 Holy crap. How is it that everything you touch turns to absolute garbage? I don't get it. It's Intel Extreme Tech Upgrade time again, and today I am not in charge. Taron has some very, Taron rules for how this Extreme Tech Upgrade is going to go, including that we will only be filming in front of this wall and in the room behind me, which I am not allowed to walk into right now because he hasn't put a blanket over the bookshelf yet. I value my privacy. And that's good. And I value our sponsor. That's right, we're doing a $5,000 tech makeover for Taron's apartment. Here we go. It's gonna be a little cramped, but that's okay. I mean, you have at least made yourself comfortable. Oh yeah. There's no rules about not wearing pajamas in your own house, just in the office. That's true. I'm not gonna lie. Careful, careful. Oh, there's cables going through the door. I see. Is this a poor man's version of my whole thing where I have my computer in a different room so I don't have to listen to it? That's exactly what it is. But hey, hey, hey, hey, careful. No, no, I'm careful. It's vibrating. The problem is it just gets so hot in that room during the summer that I was like, well, let's just put the computer in the other room and then be able to run the air conditioner in there because I don't like the idea of heating and cooling the same room with electricity. Right, especially with ill-gotten games like this black and orange painted graphics card that I painted. I won that at the Christmas party. See, I know why Taron doesn't want us to film his place because then he'd have to show us all his other ill-gotten games, but he never specified that I'm not allowed to take things from the rest of the apartment and bring them here. Like say for example, this MaxNomic chair that he applied his corrosive ass to for the better part of six years. Or this rad power bikes, rad mini. Hey, I'm doing you a favor because this takes up so much room in the warehouse. You heard it here first folks. If you're gonna take something from work, make sure it's really large. This is far more cobbled together than I initially thought. Yeah, and like there's no room to put the panel back on on the back and like, I hate this case. I hate it so much. This hard drive isn't even plugged in Taron. This one isn't either. I know it's not because they vibrate like crazy in this case. So I just only plug it in when I really need it. What's with the, what the f*** face? The case sucks. What? Linus, this is why I need the upgrade. Why are you even using the front because- Instead of the back. I don't know, this is more obviously visual. Like sometimes I got to swap it around. I'll have like one pair of headphones that I talk into another pair that I'm actually using as headphones. That's crazy, my brain hurts already. I just don't have a very good headphone. I haven't even gotten into the room yet. Okay. So this will all be blurred because you're not allowed to know what books you read or- These are my girlfriend's books actually. All of this is going to be bleeped out. Nope. Oh, and also all of these things need to be off the wall. I can't have you knowing my to-do list. What are bed papers? They were papers that were on my bed that needed to be sorted, okay? I mean, are we allowed to at least show the Epic fan art? Yes. And the monument to the original Logitech G15? I have two of these now. You gave me another one. Yeah, I know. Oh my God, I remember this computer. Yes. Okay, there's a story here. I believe we upgraded what was already your computer, or we- No, you just straight up gave me this whole computer. I gave you this computer. Because when I started editing NCIX Tech Tips videos, I did not have a computer that worked for video editing. And then I would do that for you remotely. Right. And send over the finished Premiere files, but I couldn't edit even 720p on my old machine. Were you technically even an employee yet? No, I was just contract. Crazy. Yeah. This is definitely the original power supply. Yeah. I remember this being a good enough to actually trust in a deployment, but not good enough that I cared about giving it away power supply. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This case is another example of, yeah, I really just did not care about this thing. So, GMC, man. You made a video about manly dust cleaning, manly dust removal, remember? Oh, that's true. That's what this computer is in. Because Taren had the dustiest computer in the office. Yeah. Before you, yeah, you dusted it out and then you gave it to me. Perfect. Oh, I recognize this Dell too. Yes, I bought that. This was like one of the first monitors I had working for you, because it's 16 by 10. I really liked the aspect ratio on it. It gets way too hot though. I remember you were very particular about monitors. Yes, because I want a lot of timeline space. Only monitors, like you're not super particular about anything else. Well, no. You know that he actually has a custom depth of desk at the office? Yes. Yes, because I need to be able to rest my arms on it. Also, I'm very particular about keyboards. Look Linus, it's another