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I Bought Out This Bankrupt Computer Store's Inventory - YouTube
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[0]
- We're going back in
time, ladies and gentlemen.
[3]
That's right, I just bought
out the remaining inventory
[6]
of EXPC, a long dead PC store
that hasn't even had a website
[11]
for the last eight years.
[14]
So all of this stuff in here
[16]
has been sitting around
collecting dust in a warehouse
[19]
for nearly a decade, probably longer,
[21]
judging on the state of
some of the packaging.
[24]
Do you wanna dig through it with me?
[25]
Do you want me to tell
you about our sponsor?
[27]
Thanks to Pulseway for
sponsoring this video.
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Try for free today at the
link in the video description.
[37]
(bright jingle)
[46]
There's four boxes?
(energetic music)
[47]
- [Colin] Yeah, this
whole skid is all stuff.
[49]
- Oh, so we actually bought the
entire like remaining stock.
[53]
- [Colin] Uh-huh.
[53]
- This is a GPU water cooler,
[56]
but it's unlike anything you
would find on the market today.
[60]
Oh, this is gonna be fun.
[63]
You knew some of the wildest stuff
[65]
had to be from Thermaltake, right?
[67]
Like what do these guys not make?
[68]
Oh my gosh.
[71]
Remember laptop expansion
cards, ladies and gentlemen?
[75]
You could add a whopping four
USB 2 ports to your laptop.
[79]
Nicole actually still has a
laptop that takes card, guys.
[82]
Whoa, this one's got USB 2 and FireWire.
[86]
You wanna ingest some footage, Mark?
[88]
- [Mark] Oh yeah.
[89]
- At real time speed?
[91]
What is this pill?
[92]
This is a pill from Buffalo.
[95]
You know, the external hard drive guys?
[97]
Okay, I must know what the pill is.
[99]
$9.50, this is the medicine
that your keyboard needs.
[104]
It's got a twist top.
[105]
Fetch me a laptop.
[107]
Ah, yes.
[108]
Now for a product demonstration.
[112]
Yeah, I don't think
I'd pay $9.50 for this.
[115]
I gotta do this thing, Thermaltake.
[118]
For the price of just 14.99,
[120]
you could get the Cyclo cooling memo.
[124]
Cyclone cooling for memory.
[127]
Oh, man.
[129]
Let me show you guys how we
cooled our memory, 2000s style.
[134]
These look like LED fans.
[135]
I bet you $100 that they're blue.
[138]
They're so weak.
[139]
The RGB memory under it
makes these little pin LEDs
[143]
look super unimpressive.
[145]
Surprisingly quiet for having been sitting
[147]
for over a decade.
[149]
Move.
[150]
These guys, I never understood
it, as an enthusiast,
[154]
I was like, why do they exist?
[156]
Why do you get to charge $12
[158]
for the world's most
basic 80 millimeter fan,
[160]
even back then?
[162]
Did say 80, I meant 70.
[163]
And that's the answer, because Star Tech
[166]
has one of basically everything.
[171]
Hold on a second.
[174]
I recognize this packaging.
[177]
This was exactly the
same scheme and packaging
[180]
that NCIX used for its
house brand nGear products.
[184]
These were the shizz though,
taking your floppy drive
[187]
'cause like, who needed one of those,
[189]
and turning it into a card reader
[192]
with that SD, MMC, CompactFlash,
SmartMedia, Memory Stick.
[199]
Man, do you guys remember when Sony
[200]
had so much proprietary bullcrap?
[203]
Me too 'cause it was yesterday.
[205]
And also 20 years ago.
[207]
WanTeng series USB port
equipment plug and play.
[213]
What even is it?
[214]
A USB to parallel cable so you
can plug in your old printer.
[217]
- [Colin] Oh, I legitimately
might need that for my lathe.
[220]
- You need this?
- [Colin] Yep.
[221]
- Take it.
[222]
Removable fram for three and a half inch
[224]
and two and a half inch HDD.
[234]
This is before my time.
[237]
Holy crap.
[238]
You would use a five
and a quarter inch bay,
[240]
so that's your optical drive bay,
[242]
you'd plug this chungus
bad boy into it, I mean,
[246]
that's why we had full towers
that were this freaking big.
