- The last time we invaded the privacy of our staff,
entering their homes and rifling through their belongings,
it was for the Wall of Shame,
showing you guys the three worst computers
out of everyone who works at a Linus...
At a Linus...
At Linus Tech Tips.
This time around, we are gonna find
the three best machines out of everybody who works here,
except there is one small challenge.
Last time, we took the very worst one
and gave them a free upgrade.
This time around, this is already the people
who have the most balling setups,
so we had to dig pretty deep
to find anything that would be an upgrade.
So Intel, our sponsor for today's video,
has provided a Core i9-9900K,
and Asus chipped in
one of their Maximus ROG gaming motherboards as well.
So let's head into our first contestant here.
I can tell you one thing:
They definitely have a better gaming rig than a barbecue.
- [Jake] Wow.
- I thought it was a propane one,
but it's actually, that's actually, that's nice.
- Look down there, we have a natural gas one
that's routed into the house. - That's a wire brush.
- And there's another one- - I shouldn't be a hater.
Shouldn't be a hater. - We have three.
Three of 'em. - I just...
(upbeat music)
So our first stop, rather unsurprisingly, is Jake's house,
or rather, I should say, Jake's mom's house,
which might explain why Jake has so much budget
to spend on his gaming setup.
One thing he doesn't apparently have budget for
is a soldering iron, although I gotta say, Jake,
I really appreciate you helpfully taking
all the things that you've stolen from the office
and putting them in one place for me
so that I don't have to go digging for them
like I did at Dennis' house.
- I also stole-
- I guarantee you didn't buy this.
- No! I bought it, I paid for this.
- I actually was looking for this yesterday.
- This is like our third soldering iron,
and I borrowed it for like two days.
- Well, I was looking for this one.
- What about the floss?
Oh. Uh, are you flossing right now?
- I actually have not seen Jake's setup.
There's some unusual things like, for example,
this UPS that's definitely from the office.
- [Jake] Yes. Um...
- Why do you have so many wireless mice?
- (laughs) I like to switch it up sometimes. That's a G305.
- You've got a G PRO Wireless.
You already have the king of gaming mice.
- I like the G305,
and then the 403 is just kinda nostalgia, you know?
- Let's see if he has all of them plugged in.
Okay, this one is indeed actually active.
This one is also plugged in. What the hell?
- I also have another 403, two 502s,
and I think there's a G900 somewhere.
- Ooh! - Oh god.
Yeah, the cables are kinda short.
- [Linus] So what are you already running?
Wow, is this ITX?
- So this case is actually for mATX,
but the board that I had was ITX.
And that graphics card is so massive
that I can't even put even put anything else
in PCIe slots, so whatever.
- [Linus] I'm just trying to figure out how much
of this stuff is from the office.
- [Jake] Literally none of it.
- Literally none of it?
You know that RAM has an inventory sticker on it, right?
- [Jake] Okay, well, I bought it from work.
- [Linus] This is a pretty banging rig. 2080 Ti.
16 gigs RAM.
What CPU is that in there?
- [Jake] It's a 7700K.
- Okay, well at least that would be an upgrade.
On the subject of mechanic,
I really like your decal that you've got
on your rear panel here.
- Yeah, so that's actually my old car
that some guy hand-drew.
He sent me a sticker and I stuck it on the side of my case.
That Volta cable I did not pay for.
- Oh, this one? (Jake laughs)
- So I actually saw this trick online.
You use the Volta cable and stick the little
one- or two-gram dongle-y bit in the mouse
and then, assuming that somebody isn't holding it,
it just goes like that, and you just go bloop,
and it hooks up, charges the mouse.
- What about this chair?
- I think I bought that chair from work for $10.
- No way. - It was broken on the bottom,
on the casters. - Oh.
- And then I got a new base for it.
And it's kinda wonky-
- Yeah, all right. - But it's good enough.
It's better than the IKEA chair I had before.
- This is actually a pretty sick setup.