K95RTV. Taren, I was being verbally ironic. Oh. I did not pick up on that. And there's a towel on the desk. Yeah, so that's my wrist rest basically. And as you can see here- World's largest wrists. Brandon, you wanna- Whoa, what the hell? So this is IKEA and my elbow is always here. So you've got a shock absorber. Over time, it has completely destroyed this table. Brandon, how is it that everything you touch turns to absolute garbage? I don't get it. I mean, so I don't know. Nick Van Berkel says I've got a sandpaper ass. Uh-huh. Brandon, how does it feel to be objectively the least eccentric of the original Linus Media Group employees? Pretty good. This is my YouTube silver play button. Oh, I see. YouTube. It's a YouTube. I know for a fact you have a real one. I do now, but I forgot to put it up. So I'm gonna let you file that away. Why don't we have a look at- Look at your bedpapers. At what particular parts you picked out for your build. Did you get any help with this or is this all your own design? I had a lot of help. They were very helpful. Awesome. Who's they? I don't know. Jake was helpful. Cool, all right. So new computer, new monitor, and a NAS. Yeah, so the desktop here is because this one is now trash. Oh no, it might've gotten bopped in shipping. Is it broken? Oh, sh- Oh wait, hold on. It's just a little bit of shmuel, I think. Okay. The ultimate plan. The ultimate plan. My dad is going to build me a beautiful Douglas fir desk out of trees from our own property. Got it. So this is actually a bit of a temporary measure anyway. Got it, okay. You know what? I'm gonna disconnect everything from the back of the computer. Okay, let me turn it off first. You know we're gonna have to, right? Why? Because we're replacing it. This old computer, I'm gonna keep it. We're not gonna deconstruct it at all. It's just gonna be my gaming computer now. So you won't game on the new one? You're gonna have an RTX 3070. Aaron. I don't play games that require tons of GPU power. I play Civ 6 and like chess. You don't game on a 980 Ti when you have an RTX 3070. I do what I want. Well, I know, but- It's nice to have a separation between work and play, Linus. Holy crap. What? It's smiling. I know, I know, I know. And listen, if this newest IKEA desktop also fails in this way, then I'm just never gonna buy anything IKEA ever again. I've said that so many times. Every time they get me. I know, I know. I always go back. Yeah, I know. It's like an abusive relationship. But this one's supposed to be really strong. They said it's really strong. Yeah, sure. They wouldn't lie to me. So what's with all the googly eyes everywhere? Those are fluffies. I see that, but why do you have them? Well, my girlfriend and I make these and then we hide them all over the house and then we gaslight each other about them. Oh, I see. Where did that come from? I don't know where that came from. I think it's possible that Taron found his soulmate. Have you not noticed these all over the office? I have, that's- Oh, no, I haven't. They are all over the office and they are adorable. Oh, okay. Okay. You've just got like SSDs in a bin, Taron. Yeah, I know. The number of creatives and even in some cases, small to medium sized studios that I've seen where they manage their data exactly like this. This is from the dollar store. It's mind blowing. And NAS is a game changer. So for those of you who are doing this, pay close attention today. I found a pile of all your side panels. Thank you. I know that they're there. I keep accidentally kicking them. Oh. Look how huge that fan is by the way. It's a big feature. That's a big ass fan. I'd like to jack up the desk while we're working on the machine. Okay. Oh gosh, okay. You know, this is a bad idea. We could have just put like books under it or something. We would have to censor the books. Yes, we would. Ow. Sh**. Ow. This was a bad idea, Linus. Ow, I hit my hard drive in the butt. Yeah, you did. You did. I would appreciate it if those hadn't fallen off the table. If it helps at all, they were cushioned by my butt. I'm already stressed out. Are you going to build the computer? No, you're going to do it. I'm going to build the computer? Oh, come on. You're the computer guy. When I do it, I break things. I break three drives and I busted a motherboard. I remember that. I plugged in an old power supply cable to those drives. Listen guys, I've literally never seen it online as tech tips, but you cannot use a power cable from another power supply with anything else. They only go with that one power supply, even if it's modular. It isn't quite strictly true. It might as well be. It's not worth risking all your drive. Cable Mod has an excellent compatibility matrix on their website for different power supply models and different cable series. I don't think I've ever co-hosted with you. It's Tarrant Tech Tips today. Well, why don't you tech tip us why you chose the Z690 plus Wi-Fi D4 Tough Gaming from Asus. I have no idea. Look, I still don't know very much about CPUs and motherboards. Okay. I'm just like whatever works for video editing is good enough. This is great. It's got two and