I Build The Cheapest AMD Gaming PC From AliExpress…
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00:00This little PC that looks like an infrastructure project built by engineers with a wild PCP addiction
00:06is the cheapest AM5 gaming PC I could build using parts of Aliexpress.
00:11And wow, did this not go well.
00:14I think it just crashed again.
00:16Oh, please.
00:19But before we delve into my suffering,
00:22today's video is sponsored by Deepcool's new CH160 case,
00:26a mini ITX enclosure with an insatiable appetite for gratuitously sized air coolers,
00:32a rare talent in this space.
00:34Aside from big air coolers, theic graphics cards are also welcome.
00:38It also comes with a handle.
00:40So if you're in the market for a high airflow ITX case with great temperatures while gaming
00:45at an affordable price, check out the Deepcool CH160 with the link in the video description.
00:51Thank you Deepcool for sponsoring today's video.
00:57Now, one of my favorite things to do with this kind of packaging is guess the parcel.
01:10Just figure out what's inside based on its grotesque exterior.
01:14Because these sellers package stuff real weirdly.
01:17This box, for example, looks CPU shaped.
01:20But then what is this cow pat looking package?
01:23Because if you touch it and feel it, it feels a lot like the inner packaging of a CPU box.
01:30But then what is this?
01:31Is this the cooler?
01:32Yeah, I guess the best way to find out is open it up.
01:34So let's see if this CPU bed pays off.
01:39No, it isn't.
01:40This is an NVMe drive in a tiny little box.
01:44And this poorly box endowed NVMe drive costs $44 Canadian dollars for 250 gigs.
01:50So does that mean that there is a CPU living in here?
01:54No.
01:56This is definitely a CPU.
01:58Although it's not packaged in the way I was expecting.
02:02Okay, my first instinct was correct.
02:04And this is a fascinating AM5 CPU, a Ryzen 5 7500F.
02:10AMD clearly continuing ripping off Intel branding.
02:14But this is a CPU that's actually not available in the Western market.
02:17And it's like a budget six core AM5 chip.
02:21And as far as I can tell, the main differences between it and a 7600
02:25is a slightly lower boost frequency and that it has no iGPU,
02:29which makes the F plagiarism even funnier.
02:32And it costs $170 CAD, including shipping, which is quite a bit cheaper than the 7600.
02:38But you are getting it shipped in a little bit of plastic they found in a bin and with no cooler.
02:43This one feels and sounds very air coolery.
02:48The Ice 200 Pro.
02:54This was the cheapest AM5 compatible CPU cooler I could find,
02:58which cost a whopping $10 CAD, including shipping.
03:02And it comes with two whole heat pipes.
03:07This one's easy.
03:07It's obviously RAM.
03:10Oh, we got some RAM inspired by spinners on a 90s lowrider.
03:15And it's about as performance oriented as said lowrider,
03:18which cost me $98 CAD,
03:20which considering that it's 16 gigs of peasant DDR5, that's pretty expensive.
03:26This box feels power supply-y and by power supply-y, I mean low yield dirty bomb,
03:32because that's the only kind of power supply you get for no money off of Aliexpress.
03:37Oh yeah, birth that fake 600 watt power supply.
03:42Oh, it comes with an RGB fan.
03:44So never mind, this thing is going to be a beast.
03:46There's some terrifying frat bro tattoo on the side.
03:50Whoa, it's equipped with a 6 plus 2 pin VGA card port.
03:55Wow.
03:56But despite these uber premium features, I got it for a steal at just $40 CAD.
04:04Oh, a gigabyte motherboard.
04:05So we have a new top fire hazard contender.
04:08And our pyro catalyst board cost $130 CAD,
04:12which for a B650 board is actually very cheap.
04:15This last one's either a graphics card or a flotation device.
04:21Those are looking like some very Invidia-y colors in there, which...
04:27Did I buy the right graphics card?
04:30Yeah, no, I've never been wronged by a graphics card box
04:33that says gaming graphics card on the front,
04:36and that's basically all the information it gives you.
04:39Although it is real comforting to note
04:41that Mulsanne graphics cards are equipped with an upgraded power solution,
04:46great cooling system and excellent connectivity.
04:49And our confidence inspiring mystery GPU came in at $59 CAD.
04:54But that price is a little bit of a debate
04:56because shipping costs more than the GPU itself,
04:59bringing up the total to $132 CAD.
05:03And then finally, we just have the case left,
05:05which is by good old Goldenfield, a brand we know well on the channel.
05:10But we'll have a closer look at the case once we build it,
05:12which brings the total cost of our cheapest AM5 build to $815 CAD,
05:18which includes the obscene shipping on a couple of our components.
05:23But with that, let's cobble our weirdly advanced AliExpress abomination together.
05:28Now, the first wildly exciting thing about this motherboard
05:35is despite costing about as much as a Big Mac,
05:38we still get an integrated rear IO shield,
05:41something that I'm so excited about.
05:44Said IOs, not great, no USB-C, but at least we get Wi-Fi.