You've got two Acer Predator X34s.
So these are 100 hertz.
I see you've helpfully put the
refresh rate counter up there. - I love that thing.
It's great. - Yeah. Okay.
3440 x 1440 ultrawide monitors,
and then I'm guessing these are your old monitors over here.
- [Jake] I actually bought those as side monitors
off a guy from Craigslist for really cheap.
- [Linus] So you seem to be kinda set up for streaming,
but as far as I know you don't actually game stream,
so are you just like a poser streamer?
- I didn't stream for like eight months.
I used to do it quite a bit,
and then recently I've done it once or twice a week,
just on the not-yet-LTT "Minecraft" server.
- So why don't you tell us about your audio setup here?
Because it seems to be a fair bit better than "WAN Show."
- So overall it's actually pretty simple.
This is the same preamp we use on "WAN Show."
This is where I got the inspiration to buy it.
So I have an Audio-Technica AT2035
with a stupid pop filter that's just there
to protect it from food when I'm eating,
with a Rode PSA1 boom arm.
So that goes right into the preamp,
which is pre-amping our signal, and then it goes
over to this little, crappy Behringer interface.
- But your webcam kinda...
- It does kinda suck. - Sucks. Yeah.
- [Jake] But it's honestly good enough. (laughs)
- You unplug it when you're not using it?
- Well, see, the thing with this stupid webcam
is this is how long the cable is.
It's like three feet.
But it's conveniently just long enough
to plug in right there,
so I might as well just unplug it
and tuck it behind when I'm not using it, right?
- [Linus] Why do you need two 34-inch ultrawides' worth
of desktop real estate?
- Ah...
Pretty much just have everything you need access to
while you're streaming, while you're gaming,
and then have your game on the main screen
and don't have to Tab out, like literally ever.
- Pretty sick setup.
With that said, I think you might end up
giving up some style points here.
This stand. This is three two-by-eights.
This is pretty bad, Jake.
- I mean, okay- - Also, also,
I couldn't help noticing
that even if this hardware wasn't stolen from work,
it's not really being treated with the proper respect.
Down here, under the bed,
we've got a hard drive- - Those are dead hard drives.
- [Linus] Got another hard drive.
- Dead! - And what is this?
Do your laundry. (Jake laughs)
Got a PS3. - Those, okay, so that-
- [Linus] Got another, more different PS3.
- One of those PS3s is running-
- This is fun! - Is running Linux.
- I bet this I/O shield is stolen from the office.
- Uh...
- I want more monitors too.
- Yeah, I don't know if it's necessarily more efficient,
but it is convenient.
- So contender number two was sort of a surprise to me,
because he's more into board games
than computer games as far as I knew,
but our next setup is actually none other than Tyler's,
our warehouse and inventory and logistics manager.
- Yeah, and I think the important thing to remember
when you step into my home is that at the office,
I am the organization and cleanliness guy,
and this is my setup.
- Wow! Okay.
So I've seen Tyler working
on this kind of stuff at the office.
Oh, I think I actually saw you working on this guy.
- Yeah, you did.
- Tyler actually paints his own figurines.
Would figurine be the correct term?
- Miniature. - Miniature.
I knew there was a proper term that I was missing here.
I think he does a spectacular job with them.
I'll let you guys be the judge though.
Why don't we make our way in towards the computer?
So gotta get past the boxes of new miniatures
that you still haven't worked on.
Oh, some of them have some paint on them though.
- They got their white coats on,
and then they got their green trim.
And then I have my collection of various romance books
and real human hair that I use for cosplay.
- [Linus] Along with a list of real letters
to fictional people that you apparently need to write.
- Yeah, so that's a series
of short stories that I'm working on.
- "To the other participants of this Mexican standoff,"
"To the poor bastards on the other side of the blast door,"
and "To the anonymous man giving me constructive criticism."
- That's just more painting stuff.
- Yeah, with something.
Something got on there.