[250]
Boy, have we ever come
a long way on these?
[252]
Got your USB-C two and a half inch drives,
[256]
got these little tiny mobile SSDs,
[258]
you're just off to the races.
[261]
But no, this, this is technology.
[264]
But at least you had security.
[266]
You know, you got the lock on the front.
[268]
Okay, now we're getting
into the real good stuff.
[270]
Zalman has tried just
about everything, I think.
[275]
And this is their 5.1
channel headphone amplifier.
[279]
Colin, how much you wanna
bet that this still works?
[285]
- [Colin] 20 bucks.
[286]
- 20 bucks, okay, that's too
much, too rich for my blood.
[289]
Hold on a second.
[291]
This thing is crazy.
[294]
What?
[295]
No, Colin, it is not, in fact, USB.
[298]
- [Colin] It's just RCA.
[299]
- Volume control interface
between 5.1 channel headphones.
[305]
You can plug two users into
it, so you've got your front,
[308]
rear, and center/subwoofer
channels for both,
[312]
separate volume knobs.
[314]
Who would have bought this?
[316]
And then you've got whatever your sources,
[318]
front left, front right, (mumbles).
[320]
You know what, Colin? I was wrong.
[322]
This would totally work.
[324]
Not that you'd want to 'cause
it's really, really stupid.
[330]
Thanks, Digital Surround.
[332]
Look at this flow meter.
[334]
You wanna know how fast
your water's going?
[339]
What about this?
[341]
It stinks.
[348]
That's weird.
[351]
Bye.
[352]
TV capture, I remember TV tuner cards.
[356]
I really wish that this
had been more of a thing.
[359]
It was because of resistance
from the cable cutters,
[362]
you guys know that, right?
[363]
They wanted you to sit and
watch the freaking ads.
[366]
(beep)
[367]
Ah, these were fun.
[371]
Okay.
[371]
So we've got both an ATI
Silencer and an NV Silencer 4.
[377]
And as you guys can probably
guess, these were for ATI
[380]
and Nvidia cards respectively
[382]
and these were fricking
awesome, Arctic Cooling, man.
[386]
They were the schiz back in the day.
[388]
And this is not nearly old enough, Colin,
[391]
if this was your intention.
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Most graphics cards back
in the day were single slot
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and they would have these
wimpy little coolers, in fact,
[397]
in a lot of cases, they
wouldn't even be configured
[400]
like this one where they're
blowing air toward the back
[402]
of the case, they would just be sitting
[404]
on the card right here chilling
just blowing air around
[407]
into your computer case, and
what that obviously affected
[410]
was your CPU temps, your
motherboard temps, everything else,
[413]
because even back then, your GPU was one
[415]
of the hottest running
components in the system.
[417]
Arctic Cooling allowed you
to put what is actually,
[420]
by modern standards, a
pretty decent looking cooler
[425]
on your GPU after the fact
that had multiple benefits.
[430]
Better performance, quieter.
[433]
And they had the added benefit
of kicking all the heat out
[436]
of your system.
[437]
So check this out.
[438]
You got your copper cold plate.
[440]
You've got cooling for your memory chips.
[442]
Then you had your cooler.
[444]
This guy right here would go like this,
[446]
blowing air through these fins.
[447]
And then you can see it's
actually kind of ducted here
[449]
in its shape.
[450]
So you'd have your stock
PCI cover right here.
[452]
And then they would give
you a second vented one
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to install next to it,
effectively turning your GPU
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into a modern style dual slot card.
[460]
So it would expel all
the heat from your case
[462]
through the back IO panel, and
then this is the best part.
[465]
Check this out.
[466]
Okay, we've seen coolers for
the backs of graphics cards.
[470]
In fact, a lot of coolers come
with a backplate these days,
[472]
even this one comes with a backplate.
[474]
But this was back when they
cared about freaking cooling
[477]
on the backplate.
[479]
Your card would be this thick.
[481]
Oh no.
[484]
I love this.
[486]
This is amazing.
[488]
I remember these.
[489]
Jake.
[490]
You wanna make the server go faster, boys?
[492]
- [Jake] Yeah?
[493]
- You gotta put one of
these on your hard drive.
