 Wow! Is that RGB or what? Oh, that is so cool! More and more people are asking themselves the question, do I build a powerful workstation so that I can work from home and do a little bit of gaming? Or do I build a powerful gaming rig that is also capable of doing work? When Micro Center reached out and asked us that question, we decided that deciding is for chumps. So we built this, the ultimate workstation combined with the ultimate gaming machine. We're talking business in the front, business in the back, party in the front, party in the back, and watch this! Speaking of parties, look at this party trick. Whoa, there's the computer! Did you freaking see that? Oh yeah, by the way, it was a complete pain in the ass to build, so you're gonna wanna watch the video. You know who isn't a big pain in the arse? Micro Center. Big thanks to Micro Center for sponsoring this project. Stay tuned until the end of the video for more information on Micro Center's custom PC builder and click the link in the video description for a free 32 gig flash drive and 32 gig micro SD card. Valid in store only, no purchase necessary. This is legitimately going to be one of the most overkill systems I've ever built. This right here is the Li and Li DK05, and it is a desk PC that you're able to put two systems in. One for gaming, one for business. I wonder how much that cost. Look at the size of this piece of tempered glass. Wow. That's like basically the whole desiccate there. And the final bit of box here. So there's the legs. This might actually be pretty easy. You've gotta absolutely love it when they pre-sort all the screws for you. There's a hundred watt inverter. I have no clue what this is for. All that I have to do is attach some legs to it. It took Jake what, like nearly a week last time to build the whole thing. So we got the legs on. It was a bit tricky figuring out how to get it in, but it turns out if you have someone lift up on this end and push down in the center at the same time, it makes this whole a lot bigger. And it's really easy to just have the second person stick it in and you're basically good to go. As for the construction, I'm not totally sure how I feel about it. It's like on one hand, this is the absolute pinnacle of PC case design. Like the sheet metal that's here is just pretty incredible. And like the thickness of this aluminum, everything about it is super premium. But at the same time, it's a desk. And like this desk right here, I think is built in a way that makes a lot more sense for a desk using like these massive big old bolts instead of like 30 little tiny computer screws. Well, I probably should have continued building computer, but I got distracted a little bit by science here. So I was curious how this tempered glass panel can turn opaque and then transparent, just kind of at the push of a button. So it turns out if you look here, there's tempered glass on each side, but in the middle, there's actually a layer of like plastic polymer stuff. So what's in there are a bunch of liquid crystals. It's actually kind of similar to how like your LCD TV would work. So it's called electrochromic glass. And basically what happens is when there's no voltage applied across it, all of the liquid crystals in there are just kind of orientated at random. So the light comes in, maybe it bounces off there, maybe it bounces up there, maybe it just stops or goes back out. So, you know, some of it gets through, but not all of it. Although when you do apply a voltage, all of them orientate themselves in the same direction. So the light shoots straight through. Basically I set up a dirty thing, hot wired the power supply, hooked it up to the inverter. And when I turn it on, it should turn transparent. Yes. It's sick. I guess we can start building a PC in here now. I'm thinking that the gaming system is gonna go on the left side and the work system on the right. The main reason why I think that is just because when you're gaming, you want to have a lot more space for your mouse. Whereas when you're working, you can kind of get away with a lot less. Like you don't need to do massive flick shots and solid works or whatever the heck you're doing. Which one do you want to build first, Brandon? Let's do the work one. Work one. Okay, perfect. That one we don't have to water cool. So I'm very down for that. This doesn't quite make sense, but it sort of makes sense. It's the 3970X, which is a 32 core thread ripper processor, which is going to be the heart of our workstation system. This thing is basically the best processor that you can get for a workstation because the 64 core one, you generally don't need 64 cores. That's basically it. If you're the sort of person that needs 64 cores, you're probably better off just using like a render farm or something. For the motherboard, we've gone with the creator TRX 40. Highlights include 10 gig networking and a sick RGB lighting thing. It was a while ago, so I don't quite remember what I spec'd for storage, but I definitely didn't bolo it as hard as spec'ing three, two terabyte 970 EVOs, but