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Final Verdict - $1500 Gaming PC Secret Shopper pt4

7 hours ago, Ocee said:

Can we get how much you guys paid for the systems in the video?

They said all the systems cost approximately 1500 USD.

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You don't know? You spend all this time playing the experts in a video yet you pretend to not know that Intel's i7-8700 on it's designed 65W TDP spec boost nowhere near 4.3ghz? I'm having a hard time believing that, @LinusTech.

 

 

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@LMG Ivan Isn't it ironic that LTT has recent Videos sponsored by Origin (videos during this series) and yet they sell expensive and bad systems compared to other SI's. Maybe LTT would use its finding in this series when taking future sponsorships. Perhaps taking a stance like other youtubers to take sponsorships that makes sense for the consumer (good deals, Good systems, not a rip off)

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12 hours ago, r2724r16 said:

Final Verdict - Build your own PC

I disagree, lay people can just use a good custom PC builder such as Scan or Oveclockers.

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Hello!

 

Instead of continuing a string of comments on the recent video "Final Verdict - $1500 Gaming PC Secret Shopper pt4", I decided that it would be best to continue our Dell RAM issue conversation here. I figured that this would be much easier to navigate than YouTube comment strings.

 

First off, I (along with others in the comments) have the same high RAM usage on my Dell prebuilt. It is the Dell IPS 8920. I have an i7-7700k, GTX 1060 6GB, 32GB RAM, 256 GB boot SSD, and a 2TB storage drive. On a (and every, really) normal boot cycle, my machine will use 4 to 5.2 (ish) GB of RAM on startup. I have attached images below showing RAM usage after two boot cycles.

 

Cycle 1:

Spoiler

Boot1.PNG.bee32c3b81bc0970d8f72916f66ceccc.PNG

Boot1_1.PNG.11aa43728ba083082221b889be9e37f3.PNG

 

 

Cycle 2:

Spoiler

Boot2.PNG.e4366ca127726d46aa01a7e81a715909.PNG

 

 

So, with that being said, someone in the comments recommended trying out RamMap, which is apart of the Sysinternals Suite (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap). I ran that after a third and fourth boot, and received similar results. I have posted the results from the fourth boot cycle below.

 

Spoiler

RamMap_0.PNG.9a75bb56ca36cb5a94a0986e34a439d8.PNG

RamMap_1.PNG.7ed1bda55407038d681fd9a084fec906.PNG

RamMap_2.PNG.8391183fb3561118d09010e334ceb328.PNG

 

 

Without knowing what many of the categories meant on the home screen, somethings did pop out to me. Most importantly, the directory of "C:\Windows\System32\config\software" was using a suspiciously high amount of RAM. After navigating to that path, I found that that directory leads to a 133 MB file that is nothing that I can look farther into. It could not be opened by anything software that I currently have. There is another screenshot below showing the path.

 

Spoiler

Sys32.PNG.9a23bccb81c8bc95c8fd0bbe5ba4c1a4.PNG

 

 

At this point, I don't know where or how to continue. I would greatly appreciate it others could give their insight and hopefully get this Dell RAM issue resolved. I appreciate anything you may have to say.

 

Thank you!

Ryan

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While I do not have a Dell, for reference I have a Razer Blade Stealth with a fresh(ish) windows install (from Microsoft, not the one tha came on the machine)

 

Annotation 2018-12-26 133415.jpg

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Really enjoyed this series.  An underrated aspect is how accessible these episodes are to non-tech people.  I watch tons of LTT and others, and normally to my wife I might as well be watching a different language.  She was actually able to follow and enjoy these episodes.  I am not saying this should be the standard for videos in the future, but it was a nice change of pace.  

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Not sure what your question is, but let me Google that for you.