05:49Other than that, there's not a whole lot to say about the motherboard,
05:52other than we do only have two memory slots,
05:55which should make this a very good at overclocking.
05:57Also, no CMOS battery.
06:11Next, we got to drop our Nittak Shadow RGB in,
06:14which I don't know, surely shadow and RGB is mutually exclusive.
06:22Oh, look at that chrome.
06:24You know what they say, plastic chrome is the classiest material.
06:28I mean, it matches the plain metal aesthetic on the motherboard,
06:32which at this price point is just a happy coincidence.
06:34Another nice thing about this Gigabyte motherboard
06:36is that it doesn't have those stupid seesaw half RAM clips.
06:40This is way better.
06:42This is just such funny packaging for an SSD.
06:56Ooh, PCIe Gen 3, fancy.
07:07Our dollar menu cooler is next.
07:13I'm just so excited to see how this thing handles an AM5 CPU.
07:17Now, first, we get our Viking sachet of thermal paste.
07:23Now, when it comes to mounting the actual cooler,
07:25there aren't any instructions,
07:30so I'm just going to assume that I stick it down on here,
07:35and then, yeah, there we go.
07:39That's mounted.
07:40Now, again, weirdly, all of this stuff is so coordinated.
07:44This was not on purpose.
07:45I just bought the cheapest of everything,
07:47but somehow it's kind of working aesthetically.
07:51And before I forget, let me just quickly pop a CMOS battery in here
07:54so I don't spend hours suffering trying to get the PC working later.
08:04Oh, it's also silver.
08:07How does all of it match?
08:08I don't understand.
08:09Apparently, Past David is way better at shopping on AliExpress than I anticipated.
08:21I mean, I guess the reason it all matches
08:23is because it's just cheaper not to paint stuff,
08:26but that's a pretty cool-looking case.
08:28I like that the chrome handles matches our RAM,
08:31and there does seem to be a little bit of front ventilation, which is cool.
08:34This, like, bare steel look, it's almost Apple-y.
08:38And the power button.
08:42Not meaning to sound extremely pretentious,
08:44but that's a little unrefined for my liking.
08:46But before we start opening this stuff up and dropping things in,
08:49we need to get our power supply unpackaged.
08:55Oh, I just realized this is the same brand as the air cooler.
08:59So I guess this is the power supply equivalent of that air cooler,
09:03which really puts into perspective how terrible this power supply is going to be.
09:09Oh, yeah, there's just such a satisfying
09:15tinny hollow feeling to these power supplies, which just screams quality.
09:20But at least they weren't lying about the RGB fan, I think.
09:24It looks like it'll light up.
09:26And considering where the power supply sits in the case,
09:30we're gonna get to see it as well.
09:32Unfortunately, we will also be seeing this atrocity of power supply cables.
09:37No way!
09:38They included an installation guide for the power supply, but not their CPU cooler.
09:47Oh, I just noticed another concerning thing.
09:49It just says 220 volt on it.
09:51Everywhere I looked, the power supply just had 200 volt compatibility listed.
09:56So I had to make another plan.
09:58Okay, you know what?
09:58I'm still gonna install it.
09:59I bought a step-up transformer, so it should be fine, I guess.
10:07Wow, that is really dumb, because like you see,
10:13we've got this fan pulling air from the hot system inside,
10:17and the back of the power supply blocks all of the front ventilation.
10:23This cable is also the wrong length,
10:25so it's like super in the way of the motherboard, but you know, that's fine.
10:37Okay, so now we just need to somehow figure out the cable management in here,
10:46which may not take too long, because we don't have a whole lot of options.
10:50Luckily, we get some of the most ghetto looking zip ties.
11:02Now, the cable management, if you can call it that, didn't go too terribly.
11:11I mean, there's still some clumps going on,
11:14but we could hide a bunch of the runs behind the motherboard, which helps.
11:19The same goes for like the front panel connectors and stuff.
11:22So it doesn't look that awful, I think.
11:25Oh, now, unfortunately, accessory-wise,
11:28we didn't get any super dodgy Molex to PCIe power adapters, which is very disappointing.
11:37Wild plastic aside, this was the cheapest AMD graphics card I could get,
11:42and I know that because it said cheapest in the name,
11:45but it's kind of crazy, because this is an RX 580, which is quite a powerful graphics card.
11:51Now, again, the purchase price was deceptive,
11:53because the shipping more than doubled that price.
11:56And when it comes to I.O., it looks like it's even going to be the real thing,
11:59which is very exciting.
12:01And we even get some heat pipes in our great cooling system.
12:13And just like that, our AM5 AliExpress build was done.
12:17So now all I had to do was wait till the next day for my step-up transformer to arrive.
12:21And then suffering.
12:27So this is the step-up transformer I bought.
12:29It was like 90 Canadian dollars.
12:31And apparently this is a 1500 watt variant.
12:35Very fancy.
12:36And because of this, we can now use a 230 volt output.
12:40So I've got everything plugged in.
12:42Let's...
12:45And then we turn this on.
12:49And that's a promising start.
