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About a year ago a few of my friends on Discord introduced me to the wild cursed world of Chinese domestic electronics. Me being an absolute fiend for unfathomably cursed electronics (the worse the better), I couldn鈥檛 resist the urge to get in on the action. After a few hours of trying to figure out how to create an account on Xianyu (basically Chinese eBay), I started my hunt for that sweet Chinesium gold.

I had heard about Zhaoxin CPUs in the past from tech YouTubers like Linus Tech Tips and Tech Yes City (馃ぎ), so that鈥檚 where I started my search. To my surprise, the used market was absolutely flooded with cheap options. For $44 US dollars, I could get an mATX motherboard complete with a cooler and a soldered CPU. That CPU being the Zhaoxin KaiXian KX-U6780A, an 8 core 8 threaded CPU running at 2.7 GHz. This ticked all my boxes, particularly the funny to money ratio, so I went ahead and ordered it. About a month later, a strange package resembling a kilo of cocaine from a police drug bust showed up at my doorstep.

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I could have stopped there, and honestly should have, but I had a feeling there was something missing from my build. The Zhaoxin does have an iGPU, but it鈥檚 an absolutely prehistoric and pathetic S3 based shitter. If I wanted to do some real gaming, I needed a real GPU and it needed to also be Chinese. Back to Xianyu I went in hunt of the top tier of Chinese GPUs, the Moore Threads MTT S80. On paper, this thing looked fucking baller. 16 GB GDDR6? PCIe Gen 5?? Where else am I gonna get that kind of specs for $100? Of course, I knew that this didn鈥檛 represent the performance I was going to get. People had been benchmarking this GPU going back years before where was being handily beat by a GeForce GT 1030, but I had heard some news about some new drivers that supposedly doubled the performance (not really a flex, I know) so I was curious to see. After waiting another month, another suspicious package arrived at my doorstep.

The S80 is a weird card. Instead of using a regular PCIe 8 pin power connector, it uses an 8 pin EPS CPU power connector. My best guess is this was so it could be easily thrown in servers (maybe for AI???), but that doesn鈥檛 make any sense because this card was clearly advertised as a gaming card by Moore Threads. Whatever, as long as it works it could have an AC power input for all I care.

After installing it the Zhaoxin system, I crossed my fingers and pressed the power button. For just a second it spun to life and everything seemed like it was working fine. After about 3 seconds I noticed the all too familiar smell of burnt electronics. I immediately powered off the system and removed the GPU, but it was too late. One of the components near the PCIe slot on the motherboard had blown up. My best guess is that the GPU wanted to draw way more power from the PCIe slot that the cheapo motherboard was willing to give. I tried several times without the S80 as well as with other cards, but it was way too late. The GPU had killed the motherboard in a glorious fire.

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I did end up buying another Zhaoxin board, but the dream of the all China gaming PC (the CCPC) had died. I ended up pairing the new board with a Radeon 5500 XT and haven鈥檛 had any problems with it yet. I鈥檒l probably do a video on that system at some point in the future, but I haven鈥檛 had the time. The S80 also works fine too, but as I should have expected it鈥檚 a total piece of junk. I鈥檇 do a video on that too, but it actively causes me pain to have to use that abomination.

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Main Desktop: Core i7-12700K | 64 GB RAM | MSI Z790 Tomahawk DDR4 | Radeon RX 6900 XT | 2x4TB + 2TB SSD

Secondary Desktop: Core i9-12900HX (ES) | 32 GB RAM | ASUS Z690 TUF DDR4 | GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | 2TB SSD
Server: Ryzen 9 5950X | 128 GB RAM | ASUS Crosshair VII Hero | GeForce RTX 3060 | 6 TB assorted SSD + 5x10TB & 2x4TB HDD

Baller X79 Rig: Xeon E5-1680v2 | 32 GB RAM | ASUS Rampage IV Extreme | 2x GTX 980 Ti SLI | 1TB SSD

Laptop:Core i9-13950HX | 32 GB RAM | MSI Raider GE78HX | GeForce RTX 4070 | 2 TB SSD

And a lot more PCs I am not going to individually list (i am a hoarder)

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14 minutes ago, danalog said:

Man, I've been looking for Zhaoxin boards/CPUs but haven't been able to find any in the US... Love the build.聽

Thanks! I was pretty surprised how common and cheap on Chinese sites. Both of these I was able to get with the full CPU+Board+Cooler combo for about $30-45. Id say it would definitely be worth looking into if you're willing to go through the hassle of dealing with forwarders.

Main Desktop: Core i7-12700K | 64 GB RAM | MSI Z790 Tomahawk DDR4 | Radeon RX 6900 XT | 2x4TB + 2TB SSD

Secondary Desktop: Core i9-12900HX (ES) | 32 GB RAM | ASUS Z690 TUF DDR4 | GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | 2TB SSD
Server: Ryzen 9 5950X | 128 GB RAM | ASUS Crosshair VII Hero | GeForce RTX 3060 | 6 TB assorted SSD + 5x10TB & 2x4TB HDD

Baller X79 Rig: Xeon E5-1680v2 | 32 GB RAM | ASUS Rampage IV Extreme | 2x GTX 980 Ti SLI | 1TB SSD

Laptop:Core i9-13950HX | 32 GB RAM | MSI Raider GE78HX | GeForce RTX 4070 | 2 TB SSD

And a lot more PCs I am not going to individually list (i am a hoarder)

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