This $69 Gaming PC is INCREDIBLE
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- čas přidán 5. 05. 2024
- A portion of this video was sponsored by IBM. Want to learn more? Check out IBM’s CZcams channel or New Creators homepage: ibm.co/3QtW6wD
Our last $69 gaming PC from 2018 was a pretty good machine for the budget. Will we be able to beat it in 2022? Watch to find out!
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:48 A new challenger - HP Z420
2:20 Looking inside the Z420
5:40 Availability and more options
7:55 A GPU and storage for $25?
9:40 GPU secured!
10:35 Storage for $2.07?
12:05 Step 1 Sell old GPU. Step 2 cha-ching!
12:54 Booting up the $69 PC
13:36 Benchmarking games
16:19 Conclusion
16:53 Outro - Věda a technologie
so... when we gonna get a $420 PC build?
Coincidentally that's about the amount I've dumped into my PC including upgrades.... Which is an HP Z420 like in the video.
We need a $420.69 PC bulid..
🤔
The wish pc was that
Hehehe hahahahaha funny numbers xd!!!!
Whichever writers worked on this did a great job meeting that price point. Honestly thought sub $100 windows 10 gaming machines were dead.
Buy a refurbed/used OEM desktop PC and slap in at least a 4GB graphics card. Later upgrade the RAM to 16GB. Much like people did with cars in the 1990s: buy used and incrementally upgrade it. It's called "living within your means". Throughout most of American history that's what most Americans did.
@@natejennings5884 yeah you can find some ex office PCs with decent i5 and i7 chips.
@@natejennings5884 Well. That was quite the tangent. Also these days people aren't just "living within their means" people are literally choosing between buying health insurance or food. This isn't the 1960s where you could just work for a couple years and buy yourself a nice little home. People don't even have money to save because they can barely pay rent.
Living within your means doesn't count for shit if the supply runs out though. Otherwise people wouldn't, y'know, starve.
I get what you're saying but sheesh, what an unecessarily snarky tangent that had no bearing on the discussion.
@@natejennings5884 outside we make do with much worse still do in fact
Considering inflation, high prices and people being laid off - this is an amazing video for the student, the family struggling with presents for their children, fathers wanting to treat themselves without selling a kidney etc. All jokes aside, amazing video and truly helpful in these times.
Underrated comment I spent 500 on a mac m1 I kind of get buyers remorse but idk shit about computers
@@calicancer661 you can save a bunch if you dont buy new. If you go on laptops direct (or some other websites are good but i like this one most), there are some very good deals. ive seen laptops going for under half price just because of some scratches or something, so its worth having a look in future
💀
Too bad even 5 months ago when they built the computer it would have been impossible to do for a price they claim without having 90% of the components laying around the house from other projects
@@calicancer661 if you bought the pc because you wanted to play on it, then it was a bad choice. if you got it because you wanted a Mac with their power, OS and all the stuff then it was probably the best choice
I love how Linus accidentally called out his own store's pricing comparing the PC to the screwdriver 😂
It's a good screwdriver though.
@Classy Days a $70 screwdriver better be the most life changing screwdriver I've ever layed eyes on
@@xxProjectJxx It's the screwdriver for people who only shop online and don't know how to hardware store.
@@classydays43 guarantee my klein tools screwdriver will work just as good for a fraction of the price with a lifetime warranty as well lol
@TxBoi They are magnetized but in order to store 12 in the handle of the screwdriver, you have to use their small bits. With regular bits you can only store 6. They sell their replacement bit set for like $6
Love the fact that you went with a z420 for the $69 PC build. Very nice.
"Blazing fast" must have been on purpose ahaha
@@TehScareM8 blaze it
Oh yeah, 69420
That case is actually the same case as my Graphic Design workstation in work, that hasn’t been been upgraded for a few years and definitely wasn’t bought new.
epic
I work in my university's e-waste centre and we give out machines, like the one you started with, for free all the time. Becasue otherwise the uni has to pay to get them recycled. So for anyone wanting a base machine like the HP maybe ask around local institutions for what they do with their outdated equipment, they might just let you have it 🙂
Are you saying many universities can afford to set up an eSports league LAN Center full of repurposed obsolete workstations?
Great tip!
On top of that, check out universities on move out day. Some have dumpsters to recycle "e-waste" which can be current computers that the kids just don't want to or can't take home.
I’ve gotten generators and pumps the same way, generator probably didn’t have 10 hours of use.
@@handlemonium imagine what great players could be discovered by such projects who otherwise may never be able to play the games.
I have to say I appreciate you guys putting these videos together. I live on a fixed income and have wanted to upgrade my 2009 HP desktop for years (my steam and gog libraries are filled with games I can't play) but kept putting it off due to the costs of computers -- especially now with rocketing inflation. A modest upgrade like this one could give me access to 90-95% of my libraries. Thx!
Did you upgrade?
I guess we'll never know.
you go it?
as a personal experience as service engineer, the Siemens Healthineers MRI scanners were equipped with HP Z400, Z420 and recently Z440 (intel Xeon), they work pretty well as heavy-duty workstations. even the former versions are still at service without even dust cleaning service!
I would never have associated "budget build" and "Quadro" in the same sentence, but color me surprised.
It's also amazing how little the HP case design has changed. The only thing that looks different between that and the PCs I see at work is that the ventilation slits in the front go vertically instead of horizontally...
That said, nice
Uh wdym quadro and budget, its litteraly the king of hyper budget lol
well they didnt even use the quadro so it wasnt really in the same sentence
My friend was making a budget rendering workstation with a Threadripper. I was like, what? But then I looked at the price of early Threadrippers, and it makes total sense!
