Hey there. What's going on? I'm Greg.
Brandon. Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I heard that you have a super old rig. Very old.
You pretty much need to rebuild the entire thing. That is correct.
Well, I have a bit of a challenge because I only have an $800 budget,
but I think we can still work with that because of where we are.
We are in Micro Center here in Houston, Texas, and this is actually my brother and he lives here.
So I told him, hey, while we're here filming for the Gear Up series,
bring your super old rig that I built you, what, eight years ago?
2016 in college, give or take?
Yeah, something like yeah, almost eight years ago. Uh, it's it's it's really old. Let's let's let's show them.
Let's take a look. And it's dirty.
So this is what we're working with now. Some of you from a few years ago might know what this case is.
This is the Deepcool Genome. Holy crap, Brandon. Have you ever cleaned this?
Have you ever cleaned this?
Oh, this is like years worth of cat hair and clogs on it.
And we have two cats. So that makes complete sense. It's like it's wrapped around
the reservoir. This is a really cool case. I think if you like deep clean it, which it really needs,
um, this would be like a super cool thing to flex. The problem is you keep this on the floor, right?
Yeah, you can't do that. Or cat hair likes to go. You can't do that anymore. So do you know what's in here?
Uh, I know the graphics card. That's about it. What is it?
An R9 Fury. Okay. Do you know how good or bad that is?
I know it was made or released in 2015, 2016 time frame.
It was actually a pretty good card at the time, which is why I put it in here.
So you don't know what your CPU is?
No, I remember when we looked at the specs one time it was completely
and terribly bad.
Uh, it's a Xeon.
Yeah, it's like a really low frequency Xeon. I think I bought it at this micro center.
It just, it hurts me that you've been gaming on this for like eight years because this CPU is definitely not a gaming CPU.
I'm not sure what on earth I was thinking when I threw this in here.
I don't even remember what kind of power supply you have. I've had to replace the power supply once or twice.
Oh, you did already? Yeah. Uh, this was probably like three years ago. Oh, okay.
Well, that might still be good though. You've got rubber grommets just hanging around like just chilling. Yep.
Uh, this I think is DDR4. What kind of DDR4 is this? I don't even remember what,
what brand
modules these are. This is a pacer blade DDR4.
Wow. Now this MSI motherboard I for sure bought here at this Houston micro center.
Kind of cool that we're bringing it back to its roots, back to uh,
where it was largely assembled. Do you kind of have an idea of what you want?
Are you like familiar at all with this stuff? Not the latest and greatest.
You might have some open box deals, some bundles to dip into. I'd say we start with a platform refresh.
That's going to be a night and day difference. Yep. And then whatever excess we have,
we can maybe throw into a graphics card
possibly some storage and something. I think your, your case is largely fine.
I guess you're just kind of going to go blind here and just trust what I, what I tell you.
Yeah, go off your word. Okay. I'm not going to steer them wrong. I hope. Right then Brandon, are you ready?
I'm ready. It's been a while since uh, we built you a PC. So hopefully this will pay off.
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Ooh, look at this Brandon. Something like this is not too tall. Oh, yeah.
It's a hundred bucks. 110 bucks. O11D mini, you know, like you've got plenty of choices here.
Uh, plenty of case brands, you know, manufacturers to choose from. Look at that all the way down there.
You get tons to splurge on here at Micro Center. Or just spend 50 bucks on a case. You could. No, you totally could.
So that's totally up to you. Like if you don't care, if you insist on putting this dang thing on the ground,
which is just the ultimate sin.
I don't know how you're doing it.
He's related to me, but you wouldn't think that based on his PC habits.
If you insist on doing that, just getting a, you know, cheap case you're gonna throw on the ground
and not care about, then you could definitely maximize performance. And some people choose to do that.
It's totally up to you. But again, maybe we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves.
It's very easy to get distracted at Micro Center because you'll find literally everything on your PC.
We might not need a case because we might be recycling the one he already has, which I think would be the smartest decision.
Especially if he wants to maximize performance. Brandon games a lot, by the way. A lot. On his PC. Like way more than I do.
So I definitely want to make sure that that platform and the graphics card specifically are ready to go.
So here is the open box motherboard section. Brandon, maybe we should start here. Yeah, do you want to do
ATX or M-ATX? You might save a few bucks if you go the M-ATX route. And what is the difference between the two?