can't complain. Now my logic is going to be, I'm going to put one into the workstation and two into the gaming one, because when you use a workstation, you're probably just going to be using the 10 gigabit networking to transfer all your files to and from a server. Whereas when you're gaming, you want to be able to boot them up fast from local storage. Maybe we'll even raid zero them, but we'll see if I have time, realistically. For any proper workstation, you need heaps of RAM, which is why we have gone with 128 gigabytes of Crucial Ballistix. It's 3200 C18, so not the fastest stuff around, but it gets pretty expensive pretty fast when you have 32 gig DIMMs. For cooling, I called an audible. We're supposed to be using the NH-U14S, but the ice giant came out in the time since we spec'd it out, and this is basically the best cooler that you can use for Threadripper, besides custom water cooling. It also really fits with the clean aesthetic of our workstation, so I really like it. You might be surprised that, in a system that includes a water-cooled RTX 3090, that is not the most expensive graphics card. Instead, this guy right here is. This is the Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000. What it does have that the 3090 doesn't are certified drivers, which means professional programs work with it well. Now we just have to see if this system works, and we're well on our way to getting it right into the system there. Let's just do it. Oh, I think we're all good. A 32-core processor, got all 128 gigs of RAM. Beautiful. Now we're able to just take the whole system, just like that. I have to say, props to Lee and Lee for how easy that was. If you just wanna build an air-cooled system in this, that is one of the simplest computer builds that I have ever done. I'm gonna pull out our second motherboard tray and get going on the gaming side. So we're using the Meg X570 Ace from MSI. This is about as tricked out as it gets for a Ryzen 5000 series motherboard. For storage, we've gone a little overkill. Technically, the 970 EVO Plus is not as fast as a 980 Pro. Okay, I'll grant you that. But each of these is two terabytes. We're gonna run them in RAID 0, giving us a total of four flipping terabytes of high-speed storage. Wait, 5,800X? What kind of pleb CPU is this? Only eight cores? I thought this was AMD. I actually thought it was 5,900X, so there you go. No, well, it's not. It's a 5,800X. The good news is that a 5,800X is still basically as fast as it gets for modern gaming, so, whomp. And realistically, if we had a multi-core workload, the computer ain't far away. For RAM, we've gone with 32 gigs of Crucial Ballistics RGB. 3,600 megahertz CL16. That's basically your sweet spot where, yeah, there's a little bit more performance to be gained by going higher, but not a lot. You know what my favorite thing is about the graphics card we're using here? If you didn't know exactly what all these numbers and letters mean, you'd look at this and go, oh yeah, it's probably like a mid-range card. Pick up the box, be like, oh yeah, it doesn't have much heft to it. Probably has a crappy cooler on it. No, my friends, it ain't. This is the EKWB collaboration with ASUS GeForce RTX 3090, a pre-water blocked graphics card, and it is as fast as it gets, my friends. So this right here is our pump and reservoir, which looks, for one, freaking sweet, and two, already has pre-drilled holes in this case. So you just remove this fan and just boom, it goes in right there. We also have this awesome distribution plate that you put in like right here, and it's designed so that all of your runs just go straight across to all of your components. So we've got funnel hooked up to a quick disconnect. It's going to be sealed with some gaff tape. Absolutely beautiful. This is how the pros do it. Water hasn't made it through the radiator yet. It also hasn't posted yet, but it also might have overheated by now. Got the gaming system running. Turns out the problem was just a needed BIOS update. Super easy using the USB BIOS flashback, although I do wish MSI had documented it. Instead, I had to use this Reddit post here. But anyway, I'd love to show you it working, but unfortunately one of the tubes on the CPU popped off and spilled water all over the place. Should be fine, but we're not going to turn it on for a day just to be sure. Yeah, this in theory should be really easy. We have the custom reservoir designed for this case. We have the custom pump also designed for the case. Yeah. How much is this thing? It's like 300 bucks. Oh my God. I mean, I guess by the time you're spending two grand on your desk case, it's- Yeah, same with the pump. It's like 300 bucks. So EK sent us over like literally a box full of these fans right here. And they don't work with this. This mount that they have right here does not work with- Oh, with this. Their fans. Yeah. Oh, I see. Why would they do that? Okay, there is a little bit of room behind the motherboard tray here, but it is not that easy to get in there with your fingers. Hey, there we go. See, not bad. I can make