Well when somone is trying go get rid of pc any specs are possible
@@DrMixxes Used old junk that companies are dumping on the market because they replaced it are budget quadros, brand new quadros are ridiculously expensive.
I started out with a rig like that, replaced the CPU, GPU and Motherboard over a year or so and its pretty powerful...
It's a PC of Theseus.
So you basically got a new PC :D
@@Raress96 Hence the ship of Theseus reference.
I've also got a pc of theseus, only thing I havent replaced is the motherboard
PCeus
I have an office hp too, but the mobo screw holes are not in the same position than standard mATX, and so are the holes for the PSU 😔
My first desktop was a HP Z240, I chucked 8GB of ram in it and eventually a 1050ti and it was a pretty powerful computer for what I was used to, when gaming it wasn't anything special, but when I did the occasional video editing, cad work or photo editing, the xeon absolutely crushed it, still have it sitting in storage for use with 3D printing once I have the space
I ran one of these for about 5 years before upgrading to a more modern machine. It was an HP z400 with a GTX 1060 (6GB) and an Intel Xeon x5680 and an SSD and some 120mm fans cable-tied to the front to help with cooling 😊. Got the PC for free from a friend's workplace and bought the GPU and CPU used. Ran pretty much every game at 1080p flawlessly.
Bonus point: usually business centered workstations are pretty solid and can last a long time. They really put an extra effort in the parts.
I still use a HP Business Elite 8200 with an i5 2400 as a NAS and Plex server. Tossed in a Quadro K600 and it'll rip and convert movies like a champ for under $80 USD.
Another way to say this is that they totally cheap out and give consumers the shoddiest parts they can get away with.
@@TheNiteNinja19 "rip and convert movies" Wait what year is this?
@@DuBstep115 Some people prefer the conventional ways of doing things. I myself would much rather rip my own DVD collection than to rely on streaming services.
Unfortunately VRM is not that well cooled in Z420 (unless you got model with water cooling, it has extra VRM heatsink). Recently I replaced a failed mosfet on dead Z420, whole PCB in power delivery part is a bit discolored from heat.
Old-ish office PCs are a gold mine. With a tiny amount of work they're basically the fastest PC your non-enthusiast friends/family have ever used.
Man, with that many SATA ports i'm thinking about getting one of these to upgrade my old unraid NAS. Plenty of memory options and a Xeon for some lightweight virtualisation. Perfect for my use case.
@@niek5526 maan thanks for that idea
@@niek5526 I'm personally using an old Optiplex and running TrueNAS. For generic home use, anything in this weight class is going to do well.
@@niek5526 That's exactly what I did! There was a period a few years ago when the Xeon E5-2670 was reaching EOL for enterprise customers and datacentres were dumping inventory like crazy.
Picked up an 8 core, 16 thread CPU in 2016 for like $30, when that sort of core count was hundreds or thousands of dollars in the consumer space. Tracking down a cheap-ish x79 motherboard was a bit rough but in the end I had 16 threads, x79 absolute top end chipset and all the virtualisation, PCIe lanes and storage capacity I could ever want for like
so right! for $200 my dad picked up an old z230 hp workstation, and he said it was the fastest pc he has ever used! and it was very snappy!
3:20 The split 18-6 pin motherboard cable was standard there for a while. It allows for more versatility when placing the video chipset on the motherboard. Maybe this was just in HP, but I definitely remember it in a lot more places.
I recently watched this video, and it has been of great help to me, I acquired this equipment that is no longer used in the company where I work, and I plan to update it to give it the use it deserves. Mine came with NVIDIA QUADRO P4000 . Thks a lot for your content
Oh, man this episode made me smile. I found one of these Z420's in the electronics recycle bin at work. My new(to me) free rig had inside, a 4C/8T Xeon E5-1620-0 at 3.6ghz, 16GB of DDR3 at 1600, a GTX 770 2GB and 240GB SSD. I added a GTX 1060 6GB (this was in 2017) and a 2TB HDD for games/storage and I was off to the races with what ended up being a rock solid gaming rig that never gave me a single problem for 3 years. With that 1060 inside, it ran Witcher 3, AC Odyssey, GTA V and other newer titles at 1080p medium/high settings with no issues. Good times!
Plus if you timed it right, you sold the whole thing for $3500 at the height of the GPU shortage.
@@deano1699 lmao
Same thing for me, threw in an R9 380 I had an used it for a few months, then got a killer deal on a used 1080 for only $370 in 2017!! Was an Asus strix card that had a broken cooler. While the platform has moved on the 1080 still keeps up 5 years later.
@@cameronkoplin5131 the 1080 and ti are both wonders of Tech if you ask me, both monsters back in the day and even today both hold out well, the ti with its 11gb is still one i would like to have/buy today
That is not far off from my current rig (i5-33570K, 16 GB DDR 3 @2000, GTX 1060) but I notice the CPU limit hard. But finding the right upgrade for a good price isn't easy.
The 10 SATA slots would make this an interesting basis for a ultra budget storage machine.
Yeah, would make for an awesome cheap server
Especially with access to ECC RAM
Had the same idea, also some basic Plex or other media server would be cool variant for it as well
It'd be slow for transfers over the network, but if you don't mind uploading things over night while you sleep, or copying over USB (it does have USB 3.0) then you'd be set. Rig up an intake fan on the front of that thing and load it up with HDD's. Edit: could even put a fast PCIE network adapter in it with at least 2.5Gbps, and a handful of 6 or 8TB IronWolf's, and it'd be a great media and/or storage server.
I was thinking the same
The original $69 gaming PC build was the first LTT video I ever watched. Glad to see the concept being revisited.