- Yeah, it's just all over.
- I can only focus when something's this close
in front of me. - I think that's how close
it's supposed to be when you're working on it.
- I don't like it.
- Yeah, I'm not a fan either.
- In terms of general setup here,
there's some highlights already and there's some lowlights.
We've got a G502 mouse. (clucks) Like it.
We've got one of those free mouse pads
that they gave away in the early '90s.
This is a freakin' LG ultrawide monitor here. 34 inches.
You're connected via HDMI, aren't you?
- Yes, I am.
- He's running at 49 hertz
instead of 60 hertz on his ultrawide
because of the bandwidth limitation
of the HDMI input on this model.
Tyler.
This keyboard-
- This keyboard- - Is quite frankly disgusting.
- [Tyler] Needs to be swapped out, yeah. It is, uh-
- Or run through the dishwasher. Or something.
Something, please.
- It has been with me for a long time.
- Your computer might actually be
the cleanest component of this entire rig.
- [Tyler] Well, it's the newest.
- Oh!
What kinda specs are we looking at here?
- [Tyler] So it's an i7-8700,
GeForce 1080 Ti,
32 gigabytes of RAM-
- RGB. - An SSD and a hard drive.
- [Linus] So did someone at the office
put this together for you? - Oh yeah, this was all Ed.
I was going to do it on my own
because I felt very confident in my abilities,
but then, as soon as I started putting it together,
I realized that it was quite out of my league.
- [Linus] So what inspired you
to put together a rig like this?
- [Tyler] So first, I wanted to play "Fallout '76,"
but then it became quickly apparent
that it was a terrible game.
So then, after that,
I wanted to play "The Outer Worlds" when it comes out,
so I'm pretty eager for that.
At the moment, mostly I use it
for "Civilization," which is a little-
- This is a pretty overkill "Civ" machine.
- Yeah, it's a little over-the-kill for "Civ,"
although I did see a lot of performance improvement
in the later game, when normally
the processing power starts to lag down
just because there's so much stuff on the map.
But it's still more of a machine that I built
for gaming in the next two to three years,
as opposed to stuff that's just out right now.
- [Linus] Tyler, do you have a screwdriver?
- I think Kristen has one. Just let me check.
- Okay.
- [Tyler] Do we have a screwdriver?
- So iFixit told us
we had to get rid of all the first-gen kits
so that they would stop appearing on camera,
and Tyler helpfully took one off of our hands for us.
- Yeah. - Stealing it.
- [Tyler] I jumped right on that grenade.
- [Linus] I knew I was gonna find something stolen.
- [Tyler] It's not stolen if you give it to me.
- [Linus] Did Ed know when he built you this machine
that it was going to be subjected to this?
- [Tyler] Subjected to what?
- I mean, it does sit in a fairly gloriously nerdy place.
I'm willing to bet there is a backstory
for literally everything in this nook.
What's the backstory for this surprise container?
- So this was brought to me from one of my friends,
who I'm actually in a role-playing podcast with.
He went on a trip to Japan and he brought back
unique gifts for each of us.
I believe it is a little spirit animal-
- You don't know what it is.
- [Tyler] I thought it was a goat.
- The Kindle with the dead battery.
- Yeah, it's a Kindle that's not plugged in.
- You don't like E Ink?
- I love this Kindle.
That's a cat toy.
Obviously Mycroft batted it behind my computer station.
- 17 months ago.
- Possibly.
I enjoy Coke.
(David laughs)
- Oh my god.
- [Tyler] Oh, the original VHS tapes of "Star Wars?"
- Well- - Or, sorry,
the last launch of the original ones
before they digitally remastered them.
- I had this, and my parents threw it away when they moved.
- Yeah, I found those in a thrift shop for $3.
- What? Do they work though?
- They do.
- And you have a VHS player?
- I do not.
- This place has a lot of character, but I'll say this:
if you're ever doing like a cleanup Saturday or something,
call me, I would be happy to help.