a half gig LAN. It's got 10 gigabit USB. It's got USB type C. It's got built-in Wi-Fi in case you ever have a situation where something happens and you gotta move it to the other side of the apartment. You don't wanna run a cable, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. With your 12th gen CPU, we went with Core i7-12700K. This is such a fricking great bang for the buck CPU right now. Should you be wearing one of these? It's got a total of 12 cores. So yeah, we could do that. Sure, fine. We could connect it to. Open up your power supply. We'll plug the power supply into the wall and then we'll connect this to that. Okay. And you would be crazy to use your old rig for gaming once we have this thing set up, Taron. So now I'm just gonna clip this to some metal as long as we make sure that we kind of bite into the paint a little bit. And I am grounded. I am one grounded boy. I mean, why are your hands so clammy? Cause it's hot in here. CPUs installed. Same procedure as any Intel platform from pretty much the last 10 years. Next thing we're gonna need is RAM. 3200 megahertz C16. This is a 64 gig kit. Two 32 gig sticks. Yeah, I need a lot of gigs. So the idea then is I guess you could go up to 128 on this motherboard without actually swapping these out. Or had you considered that or? No. Okay. I mean, someone. Whoa Linus. Someone probably considered that. Dude. It's solid state. It's probably fine. Did you scratch the motherboard? You know what? The peel was still here. Oh my God. Unfortunately, it's still less likely that things will break if you do it. For your boot SSD, you've got this 500 gig P5 from Crucial. Yeah. I won that from the Christmas party. Solid choice. Is that the new screwdriver? Yeah. Can I have one? Yeah, of course. Do you wanna check it out? This is mine now. It's not quite how that works. It just, this was one of my requests and with all the merch, like the pillow and stuff. Oh really? Our biggest fans of LTT merch are actually people internally because they have to see it all the time internally. And if they don't have one, it's like, oh. Yeah, that's pretty sick. So what case did you go for? I don't know. Let's find out. Ah, yes. I just wanted something that was easy-ish to build in, something with enough room so that the drives don't get in the way of the cable management. Like on my old case, something with magnetic dust filters. Look, Intel, I assure you we're not cheating on you. Core Center is not a co-sponsor of this series. The last three or four people in a row have just independently chosen this case. They're not all good. My last case was Core Center and it's awful and I hate it. Okay, well there you go. So I'll give you the side panels. Put them in your side panel pile probably. Yay, my side panel pile. You're sure you don't wanna help at all? No, you do it. I don't wanna do it. I'm gonna break some. You know what? Actually, that can be your job to break some stuff. I don't, what? Here's the thing. The reason I know this already is because the last three people have used this case and also got a free EK cooler at the Christmas party and there's a slight, oops, there's a slight incompatibility. You're gonna have to make a modification to the plastic clips for the front magnetic fan filter. Oh, that's too bad. Okay, I'll use my cheese knife that I hate. Why do you have a knife specifically for the cheese? No, no, the knife is. Oh, shut up. I think Taren has the most responsible build that I've seen so far. He's got a power supply that is over spec. He's got a UPS to protect his system. He's got two hard drives because he's planning to run them in raid one for a data redundancy. Whereas I think a lot of the people so far have gone bleeding edge to try to get as much performance as possible out of their setup. Instead, this is like the responsible man's computer. I don't like being on the bleeding edge because it's the bleeding edge and things are more likely to go wrong. I like tried and true and responsible. So I might've cut my thumb a little bit. So it's just gonna kind of sit there. Yeah. Magnetically kind of. Yeah, but the front bezel will go on. Okay. See? Yeah, I can't help but notice you're not grounded anymore, please. Oh, right. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Good catch. Oh my God. Static is probably the least of your concerns, Mr. Corrosion. Oh God, this is a very small room. You guys might wanna... The window's already as open as it's gonna get. Oh no. Oh, oh God. Oh, it's not great. Oh my God, I'm full of whiff. No, stop it. You're whelping it towards me. I need to, to get it out of the room. Linus. What? What, don't sit on that. I'll get you a chair. Well, you don't think UVGA makes small package. Get off of the box. Get off of my graphics card. It's very comfortable. Get off. It's like it deflects a little bit, so it kind of accommodates the aft screw. Jeez, man. Still smells in here. These screws are longer than the table is thick. I don't have any other screws. Do you have any other wood? This is the only other wood that I have. What is this? Try to guess what this is supposed to be. For