The HP workstations were great had a refurbished HP xw4400 Workstation (Core2Duo E6600 2.4GHz, 4GB, 80GB, DVD-RW, Quadro FX 1500). Worked well, also for gaming back then (around 10 to 12 years ago). Rocksolid machines for a good price. Awesome server/router capabilities (but for a router I choose a bananna Pi today at 10W).
Love my $199 z440 with 128gb of ram
How you doing laundromat king?
@@9HighFlyer9 me good
oh wow, what gpu and cpu?
A z420 is better than a z440 in gaming but in workstationing the z440 is better
I was given one of these workstations and installed a 980 and an SSD a few years ago. Still runs great. Good to show that it doesn't take a lot to be able to get into PC gaming.
the fact that there were 69 likes
you can mod the bios to boot nvmes on these machine too, fuckin sick
I paid close to 2k for my build in 2015 (monitor was 500) still have the original 980 i put in it and added a second in SLI. upgraded 40 gbs of ram. Still runs great! but it's not like i can still play all games on max settings.
It is incredible what components you can get for such a low price! People write off older components but don't realise a lot of them still have a purpose!
picked one of these up the other day at the local pc shop. runs everything i need it for and have thrown at it.
Processor Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 0 @ 2.90GHz
Video Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Operating System Windows 11
RAM 16 GB
How did you get Windows 11 on it?
Man, I never realised how much I miss these budget build episodes. I really hope there's a new scrapyard wars with prices coming a bit more back to earth in the near future :D
I miss scrapyard wars a lot.
@@G-C-G me too
Scrapyard wars is what brought me to ltt.
@DounutCereal Linus has said on several occasions that Scrapyard Wars is dead (at least twice on WAN Show if I am remembering correctly). The shoots were getting too complicated and costly and didn't receive as much viewership as he had hoped for with that kind of investment. I think he said he is still interested in bring that kind of content around in some other form, but not "Scrapyard Wars".
@@BryceCassagneres and the fact him and Luke get recognized too much
3:30 The reason they did it this way is actually pretty cool. On higher SKUs of this workstation (like the one I have), there's this really weird LGA slot, right where your barcode is just above the GPU. After a little digging, turns out it's a freaking CPU socket daughter board. Like a full on daughterboard with another LGA slot for a CPU, and 4 or 8 DDR3 slots and a cooler. These things go for 50 bucks on Ebay so pretty good deal if you wanna up this to an 8 core machine
Pretty nice upgrade, but those old CPUs use a lot of power. It's probably cheaper in the long term to pay out for a more modern workstation with a single 8 core CPU.
LGA1200. The downside to the one I bought was gen 1 so no overclocking
You probably dont want to run dual CPUs for gaming due to the bad cross-CPU latencies you can encounter unless you are able to restrict the threads to one CPU only. It can kill your 1% lows.
@@HodgePodgeProducts Yeah it wasn't until recently that multi-CPU machines had tolerable latency between CPUs, when Infinity Fabric lanes started getting implemented
@@HodgePodgeProducts thank god for process lasso x)
This computer is cheaper than mw3
My current gaming machine is a Z230 with a 1060, I had to do some wire joining and soldering for the 8 pin power gpu plug but it works brilliantly its very reliable for the last year!
I think the biggest takeaway is that when you're trying to build a PC on a very low budget, start looking into old workstations. And if you manage to get in touch with someone who's selling a number of them, ask for a monitor, keyboard and mouse, they might be able to get you something really cheap as well.
Be aware of all the limitations, especially if it's one of those low profile ones (low profile GPUs are really hard to find right now). And also make sure that you actually want a PC for that cheap. Because if you're planning to start gradually upgrading sooner or later, you will run into trouble due to the weird form factors and proprietary stuff. Even the motherboards sometimes won't fit into regular cases and a lot of these workstations come with PSUs which don't have any PCIe connectors (meaning you need a GPU that will run just on the 75W from the motherboard).
Research the specs on the PCI slots. Not all dell machines supply a full 75 watts through the slots, for example.
If U need to upgrade it its waste of time. Bunch of x79 Hp models support just 25w quadro cards and even lenovo C30 and supermicro mobos that support regular cards are not without bugs.
Depending on generation, many of those office PCs have adapters/jumpers that you can buy on ebay/amazon that allow you to run standard power supplies and other stuff like that.
Such as the HP Elitedesk 800 g1, and the 8200/8300 elite.
Sandy/ivy bridge Dell optiplexes have a few videos on youtube that show you how to get by the proprietary stuff.
@@romevang there’s a 24-pin to 6-pin adapter you can get to use standard ATX power supplies in newer Dell Optiplexes (the ones with 8th, 9th and even 10th gen Intel CPUs)
Once you get that taken care of, it’s a simple matter making other upgrades
There’s a guy who built a liquid cooled Dell Optiplex, and he was able to put an RTX 3060 in it, because that 24-pin to 6-pin adapter allowed him to use a standard modular ATX power supply, which had a 6-pin power cable for the GPU
Yo the salty butter on the inside of microwave popcorn bags slaps
The cooler position actually makes sense. The liquid accumulates at the bottom of the heatpipes when the computer stands, boils up, and when cooled goes back down.
Liquid?
