I Built the Slowest Brand New PC and it Sucks.

[JordB]

How could we possibly go wrong by buying only new, Windows 11 compatible parts to build our brand new PC? We’ll show you!

 

Please don't buy these:

Intel Celeron G5900 - https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/199268/intel-celeron-processor-g5900-2m-cache-3-40-ghz.html

AMD Athlon 3000G - https://www.amd.com/en/product/8956

[GodAtum]

you forget to mention warranty. 2nd hand is very risky

[darknessblade]

At MAX 300$ even something like a minisforum UN100L

https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-un100l-1

Which cost 180$ is a much billion times of a better deal than that E-waste PC.

 

{I have the UN100C, which is near identical in specs} and it is quite decent for windows/basic office usage/light gaming.

Though with a TDP of at most 15W under normal use, and max 9W when underclocked, its perfect for a home-assistant server.

 

Please note for some strange reason the UN100C is discontinued. not sure what the reason is.

Especially with it being smaller and taking up less space than the Un100L. it would be a better bang for the buck system. 

 

[AndreiArgeanu]

I'm a little surprised you were actually able to find a pre built with standard PSU connectors. A lot of office PC manufacturers like Dell seem to have exclusively switched to their own shitty proprietary crap that requires adaptors to make it work since 8th-9th gen and up at least.

[emosun]

it still bugs me when they build these ultra low end machines and just run stock windows 11 and are surprised it runs bad.

[dogwitch]

2 minutes ago, emosun said:

it still bugs me when they build these ultra low end machines and just run stock windows 11 and are surprised it runs bad.

the laptop market is even worst... then desk top market...

solder on ram.......

[emosun]

9 minutes ago, dogwitch said:

the laptop market is even worst... then desk top market...

solder on ram.......

i dont recall them building any laptops

[Zodiark1593]

3 hours ago, GodAtum said:

you forget to mention warranty. 2nd hand is very risky

A warranty does not come close to making up the difference in value, between the shit-tier PC that was built, vs one that was built with competent components. 

A warranty may justify a slight downgrade (maybe a 25% performance cut overall), but what is exhibited here is easily an order of magnitude, and arguably, reasonably good vs borderline unusable. No warranty justifies such extreme difference. 

[lestofante]

I wanna chip in, for such "low" price there ARE better PC AND with guarantee!!

 

Recently look for the cheapest decent computer to put in my brother office, for the accounting person. 

Got this mini-pc box from amazon, around 300€ and it run so smooth we bought right away a couple more for the CAD guys (AutoCAD and similar stuff).

Bonus point, they are so small and light they fit in a big pocket, one person take it to WFH, using its own monitor and peripheral.

 

Just format them clean, dont trust their windows.
And yes, probably in 2 year those company may have disappeared, but still better than suggesting used parts imho.

Oh and, at least the ones i got, have upgradable ram, SSD and even the wifi card is standard laptop!

 

 

just search for "mini pc ryzen 5000"

[bortao]

I think the point is to compare the worst PC and the best for the same price, but why compare only the worst new PC with the best used PC? Shouldn't you also put the best new PC there? This video seems incomplete, and the way it is doesn't make any sense to me.

[TaylorRobinson]

Didn't LMG decide not to work with Opera GX?

 

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1410645-thoughts-on-opera-gx/page/2/#comment-15257034

 

[atxcyclist]

5 hours ago, GodAtum said:

you forget to mention warranty. 2nd hand is very risky

They do mention it.

 

I have built so many machines with second-hand parts I couldn’t count them all. Have I gotten a few stinkers of used parts over the last 28 years of building machines? Yes, of course. But, especially with marketplaces like eBay where there is decent buyer protection, those risks are very minimal.

 

About the only thing I will shy away from is used storage, SSDs and especially older ones have fairly low TBW durability, and having worn-out an older SATA SSD myself, that is a risk I won’t take. That said, new SSD storage is cheap, and basically anything in the Windows 11-compatible platforms will support NVMe, which is worth buying with the prices where they are.

