- Hey, guys, this is Austin,
and today, we're going to be doing
a little bit of a different video.
So, I'm here with my buddy JayzTwoCents.
- So, we thought, what if you already have
an old computer laying around, or access to it?
Does it make more sense to buy
a new GPU and put it in that?
- So, this is the first episode of...
- [Austin and Jay] Junkyard Battles, yeah!
- I almost said Scrapyard Wars.
- I think it's time to hit Craigslist.
$30 for a Core 2 Duo machine?
- What is that?
- This one?
- Oh, it's 195 bucks, though.
It's an i5.
It also says Windows Vista on it.
- I mean, that's the finest operating system ever.
It's clearly what I want in my life.
Acer Athlon 64.
For 50 bucks, this might not be crazy.
- [Jay] Okay, well I'm gonna text him now.
What's the number?
- Here's a place.
Buy, sell, trade, and repair.
Hey, so, a friend and I, we're trying to do a project,
and we need a little bit like an older and cheaper desktop
that has a PCI slot.
- Yeah, we have a bunch
of different desktops.
I can go 150 dollars.
- Okay perfect, much appreciated, man.
Have a good one.
- Okay, all right, you too.
You have a good one, bye-bye.
- It's not far away.
It sounds like it's got options,
and if it's maybe missing something,
could talk the price down a little bit,
and it sounds like he has--
- Yeah, lots of parts.
So even if we don't want necessarily a fully built system,
like if we're able to get everything we need,
we can throw something together.
- But if it doesn't have like say an air cooler.
- All right, so I heard back from the guy that I texted
before we found this other shop,
so I think it's a really good back up plan,
in case this store doesn't work out.
- [Austin] How far is this from the store?
- They're both in Fontana.
- Oh, okay.
- So they're in the same city,
and they are available today,
so I think we got a good back up.
- [Austin] Once we got to the store though,
we quickly realized we might be in a little bit of trouble.
- [Jay] We're hoping there's something
maybe complete enough
that we can at least make sure powers on.
- I know for a fact that it turns on.
(ding)
- What about these guys?
These are Core 2 Duo.
- [Jay] It's got a cooler in there already.
It's got no RAM though.
- Yeah, the drive.
This is gonna be a pretty good, complete system.
I can almost guarantee you it'll turn on.
- So how much is that one?
- This one is gonna be 150.
[crashing sound]
- [Jay] All right, so it's a 7200.
It's got a gig of DDR2.
- [Austin] There were a few options that could sort of work,
but the system we really wanted was the $50 Craigslist PC.
- Hi, I'm the one that was texting you
about the computer for sale.
If we could get an address and come meet up with you,
we're really interested in it.
It's working, right?
All right, have a good one.
And he's like three blocks away.
- Oh perfect.
- Okay, so this is like an old guy.
- Okay. - Wasn't a kid.
Wasn't someone that beat up the computer.
It literally sounds like an old man
that just got a new computer,
and just trying to get a couple bucks for his old one,
so I think we really lucked out right now.
50 bucks?
- 50 bucks is pretty much perfect.
The two gigs of RAM worries me a little bit--
- And it's a 32 bit system.
- So we might not be able to do everything,
but we're all in on this computer less than $200 right now.
- [Jay] I think it's the yellow house.
- Yellow house?
That's a lot of bird (bleep).
All right, we have been successful,
so Craigslist pulled it out.
So we got a 160 gig hard drive.
It's a little dusty, but man,
we blow this thing out, throw a graphics card in here--
- It's got wireless, it's got a card reader,
it's got bonus stuff.
- Yeah.
We're bringing the heat right now.
I mean, like it's actually hot.
Okay, so we successfully made it.
It is 5 o'clock, so I think it's time to update this guy.
- [Jay] I still can't believe we scored this
for 50 bucks.
- 50 bucks, I'm like really happy.
Although now I realize, it's missing a foot.
- Ah, so we could've 45 bucks.
- We need our money back (laughs).
I mean, we do only have 2 gigs of RAM.
That's the only thing I worry about.
Some of the games and benchmarks probably won't work.
- Ideally we wanted four,
but we've realize that trying to keep this on the super low
and getting 4 gigs wasn't really gonna happen.
- So not only is it 50 bucks, we scored upgrades,
because it says Windows Vista, but it has Windows 7 Pro--
albeit it 32 bit--
- I mean this is like what, a nine year old system?
- Close, close. - 2007.
- Yeah.
- This actually is a pretty solid card,
like it doesn't need external PCI power,
so it's perfect for something like this.
So on addition to our sick graphics card,
we have a dedicated Wi-Fi card and a modem, because future.
- [Jay] You need help?
- You know what, I'm not sure.
I've never done this before.
- Okay, well-- - Right here--
- Well, well-- - You do it like this, right?
If it doesn't go, just push harder.
There we go.
Moment of truth.
(suspenseful music)
- I mean, unless something got damaged in transit--
- I mean, we did check before we bought it
to make sure it worked.