- Yeah. I'll call you when I need to paint my walls.
- First Dennis, now Brandon...
Taran was like, "Oh, I didn't know you paint walls.
I would've had you come paint my walls."
It's not actually a service I offer.
So we've had some good ones so far,
but Jono's promises to be the cutest
of our setup tours today.
Not because Jono is particularly cute, sorry Jono,
but because he has a new puppy!
Oh my goodness! You can pick her up?
- Yep. She's 52 pounds of love.
- You were almost Sho Pao?
- [Jono] If it was a male dog I was gonna call it Subway.
- [David] From "Community?"
- Yeah, (laughs) exactly! You got it!
- So I'm liking the setup here overall.
You've got the whiteboard for the organization.
You got the DualShock controller over there.
Do you actually use that for PC gaming?
Is that why it's there? - No, no, for PS4.
I used to have it over here,
but I don't play any consoles anymore,
so it's all about PC gaming.
- Don't suck up.
- Why?
So basically enough,
just, let's say, for the monitors,
I have a PG279Q here-
- Cadence! Quit licking my hand!
- (laughs) So cute!
And before I actually started working here,
I actually watched your review on it
and I was like (snaps fingers) gotta get it.
- Now, you're definitely getting some marks off
for your other monitor,
because the viewing angles on that are so bad
I thought you had a privacy filter.
- Yeah, so this one is, basically enough, was...
Aw, I don't even know how old this is.
I think it's probably like six, seven years ago.
But I keep it vertical because every time
I do any spreadsheets, Excel,
or when I do my after/before work kind of stock trading,
it's all nice and vertical for my charts.
- I am liking the desk pad here.
- Mm-hmm. - Not bad.
- [Jono] Aw jeez, Rick!
- Pretty good. I'm liking it.
All right, but we're gonna have to move it out of the way
so we can admire the setup here.
This is from the office, isn't it?
- [Jono] Yep, so I got it at a super good price.
- How much did you end up paying for this?
- 200.
- [Linus] Really? For the Lian Li desk?
- I was actually prepared to pay 500 bucks, Tyler.
- And you've got a pretty sick rig in here.
So that looks like an RTX 2080?
- [Jono] Yeah, 2080 Ti.
- [Linus] 2080 Ti.
- I was trying to play "Anno" with you guys one time
and it would just not work, so I had to upgrade.
- And then what are we looking at for CPU here?
- So that's an 8700K, not overclocked,
'cause I just don't feel like bothering with that.
So right now I have the H150i from Corsair,
but I did change the fans from the stock ones,
so they're ML120s, just because of RGB,
and I like the future tech of maglev.
I got them on sale!
I think it was on Newegg for like 40 bucks for three.
- Oh, that's not too bad.
- Yeah, that's actually pretty good.
I am rich enough, maybe in two or three months,
to do a full custom water cooling on it.
(metal clangs)
- That's the sound of a quality water bottle
dropping on the floor.
- It's super good. - LTTStore.com.
- (clucks) Yeah. (snaps fingers)
- Why do you need it so quiet?
- I don't know. I just wanna do custom water cooling.
- You're one of the only ones that has paid much attention
to their sound setup though.
- I had to do that because my old Logitech-
(metal clangs)
(Jono laughs) - LTTStore.com.
But your gaming rig is only part
of your overall computer setup, is that right?
- Yes, it is. Yeah.
- So this is sort of the media and entertainment hub.
Now, are you unironically using an Xbox One Kinect?
If I find any dance games over here, Jono...
- [Jono] I don't think so.
- So even this one looks like
a pretty banging machine here.
So you got an NH-D15 in here,
Z370, so this is probably, what?
Like a 7700K or...
- [Jono] That's a 8600K.
- An 8600K!
And then you've got a 1080 Ti in here.
- [Jono] Yeah.
- This is your secondary machine?
- [Jono] It's for the wife.
We originally built this for "Fallout '76,"
but we all know how that turned out.