[496]
- [Jake] Oh, I know what that is.
[498]
- Actually, oh, can I have
one of the new server ones?
[501]
Thanks, Jake.
[502]
I can't promise I won't
put thermal paste on it.
[504]
It actually served multiple purposes,
[506]
these things were kind of cool
[508]
if you had like a 10,000
RPM WD Raptor drive
[513]
or something like that.
[514]
Basically, you pop off the top,
[517]
and then you can see the
inside is both heatsinked
[521]
and yet insulated.
[524]
Why would that be, you might ask?
[525]
They served two purposes,
one was anti-vibration.
[528]
So the only drives that needed
a cooling enclosure like this
[531]
were ones that spun at higher
RPMs, high performance drives.
[534]
And they tended to vibrate more.
[536]
So you've got this thick
foam padding right here
[538]
that theoretically will make
it vibrate less, I guess.
[542]
Oh my gosh, this thing
feels so chungus in here.
[547]
It totally doesn't fit, and you know what,
[548]
maybe I have the drive in upside down.
[550]
Hold on, hold on.
[552]
Yeah, IDE interfaces were at the bottom.
[554]
Oh my God, it still works.
[555]
Tell me this doesn't feel
like performance hard drive.
[558]
You can't.
[560]
- [Jake] It feels terrible.
[561]
- Shut up, it does not,
I want a second opinion.
[564]
Colin, come touch my hard drive.
[566]
All right, let's toss it in the pot.
[567]
Just kidding, just kidding,
just kidding, just kidding.
[570]
Should have seen the look
on Jake's face, here you go.
[573]
Oh, I forgot about this one.
[577]
Oh my gosh, okay.
[579]
So this is Thermaltake doing
what Thermaltake does best,
[582]
ripping off someone else's product.
[584]
So you can see it's basically
[585]
that Arctic Cooling cooler, right?
[589]
Except Thermaltake added their
own bizarro land spin to it
[595]
and added water cooling to it.
[597]
So it actually does both,
[599]
it's like a hybrid air/water cooler,
[602]
and there were a handful
of these back in the day.
[605]
I actually reviewed one back
when I was ghost-writing
[608]
for Hardware Canucks.
[609]
You managed to bring me every
8800 card except the one
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that this fits, this only goes on the GTX.
[615]
- [Colin] I tried.
[615]
- It's okay, it's okay.
[617]
These coolers were actually kind of neat
[619]
because they used air cooling
for your memory and your VRMs
[624]
and all that good stuff.
[625]
And then they used water
for the GPU itself,
[628]
do we have a screwdriver, can
I have an iFixit kit handy?
[630]
The main benefit of this
approach is that it allowed you
[633]
to focus all of your
radiator power, right,
[636]
so all of your cooling
capacity, on the GPU,
[639]
which was what really
mattered for overclocking.
[641]
And it kept all of this heat
from your DRAM and your VRMs
[647]
and all that good stuff out of your water,
[649]
so you could just dump
that out of the system
[651]
with air cooling and then use
all of your radiator capacity
[654]
to get the lowest possible
temps on your GPU.
[657]
The only issue with that theory
[659]
is that you bought a
Thermaltake water block.
[662]
So let's go ahead and open this up.
[664]
And we're gonna find what I'm expecting
[666]
to be a very rudimentary block design.
[669]
Holy (beep), is this just sealed?
[672]
We would have to cut it open.
[673]
What were these screws even?
[674]
Oh, they attached it to the heat sink.
[677]
How hard is it for us to cut
open a copper thing like this,
[680]
just saw it in half?
[683]
- [Colin] The bandsaw is
pretty dead right now.
[685]
- The bandsaw is dead?
[687]
Can we throw it in the mill
[687]
and just (imitates slicing noise)?
[689]
- [Colin] Sure?
[690]
- Awesome, thanks, Colin.
[691]
While Colin's working on getting us a look
[693]
at that Thermaltake block,
[694]
I wanna show you guys
something really special,
[696]
this is not actually
from EXPC, this is from-
[699]
♪ Brian the Electrician ♪
[701]
- He dug it up somewhere, I have no idea.
[704]
If CPU fan stops working,
CPU may become too hot.
[709]
New CPU fan must be installed.