 

i would tell most people that if they can buy parts on a marketplace like eBay, they’re probably going to do fine with used; The many systems I’ve built this way wouldn’t have me questioning it for a moment if that’s all my budget could get me.

[piciupitik]

Guys, the RAM... please! It shows in the video the RAM is full. 4GB is is minimum to start Windows, not run it. 8GB is the bare minimum, try again in another video.

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

6 hours ago, darknessblade said:

At MAX 300$ even something like a minisforum UN100L

https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-un100l-1

Which cost 180$ is a much billion times of a better deal than that E-waste PC.

Wish recently sold the CHUWI LarkBox X (Intel N100) for $128.

The CHUWI HeroBox with 8gb RAM and 256GB is $136 at the moment.

 

Those devices are the reason why Intel is kiling the Raspberry Pi 5 in value for budget computing and office PCs.

[Gokul_P]

I believe the system is handicapped bcz of Ram and storage and the funny thing is ssds are cheaper than HDD these days go for a 128Gb sata ssd (didnt microcenter have a free ssd for new customers) and it would cost less than the spinning rust when you want to more you can just get another drive even a mechanical one bcz it is not going to be your boot drive. 

[dogwitch]

7 hours ago, emosun said:

i dont recall them building any laptops

the low end laptop market so garbage.

a low end desktop will smoke  a low end laptop and can be work on and fixed/upgraded.

the laptop. throw it into the trash.

[emosun]

6 minutes ago, dogwitch said:

the low end laptop market so garbage.

a low end desktop will smoke  a low end laptop and can be work on and fixed/upgraded.

the laptop. throw it into the trash.

ok neato who are you talking to? quote whoever your message is for vs quoting me.

[atxcyclist]

8 hours ago, lestofante said:

I wanna chip in, for such "low" price there ARE better PC AND with guarantee!!

 

Recently look for the cheapest decent computer to put in my brother office, for the accounting person. 

Got this mini-pc box from amazon, around 300€ and it run so smooth we bought right away a couple more for the CAD guys (AutoCAD and similar stuff).

Bonus point, they are so small and light they fit in a big pocket, one person take it to WFH, using its own monitor and peripheral.

 

Just format them clean, dont trust their windows.
And yes, probably in 2 year those company may have disappeared, but still better than suggesting used parts imho.

Oh and, at least the ones i got, have upgradable ram, SSD and even the wifi card is standard laptop!

 

 

 

 

just search for "mini pc ryzen 5000"

BeeLink has been around a while, but unfortunately even they seem to drop support quickly. I want to like these little mini setups more, but while everyone has copied the Intel NUC concept, the Intel hardware seems to keep support the longest. If I really wanted an inexpensive mini form-factor Windows machine, there are countless HP EliteDesk, Dell mini, and Lenovo machines on eBay and other marketplaces that once you get a generation or two of hardware back (still Windows 11 compatible though), they get cheap. Those companies seem to support those systems a long time too since they're mainly thin clients for enterprise customers.

 

Those Ryzen chips in the ones you mentioned are much faster though, so that's a consideration. Also, the newer low-power mobile/mini chips have much better built-in video than anything a few generations old, so gaming performance will be better on a new AMD APU especially.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

12 hours ago, emosun said:

it still bugs me when they build these ultra low end machines and just run stock windows 11 and are surprised it runs bad.

It's a fair assumption that someone that buys stock components new might also run windows 11 stock.

 

I liked that Linus tried to buy the slowest new PC money can buy, than tried to build a PC with the same money with used parts to show the enormous difference.

 

It would have been informative to also include options to debloat windows, I used it on a friend's laptop and it went from stuck to useable for everyday use. I think I used this one: https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater

 

I suspect the slowest PC would have been much more useable with a debloated windows, enough to run cinebench and put numbers other than "Didn't Complete"

[Needfuldoer]

11 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

I have built so many machines with second-hand parts I couldn’t count them all. Have I gotten a few stinkers of used parts over the last 28 years of building machines? Yes, of course. But, especially with marketplaces like eBay where there is decent buyer protection, those risks are very minimal.