this work. Oh, there's so much front USB. Front USB for days. As far as hardline water cooling goes, this is about as simple as it gets. I might be able to get away with doing the whole thing with no bends, although I might do a couple for the CPU. We'll see how I'm feeling. Anyway, especially in a shop like this, it's not very hard. My personal favorite method is to just mark it a little bit long, cut it, and then sand it down to size. That way I find when you're cutting the tubes, you can sometimes get jagged ends. Whereas if you just sand it down, it's perfect every time. You know, it's more of an art than a science. We don't need to get super technical measuring things here. This tool just removes any sharp edges, and I'm also going to sand it just to make sure that it's extra smooth. You don't need it, but I'd recommend putting on just a little bit of O-ring lube. It's the sort of thing that can just make it last a little bit longer, and again, less chances of ripping the O-ring while you're putting it in. Another thing I'd strongly recommend is to do your longest runs first. So look, we did these two here, and now I'm doing this one. And the main reason is because if you take off a little bit too much, it's kind of fine. Like this right here, I can make work in this spot, but I'm not totally comfortable because I think I took off just a tiny bit too much. So instead, bippity boppity, the one that's just a tiny bit shorter than it, you can come right in here and you don't waste a whole bunch of tube. You only waste like half an inch. I think it's about ready to get filled. Now I did have some issues with the RGB on the front fans because for whatever reason, it has a different RGB standard than everything else. Some solder hawk glue and this little RGB hub here fixed that, but what might not be fixed is the motherboard. I'm a little bit scared from just how much water got on it when we had the leak that it might not be doing too great. But at the same time, if there's anything that we learned from the Electro Boom video, it's that electronics can take a lot more than you would expect. Ah! Ah! Oh! Ah. I'm clearing the CMOS now. The power button's lighting up, but nothing's happening when I press it. Electronics can take a lot more than you would expect. Ah! Okay, good news, good news. So it turns out the only thing that died was the old motherboard, which sucks, but at the same time, when you're afraid that you've killed an RTX 3090 and all of the other stuff, just a motherboard dying really isn't that bad. We've actually had a bit of an upgrade. So we've changed to the MSI Godlike. It's a ridiculously expensive motherboard. This thing's $700. And as far as I can tell, the only difference in spending that you get between the Ace and the Godlike is that this one right here, lets you be able to tell everyone that you have a really big DAC. Quarter inch input. Yeah, why? David said it perfectly. All that's left then is to wire up the last couple of doodadamajigs then, hey? Yeah, pretty much. Okay. So there's a couple of interesting things in here. Yeah. Yeah, so I've been doing this a while, but I haven't really mentioned it. But in hardline water cooling, it's kind of smart to not quite do 90 degree bends. Like this one's just a tiny bit shy of it, if you can see that there. Yeah. So then when you put it in, like so, that little bit of a bend is pushing this tube in there and down that way. Ah. So, you know, you just have a little bit of force. Yeah. That's keeping it in automatically. So you gotta use it. Yeah. The force that is. I'm going to ignore that. And here's another thing that was quite difficult about this. Oh yeah, there is a lot of rigidity here. Yeah. This one can go in and it still is too short. Oh. So what you need to do is come in here, like so. Now you can just move the whole thing. Wait, that, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So for all the like six people out there that are going to buy this desk, now they know. Yeah. Oh, we also added, after the last test fit, you don't need to be doing that. We added a drain with this and also an input. A fill thing. Yeah, fill thing. Genius. Just like Li and Li and EK thought of that. Well, they did, but they put the drain port right here. So when we just had a fitting in it last time, you just let it go and it just sprayed fluid all over everything. Neat. You know, EK has a pressure tester so you can make sure there's no leaks in your loop before you do the thing, right? Wow, that would actually be pretty smart to use right now. We should. Okay. Do you know where it is? No. Do you think we have time to find it? Hmm, yeah, forget it. Do you see any leaks? Not yet. It's not draining? Yeah, it makes sense. Here, let me just crack a fitting over here. Feel a little faster. Hey, hey, hey, how are you doing? Okay. Just gotta keep an eye on this one. It starts to come up this way. Hey, hey, hey, hey, okay. Let's go ahead and close that. Let's crack a fitting. Let's crack a fitting. Let's give it a little cracky crack here. And it... Okay. We're