trimming, like a flower, flower hanging baskets. Blackberries. Blackberries. Yeah, you hang a bucket on the little eyeball from the bottom. See, so you just, you just pull the little thingy and it just, it's very simple, but it gets the blackberries. Hi, so I'm here. We're with Linus at doing the Linus tech upgrade for Taren Intel upgrade and we need some screws. Taren, I love your phone etiquette. Okay, I'm in the middle of something right now, Linus. I'm making a... Sorry. I'm just building a computer for you. I'm just building a desk for me. Yeah. Get it? Ah. Ah. He's a dad now. No, I'm not. Not that I, not that I care. Oh. Oh my God. We're gonna go ahead and put the GPU in. Where'd my chair go? Wow. This is a beefy freaking card. Yeah. Did you go FTW? I don't know. FTW3 Ultra. This is like one of the fastest 3070s on the flipping market. The more you get to the bleeding edge, the more expensive things get. So like if you can get just a little close to it, it's okay. Yeah, this'll be very, this'll run Civ 6 like a Dickens. Yeah, well, it's not about the speed. Don't forget that that's a 4K display. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Your games are about to get a lot more demanding to run. Yeah, but I can just run them in a lower resolution. But you wouldn't have to. You have a 3070. Yeah, but I'm saying if I didn't, it wouldn't matter. But you have one. I'm trying to convince you not to use the other machine for gaming. It's so ridiculous. I'm a ridiculous person. No, I know, but it... What do you think about this whole thing of you should have a separate space for your play and your work and your recreation? Well, I haven't for years. You have not. And I haven't died yet. It's not about dying. It's about optimizing your life. And I just want to give that a try. I mean, I didn't like having the office in my house. We did away with that paradigm in about six months. Yeah. But in terms of whether I use the same computer for playing a game or writing emails, that doesn't make any difference. Yeah, but writing emails is one thing. Editing entire videos is another. That's pretty loosey goosey right there. I don't know about that. It's a really heavy card, dude. Giant vapor chamber. Yeah, I see that. Triple fan, triple slot cooling solution. This thing is chonk. Should I get like a little thingy to hold it? I mean, you could, but it doesn't really doesn't make a difference yet. Are you sure? I mean, that's several millimeters of play there. Ugh, don't do that. You could probably get a whole centimeter if you wanted. Don't do that. Stop, will you? Stop. Can fit so much gaming in here. Look at that. All right. Let's build a desk. Brandon, we're going for the sky hook. Okay, please stop. You were an agent of chaos. You knew that when you invited me here. You didn't really invite me. Technically I didn't, yeah. You have invited me, just not today. I have, not today. Come to think of it, it was only one time. It was only the one time. Never been invited back. That's right. I'm done. Look how comfortable that would be for the people's elbow here. You know, this, I think this is too bendy. I'm already disappointed in this. Wait, really? Oh, you're done. You're out on this desk? Yeah, like even this one is like actually solid. Like even though it's already curved, like it's solid when you push on it. Bear in mind, because they're screwed in this far apart, that will actually change the- Hello? Why do I even talk? I can't show anything in Taron's place, but. I wanna make one of the googly eye things that's stashed somewhere, so that they'll both think that the other is gaslighting the other. I just, eyes on here. Hey look, there's a silver button. Okay, I'm gonna glue it to the bottom of a stool. We have screws. Oh, fantastic. Do you have a measuring tape? I have a sort of a measuring tape. Cool. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What just happened? Taron made everything fall. Oh, I'm glad it wasn't me. Just take that, take that. Just blur everything. Woo, this boy goes. All right, we're gonna see how wobbly this table is in a minute. Are you wearing a headlamp? Yeah, yeah, I put it on. I was looking for the drill, you know, and I needed some light. I don't know, I don't need it. Oh man, it's so bouncy. Ah, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. This is basically what I built the entire thing around. I need a monitor that is big enough so that I can use 100% UI scaling in Windows rather than 150 or 125. Because so many programs are so terrible with their own UI scaling. Yeah. That it's just so much better to just keep everything at 100 and then go from there. But also it has an sRGB mode that I can just turn on and I know that all my colors are gonna be pretty much correct. And it's hardware calibration, not software. I did a lot of work to figure out the exact right monitor to get for what I need and this is the one. It is the king of the 43 inch class. So if this monitor sucks, keep your little comment to yourself because Taren likes it and if he's happy, then I'm happy. Calibration report from the factory. Okay, okay. sRGB monitor. They