Gadgetory

I think as computer enthusiasts we've probably all been through this at least once we get all wrapped up like planning and building a sick new gaming rig and we're like super excited and then we realize as we're plugging it into all of our old peripherals that maybe it would have been wise to save some of our budget to upgrade the rest of the experience oops so today's video is gonna be something a little special we are going to be attempting to take this broken monitor which we got on eBay today for a hundred and twenty dollars and make it a fully functional Horus a d20 7qd which is a 600 u.s. dollar monitor new with this replacement panel that we also got on eBay well that one was Aliexpress Oh what would you say our success chances are today they're either like 100 percent or it just doesn't work it's like all or nothing speaking of all or nothing check out glass wire at the link in the video description glass wire allows you to instantly see your current and past network activity detect malware and block badly behaving apps on your PC or Android device use offer code Linus to get 25% off glass wire again that's linked below monitors get broken in transit all the time and because their housings and stands are typically made from reasonably robust materials the most common thing could die is the panel itself I've actually had it happen where a monitor like tipped over in its box I took it out and boom gigantic crack across the screen so finding broken monitors on sites like eBay is actually usually as simple as searching gaming monitor for parts or broken or damaged gaming monitor and you should have a whole bunch to choose from now we went with this one for a couple of reasons number one is that it's a pretty darn nice monitor we actually reviewed it a while back it's only three think but it's one of the few free sink models that Nvidia actually signed off on as a g-sync compatible so it's a pretty no compromises experience and it's got a bunch of great features 2560 by 1440 resolution HDR support 1 millisecond response time what else is it got IPS panel it's a pretty sick monitor especially for a hundred and twenty bucks now should we fire this thing up and see what happens sure I can't think of any reason not to might as well just make sure that it is broken maybe we've got a working monitor 420 bucks so once you find a broken monitor that you like on eBay I'd recommend finding that you can actually get the panel that you want before pulling the plug obviously so go on something like panel look and search your monitor model number and then you'll be able to find the panel number which you can then put into Aliexpress or somewhere similar and find out how expensive that's going to be to get a chip to you I'd recommend getting something from Acer Asus or LG they seem to be the easiest ones to get panels for Samsung I just had no luck for it all same with Alienware how lucky are you feeling today in this situation like zero [Laughter] just powered on seems to be seems to be powered on it's detected so and it's correct yeah yep that's definitely broken that's a crackin actually since we have it here sanity check nope Stan seems to be just fine no this is actually like a super decent monitor so it's been a while but I think with these no bezel ones you can't have to pry this up is that right do you know how to disassemble this no I couldn't find anything on disassembly it is pretty new the good news is we don't really have to worry about yeah careful with it yeah oh I'm making progress you want a real man screwdriver nope I don't think that's such help oh here we go that sounded like a couple clips broke but they're broken then engaged hey it's really in there maybe it doesn't need to come out like when we're done if you're able to use the menu that would be pretty great I think they're just really really big clips hey nice now it's coming out trust us for professionals we've got some some attachment doodads here what are they called again no means yeah now I'd give that a sold like c-plus for cable roading so now things should get a little bit simpler we've just got a handful of screws to remove I mean is this the point where we should pop out our replacement panel and see if it even physically looks like it might go in here yeah okay I think I get more concerned than you because I'm typically the one paying for them well like the idea of this was that in the end I just want to buy it oh really so oh so we're building your monitor right now basically yes oh wow how'd you pull that scam off that was literally like the entire idea for the video just like I'm too cheap to buy a monitor so this looks this looks really close yeah that looks right so this one guys we're only laying it down like this because it does have a protective covering on it but this little piece of the housing here looks identical this PCB looks the same all these mounting points look the same I'm not saying that makes this a guarantee I'm just saying that makes our chances a lot better than if they weren't the same okay so as long as this is functional this should work now some of this stuff we don't even have to detach necessarily actually how is that even attached it's just taped on that's pretty typical Oh oh yeah I know right really I know cuz it has like mounting holes on it no no that I've seen this before I swear huh doing the research for this I was actually shocked at how simple it is to just make your own monitor maybe that's the next stage huh try to salvage this tape if you can because there's no real reason not to reuse it Boop okay that's the part where if I accidentally bridge some of these contacts because I'm sure there's some pretty decent-sized capacitors on the other side I could die that's what okay you were paying attention to where this was routed right yeah that goes down to here so this right here is the cable that carries the data from the display controller and scaler this unit here to the panel itself so we don't want to bum this up that's presumably kind of hard to find a replacement for oh yeah so there's pretty much no point removing this tape from the plastic frame because we just want to slide our new panel right in and then lay the tape back down yeah remember that LGA 3647 motherboard you broke oh yeah that was rough actually that wasn't rough had one to us like the next day that doesn't make it good so that's it the training wheels are off there's no protector on the panel now yep all right that was relatively simple I kind of wish we'd taken a picture before we took everything apart but honestly you should be fine okay so that seems to be cable routed yeah this