good, we're good. It's all good. We should power cycle it. Oh, one thing before we do that. Oh. I don't know what it was. What a tease. But getting the front IO into this was the worst that I have ever experienced. Really? And it took me like 15 minutes and I ended up having to just hot glue it in. Yeah, don't touch it. I'm afraid that it'll pop out again. You're sure that's the front IO then, right? I'm not gonna just break it. Cause usually the front IO is over here. In fact, this is it. Wait, what is that then? You're not even plugged into the front IO. You spent 15 minutes on this? That's the trusted platform module header. Gosh darn it, Alex. And you bent the pins. Now the thing is full of glue and it's hard to put on the real header. There's glue in there. Dang it. All we can do is we can like take this pin sort of shove it up in there and get all the glue out. You know what? How about I figure out the plan? Oh, I think I might've just broken the RGB header. Okay. It's only a little bent. Hey, attempt number two. She fires up boys. Wow! Is that RGB or what? Yeah, that's a lot of RGB. Where'd all the RGB go? Oh, it's breathing. Okay, we got any water? I don't think so. No water. Hey! Is the pump working? Wait. Yeah, that's a hard no. We have plugged in the pump. That was a bit of a problem. Let's see if the water moves now. Come on water. Hey, now it's moving. Yay! Now we're moving. Yay, moving water. That's good. Hello? That just needs a little wiggle. Do the wiggle worm. If we do just a little like a... No, no, no, no. It needs to wiggle. Oh God. Oh, that was close. That was real close. So what's happening is I'm letting out air at the top of the reservoir here to let the water from here come in. Move bubbles. You gotta schwack them. Ow, my fingernail. Yeah, normally in the situation, I'd like take the case and put it upside down, but you can't exactly do that. No, not really. I mean, you can kinda, you know. I don't like this. How on earth are we supposed to put this fitting on here now? I was thinking that we would take a bucket, dump this into the bucket, and then just kind of... You're making up this plan on the spot. You weren't thinking any of those things. No, I was thinking this beforehand. It's not a good plan. Oh my God. That looks freaking crazy. That effect is so trippy. That is so cool. I mean, it's not clear, clear, but it's like, bam, bam, bam. Like, what? To be clear, it's not like I've never seen, what's it called, electrovoltaic or photo? Chromic. Sorry? Electrochromic. Electrochromic glass. It's not like I've never seen this stuff before. They have it at Science World just to make the HVAC more efficient, actually. It's to keep the sun out of it so it doesn't heat up all the time. But just the idea of integrating it into a PC is like... And it works so well. That looks so cool. Look, I don't want to be distracted by my computer or whatever. I'm like, I'm like working. And then I'm like, gamer mode. Bam. Oh yeah, load checkpoint. I died. This is when my boss walks in. Like, oh, there's no alt tab. There's no getting rid of it. No, but really, this was over here. Pause, pause. No, more so you can just be like... So click like run. Oh, and I'm keeping an eye on it. Yeah. Oh. And then you just push the keyboard away. Yeah. I've heard that from the editors before. Yeah, yeah, I'm exporting or like, you know, I'm rendering. So I just gotta, you know, I gotta keep an eye on it. Okay, so how much do you think all of this costs? 15 grand. $19,416.49. This is the part where I say I don't recommend the solution, right? Yeah, not at all. We don't think people should buy this. Do you wanna make something that people should buy? Ah, that's right. Micro Center sponsored this video. So whether you want something totally impractical or something that's actually sensible, Micro Center's got you covered for all your technology needs. And today we are showing off their PC builders. So all you gotta do is pick your CPU. I'm gonna start with a 5600X. Let's go ASRock B550 Steel Legend. Ram. GripDraws V 16 gig 2x8 3200. For case we can still go Lee and Lee, but maybe just something more reasonable. Like how about the O11 Mini? That thing's sick. 650 80 plus gold? Sure. Okay, EVGA Supernova, graphics card. Oh man, I mean, if you're going higher than like 3070, you better have a 4K display and you better be like playing, you know, latest AAA games with all the eye candy. We're going 3070. Is there anything in stock? Yeah, this is not Micro Center's fault. Yeah. There you have it. $1500 and that is a pretty smoking fast machine. Like, okay. One eighth as many cores. So if that's a problem for you, then I guess you need to go, you need to go this route. But for everyone else, there's this. You can either build it yourself or Micro Center will build it for you. I think that's pretty much all there is to it folks. If you enjoyed this video, you might enjoy our previous desk PC, which was more of like a cleanest desk PC setup. This is definitely not cleanest. Unless you press this button. Bam, now it's like stealthy. I love it.