Gadgetory

so there are a lot of great reasons to use a test bench instead of a conventional case let's say for example you like the look or maybe you swap your hardware out really frequently or I mean those are really the main reasons that you might want to do it anyway we use tons of them here at Linus Media Group because we're constantly benchmarking graphics card CPUs coolers all sorts of things basically all of our writers have one or even two or three test benches in the case of Anthony but as you guys might know money's been a little tight around here ever since I broke that Xeon Platinum CPU so we needed some new test benches but we didn't have the funds for these open bench tables that we like so much enter Aliexpress where we got this test bench for how much was actually a little bit under $30 how bad could it be definitely not as good as our sponsor for today's video fresh books fresh books accounting software is custom built for how you want to work helping you stay organized and productive try out their 30 day free trial at fresh books comm forward slash tech tips we'll have that linked below so the open bench table here is pretty much what we consider to be the gold standard in test benches it does have some drawbacks for example their radiator mounting could be vastly improved but it's completely toolless it's really easy to access it folds completely flat and it fits pretty much all the hardware that you could want for 95% of the testing that you'd want to do without any restricted ability to get at things or any restrictions in terms of cooling the problem is that I'm going to do these ones cost $200 $200 it's a lot of shekels so we've got a static safe packing foam in here not that I'm too concerned about any of these things being sensitive to static we've got some instructions that are Chinese only but early pictograph of cold so I think we should be able to figure it out we've got front USB that's a and front audio that's a nice feature to have for a test bench at the open bench people don't have it no they don't Wow remote power button and reset switch all the included tools and standoffs and screws and everything not tool that was amiss I misspoke okay we've got some extruded aluminum something's there's five of them oh and wow that's it this is pretty flimsy okay so that's not the world's finest looking piece of acrylic it's very flex I can't fight this feeling anymore started fool see they can't copyright strike me if I'm Way off key this is really the the quintessential aliexpress experience here isn't it that's kind of like Aliexpress meets IKEA so first up I've got the hard drive mounts over here so evidently the hard drives go in between two of these kind of something like I'm not sure what the orientation is yeah it looks like they go like that how you doing I opened this upside down and now really do have meat Anthony oh my god the screws are labeled and you get they were numbered all this was gonna be so easy you screwed us so this is a spectacular example of waste not want not so we've got our our bench here and you can see they actually cut out the harddrive holders from the rest of the bench in a spot where the motherboard is gonna sit on top of it anyway acrylic is actually a much more expensive than you'd probably think does it make any sense to have the numbers on the top or the bottom so like I look at this and I'm like oh okay I'll open it up but no it's like this with this blank piece of whatever it is we'll let the audience be the judge actually we shouldn't do that they always side against me I don't know what it is no matter how junior or completely unlikable someone is they always side with them against me when we leave it up to the audience okay I'm gonna put another hard drive on here for lulz I want to load this thing up like will will deck it out it will put as much stuff on it as we can or two hard drives and an optical drive whoa did you see that I opened it up correctly it wasn't even hard oh wow I just huh there's not really as many pieces on this whole thing as I had sort of expected from looking at the like the diagram are we missing some this is the light version this is a universal set of instructions so there's a version that actually comes with up to a 240 millimeter radiator mount as well as the PCI Express plane there but we got the most basic versions oh I think we did this is where the reputation comes from China it's not that you're not capable of designing a tool path for this it's just that you can't be arsed to just go double-check this measurement I'll just put a slot you'll be fine how do you miss a line your own thing why is that a slit instead of a hole acrylic isn't one of those things that dramatically expands or shrinks when your laser cutting it so that's pretty cool check that out so we just run these cables over to our motherboard and boom we've got front i/o on our test bench I mean the thing about a test bench is that accessing the rear i/o is usually as simple as turning it around but still I wouldn't say no to being able to reach it from both sides oh wait that's weird no it does say from the buttons and that was five which you had these super long ones in for and it doesn't say for the USB one that's not labeled whatever reason this one uses a hole instead of a slot yeah like they were