line up perfectly. That's all I ever wanted. Why did you just throw that at the monitor? Oh, sorry. See, this is the biggest desk I could find before they started becoming dining room tables. Yes. So there's not enough room for the Wacom 22HD. And I want this to be able to just be like this all the time rather than being kind of stored away. Like on there, you know, because otherwise I don't use it as much when it's just like this. Whoa, hey, what did you, why does I turn around for two seconds and you're dropping things? Well, no, it's just that the- Oh, it cut me off. It cut me off. The test report thing slipped out from between my hands. Excuses. Step one, when you get a UPS, make sure the battery is actually connected. Oh no. So, no, no, no, it's normal. It's normal. They don't want them connected in transit. Yeah. Because then they'll drain too much. So if I plug it in without the battery connected, it'll still work. It'll be a surge protector. Yeah. But not a UPS. Interesting. And all you gotta do is- Like a car battery? Take this out, yeah. Wow. And then you just plug this bad boy into here. Yeah. Like that. Okay, more peripherals. Ooh, Stream Deck XL. Stream Deck XL. The deluxe-est. I really like them. I have two at the office. I kinda wanted two, but it just wasn't quite in the budget, you know. What's this? This looks like some kind of audio interface. Yeah. So- EVO4. Makes recording easy. Why does it speak here? Oh, there's a fluffy in there. Where did that come from? I don't know. Where did these come from? So, we, the editors, have EVO8 on our desks. So I don't need the eight, because I don't need all like, I don't need twice the ports and stuff. So the four is enough for me. And then the headphones. Ooh. These were not cheap. Closed back. Closed back. Really, at home, why do you need closed back at home? I really like silence. Okay. I think they're 500 bucks. Like they're not cheap. But they are really sweet. Is that carbon fiber? Maybe. Damn Daniel. So I tried every chair in the office. Basically. And this is the one that fits me best. Taren's on team Maxonomic with me. A lot of people complained about them. Yeah, I like the Maxonomic. It's just- Secret Lab is very similar in build quality. I think this is the ultimate chair. It even has a T for Taren on it. We need to build a NAS. Oh yeah, the NAS. That's important. Taren has been responsible here. He's gone with WD Red Plus drives. These are eight terabyte drives. So that'll give him a total of eight terabytes of storage, because you were planning to use RAID 1, is that correct Taren? That is correct. So that is full redundancy. In the event that one fails, the full data will be on the second drive, easy to recover. But it should be noted that RAID is redundancy and redundancy is not a backup. So if Taren really cares about his data, he should also have anything important backed up off site. We need to find out if this computer works. Okay. Are you ready for the moment of truth? I don't know if I'm ready. You dropped it a lot. Moment of truth. Ooh. Look at that RGB voice. I love it. Keyboard's on, yeah. Yeah, it's actually kind of tastefully RGB, you know? Because I didn't try at all. Okay, perfect. So go right to AI tweaker. AI tweaker. Yep, and then, and press enter for overclocked tuner and go to XMP1. What does that do? It sets your memory to the default 3200 C16 profile. That's all it does. Why is that good? So it's faster. Why isn't it already that? Because XMP is a only sort of stock configuration. It's technically overclocking. I don't wanna overclock, it's not stable. That's not real overclocking. I don't know what you mean. F10, enter. Fine. What? I don't remember making that account, but Windows requires an account. Do you only have a 50 megabit service? I don't know Linus, look, as long as it's enough to stream HD, Netflix, and YouTube, it's enough for me. I don't need faster. Yeah, but like this Nvidia driver download is gonna take like freaking 10 minutes. Why is it so huge? Also, I don't care. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is a very random approach to vacuuming. I couldn't help noticing. I'm just getting the parts that are dirty. I didn't realize these pillows came so flat Linus. Your slow internet is going to be a pro. Taron. Did we do okay today, Brandon? Taron managed to go from having a pretty big central monitor to having an absolutely enormous one. He's got more macro keys than ever before. Still tons of room for project bins and there's sort of space for the Wacom tablet. His audio solution has been dramatically upgraded. And finally, all his data is safe thanks to his RAID 1 NAS. Not bad, not bad. I'm very happy. Thanks Intel. This has been another Intel Extreme Tech upgrade. You guys are gonna wanna check out the whole freaking series because it's all awesome. My personal favorite so far have gotta be Sarah's. Sarah's is really good. Wow, what's your favorite? Kind of have to go Dennis. Gotta go Dennis, go check those out. See you at the next one. It's gonna be Brandon. You did steal the fluffies. All of them. Nice. I don't know what you're talking about.