12:51Oh, I just realized I haven't plugged anything else into it yet.
12:54Wait, give me a second.
12:55Okay, so I've plugged everything in.
12:58We've restarted the system.
12:59So hopefully we get a video out.
13:04We very much did not get a signal out, even after the system rebooted itself.
13:09And I tried every output on the back of the graphics card.
13:12Okay, well, we're not getting a signal out of it.
13:14That's very fun.
13:15And because the motherboard doesn't have postcodes, I have no idea what's wrong with it.
13:19But I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's probably that graphics card.
13:23Because it was suspiciously cheap.
13:25So I'm gonna swap something else in there and see if we get a signal out then.
13:29But unfortunately, swapping in a known working RX 580 still didn't give us a signal out.
13:34I then decided to swap out the War Crimes power supply, which also didn't help.
13:38Okay, so after a while of tinkering, we know now that it's not the power supply,
13:43because this power supply doesn't work either.
13:45And it's not the graphics card.
13:47So I guess next I'm gonna try the RAM.
13:50And once I dropped some trusty Patriot DDR5 in there, the system worked.
13:56For now.
13:56Look at that.
13:57We're getting a signal out with our Patriot Viper RAM in there.
14:03So apparently, Chrome RAM is not a good idea.
14:09I then installed some Windows and graphics card drivers, which went flawlessly.
14:13But when I tried to launch CS2, my hope was again shattered.
14:18Hey, yes, and we've even got an overlay.
14:24What's happening?
14:25What was happening was the PC crashed.
14:28No.
14:30And when I restarted.
14:31I don't know, man, this PC's on drugs.
14:34It seemed like the reason the system crashed was because the graphics card drivers corrupted.
14:38The version of your AMD software is not compatible with your graphics driver.
14:43How is my driver not compatible with my driver?
14:46That doesn't even make sense.
14:48I then DDU wiped and reinstalled my drivers.
14:51But when I tried launching CSGO, the same thing happened again.
14:54I think it just crashed again.
14:58Oh, please.
15:01I then tried a different version of the graphics driver, which did the same thing.
15:04There's suddenly no readings from the GPU.
15:07No matter what I did with every fresh driver install,
15:10after just a couple seconds of load on the GPU,
15:13the driver would corrupt and the system would crash.
15:15I then swapped the AliExpress graphics card out for the RX 580 I bought from Wish
15:20I looked at a couple of videos ago.
15:22And after a quick driver install, it worked.
15:25It's running!
15:27Finally, we have lost two components in the meantime,
15:31but with different RAM and a different graphics card in here,
15:35well, it's the same kind of graphics card, but it's not the same graphics card.
15:39We're actually getting quite a lot of frame rate playing CS2.
15:44It's quite stuttery, but that is an issue that CS2 does seem to have sometimes,
15:49even with the bots.
15:51Although that is particularly bad.
15:53This is a 1080p low.
15:54I'm not sure if I said with 15% utilization on our 5GHz Ryzen 5,
16:01temperatures are great with that tiny little cooler.
16:03Oh, I actually need to put the side panel back on.
16:06Now moving over to Cyberpunk at 1080p low settings,
16:09we're getting 60 frames per second.
16:11Honestly, it scales down pretty well visually.
16:15It doesn't look terrible.
16:17But having said that, now that we have higher utilization on our CPU,
16:22the temperature has quickly gone way higher.
16:2585C with just 37-ish percent utilization.
16:30So it's not going great, but much better than I thought it was going to go.
16:33With that $10 cooler, I was expecting like a category 5 house fire with that thing.
16:38Doom Eternal at 1080p medium settings on paper is running very well,
16:42about 90 frames per second.
16:44But despite that high frame rate, it doesn't feel or look particularly great.
16:49I'm not entirely sure why that's happening.
16:51Generally, the system ran the crap out of esports titles at 1080p,
16:55as you'd expect from a system with an RX 580 in it,
16:58a graphics card that's maybe not quite well endowed enough to keep up with that AM5 CPU.
17:03Speaking of CPU, I did run Cinebench R20 on the 7500F,
17:08and it is a reasonable amount slower than my 7600X,
17:11but there's also a pretty big price gap between the two CPUs.
17:15Also, when looking at Crystal Disk Mark,
17:17that SSD's performance isn't a complete abomination for what it is,
17:21which just leaves one last mystery.
17:23What's wrong with our RX 580?
17:26Well, frankly, I have no idea what's wrong with it.
17:29I took the cooler off, and it looks RX 580 to me.
17:33I even launched GPU-Z, and it also seems to think that it's just an RX 580.
17:39So my best guess at this point is that there isn't much of a mystery here,
17:42and it's just a dying GPU,
17:44which means we had to drag our system across the finish line with two dead components in it.
17:51That's not great.
17:52Now, if you do want to see an all-AM5 system with a much higher rate of component survival,
17:58check out the video that will be suggested in a second,
18:01and also subscribe to the channel while you're there,
18:03and yeah, that brings me to the end of the video.
18:06Bye-bye.
18:21you