they were confident on that one so this is actually a cool design for the button though so it's anchored along the outside here and then there's just these flexible pieces of acrylic that actuate the button and that's actually got a pretty decent little clique to it cool yeah that's really neat all right the holes are bigger want to come see the big hole well I put it in hey this really is not anything special I've gotten some pretty amazing stuff on like dealextreme for 30 bucks even though we paid 30 bucks on Aliexpress this thing can be had for 16 bucks on cowbell why did we pay $30 for it on Aliexpress because it didn't know was on time Oh wasn't until I followed the tab out link on that that their instruction sheet ha so we actually bought rebranded Chinese crap from a rebranded Chinese crap marketplace where several levels deep right now this is like Soulja test bench if it goes like any more levels deep that is not pretty so interestingly they've actually removed the most material for our drive mounts from the area that has the least support from the feet this this obviously isn't a thing but then wait yeah yeah everything goes on the other side really okay well back to the drawing board like we're not we're not missing something here are we I mean we might be but I don't think so this too is a protective layer hey so that's good it makes a little more sense now so we can go ahead and put some PCI Express due to Adam a jigs on here so these are actually very similar in their design to our open bench table one just cheaper and crappier now where does this go there's like these big gaps between the standoffs and the top here why okay and then do you know what screws that uses brilliant doesn't say here's another bizarre one so there's that weird gap and then these holes are hexagonal instead of round why are they to distinguish them visually okay hey something makes sense learning a thing so the hexagon ones are for the the drive cage things and they can either be three and a half inch or five and a quarter inch so here's the other two hex ones this one is barely even in you can see there's a gap here and then there's another set one two three here three and a half five and a quarter brilliant okay now I'm just gonna fix that I put the drives in Rome in fairness to it that's more solid yeah alright um hold on I got okay I'll get these so put the standoffs where they go and I'll screw them in from the bottom by the time we go through all this hassle though we could have done it Luke's way why would they put the legs right where the holes are okay at least they got this aligned correctly now see if I was learning I would have kicked it hey that's a legitimate strategy to help prevent damage I'm not kicking it I'm catching with my feet look here I'll give you a demonstration okay so if I were to accidentally drop this cooler if I'm like Oh see look how much of its momentum was arrested before it hit the ground here it's fine I'll demonstrate for you again like Oh No Oh so once your motherboards on like this then you get your power supply and honestly this is so stupid so it just goes on like that oh you guys are gonna have a full appreciation for this one side sent it back over we have to take the board off in order to mount the cooler because the hard drives go right under where the CPU socket is and it doesn't even have a cutout anyway mm-hmm yeah and it's not like it has these stock cooler it's a beefy stock cooler for like wow it's like that sucker you like that I like these more yeah those are awesome and this doesn't have them well it's about what you'd expect from just a piece of acrylic it does get some more structural rigidity from having the motherboard like mounted to it but not as much as it as we want it to have I mean is this it do we just fire it up at this point I mean we can if you want to let's do it we need to plug in the front panel there we go let's see if the reset reset switch works it does technically have a power LED in there so there you have it this is the geek studio 16 dollar test bench as long as you can get it off Taobao 30 bucks off Aliexpress it ain't great and this video is brought to you by our sponsor Squarespace with Squarespace is all-in-one platform it's easy to build yourself a beautiful functional website starting from one of their awesome and very versatile templates if you ever need additional help Squarespace has got you covered with webinars full series of help guides and 24/7 customer support via live chat and email and if you've got a third-party domain you don't have to give it up you can just transfer it over to Squarespace plus all of their sites feature ecommerce so you can manage your inventory and take orders so head over to Squarespace com /lt to get 10% off Squarespace today so thanks for watching guys if you just like this video you can hit that button but if you liked it no no it's fine it was just like a hard drive holders Oh hit that like button get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description I mean to be clear like at sixteen dollars compared to two hundred like yeah it's not gotta know the rigidity but I mean you could buy a bunch of these for that while you're down there you can check out our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which is definitely worth a join [Laughter]