Same here. I've built multiple PCs and servers for pennies on the dollar from their MSRP thanks to the used market.

 

The biggest risk to used parts in my opinion, is separating the wheat from the chaff. You have to know what you're looking at and have a general idea of used and new pricing, and know what's compatible with what.

 

If you're PC-savvy (or even better, willing to roll the dice on "broken" or "untested" parts with the skills to fix them), you can make out like a bandit.

 

If you don't know what you're looking at, you could get stuck with parts that are incompatible with each other, suboptimal, "might as well buy new" expensive, or misleadingly marketed. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. "This GT 1030 has a higher number than a GTX 960, so it must be better!" "This i7-4770 is an i7, so it must be better than that i5-8400 because i7s are better than i5s!"

 

I was in that same boat this week; somebody asked me about laptops because they were looking at some $300 grocery store special with a Pentium N5030, 4 gigs of RAM, and a 128 gig SSD. I recommended looking at off-lease corporate laptops with at least an 8th gen processor (for official Windows 11 support), and I found them tons of listings for laptops with 16 gigs of RAM and a 256 or 512 gig SSD for half the price of the new one they were looking at. I told them cheap laptops are never worth it, because you can get a much faster and better-made laptop for half the price. They got sketched out because "I don't know, those are old and used so they can't possibly be any good". They bought the manufactured e-waste, and were surprised when it turned out to be garbage.

 

I think that's the blind spot when Linus talks about buying decent used parts instead of mediocre new parts. He knows what "decent" used parts are, not everybody else does.

[darknessblade]

10 hours ago, FlyingPotato_is_taken said:

Wish recently sold the CHUWI LarkBox X (Intel N100) for $128.

The CHUWI HeroBox with 8gb RAM and 256GB is $136 at the moment.

 

Those devices are the reason why Intel is kiling the Raspberry Pi 5 in value for budget computing and office PCs.

One of the downsides of the Chuwi herobox. is that it can't be powered by USB-C. 

 

which is possible with the UN100C

[GoStormPlays]

4 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

It's a fair assumption that someone that buys stock components new might also run windows 11 stock.

Well the idea would be that if you wanted to use this PC for more than two years with security updates that you would need to use 11. Windows 10 is very close to EOL.

[powertoys]

3 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

They bought the manufactured e-waste, and were surprised when it turned out to be garbage.

A tale as old as time...

 

3 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

I think that's the blind spot when Linus talks about buying decent used parts instead of mediocre new parts. He knows what "decent" used parts are, not everybody else does.

This, this, this. So much this.

 

I can recommend the used market to a tech savvy person. But someone that isn't familiar with computers will not follow your advice (most likely outcome) or buy junk either way. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

17 hours ago, bortao said:

I think the point is to compare the worst PC and the best for the same price, but why compare only the worst new PC with the best used PC? Shouldn't you also put the best new PC there? This video seems incomplete, and the way it is doesn't make any sense to me.

did you.. watch the video? they compared it to a used pc of the same price to try and show why you should be buying used parts instead of the bottom of the barrel new pc

 

[OhYou_]

this video actually causes me physical pain to watch
a few previous jobs I worked at would buy something off the shelf similar to that pc and with similar performance.
I with little social skills have to go out to these calls and look at the computer because the user is saying its slow. And I have to weigh the factors of trust and relations to form an answer to a problem I cant solve  without having it be the same answer I said the other day.

This isnt even that bad, when amd was still shipping 1 core semperons a year before ryzen, there were sellers shilling these things cheap to small offices.
those were unusable with windows 8.1 at the time in 2015. from power button to outlook open was 25 minutes.
I actually got them to let me put a ssd in it and it did near nothing. I eventually instructed them to never close their work and leave the computer running 24/7