- That's the second time we've heard that today!
- Yeah.
- [Linus] You played "Breath of the Wild-"
- [Jono] Yeah.
- [Linus] And then didn't touch it again.
- [Jono] I haven't finished it yet.
- [Linus] You haven't finished "Breath of the Wild?"
- It just got so good I didn't want it to end.
- Now, why do you have two PS4s?
- Oh, because Jillie and I can play "Destiny"
and multiplayer games like "Watch Dog" as well.
But I got those at a pawn shop.
- [Linus] So basically these are stolen goods.
- I have no idea.
- Sounds pretty stolen to me.
Now, I did find one that was a bit of a cause for concern.
Jono, do you have something to tell us?
- So I travel at least once a year-
- Okay, the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
- [Jono] Okay, okay, that. Yeah.
- So welcome to the rose ceremony, everyone,
except instead of roses, we will be awarding
a Maximus XI HERO gaming motherboard
and a Core i9-9900K.
This is basically the pinnacle when it comes to gaming,
and when paired with the right hardware,
it'll basically run anything under the sun
at frame rates that will pretty much boggle your mind.
And it can be yours if the judges,
that's me,
select your setup as the fame-iest.
There were some pros and cons to each of your setups.
Jake, yours stood out as by far the geekiest,
and I mean that in a very functional sense.
Nobody else would've thought to strip down
the housing of their webcam to make it
so that it'll fit in between the bezels
of their vertically stacked ultrawide monitors.
Massive credit for that.
What held your setup back was, quite frankly,
the fact that I had to touch one of your socks.
That was the most disgusting experience
of my day. - You went under my bed.
- That was the most disgusting experience I had today,
and I touched Tyler's keyboard.
- I think it was a clean sock too.
- Was it?
Tyler, the vibe I got from your space
was that you were more than just about computers and gaming.
You know, your nerdy, fringe, unusual hobbies
stretch far beyond just tech.
I kinda feel like, you know...
You know that club in high school
with like two or three members?
I feel like you were in that club,
and then you were in the other club that was like that club.
- I was probably leading both of those clubs.
- With that said, you lost some serious brownie points
for how brown my hands were
after I touched anything in your setup.
Dude, it was disgusting.
- That's fair.
- Jono, you had the slickest setup.
So you've got the desk PC going.
You've got the whiteboard next to it.
All your controllers and consoles have a place.
You've got somewhere to actually keep
all of your games and stuff.
I felt like you were a little too focused on the dog.
You actually lost points for Cadence being a distraction.
- But she's so cute!
- Exactly.
Honestly, when it came time to determine a winner,
it was really, really difficult,
because what it ultimately had to come down to
was who needed it the most.
The one thing that one of you needed
more than anyone else was incentive.
Tyler, you're taking home a Core i9-9900K
and matching motherboard, come claim your prize.
But stop.
Until such time as you take me up on my very generous offer
to come and help you clean up your space,
when I come over and we take on that place
and it is cleaned to my satisfaction,
I will hand you your award.
Guys, stay tuned on Twitter, because it's happening.
Soon. Right?
- Yep. This is really a prize for my fiance.
- She actually kinda needs it more than you.
I can't talk about what she was working on,
but it was really cool.
It's NDA'd, but it's like...
But what's not NDA'd is intel.com/gaming.
It's a great place to find out
which Intel desktop processor is best for you,
find products that have the power that you're looking for
and get tips for building, overclocking, modding and more.
If it's a gaming rig you're after,
but you're just getting started,
Intel's "Pre-Built Vs. Custom PC" article
can help you decide the best path
to start enjoying those delicious frames.
So guys, thank for watching.
Massive thank you to Intel for sponsoring this video
and providing this fantastic prize.
Also Asus for the accompanying motherboard.
If you guys feel like I got it wrong though,
leave a comment and tell me
whose epic setup you think should've won.
Maybe there will be a runner-up prize.