one I think goes in here yeah get that lined up just right so we can take down there's a like a ridge here yeah it kind of settles in there so I'm ready to put in the other side of our ribbon cable it's not too delicate of an operation compared to working within like a notebook or something like that yeah maybe you could give me a piece of tape to hold it down this has been too easy I'm getting concerned yeah well the same thing happened last time we replaced a panel we just popped it apart smacked it back together and we were like okay so that's it theoretically this is assembled now should we test it before we bother putting it totally back together I was about to ask you the same thing I kind of like the drama better if we reassemble the entire thing okay I want to line me up here Oh hold on I got a few cables to put in yeah hook up that RGB yeah those are really important ones all right do you remember how this went in I think it slid the the bottom had to go in first right yes okay there we go see how many of these clips we didn't break actually there's not that many Clips broken what are you even talking about this is on here perfectly fine yeah it's pretty good no one's gonna be able to tell all right here I might as well plug this in here since you're out holding you hey is the panel on um yeah it was briefly um can we put on the stand yeah it's just like kind of difficult there you go okay so so far the RGB is working both on the back of the monitor and on the stand that's a good sign I don't know that this has DisplayPort 1.4 so it probably won't be able to do the full thing but that's fine we can go get a gaming rig to test it properly if it actually works how do I even display on this there we go see there's theoretically it's on Oh could it be that there's more wrong with it than we thought because I think I just turned it off I mean that's the thing about a broken product is it could be broken in more than one way do you know that your mini DP works it's worked in the past let's get something else what pump is this uh-oh that's course there's new one yeah it's there hydro excellent it's actually made of like clear nylon so it's like super like durable and won't stain and stuff isn't that cool I got to tell you I'm having doubts so I guess the moment we find out if I get a monitor or if you get a monitor yes yes just like that okay me a keyboard Nelson so does this thing work you'll be pretty unfortunate just have like a cross here oh nice dashboard one potential snag right now so we can see it's clearly running at 60 Hertz so we don't know if that's because it can't run it more yes yeah I would wait until I actually see it running not too shabby huh all right let's grab didn't pick somebody yeah it's kind of like the second moment of truth right here so the thing is guys just because you got a compatible panel doesn't necessarily mean that it's an a panel maybe you got not an a panel no okay no no no no that one was fine just a piece of dust okay black looks good so we want to turn it green so we can look for something like a a red pixel that's standing out to us looks good mm-hmm I don't see any blue pixels standing out no dead ones oh what's that I think that might be a dead red pixel bummer I'd say you actually did pretty well here yeah yep I think you've got a dead red summer pixel so he's got 1/3 of a dead pixel on the whole panel and it's not right in the center so one thing that's also really possible here is that the calibration could just be completely off I'm gonna take the time to actually use our display calibrator and put it on here but for anyone else a pretty good method is you just take a piece of paper put it up there change the RGB values and your monitor OSD and boom I'd love to know if g-sync works though that's interesting well it didn't pick up g-sync compatibility what drivers are on this it could be old actually so one odd behavior is that I noticed a little bit of fringing on the display earlier and it turns out that it's running at 4k even though this is a 1440p panel but then it knew to run it at 150 percent scaling so everything looked the right size but there's a little bit of so there's some artifacts on text so it doesn't look crisp we're gonna get the graphics driver installed though and that should fix that okay moment of truth time here setup G seg whoo all right freaking awesome so I guess that right there is kind of why this is a good idea as opposed to just buying a cheap monitor because this is in the end with the panel and like broken monitor slightly more expensive than just buying a 1440p 144 hertz display yeah the original plan was we were gonna get the panel for closer to like one hundred and fifty hundred and eighty bucks sounds like 140 and the whole solution was gonna be about three hundred dollars but now what did we end up with yeah so it's been like two months the order was canceled three times and in the end we paid more like three hundred dollars for the panel so that's still a hundred and eighty dollars less than new for a very respectable decent compatible gaming monitor and what forty-five minutes of time yeah something like that well for the actual upgrade not the like while doing all the research well the research was pretty quick to the two months of canceled orders on aliexpress weren't too fun so this is your new monitor that yeah see there's good ideas for videos and then there's good ideas for videos that are also because I'm really cheap don't include that I think that's fine that looks good not bad not bad at all I need a better guy do they have headshots I think on those if you get them like when their mouths open it's extra damage okay awesome you should try it all right speaking of awesome and things you should try fresh books fresh books is the small business accounting solution built for how you want to work so whether you're a freelancer or a small business owner it's a simple way to be more productive more organized and to get paid faster with fresh books you can create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds you can set up online payments to get paid up to four days faster you can see when your client has seen your invoice to put an end to the guessing games and you can take the whole experience with you on the go with their fully featured apps for iOS and Android so check it out at fresh ebooks.com slash tech tips and make sure your enter Linus tech tips in the how did you hear about us section so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like the one I'm wearing this is our Elemental shirt and oh yeah also this hoodie and our community forum which you should totally join