Slightly smaller board. Fewer PCI slots. But if you're only running a graphics card, it's not really going to matter.
Okay. But that'll save you, you know, usually on average maybe 20, 30, 40 bucks for an equivalent M-ATX board versus the
full-size counterpart. So we found a B550M for 103 bucks. That's a good start.
Maybe we can find something else. I love this. It's like a treasure hunt. Here we go.
97 bucks. B550 plus. And this is an ATX board.
So if you wanted to go full size, you know, it's totally up to you. Again,
you're only getting a few extra PCI slots if you wanted to expand in the future.
But
most of the time you're not really losing out in the way of rear IO ports or anything like USB ports and stuff.
Yep. So it's up to you. You might be able to find a cheaper M-ATX case if you went this route.
Hey, that's a really good price for a Z690 motherboard. Holy cow.
$102 for this?
Jeez. So we've made up our mind then. B550M. So you're going M-ATX then, yeah? We're going with this.
Okay, and that means now we just need to find a case that supports it.
So we have decided to move on from the Deepcool Genome case.
And mainly because that cooler doesn't have compatible mounting gear with anything we want to upgrade to. It's like, it's too cool.
So we'll just start fresh and now we need the CPU, which conveniently is going to be right in there somewhere.
There's one more left. One left. Oh, yeah, you copped it. Nice. They don't do this for everyone, Brandon.
Yeah, usually what they do when they open this up, they'll like hold it for you up front
until you pay for it. Yeah, which I don't blame them for doing. Quick, Josh. It's your chance. Oh, too late.
Knock him over, Brandon. Too late.
Awesome. Nice. Thank you. There you go. And then we can take the DDR4 out of your rig, throw it in here.
So whole platform is good now.
This is roughly
$220-ish combined. So you've still got, what? $225, so we're at $575.
$575. Yeah, something like that. You took that from me. Yeah, we went to school for this math.
All right, let's check out what you got back here power supply wise.
Brandon, have you just been chilling with this thing sitting sideways like this? It would not fit in the slots here.
So I had to dangle it and let it hang.
Uh, it's a two and a half inch drive. It'll fit right there. It's really gonna take a, yeah, let's just all tag team this.
Looking good. Hey, hey, Josh. Why are you copying? Why are you copying me?
Better. Just better. Oh, it's a 600 watt. Okay, we're gonna be kind of sort of getting close here.
You're gonna risk it?
Are you wanting to risk it? It depends how close we are to 600.
Uh, okay. Well, this will sip on power.
So I think you're okay. CPY is like, without a doubt, this, this, that's plenty.
So yeah, if you, if you pick like a really expensive graphics card
that pulls a lot of power, maybe upgrade it. So you could go with a Lancol 205 mesh micro ATX version.
I actually built into the full size version of this or the mid tower.
Um, it's a great case for 65 bucks. You could go dirt cheap with like a Versa H17.
Not really the most aesthetically pleasing thing or you could swing over here
and grab yourself something like a Montech
Air 100 micro ATX variant that still has decent airflow. Get plenty of fans, three up front, one at the rear for $60.
Okay, so we've made our decision and that puts us at what, 285? 285. So we're gonna have about 515 left. 515.
Uh, do we, do we need anything else other than the graphics card?
Is it just a graphics card we need? As long as we don't need to upgrade the power supply depending on that.
Okay, and see that's going to be tough because if we can get a marginally better graphics card,
but then squeak awfully close to the limits of that 600 watt power supply,
then we're going to need to buy a new power supply, which will drop our graphics card performance down quite a bit.
I mean, 100, $150 for 750 or 850 watt unit
is, I mean, that's a world of difference. It's a big, big chunk of the budget side.
Yeah, it's a big chunk and I would like to not spend it on the power supply if we can help it.
Although I know some of you are cringing here.
We're just trying to squeeze as much performance as we can out of 800 bucks.
And in the future, we can always revise things, future-proof things, so to speak, to make it a bit more durable.
So see, for example, this is a tried and true unit. A lot of folks pick this like RM, RM850X,
you know, somewhere around the 800 to 900 watt range is like,
mostly future-proof. Yeah, you're gonna be plenty comfortable, very efficient.
The question is how much, but it's like 160 bucks.