@@hails2991 he is probably talking about a vapor chamber
I was going to like this, but 69 likes? Nah. Just know, i like this comment
@@barretonaldo Copper heat pipes, but yes. They've got fluid in there at low pressure that boils as soon as substantial heat is introduced, and condenses when it reaches the fins.
bro is using lava lamp to cool his PC
budget PCs are honestly so cool, theres not a worry if you break something or mess something up because its easy and cheap to fix, recently got a $200 NZD PC with 16gb ram, i5 4440 and gtx 750, upgraded the 750 to a rtx 2060 super and it runs games great, does have a slight bottleneck on some demanding games but am going to upgrade to a i7 soon
I got one of these not so long ago, I got a T3610. I got to say it is a giant computer. I was able to upgrade the parts for it. It came with Xeon E5-1650v2 8GBs of RAM and a Nvidia Quadro 600. I upgraded it with some Crucial DDR3 32GB 1866Mhz of RAM, a Storage Bay for my 1TB and I swapped out the 600 with a Nvidia RTX A2000. It is a literal beast to play games with if you put enough time to upgrading it.
When I was broke a few years ago, a buddy gave me this exact computer. I put a GTX 1060 and SSD in it, it gamed quite well! Fixing up old office PC's is OP.
Back when Win7 was still in RC1 state and up to SP1; I was running it on a refurb'd Dell Optiplex 745 with 8GB (4x2GB) of DDR2 and it was a strong little workhorse for gaming and running a Minecraft server on with a low-profile 9400GT to augment the graphics in it.
Only problem with that system was it used a BTX motherboard layout which mean I couldn't transplant it to a normal tower case to have the space to do further CPU/GPU upgrades with it.
It's good to see this kind of content become possible again.
If you made the purchases LTT did .. you would be well over $100 in shipping alone.
I'm not saying it isn't still worth it, it's just definitely *NOT* a "$69 Gaming PC".
@@THE-X-Force $100 in shipping alone? bro you living in fantasy land.
@@THE-X-Force if you watch the video, you will see they found one with local pickup available.
they bought local on marketplace and amazon which is free shipping
For the next 69 dollar pc build he should use his (approximately 69 dollar) ltt screwdriver to break into a best buy and just steal all of their computer parts
Great video.... the the upgrade path for this machine is easy too... just upgrade the GPU.... I had a IBM thinkcenter workstation with a GTX980 until ... well not that long ago, and I was able to play pretty much any game I wanted to... It helps that a lot of these old workstations come with a large amount of RAM... (in my case, 32GB, which was insane when I got it).
I think this type of video is way more interesting, than just another high end PC. So great job
I know Hugh, and you're right. Hugh's end is not very interesting.
@@qwkimball Hugh showed me his end...
@@NoSteps Giggity
@@qwkimball I hate my smartphone
@@cybernd6426 I hear ya, doad...uh, dude.
We just recently tore down and rebuilt an almost identical model to this computer from 2014 in one of my college classes so seeing this so soon after was really surreal. Broke my heart to find out we weren't able to buy them off the school because it would have been a hell of a deal
Well the good news is.. its very cheap to replicate.
lol they made me do the same thing.
My buddies at tech colleges used to dumpster dive these old things 😂 The government says they're supposed to be destroyed or something but I have a handful of them in my garage that I think might be able to run Windows 98 and the college threw out in the 2010s 😂
@@ffwast That's awesome. If nobody was safekeeping old tech, people in 30 years would have no retro machines to enjoy.
@@theRPGmaster My buddies just wanted stuff to fool around with as engineers do on their broke college student budget. I just never grew out of that "packrat everything because your parents are cheapskates that would never buy it for you" so I end up with stuff like that and my grandma's old Pentium III Gateway laying around until I get the itch to play with it.
I found a 2007 Acer for $39 put about $200 into it now it can run 1080p hooked to a modern tv, this was a vista era pc, so I was able to update the Bios install a dual core cpu and an nvidia gt 730 for hdmi hookup. It now runs a lightweight Linux desktop Zorin OS lite.
3:30 they bend the heatsink like that so they can fit additional 2nd CPU in HP Z620 system which use the same motherboard of Z420 except it has an expandable port for 2nd CPU.
Happy to see my go-to budget gaming "base" of the HP Z-series workstations covered by a much larger techtuber! Good to see, Linus & team! For anyone wondering, the Z420 is also transplantable with a ATX PSU adapter (from Moddiy) and some tweaks. The ATX PSU adapter is all you need if you're cool with a "press f1 to boot" error, but if you want a clean boot then you have to disable USB 3.0 in the BIOS, add a PCI-E USB 3.0 card to keep any USB 3.0 functionality, put a jumper on the sense pin of the yellow USB 2.0 header, and thats it. Use PWM fans on any/all headers and you'll be all set. Oh, almost forgot to mention a different cpu cooler would be needed too due to the way the stock one installs. I've done mods to these, adding a clear side panel, as well as complete transplants into new cases fully gamer'd and RGB'd out. I love these workstations! Would be awesome to see you guys evolve this system into a stronger and stronger budget behemoth in upcoming videos!
What do you mean transplantable? What component would you be swapping?
@@Michelino_M5 transplanting the entire system into a new case
i love how he made a video one it, i used to have a e5 1650 version of the z420 with a gtx 1080 and it was still better than most modern computers on 3d mark
@@CoalitionGaming Ah, got you. But why would you want to do that? Esthetics?
@@Michelino_M5 Aesthetics, personalizations and maybe airflow. Depends on the person. The question isn't whether you should or not, but just a "if you wanted to" kinda thing. Many people wonder about that so was just putting it out there.
Until recently used one of these as a gaming PC. Quick tip, make sure you get a Z420 with a 1620 v2 (Linus is using the slightly older one), so that you are basically guaranteed a dual six pin. They also occasionally packaged these with very nice water cooling, so it might be worth it to look.
Yeah definitely, I have one of these and it has liquid cooler in it and 2x 6pin pcie power. I got it with a K4000 gpu in it! This was scored for the excellent price of FREE from a company that was refreshing old hardware and didn't want the hassle of selling them. I also managed to score a HP Turbodrive (from a different desktop acquired similarly) with 256GB SM951 M2 AHCI drive which is bootable in the z420 (unlike if you try NVME). I happened to have some spinners to add as RAID for extra capacity.
