've had to go
for a much less powerful card.
This is only, I think, seven inches long,
or eight inches long?
It's much smaller than a normal card.
- It's very dense though.
- That is going to live somewhere like this, right?
Something like that? - Yeah, again we're gonna have
to shave off a little bit of this extra plaster, but yeah.
It's gonna poke out, the board's gonna poke out,
and then once we have our artificial grass in here,
it's gonna look like it's- - It'll be nicely buried in-
- Yeah, we'll have some nice depth.
- So, do we actually wanna just plug things in
and make sure that all the cable runs are fine?
- Yeah, that would probably be a good idea.
- So this is gonna be an interesting run.
So, this is about as long of a riser cable
as I feel comfortable running.
So, actually, you know what?
We could do a test boot if you wanna hold all the components
or keep them on the table
so they don't all come crashing down.
- I don't know if we have enough slack to put it,
can you grab the iFixit kit?
- I can shimmy that under. - [Austin] Yep, right here.
- Look at that test bench provided by iFixit!
Power supply on, run.
(perky techno music)
They're spinning. - [Austin] Can I see,
is the CPU fan spinning?
It's not, but give it a second, it's posting.
Yeah, there we go. - [Wes] There we go, alright.
Hey, look at that! - [Wes] All right.
- [Austin] Oh, it's actually posting into Windows right now.
- If I wear a green suit, you can just key me out.
(Austin laughs)
- All right, all right, all right.
Lemme just kill the power on this guy really quick here.
(tool whirring) (calm upbeat music)
Yeah. - [Wes] All right.
(air spraying) (Wes laughing)
- [Austin] It's good, if we can get this
to stay in place, it's done.
- You wanna hold this guy?
- Yeah, I'll hold on both, actually.
- Okay, cool, I'm gonna get some coffee real quick.
(calm upbeat music)
If you let me twist this around here.
- So, that positioning is good, if it's up a little bit.
This I think we just need to tilt it one way
or probably tilt it a little like this,
just to sorta match the angle,
and I think we're pretty much set on the computer.
- Yeah, and I'll give it a little bit more
of a riser underneath to support it.
- How do we take apart an Etch A Sketch?
- I don't know if I wanna actually take it apart.
- [Ken] I was gonna say, like,
why are you taking it apart
when there's already one on the table?
- [Austin] That's a good point,
why do we have two Etch A Sketches?
- I was afraid I was gonna really mess the first one up,
so I bought a second one just in case.
- Oh, this was just for fun?
- Well honestly, I don't think I messed this one up too bad.
- Let's just use that one then!
- Okay, does that mean I get to keep the Etch A Sketch?
- Sure. (Etch A Sketch rattling)
- So, I think step one is I'm gonna put that guy in here,
we're gonna take some measurements,
and by measurements, I mean,
I'm gonna ballpark it with a Sharpie.
So now we're gonna try gluing it in.
- [Austin] Okay, you got super glue?
- [Wes] I have super glue.
- I'm gonna let you be in charge of super glue,
'cause I still glue my fingers together every time.
- Would it make you feel better if I just did it too?
Just give you solidarity. - Can you build it there?
Are you just dropping it in?
- [Wes] Yeah. - [Austin] That's it,
that's all the glue?
- Yeah, sure. - [Austin] Are you sure
that's okay? - [Wes] Yeah, we'll find out.
- Just a measure, was it?
"A good tailor measures twice and cuts once?"
- Measure twice, cut once?
Yeah, no, I have not measured and I'm about to cut.
Okay, hold it, here we go.
(fast-paced instrumental music)
- [Wes] Look at that.
- That actually does look really good, wow.
That looks so legit, look how good that looks.
So we're gonna have a little bit
of overscan, that's totally fine.
- So we have this right-angle adapter to help us out,
and this is the USB-C power cable around?
- [Austin] It is right here.
I'll plug into one of our USB three ports
just in case it needs to touch more power.
- So, walk me through this.
So I'm gonna basically run it over the top
of the power supply and through that little hole?
- Yeah, we're going to scoot it through,
and I'll help you pull it apart.
So we'll grab that,
and then we're gonna thread our HDMI through,
this is something... - [Austin] Oh, dude!
- Which will rotate. - [Austin] Very gently rotate.
- Very gently. - Alright, I think it's time.
Can we fire it up and see the monstrosity that we built?