That's the problem. This thing's a boss. Oh, dude, it's a heavy power supply.
Will it even fit in my case? It will, it will fit in there.
Now, you could always go with a $20 power supply here. So this is a Basics power supply, 400 watts.
But I have 600.
Yeah, I know, but if you want to blow your system up, and this is what you put in there.
It's basically like, it's a detonator. That's what we call it. Gotcha.
So this here is a 4060 Ti Ventus. It's a triple fan card. Actually gonna, you know, stay super cool.
These are already very efficient to begin with. That is going to leave you,
this is around 400 bucks, with about, what, $100 left, give or take? About 100 bucks.
So you could upgrade storage that way.
You could, if you really wanted, maybe upgrade the power supply,
even though I don't think you need to. 600 watts should be more than enough for this combo.
You could just buy like 50 bags of chips. 50 bags of chips? 50 bags of chips is pretty good. Steam gift cards?
No, it needs to go in the rig or in your stomach, either one. That's the rule. That's a really good price on a 980 Pro.
Holy cow. One terabyte. So you'll want to make this your boot drive. At some point, reinstall Windows, put it on this.
Because it will make everything in your OS so much snappier. So what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do with $45?
Chips. Chips.
Stop, stop.
Open box for $24.
You've still got 20 bucks left over.
Like you're trying to spend this money and you're just finding deal after deal here. Oh my gosh.
Oh, that would be nice to consolidate things. That's actually a good idea. And that'll do it.
That'll top you off. Let's do that. Okay, sounds good. Let's pull the trigger.
So we have pretty much tapped out our budget here.
We haven't even gotten as specific as like getting an ARGB and PWM hub just to help consolidate things in the 205M
mesh. Got some cable extensions. These are gonna look really good, especially with the DDR4. We're gonna be ripping out of his old rig.
Yeah, now all that's left is to haul all this to the register and then we'll bring it back and
reassemble the practically new rig. Like almost everything here is
new. There he goes.
Now you gotta wait in line.
Oh man, the line is long. It is pretty busy. Is it black Friday today? Welcome to Micro Center.
Yeah, this is a thick line right here. This is a thick daddy. And we can't forget while we're checking out to get ourselves
a Diet Coke. We have to blur that label.
Oh, yeah, true. Yeah. Pay us Dr. Coke, Pepsi, Cola.
That's why. Is that how it goes? That's why they haven't paid us. I ruined it.
All righty, there we are Brandon. We are back and ready to assemble. So, uh, can you build your own PC? Probably not. Without assistance?
Okay, so it looks like we'll need some guidance tag team in this one. Not a problem. So we can start with the motherboard,
CPU, the cooler in the box,
and the RAM that's in your old rig. Go ahead and carefully squeeze those out.
Just remember if you break these we've pretty much got no system.
Be nice and careful. Dude, DDR4-3733. It's actually decent memory considering how old it is. Wait, this is actually high-end.
Yeah, this isn't bad. This is high-end.
Yeah, CL17, dude. Okay. For, yeah, for Ryzen this is actually, wow.
You saved a, yeah, you saved a heck of a lot sticking with it. And this is 32 gigs.
So, not bad.
So there's already thermal paste pre-applied so you don't have to worry about that. Okay.
We're going to remove these two brackets.
We won't need these for the stock cooler.
And you can whip out that CPU and go ahead and drop it into this socket with the lever for you.
Uh, specific orientation for the fan. Yeah, this is probably good because you've got sideways text here.
You're going to see how easy this is. Compared to your two and a half inch drives, you have to pop the plastic off.
Oh. I thought it was already out. Oh, it is on top.
I'm an idiot. I thought it was underneath. See, I can just pop it out. Don't drop it.
Okay, so we're going to install it here. Now, it's keyed. Josh is dying over here.
He's like breathing in fumes from 10 years ago. What are you, what are you doing, Brennan? You're killing the man.
This poor guy. He is struggling. He's on the struggle bus, hard.
Oh, no, please. No, please. In goes the platform.
Sliding her on in. This one goes right here.
This one. Okay.
This one
goes somewhere. Now, we've got both of our drives. I'm not sure about this positioning here.
I think maybe this will be a bit too
crammed. I don't know. We'll figure it out. Extension cables are run.