And these proprietary power supplies are basically server power supplies and reliable, and because they only fit in these weird HP workstations, they could be had for cheap.
@@trevorharte4300 lucky.
Do you think that that gpu paired with a GeForce 1060 could play elden ring online?
I found one of these on eBay for $130
I have a z620 w/ 2 cpus, 1060 6gb and 88gb of ECC ram. You guys should try to find one of them. I still throw all kinds of crap at it and it surprises me every time.
Addition: in the spirit of the video, I got it from the scrapyard I worked at. Saved so many PCs from there at scrap price that I barely had a paycheck lol
Do you still have any? I would buy one off of you lol
@@LEM620 just the 1 that I use and a z420 I gave to a buddy. Sorry man. If it's any consolation my 620 didn't come with any drive trays so it looks pretty bobo when you take the side panel off haha
working with an refurbished Z800 here... dual xeon 6 core, 32g ram, indeed a Nvidia Quatro, 8 fans ! and a sophisticated airflow... old beast, but what i want, i run smoothly.... love these HP workstations,
Also worth noting that if you're near a Micro Center, you can get a 240GB SSD for free (if you're a new customer).
Yeah, I use a usb to sata cable for my laptop with one of those drives, and I made my whole family separately redeem a free drive lol
I did this with a Z440, only thing I ended up swapping was putting a 1080Ti in it because the quadro died. Still my daily driver to this day, hasn't let me down yet :)
Z440 is a lot better tho, how much did you pay for it ?
What CPU is in there? Is the1080ti bottlenecked at all?
I've found the same thing. Until I upgrade my display, my 1080ti system can still handle new games MAXXED out at the best my monitor is capable of (1080/60hz). So unless I decide I NEED ray tracing, then I have NO reason to upgrade until I get a 1440p or 4k or high framerate display!
I mean, I've been enjoying Spiderman remastered at a steady 60fps with MAXXED settings at 1080p, which is all my TV can handle anyway. I might be 'missing out' on Ray Tracing, but after playing the game, it seems like I'd probably never even notice the Ray Tracing improvements during regular gameplay.
And in most cases the screen space reflections and cube map tricks look convincing enough while swinging around at full speed :)
@@StreetPreacherr i'd expect a 1080Ti to get bottlenecked by an old Xeon lol. but maybe not
I did something similar with an old Lenovo with an i5 2400 (LGA1155). I installed a GTX 1060 6GB, upped the RAM from 8GB to 16GB, installed two SSDs with Win10 and Garuda Linux, and changed the case to a Cooler Master TUF.
@@StreetPreacherr tbh I have an rtx 3080 ti and I never use ray tracing anyways
Lots of good deals on older workstation PCs. They aren't built like junky consumer HP/Dells, etc. Ebay, Microcenter, Amazon sells refurbs.
Picked up a $2000 ThinkPad that was 4~5 years old for $300. And it's about 95% as fast as the current model.
Bro knew what he was doing with that price 💀
This is something to keep in mind for sure, thanks for making the video. I'm a 57 yr. old disable guy, just getting by; looking for thrifty ways to upgrade and sale gaming PC's. I'm using a DELL Optiplex 9020 right now. It does just barely what I can get by with comfortably, meaning playing some shooting games. Thanks again !!!
Look into Dell Precision or the HP equivalent workstation the next time you decide to upgrade.
Lenovo S30 Workstation is also another great workstation to turn into a low cost gaming PC.
Uncle ur bigger than my dad haha
Play ultrakill
You should put a 1050 ti low profile int here used
These budget builds to me are way more impressive than any super ultra build that can run something at like 200+ fps
i agree.
Absolutely. Its easy to do a cookie cutter build and choose high end parts etc. Chasing the most performance one can get for smaller budgets is so much more satisfying in many ways.
Wow I truly enjoy your videos so much thank you and keep up the good work I just wish I could do the things that you do with PCs take care your loved ones and family and stay safe brother
I still have a Z220 under my desk with a GTX 1060 6gig and I'm still happy! It has a XEON and USB 3 but it has non ECC (but normal) DDR3 memory. :) My wife, too, so has my buddy. We have very good experiences with the old HP Z Workstations in our computer store. They run like almost "forever". xD
Used that exact system in my office. I think the reason for the odd cpu cooling is there is supposed to be a duct covering the whole thing that directs the air from the cpu fan directly out the back of the case.
yea ur right most office pc's usually have really weird ducting
Yeah I learned CAD on a z420 in highschool, it did have a shroud going from the front intake across the CPU cooler and ram cooler connected to the exhaust fan. A really good budget design if you ask me.
@@doom9763 at my school we had bbc micros didnt even have fans or color screens!, wow do i feel old !!
They actually did this because the Z420 uses many of the same parts as the Z620, including motherboard (though slightly modified) and heatsink. The Z620 had the option for a whole second CPU with 4 more memory slots on a riser card which partially covers the socket for the first CPU (see this pic: media.gekko-computer.de/images/30001541_3.jpg ) , which is why they had to move the heatsink up a bit. They then simply reused the Z620 heatsink in the Z420.
I have the same pc and you are right should be a plastic shroud directing the air flow out the back.
as someone who barely has a budget, lost my gaming PC because I had to give it away, and has been eyeing builds for years, this video made me smile from ear to ear
thank you LTT team for this. amazing content!
I'm going to build a gaming PC BABYYYY
what do you mean by you had to give your gaming PC away.