- The surprise would be if it didn't boot.
I feel like this might, because it's a really old system,
I feel like this might be one
that we have to go into the BIOS
and set it to do external GPU.
- Which ended up being a problem,
because we actually didn't have a VGA cable lying around.
So one quick trip to Best Buy later,
we now have a VGA cable.
I can't believe we didn't have one of these.
- Are we adding that to the price of the system?
- This monitor is like really--
- [Jay and Austin] Yay!
- [Jay] I was right for once about something.
- All right.
- All right, let's look at the device manager though,
and see if the GPU is even seen.
- Okay so-- - GeForce 6100 built in.
- [Jay] But it's not seeing anything
plugged in right now to the GPU.
Is it seated all the way?
- It looks like it, maybe not.
After some tinkering, we got the card to boot,
however, we were about to run into a much bigger issue.
- Is it a dual core?
A 3800+, is it a dual core, or is it a single core?
- Wait, hang on, wait, let's Google this for a second.
Oh no.
What are we actually...
Single core, 2.4 gigahertz.
Oops (laughs).
This actually might be a big problem.
I think all of our games need dual core.
- Well we could benchmark Publisher.
That's a joke.
- When it came time
to install the graphics drivers,
we realized just how screwed we were.
Oh my goodness, these are 64 bit only.
Damn (laughs).
Okay, maybe we pivot.
Maybe this is a $100 gaming PC build, and we use that 240.
Luckily sitting right here, an R7 240.
Now I know for a fact that this will support 32 bit Windows.
So--
- And it brings that price down--
- A lot.
Now mind you, the 240 is not a card
that I really recommend for most things,
but for a situation like this.
So when Junkyard Battles runs into failure,
we don't give up, oh no,
we double down on the failure.
So with a little bit of upgrade action with the 240,
let's give this a try.
Oh, look how the 240 slipped right in no problem.
We'll clear this away.
Don't worry, this never happened.
Don't worry, this is totally not a...
So to save you some time
so we're not here til like midnight,
I'm using a laptop and an external drive,
just to load all our Steam games,
so hopefully, once we get drivers installed,
we plug it in and we're good to go.
We got zero frames per second!
- Yes, zero!
- Give us something.
- Oh! (Austin gasps)
Look at that FPS!
- Oh, 150, 120! - See in the menu, 120.
- [Austin] Oh!
- [Jay] In the menu, but still.
- I mean, that's really all we really care about.
Gaming is overrated.
Let's just take our 120 FPS menu--
- It's all about the splash screen.
- Yeah, what do you think it automatically picked for us?
- Low, low, low, off, off, off.
- 1080p, I see a medium, I see a--
- What of what?
Shader Detail, very high?
- [Austin] Should we try it?
Should we try what it thinks it can handle?
There's no way it'll actually work.
- [Jay] Dude, MSAA 8x, what the hell!
(laughing)
- Oh dude!
16 frames per second, we've got 8x MSAA right now.
This is actually kind of playable--
Okay, well.
- [Jay] You say kind of, but still...
- [Austin] With such a low powered CPU,
next we tried dropping bots
and playing online at 720p.
- Okay, so look at that, 32 FPS, 34 FPS.
So we just gained almost double.
Granted it's a shooter, yes it's CS:GO
and I know die hard CS:GO players right now
are throwing something at the screen like,
"That is not playable!"
- [Austin] Hey man, if it's this
versus not having a computer--
- Okay, so go into the settings.
- Let's try to crank it back up.
- Yeah, leave it at 720, no, go back to 1080.
- [Austin] Since we're entirely CPU bottlenecked,
in theory, running at a higher resolution
will put more strain on the graphics card
to even perform itself.
All right, so now we're playing, mind you still low,
but we're at 1080p.
- It's 43, 44, 45.
It's totally doable!
- This is 100% playable.
Like it's not even jittery.
- [Jay] 60s, because you're in the--
- [Austin] I'm in a small spot,
but still, look at the ground.
Just look at the ground.
- [Jay] Yeah!
- It's at 73 frames!
It's even able to play some relatively newer games
like Dota 2, provided you're willing to deal
with a lower frame rate.
Jump into an older game like the original Modern Warfare,
and it not only works, but it plays surprisingly well.
- If you wanna play some indie games and stuff,
this is perfect.
- Oh yeah, and I think the cool thing is
if you don't have a computer right now,
and you just wanna like build your first PC,
or even just like work on one,
this is a super easy upgrade to do.
- Grandma has got one in the garage collecting dust,
you know, "Hey Grandma, can I have that PC?"
"Oh sure, take it."
Mow some lawns, spend 60 bucks on a GPU, and look.
- I'm really happy with how this turned out.
Like, it's not a killer game PC,
it's not gonna blow you away, but it works.
- I rarely like find myself speechless, but this...
- It works, man.
Never underestimate single threaded power.
(laughing)