 

Looks like it's a config file, probably because it's in the config folder, and just holds parameters and settings to load other programs. Download CCleaner and uninstall all programs and games that you're not using, and fix your start up items using CCcleaner (I use it because it shows more things than using windows Task Manager or Windows Uninstall). Use Task Manager and go through the Processes that are running, if it doesn't look familiar then Google it, if it's suspicious, find the install folder and delete it (after you end the process). If you can't delete a process right click and go to Details or Services and from there you can stop the service from running and change it to Manual. I suggest Googling each one before you mess something up. It's rather simple. Learning to do small things like this will allow you to have a better, faster, safer computer without needing Anti-Virus software, assuming you stay away from Pornhub.

 

Good luck ?

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At 12:26 the BIOS of the Origin PC shows that it has an i3-8100 instead of the i5-8400 that the rest of the video talks about, what's going on?

 

Edit: Never mind, spoke too soon. This is explained at 20:30

Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur

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I've had a pretty rough experience with ibuypower in the past. Sometimes the build techs seem to lack common sense. This is how my last system came in from them. The drive bays were not secured in any way. The return process wasnt easy either. Had to send proof of the issue before the even considered giving me a return label. I had to tell them myself to zip tie the drive bays so this wouldn't happen again.

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9 hours ago, biohazard918 said:

You do know there is more to computers then just the os right? I had my previous machine throw an error code during post and refuse to boot when I replaced my 120mm case fans with 200mm ones. The rpm they were running at fell below what the default minimum speed setting in the bios was. The bios assumed they had failed and refused to let the machine boot until I went in and lowered the minimum acceptable speed setting.

I had a similiar kind of problem where i was prohibited to let the fans spin under 50% load while temps being oke.. at 60% there was no trouble at all.. 40% speed just delivered a system that would refuse to boot and at 50% i only got a cpu fan warning during boot. this was only with the cpu fan btw 

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3 hours ago, GodAtum said:

I disagree, lay people can just use a good custom PC builder such as Scan or Oveclockers.

Your just as well by picking the parts yourself.. turn that list over to your local expert and figure out if that would be wisest decision though… people will be people right.. stupid shiit like there are only 01 people in the world etc etc 

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3 hours ago, GodAtum said:

I disagree, lay people can just use a good custom PC builder such as Scan or Oveclockers.

If you are able to do it yourself then you can build much better for the price. Like the build I just tossed together below.

 

 

 

The thing is even if you don't know how to build your own... chances are you have a friend who does. If now forums like this are easy ways to find someone willing to help for a small fee (case of beer in most cases). I use to build and sale custom machines for a while, but these days it just isn't as feasible as it use to be. Plus it was just one of the many side ventures I tried out before having kids.

 

For example if it was me doing a custom build in the old days I would have shaved off about 100 in parts as a general profit. Then I would have offered a warranty, overclocking and various other "upgrades." They are where I made most of the profit. A $50-$75 warranty was pure profit 95% (or more) of the time and when something did happen I would get the parts for free from the manufacturers. I would just be out the time to repair the item and the return shipping.

 

The problem was some machines that were very budget oriented could get the parts cheaper than even I could due to buying in bulk. They also were able to have much lower profit margins in some cases... so to be competitive with bargain builds I really had to cut my profit on the price and try to recoup it via people paying for the warranty.

 

Then again I only did this temporarily on the side and most of my sales were over ebay(before the changed the payment hold periods) and craiglist. If all went perfect I made about 150-175 per machine.. so for 2-3hrs or work that isn't terrible money, but you would need a high volume of sales to live off of it. Then you would have to either work your ass off or hire in more help to keep order to ship times down.

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Hi, I was watching the new episode and I was shocked at how nice the colors look in this video. I'm sure it was a good mix between lighting, background and color grading. I was curious what you guys did to achieve this look and if it's something that I could try replicating. Thanks! :)

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14 hours ago, Enderman said:

In the video they say that you "won't know if the pump fails" because it's plugged into molex instead of a fan header.

 

Well yeah, you won't know the pump failed regardless of whether it was plugged in to the motherboard or to molex, because the computer will overheat and shut down.