@@bloon_snipe8998 yeah I think it is time for a dubious internet story that cannot be proven or disproven.
@@somedude9316 im confused
@@bloon_snipe8998 probably a child and their parents made them give it away
@@magnotec. to like family or poor
I own two z400 workstations I purchased refurb and they are solid working machines. Easy to upgrade, the cabinets are fantastic.
Z420 is a great choice. I use an HP Z600. It still runs well. I have a gtx 1650, 2 Xeon X5672 cpu's and 48 gb of ram. I also have 1 tb of storage, which is what it came with. In a while, I am going to turn it into a NAS and use a new system as my new battle station.
between this and the scrap yard wars, it's really cool to see what the used market has to offer when you simply need a rig to run.
This build works because its built with a cpu that is well above the consumer market. The cpu's in these are massive and very powerful in comparison to what you or I would normally buy. Movies were very often filmed in 4k even before that was possible at home, thus computers needed to be beefy as hell to account for it. This is why they aren't hitting a cpu wall like you would normally expect. However, that being said, they did not test a cpu heavy game (anything from paradox, anno, etc). But for the budget constrained, 1080p is probably your limit on monitor anyway, and you probably cant afford a paradox game
I've been saying it. There's a glut of cheap power on the market for 1080p gamers. And 10+ years of games that will run smooth as glass and still look amazing.
So much for "high barrier to entry" for PC gaming.
High barrier for entry appears to be less about price and more about knowledge and know how. I'm pretty sure most people's idea of buying consumer electronics is getting them working straight out of the box and less about scavenging parts on the cheap. That being said, since half decent PCs can be built at this price point it would serve as a great learning opportunity for more people to jump in and build one.
Never has been. I pay about 500$ every 4 years and have kept up a pretty powerful PC.
@@jamiehollywood7681 Agreed. For anyone with the desire to learn, spending $50 to $100 on some cheap office PC to take apart and learn this stuff on is a good investment. Something that runs, so that after tearing it down, to the point of even removing the motherboard from the case, one can put it all back together, start it up, and see that it’s working. Then maybe upgrade it, if it was starting out with decent enough specs to be the basis of a budget gaming rig or emulation box. Or just use that new confidence, some parts compatibility info, and a tutorial, to build a rig.
@@jamiehollywood7681 knowledge is easy to obtain now a days. Not a barrier of entry IMO.
I agree. I bought a 7th gen 7700k, with 16gb ddr4 ram and Rx 590 nitro with 8gb vram from a friend who upgraded to Ryzen and this machine do everything I through at it with issue. I play all my games at high or utra in 1080p with issue at all.
An excellent example of what can be done for little outlay, if you're prepared to chuck in some effort yourself.
I''d personally up the budget a bit (needn't be much) and go for a hex-core Xeon. Couple that to a later generation GPU (GTX 970/980 or 1060/1660 that won't cost a fortune as so many gamers are upgrading) and you'll be in serious gaming territory at 1080p if not 1440p.
I kinda did the exact thing you did for my company 6 or 7 years ago. We had similar workstations from 2012 and they were getting slow, company wanted to buy all new machines. Instead I bought all the machines SSD drives to replace the 5400rpm disk drives in bulk for a very cheap price, and the machines ran like completely new systems after that. We got another 4 or 5 years out of the machines with the solid state drives.
I'm convinced Linus hiked the price up to make it $69
Show me ANY source for the 69$ there isn't. This is like a 500$ pc still.
@@Sharpstoned They literally show everything they buy in the video, did you even watch it?
@@Sharpstoned A classic case of watching the video on mute with your eyes closed. I get it
Prices are double on ebay, can't see any for 69
@@jeremyhillaryboob4248 i stopped watching when they claimed the pc was 69 dollars when that is clearly a lie.
Some of my favourite videos on this channel are the budget builds, it's always cool to see what's possible. This is another reason we need another season of Scrapyard Wars!
Yeah, I miss scrapyard wars. I understand covid killed it but still, that stuff was fun
@@DefinitelyAPotato of course, the problem is that they are so famous, that there might be people who want one of the contestants to win so they give them discounts that are going to break the rules.
That is why they have not done a scrapyard wars series for awhile now
@@boltlighting They should do it with less known hosts, or even just off probation new hires. I bet it would be a blast.
I actually got my pc gaming start on a system like this. back in 2017, my uncle was cleaning out his basement full of computer parts (he was moving, and worked in IT, over the years he'd taken a large quantity of computer hardware from the company he had worked at for over a decade at that point), and he gave me a Dell Precision 1500 from 2010
I got a free pc, with 16gb of ram, 4/8 core i7 cpu (i7 860), an Nvidia NVS 295 with two hard drives an dvd rw drive (and since it was a 2010 Dell, it was actually upgradable)
I later added a gt 630 for $30, because that's all that was available at the time around that price, worked perfectly fine for esports and slightly older games like CSGO or Fallout NV
the fact that it's a $69 gamer PC and they used a Z420 (with of course 420 in its name), is hilarious to me.
If you go to your local transfer station and ask, the owner might let you take electronics out of the e-waste bin, since it costs more for them the heavier it is. Offices will also sometimes just dump their old computers in there if they don't want to deal with selling them.
what's a transfer station?
@@saudade_firefly a site where recyclables and refuse are collected and sorted in preparation for processing or landfill.
The weird CPU fan offset is to be able to stack another motherboard on top. I have the z620 version of this HP unit with 2 CPUs in it. The second CPU is attached to a breakout board that slots over the top of the primary motherboard. It's the most bizarre but cool double-decker CPU configuration I've ever seen. Been working great for me for about 3 years now with several extreme upgrades of course.