We'll get the SATA data cables and the SATA power connected. How do you like the card, Brennan?
It looks like a beast. Yeah, it's a beefcake for sure.
And it's so funny because like it's so large, but it only has a single eight pin. Like that's, that's so funny.
That's so efficient. Here it goes. You do know how to do this, right, Brennan? I know the fans go down.
Okay, we're off to a good start.
Yep, go ahead and line it up.
And it'll slot on in. Did you pull the, yeah, you pulled it back. Go ahead. Keep going in.
Nice.
Is that it? It clicked. Yep. Dude, that's so clean looking.
And it's like the perfect length. Yeah, that is a clean looking MHCX build.
I really like that you went with this form factor. I'm gonna connect this right here.
Oh, yeah, I actually really like the way that this runs around. So, Brennan, unfortunately, Micro Center's closing. It's nine o'clock.
I think it's cool that they stay open that late, but it's been a long day
and I don't want to hold them up any longer than we have to. So we're just gonna
literally
smash things together here. You okay with that? Yep. Let's do it.
Okay, that was actually way easier than I thought it was gonna be. That went on so easily.
I guess there was more space than I thought there was back there.
We can always address that a different day. But yeah, we do need to get the heck out of here.
So let's button that up and then we'll connect it to a monitor very quickly. Make sure it turns on.
Yep. And then we can get out. It's been pretty crazy.
Working on finalizing things and then we can power it on.
A few people have already passed his rig and they think it looks really good.
I mean, there's something about black and red builds that just looks so good in the PC space.
All right, we are finally ready to power on. The first time since the rebuild.
Do you want to go ahead and flip the switch there at the rear? Let's do it. And then power on up front.
Did it turn on? Oh, I see the light there.
So, that's a relief. Hey, there we go. It's probably complaining about your lack of a keyboard or a mouse.
So that's FTPM actually. So all you'll do when you get home is just click Y.
It'll reset that and it should at least boot straight into Windows.
And then from there, I'll show you you can download DDU, which is a direct driver installer.
It'll uninstall your previous graphics drivers. You can reinstall current ones for your 4060 Ti.
And then you can go straight to gaming. And again, it'll be a very obvious night and day difference.
Compared to what you had before, this rig is
so, so, so good.
It's going to be a huge breath of fresh air for you. Leaps ahead on the totem pole. Dude, like get close to this.
Can you even hear that that's on? It's so quiet.
Yeah, and it obviously helps that you have two super efficient components in here.
You're on the second to newest AMD Ryzen generation and the newest 60 series, 60 Ti series graphics card from NVIDIA.
So I think you'll be set for a good while. Another good 10 years.
Yeah, now when we play Sea of Thieves, we won't have to wait for you to join the lobby after like 30 minutes of processing.
So there's that. There we go. So with that, Brandon, thanks for driving out. I know you don't live too far from here.
But I haven't actually visited. I gotta stop by your house. I haven't even seen your house since you bought it.
But yeah.
So I want to know what you think when you get home and you plug it in and you play games for the first time.
I'm sure you're going to be shocked. But yeah, thanks for bringing your old rig out.
Please, please, please keep this off the floor this time.
Yes, it'll be on my desk. So that you're not crucified in the comments section. That should be your main concern.
And yeah, looking forward to it. So thank you all for watching.
Hopefully you enjoyed watching this build being transformed here in Micro Center in Houston, Texas.
If you liked what you saw, give the video a thumbs up, consider subscribing and we'll catch you in the next one.
My name's Greg. His name is Brandon. Thanks for building with us.
Look at that hot rod.
Hey, where you going, kid?
Hey, we're getting lunch or dinner sometime.
Oh, really? You want to get it now? You want to go somewhere?
Can we hitch a ride with you? You know, you may want to put the new build in there too.
Because yeah, well, this is Houston. Like I'm not saying, you know, I'm just...
Yeah, they're definitely going to steal this one before. Yeah, exactly. So it's actually a good decoy, dude.
I don't know how you've managed this, but you've shoved all of that into the trunk.
That is impressive. Can you like, uh, mute that so I don't get demonetized?
Thank you. All right. Now, now we'll end the video. Thanks for learning with us. We're gonna get some food. I'm pretty hungry.
Yes. Josh, how you doing back there? He's like barely
6'5".
You