 

So either way you will need to enter BIOS to figure out what is wrong, which will be either seeing the rpm of some fan header at 0 (which is not a really good way of knowing the pump is dead, because most motherboards have many fan headers and not all of them populated, so there are usually many fan headers at 0rpm) or you will see the CPU temperature very high which is a good indication of either a bad mount or a dead pump, which can then be easily determined by listening for pump noise.

 

The only cases where having rpm readout from the pump is useful are:

A) you have a variable speed pump and want to set a specific fan curve

 

B) You have multiple pumps running redundantly as well as some software running to continuously check both pumps are running. This way when one fails the computer doesn't overheat and shut down immediately, and you also get a notification that one of the pumps died.

Maybe I'm the exception, but typically with a liquid cooled solution I will have something like a G15 keyboard or an on tower display showing the statistics of the loop. This way I can always see in real time pump speed and thermals of all devices in the loop and quickly identify or forsee issues.

 

Granted someone will need to purchase AIDA64 and purchase a keyboard with a display. But anyone running an LCS unit is typically best served spending the $100 that it cost. But then we are walking about AIO... which makes me think. What kind of failure rates do they have with the pumps?

 

And to also look at this from another angle. Is alarms on the rpm and temps still not a BIOS setting these days? Try ignoring a loud beeeeeeeep when your pump drops to 0rpm. A lot of motherboards will also allow you to shut down when that criteria is met for a length of time.

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I wanted to ask the team about the Alienware OS issue. What did resource monitor show all the usage was being allocated to?

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This has been copied from my comment on YouTube because I'm a lazybones.

 

It was time-consuming, yes, but this was one of the most interesting, informative, and entertaining pieces you guys have done in a LONG time, performing very thorough and comprehensive stress-tests on a market that you may not cover as much, but DEFINITELY needs attention due to some of the experiences you had. I'd love to see more of this, and I'd love to see it with systems like laptops as well, because even if you're an enthusiast who knows how to tear a GPU down to its transistors, this exact experience is something to HAVE to go through with laptops. I know it's a lot of work, but it's worth it! This is a GREAT feature!

What is a mad scientist but a wizard who writes things down?

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Great series, both informative and fun to watch. You even managed to get reactions from the sellers showing their willingness to improve and their apologies for their fuck ups, so congrats.

 

Having said that, I would've expected the conclusions of this last vid to be a bit more casual user oriented as for instance I doubt they would notice at all a 15% fps increase -not to mention if their monitor is a 60Hz one, which will happen most of the times-. I think you should have shown Janice and get special consideration to what he had to say during the experience, and get her to pick the overall winner.

 

Other than this, great job and enjoy the end of the year.

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49 minutes ago, Cafuddled said:

Maybe I'm the exception, but typically with a liquid cooled solution I will have something like a G15 keyboard or an on tower display showing the statistics of the loop. This way I can always see in real time pump speed and thermals of all devices in the loop and quickly identify or forsee issues.

 

Granted someone will need to purchase AIDA64 and purchase a keyboard with a display. But anyone running an LCS unit is typically best served spending the $100 that it cost. But then we are walking about AIO... which makes me think. What kind of failure rates do they have with the pumps?

 

And to also look at this from another angle. Is alarms on the rpm and temps still not a BIOS setting these days? Try ignoring a loud beeeeeeeep when your pump drops to 0rpm. A lot of motherboards will also allow you to shut down when that criteria is met for a length of time.

Unless you're looking at the pump speed on your keyboard every 30 seconds, the computer will likely overheat and shut down before you even notice that the pump stopped.

 

By default mobos don't have alarms on rpms in BIOS because otherwise they would be going off all the time since rarely are 100% of fan headers in use.

All of the fan headers that don't have a fan/pump plugged in will show 0rpm.

 

Some motherboards do allow you to manually do stuff like that, but that still doesn't really help because if the pump fails during use it's not gonna do anything, the PC will just shut off.

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I don't necessarily have a question. I was really just following up on some comments on the recent video. I have screenshotted those for reference below.