- Yeah, where is the...
(calm upbeat music)
All right, is it coming up?
Yay! - [Wes] All right.
- So now I need to tweak the display,
make sure our setup is all up-to-date.
We have "Grounded" downloaded,
and then once we're done decorating,
we're ready for the final reveal.
(calm upbeat music)
And so, with some decoration done,
we have our "Grounded" tiny gaming PC complete.
Wes, I am so happy with how cool this is.
- Yeah, no, I am stoked.
Just, all of the little touches really came together.
My favorite is still the little people in the canoes,
and it's kind of an Easter egg, so you have to look for it,
but you can see the boot print in there.
- We still have a little bit of room for airflow,
so we actually cleared a little bit of a pocket here
so the graphics card can breathe,
the CPU, while maybe not running ice cold,
is still completely within spec.
Ultimately, I love the layered effect here.
It has a good sense of depth
and you get a real good sense of scale of everything.
And just, overall, for something
that came together pretty quick, I'm really jazzed.
I think this is honestly one
of the coolest-looking things I've built.
- So, of course, this entire project has been sponsored
by Xbox Game Pass as well as "Grounded."
So if you guys are not familiar,
Xbox Game Pass is available for only $4.99 a month
and it gives you access to over a hundred amazing games
including not only "Grounded,"
which we'll talk about in a second,
but also major new titles like "Halo Infinite,"
"Flight Simulator," all of which is available
for $4.99 a month.
- Now I think it's actually time
to give "Grounded" a try since
it's the first time I'm playing the game
since it didn't work with a previous plan.
- Yeah, I hope it works.
Between you and me, I hope it plays.
- So, the idea with "Grounded" is
that it is a first-person game
that is all about putting you in a tiny world
where a baseball is the size of a house,
and that's what we were really trying to go for
with the build, right?
With the small people, with the grass, with the wood,
especially these sprigs of grass, almost perfectly match,
I guess we could have had like a baseball
or we could have had some mushrooms or something,
but I'm really happy with this,
especially the way that we've integrated the screen inside.
So we're actually running it
slightly less than 1080p right now,
we had to do a custom resolution
because the screen's not fully being shown right now,
but we've got like 90 frames per second on "Epic."
Whoa, what is that?
Is that a baseball?
Oh man, all right, what are we doing here, what is this?
Pebblet? Okay, I'll take a Pebblet.
Oh, I can attack with it, oh, word, okay.
- [Ken] There's some motion blur too.
- It's really nice-looking game,
no wonder we couldn't run it on the first PC.
I think I probably need to build something.
Oh, what is that?
That's an ant, okay.
Do I attack the ant?
I think I attack the ant, right?
Then he sends his buddies after?
Oh, I got him, I got him.
Then he sends his buddies after?
Uh-oh, he's mad, he's mad, okay, okay.
Oh, all the ants are attacking!
Okay, all right, oh no,
no, no, no, no, no, no.
That was a bad idea, bad idea, bad idea.
Go away, go away. go away.
All right, did I outrun them yet?
Nope, didn't outrun them.
Oh, I'm about to die, aren't I?
Oh, hello, little bug.
What is this?
What is that?
Is that a shoe, is that a rock?
What is that, what is that?
I don't like that.
Oh, those ants are not happy.
What is this?
Okay, we're friends, right?
The ants are trying to find something,
I'm just gonna oh, okay, that's a spider.
That's a spider.
Got him, got him.
I got some spider silk.
I'm so lost now.
Oh, I am not going down there.
Oh, hell no.
Oh, wait, here's a computer.
Okay, I need to analyze some things.
(cheery music)
Oh, what the, I can go third-person?
Oh, I'm totally living in third person.
"Threat engaged," what was that?
Oh no! I died!
No! (cheery music)
So that is "Grounded" and this is the tiniest gaming PC.
Well, okay, it's maybe a little bit bigger
than it could've been, but honestly
I think the aesthetic kinda really helps
to sell the entire package.
So what are you waiting for?
Go sign up for Xbox Game Pass right now,
it literally is the best deal in gaming.
Anyway, again, huge thank you
to Xbox Game Pass for sponsoring this video
and let me know in the comments below,
what tiny/slash giant PC should we build next?
Please make it not hard to build,
'cause this was a lot of work.
(relaxing music)
They're not gonna do that, are they?
- [Ken] Probably not. (resounding music)