Had one as well. Truly insane riser card setup for the second CPU and RAM. Totally unrepairable if the motherboard dies, though, like mine did.
@@disekjoumoer That'a bummer. I was trying to mod mine once and fried it. I was lucky enough to find a spare board for it floating on Ebay and swapped them out. If not for that it would have been toast though. Because garunteed they don't make those parts anymore. And they are not compatible with any other system like you are desctibing.
@@johnmckeon4498 pretty sure aliexpress sells those aswell just look for intel xeon
That sounds intriguing, I'll have to look into it. Curious, what were the extreme upgrades you made?
I'm happy you're doing this! Modern hardware is overrated, will likely become a good value at LEAST 2 years from now! 75% performance for 25% the cost is definitely a sweet spot!
I actually have that HP Workstation as my home-Server
Works really good, but takes about 70W Power, so I am only using it to Host some Game Server and shut it down after Weekend
I used to work for a 2D animation company and we had most of these machines. The HP machines were really nice to service
I work in a CAD office and its full of Z440s. 128GB of RAM but only 4 cores at 3.5GHz max, interesting combination
@@kkrampus Wow
I work as an employee in SI and always recommend HP Workstation as they are user friendly(easy to open, no hardware incompatible bs, etc)
I've been trying to tell people, HP Z series, Dell Precision T series, Lenovo Thinkstation, and Dell Optiplex's make for great budget gaming PC's, just know what you're doing when it comes to matching the CPU and GPU and the PSU.
Love my 9020
Got myself a DELL optiplex from 12 years ago. Running on a core i3 CPU and onboard graphics [smh] but it does render g-code for my 3D print farm faster than my 2018 duel core celeron connex netbook with 4GB ram and 32GB embedded flash memory
my optiplex 7010 still kicking
The non standard power supply isn't "Thanks HP" but like a lot of HP's modern business computers, it's more like, "Thanks Compaq" as these resemble the setup used in Compaq's Deskpro business computer line. Even my HP EliteDesk 800 G1 tower has these weird features.
I picked up a ThinkCenter M-82 for around $75 last year. I'm using it as a server, not for gaming. But it's great.
After a long time, an LTT video reminded me of the channel that made me fall for tech and IT! Been watching this channel for over a decade and it all started because I needed to build a PC over a decade ago, and hacks like this are why I love LTT so much!
That offset heatsink is actually a brilliant idea. Normally those pipes are tucked under the assembly, meaning the heat they produce has less opportunity to dissipate before reaching the main block. By exposing the pipes it allows not only for some additional heat to dissipate, but for you to improve on it with adhesive heatsinks like you'd put on a Raspberry Pi or if you're brave enough a water cooling block soldered onto the heat pipes. That design invites modification!
THANK YOU ive been saving for my first ever gaming setup but it was way to much to get a good tower
A buddy of mine worked in an office it dept for a while, he dropped a bunch of pcs for free when they upgraded, even better he got me in for a.stupid amount of money per day to unplug them all, organise, desktop, peripherals and cables into piles, take the desks apart etc, a VERY good gig if you can get it, such easy work but it's laborious and you need to know something more than nothing about pcs to do it. 10/10 would do it again any day.
I used to use one of these for software development back in 2014-2017ish. Ended up getting it for free when the company upgraded. Great CPU, terrible GPU I had with mine. It was also always bottlenecked by the company being too cheap to put an SSD in it (something I rectified when I took it home) There is an adapter you can get to use a 24 pin ATX connector if you want to upgrade the PSU.
If the power supply ever dies, you can find adapters on amazon and ebay for regular ATX supplies for
I’m STILL using a Z420 as my main gaming PC (although I’m currently in the process of building a new machine) and it runs great! I have Windows 11, 8GB RAM, an SSD, and most importantly a Radeon RX 580 GPU. That said, it won’t do anything better than 1080p, but I can max out the graphics settings and manage at least 60FPS in any game I’ve tried, peaking at 100FPS at times. It may be almost 10 years old at this point, but this machine is a good choice if you’re on a tight budget. I’m not anymore, but I’m not in a huge hurry to upgrade, because it runs so well, even in 2023
Okay that is pretty impressive. I think I will try and do it for lower but I don't think it will happen! GG Linus and crew!
Oh my god I love you for making this, I’ve never owned my own computer and I think I’m just going to get this so I have something to use before I put the money down to get the parts for your $500 build. It’s amazing you guys are considering people at every income range. Again I love you guys for this.👏🏾❤️🙌🏾
Edit "three months later" - I just ended up getting a I7-12700K/3070 Ti build, came to the conclusion that I wanted uncompromised performance. Probably gonna save up for a 40 series for the future too. I started school so I need something reliable.
they... dont care about every income range and their 500$ budget build sucks
@@elijahevo6859 I don't know how it works these days, but back in the early 2000s a $500 budget build part list would be good for like a week. I think the best they can do is give general advice, like don't spend too much of budget in one place. $69 PC + $420 GPU would probably have power supply problems.
@@DoctorWhom I build and flip multiple budget systems a month, it's not about everything changing constantly, they just got shit deals and not only that it wasn't speced for best price to performance, it was doomed before it was even bought
@@elijahevo6859 Doomed how? You are just saying they paid too much? I don't understand your criticism.
Its too bad they only do videos like this every 20 videos with $5,000 PCs or $10,000 random ass projects that are pretty useless. But u know, the ppl love mindless entertainment
I have this exact computer. Im glad you guys are showcasing how capable it really is.