 

Spoiler

YT-1.PNG.982e9e8c181c770a5b7d4a5ce7d4e1b5.PNG

YT-2.PNG.9a9afea63be6c76a9de364a4879c2c28.PNG

 

 

After reading what you said, I don't think the ram usage is mainly due to currently installed programs. Yes, I could optimize and uninstall items that I don't need and disable things from running at startup. But, this issue has been prevalent ever since I bought the machine. I really just want to know if the high usage is something I can control or if it is due to the DELL OS image/bloatware installation package that came with the computer (which is out of my control).

 

Ryan

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I would reinstall Windows fresh and NOT install any Dell Dell drivers. Windows does not need Dell drivers to run that board. Anything from Dell is likely to include bloatware.

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The verdict made no sense. The first three videos really emphasized that this was about customer support more than the products. In the end you just rated the gaming performance.

 

I'm at least glad that most people agree that Maingear should have won.

Make sure to quote or tag me (@JoostinOnline) or I won't see your response!

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1 hour ago, JoostinOnline said:

The verdict made no sense. The first three videos really emphasized that this was about customer support more than the products. In the end you just rated the gaming performance.

 

I'm at least glad that most people agree that Maingear should have won.

No, not really. 

Linus did mention in one of previous videos that Maingear is the main candidate to win, unless its performance falls behind noticeably, which was the case. The difference between 1060 and 1070 outweights the difference of your luck calling the tech support. I mean, yeah, iBuyPower tech was awful, but how can you be sure that situation wouldn't have been reversed if Jenice called an hour earlier?

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33 minutes ago, Quadriplegic said:

No, not really. 

Linus did mention in one of previous videos that Maingear is the main candidate to win, unless its performance falls behind noticeably, which was the case. The difference between 1060 and 1070 outweights the difference of your luck calling the tech support. I mean, yeah, iBuyPower tech was awful, but how can you be sure that situation wouldn't have been reversed if Jenice called an hour earlier?

Everyone knows if you're looking for the best price/performance then you build your own. This was a valuable test for people who can't do that.

 

As for the testing, the whole "recording =/= streaming" thing was a little stupid. Just about any technical person would make that assumption, as recording but NOT streaming isn't nearly as common. The Ryzen system would have performed better there. If not for some intentionally misleading wording then Maingear probably would have been the best system.

 

Take a look at the YouTube comments. Lots of people reached the same conclusion.

Make sure to quote or tag me (@JoostinOnline) or I won't see your response!

PSU Tier List  |  The Real Reason Delidding Improves Temperatures"2K" does not mean 2560×1440 

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6 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Everyone knows if you're looking for the best price/performance then you build your own. This was a valuable test for people who can't do that.

 

As for the testing, the whole "recording =/= streaming" thing was a little stupid. Just about any technical person would make that assumption, as recording but NOT streaming isn't nearly as common. The Ryzen system would have performed better there. If not for some intentionally misleading wording then Maingear probably would have been the best system.

 

Take a look at the YouTube comments. Lots of people reached the same conclusion.

Even people who can't build their own systems deserve to get a good price to performance ratio. 

What's the point of YouTube comments? It's full of dickheads who commented about Origin PC BIOS showing i3 instead of i5, when Linus clearly pointed out that they tested both CPUs in that system. 

During the phone call, Jenice never mentioned streaming. And yes, recording does not equal streaming. Why would anyone assume they are the same? Streaming is common because it is easy to do so. Recording and editing the video is bit more challenging, hence hwy there are not as many kids trying to do that.

If performance is not an issue either, then Origin should have been higher up in the list too. Because who cares about performance, when you have the tech support, right?

Ex-EX build: Liquidfy C+... R.I.P.

Ex-build:

Meshify C – sold

Ryzen 5 1600x @4.0 GHz/1.4V – sold

Gigabyte X370 Aorus Gaming K7 – sold

Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8 GB @3200 Mhz – sold

Alpenfoehn Brocken 3 Black Edition – it's somewhere

Sapphire Vega 56 Pulse – ded

Intel SSD 660p 1TB – sold

be Quiet! Straight Power 11 750w – sold

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