[712]
If CPU fan is not working,
look. The red light is on.
[717]
But listen, the alarm is heard.
[720]
The green light is on
when CPU Guard is on duty.
[723]
You guys ready for this?
[725]
Whoa, this thing is older than I thought.
[729]
I thought the PCB was black,
[732]
which would be an indicator of the age.
[735]
Not only is it green,
it's this kind of green.
[740]
And as far as I can tell, this
board was manually assembled.
[743]
It was quite common for
Molex-powered peripherals
[746]
to have a Y splitter in the package.
[748]
And the idea was that
a lot of power supplies
[750]
didn't have extra Molex connectors.
[753]
So if you wanted to
plug in your CPU Guard,
[757]
oh, it's a little crusty,
[760]
you'd need another cable coming off of it
[762]
so that you could plug
in your optical drive
[764]
or whatever else it was that
was plugged into it originally.
[767]
The green light is on
when CPU Guard is on duty.
[774]
The system just shut down.
[777]
All I did was power this
board, am I gonna...
[783]
Oh my God, this is not turning on.
[786]
I don't know if we're gonna
be taking another crack
[788]
at CPU Guard, I was so excited to hear it.
[791]
Look at the size of the speaker on it.
[793]
Like this thing was gonna freaking go.
[796]
Oh, you know what?
[798]
I think there's a manufacturing defect.
[800]
There's a ball of solder
in between these pins here.
[804]
Hold on.
[806]
I bet if I pick that out, it'll work.
[808]
(beeping)
[810]
It works!
[813]
Okay, it's really annoying.
One moment, please.
[817]
(whirring)
[819]
Okay, okay, I need a crappy
fan to absolutely destroy,
[824]
wire strippers, and a sacrificial Molex.
[827]
Stay in there, this is
such a cheap housing.
[832]
It just falls right out.
[834]
Okay, where's that damn Zalman fan then?
[836]
(tape fast-forward screeching)
[841]
Oh yeah.
[842]
Oh yeah.
[844]
Okay, you guys ready?
[845]
You get, oh!
[846]
You get, oh!
[848]
It's sparking.
[848]
It was completely not grounded in any way,
[852]
even though there's a ground
pin running right through it
[856]
to the power supply.
[858]
How is that even possible?
[861]
Okay, look, I'm not saying the
CPU Guard is the best product
[864]
in the world, I'm just saying that,
[865]
when your CPU fan stops...
[869]
(beeping)
[873]
Red light, CPU fan is not working.
[877]
(laughs)
[881]
Oh, it works, I love it, sort of.
[884]
(laughs)
[885]
The last thing I wanted to look at,
[887]
the inside of this
Thermaltake water block.
[890]
Yes, my friends, that is
basically a heat sink style,
[896]
like north bridge heat sink
style of fin construction.
[902]
This would be so restrictive
'cause your flow comes
[906]
in the side.
[908]
And then they don't even have
like a channel at the back,
[911]
like an open channel at the
back for it to flow through
[914]
and come out the other one.
[915]
It's not just cheap, it's stupid.
[919]
How could you possibly
design something this bad?
[923]
Is there a flow-through like
that I'm not seeing here?
[926]
There isn't.
[928]
There's no path for the
water to make its way
[931]
to the other side.
[932]
This is just a solid wall of fin.
[935]
It would stop your water
flow dead, basically.
[937]
Oh, you know what?
[939]
It's probably the domed top.
[940]
- [Colin] Yeah, there's
definitely an air gap.
[941]
- [Linus] Yeah, but there
were barely any places
[944]
for the water to come out into the thing.
[946]
- [Colin] And that's
why it had bad reviews!
[948]
- Yeah.
[948]
Hey, reviews, the system works.
[951]
Hey, sponsors, the system
works for that too.
[954]
This video is brought to you by...
[955]
Thanks, Squarespace, for
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[957]
We use Squarespace,
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both our linusmediagroup.com
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Thanks so much for following along
[1001]
in this archeological exploration of tech.
[1003]
If you guys wanna see more like this,
[1005]
why not check out my
attic exploration video
[1007]
where I unearthed some
long forgotten history
[1009]
from the early days of Linus Media Group?
[1011]
And there's some fun
tech in there as well.
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