I've got the big brother to the Z420.. a Z800 with *dual* Xeon x5675 6 core cpu's @3.07 ghz. (24 cores total w/hyperthreading), and 64 gb. of DDR3-1333 Registered DIMMS. It also has onboard SATA/SAS RAID with about 9 TB. total storage across 4 drives. Primary drive is a 1 TB. Samsung 870 EVO SSD., and a Nvidia GTX 285 graphics card. Runs Windows 10 Pro with a few speed mods. Not much for gaming, but a hell of a workstation, and the platform for driving my Hauptwerk 4.2 organ software! Total investment including purchase cost of the Z800: about $475! 😉 Performance is rock solid..
bought one of these 5 years ago for $40 barebone box just motherboard and e5-1650v2 got 256 gb ddr3 from school for $100 and used an old atx psu also bought a 1tb ssd and 10tb hd for it from best buy for $200 and a rx 480 for $100 from a yard sale lol played all the latest games and still does
I like how the pc is better than my thousand dollar laptop
same here
Laptops aren't good for very long.
@@Bigbitesdark bro my pc lasted for 10 days only and when I booted it I get a black screen and a loop of blue screen of death that's why I switched to laptop
@@mrfudgefan i bought one on black Friday and within a year now it has micro stutter especially when i plug in Razor products and it tries to download the official firmware. My desktop i built i used for 10 years and upgraded some of the stuff, i had to leave it and give it away because i moved states and took a plane
@@mrfudgefan i built my pc when i was like 10 and its still running fine now 6 years later. graphics are lacking a bit but its working perfectly fine lol
Oh man, I love benchmarks from PCs like this. It's always far more interesting and impressive given the age of these parts than builds with today's new tech in them.
Thanks to this video and Linus I got me an HP compaq elite 8200 sff with an i5... did some research and ended up buying all kinds of upgrades for it, from a new i7 2600 to a gtx1650 with new ssd and ram, of course it all came to the price of 370 dollars but it runs like a champ and best thing is that i build it for my brother and now we can game together!! Thank you Linus :')
I had a Z series but it had a different CPU fan/heatsink and no ram cooler, it was fitted with a plastic heat shroud that I guess helped blow air over the ram on it's way out.
Your segment on social engineering, and specific examples of what to look for was just excellent and engrossing content. Not that I didn't already enjoy your content before, but giving those social tips beyond the tech stuff was just really great and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I’m actually in the middle of building a Z440 gaming box for someone, it’s a really decent way to go. It’s just a little newer (haswell) so no m.2 onboard but supports booting from a pcie slot m.2 adapter. Put in a 6-core 2643v3, 16gb ecc in quad channel, it has a 700w psu so I could fit a 1070. The cpu heatsink
is beefier and more traditionally U-shaped heat pipes, it had a 92mm but was wide, I 3d printed an adapter to use a 120mm noctua redux instead. The chassis cooling is the worst part but I 3d printed a front fan mount/duct to get a 120mm intake fan. Not as cheap as $69, I’ve probably got about $300 total into it.
I had a 2012 Z620 that my work mustered out; dual E5 2640 with 24 threads in total, 96 GB RAM! and a Nvidia GTX1080. Fantastic machine capable of doing anything... until the motherboard died. Although HP does an amazing job at making everything pop out with just a pull on a tab, CPUs and RAM were on a custom riser card and the board wasn't a standard ATX (of course). Still, for the two years I had it, it was fantastic.
A good choice for graphics currently in the UK (Feb 2023) would be a GTX 1060 or 1660 (6GB) which (on a good day) you might get for as little as £100. You can sell on the Quadro that's usually fitted in these for £20-40 (more still if you're lucky to find a higher end one fitted) to offset that cost.
I love that after all these years Linus still has that sparkle in his eyes when he sets up a sponsor moment.
I thought you were about say "when he's building pc" lmao
Did we saw the same crappy sponsor spots that looked added after the fact?
I got one of these about 2 years ago when everyone got stuck at home, first one was super cheap and terrible but I liked it enough that I paid for a decent one after words and put a e5-1650 v2 and a gtx 670 in it. Power supply mod is pretty easy and you can get a adapter off Amazon. It was pretty sweet for what it was, didn't need to run a heater in the room thru the winter nights when I ran folding either lol.
However, I had many many memory errors with both of mine that I eventually got sick of and needed up building a replacement on black Friday last year.
The NVS series of cards is NOT designed for CAD. They are designed to simply run a display. Common as a card for something that normally runs headless or as something that runs a kiosk display or something. It's the dedicated version of onboard graphics.
My school once cleared out their old computer room and since they knew I was pretty tech savvy I was the first to get offered some desktops.
I think it was like 15 euro for a Dell optiplex system but atm I had so much stuff laying around I declined their offer though ofc 1-2 weeks later I could've used one since my grandpa needed a new desktop haha
One thing I love about HP machines from this era is their handy green pull tabs to remove hardware. It was hard to find workstations/desktops from this time that were so easy to service.
The one thing I hate about those hp workstation pcs is there stupid proprietary power supplies
I have a lot of z420 and Z400 at work, they were choosen because stock quadro was able to support 2048x2048 displays (it was hard at the time), they were easy to repair (i had to change power supply once and it took me 1 minute) and they are capable of running for 15 years without problems :) . When covid started i had Z620 with GXT850 and i realy enjoyed that setup.
I just upgraded my system for $71. Bought a $60 Dell 9020 with a i7-4790 and 8GB of RAM. (I was using a Athlon II X4 635 with 12GB) Paired it with my 8GB for 16GB total and still using my GTX 760. The $11 was for a 24-pin to 8-pin adapter for motherboard power. I'm also still using my 2TB HDD from 2012.
there are also fujitsu siemens celcius line m400 series mostly which is really good in quality and reliability and uses standard psu and motherboard connectors!