The Worst Prebuilt PC Mistakes We've Seen (So Far) 

About 20yrs ago a friend needed help with his Dell computer, would not boot so I looked at it and confirmed it was the motherboard so as a young enthusiast I said ya sure looks like we can swap the MB Oh man open mouth insert foot. The case did allow for a standard MB but I also had to buy a power supply, memory and still had to Jerry rig a reset switch in the damn thing this is when you needed a reset...That was the first and last time I did that.

My mother got took in by a COMPAQ brand in 1997... Bloatware beyond belief...a slower than dead chipset...and a case so sharp that I believed the French Revolution was going to make a comeback... Lucky for me...with my Linux skills even back then knew that everything inside needed an upgrade... It took three days to get the case dulled enough to avoid cutting myself on it (again) and another three to get the upgraded parts... Then the 26 CD install of SuSE Linux caused another headache because I forgot which would work best on the new build (later finding out that I could have gone with 16 home use install CDs)... Remember that she paid $1950 for this NEW... It took six months of gar(b)age sales (from trying to piece out Compaq's garbage) to break even with the new components I substituted... She did go back to Windows eventually...but when this new rebuild sold for $2100 at auction...we finally decided that I build whatever I wanted and she would like it... It eventually got spread that I could improve the performance of any computer and a small business of a repair shop was born... I just never did MacWindows...strictly Linux builds...

I recently bought a Cyberpower Prebuilt and I got exactly what I wanted: an rtx 3080 evga ftw3 plus an i7-11700kf with an aio it performs really great! Only when I take the side panel off cuz my card is cooking my pc to a 90⁰c. Side panel off is now 52⁰c max on the cpu and 75⁰c max on the gpu... so yeah

@@rlosangeleskings Ya know you brought up an interesting point I paid I think $1700 for a stupid 286 computer like 30 yrs ago now look what you get for a $2,000 dollar computer WOW!

I would rather see the best high-end prebuilds with decent value.

Even a blindfold caveman can do a better job than NZXT

For real. I felt horrible about my level of skill, especially cable management, then I started watching this series.

You mean "billion" dollar companies, they are literally a joke sometimes. I've had friends ask me to look at a pre-built because certain components weren't working. Sometimes it can be because plugs were just loose or plugged in the wrong spot.

Me and u both lol and mine was 5 years ago

Yeah I kinda had to do my own last year after seeing how bad these companies are... I just didn't feel like I could rely on any of them. Sad

The follow-up made it even better. xD

Obviously you never heard of cyberpower pc 👀

I want to live 100 years or more so I can see how that is sent to space

@@kekaikobatake4598 you're right, those ended up in the middle, they were bought, thrown out, then never bought again.

I'd like this comment but it has 69 likes already and I'm immature

Well it was a reliable antivirus back in 1998... But nowadays, antivirus are more of a nuisance than a help

Wait so is McCafé that bad? I’m new to pc gaming (bought a gaming laptop) and thought it’s good to have virus protection.

@@zachconant7031 actually is not THAT bad, there are worse options (Norton, Panda...) But antivirus software is no longer viable unless you literally put your pc at risk intentionally. Windows defender is the best antivirus nowadays, it generates less false positives than any other. Antivirus software just clogs the ram nowadays

@@solouno2280 yeah that’s good to know, I remember years ago my parents spent quite a bit of money on Norton and we still faced a ton of issues.

Why not just look laziness?

@@ScoobyShotU there would often be screws in places you wouldn't see, behind panels etc.

And when there are no lose crews in It you just put some in

@@ScoobyShotU how is it more lazy to pick something up and shake the shit out of it compared to just looking at it...

No wonder the Z axis gets bent from the factory.

Aka the FUX form factor

fr

So basically an Apple

@@SchwachsinnProduzent ooouch. But true.

Hope they use a $2,000 3080 lol, or maybe the 6600XT because it has the worst MSRP since Turing.

The most scandalous part about the disappointment PC this year is definitely going to be that you can't pick and choose the components. Can't even match the shitty mobo form factor of alienware crap with the shitty PSU from HP. Truly a time to be alive!

@@BrianCroweAcolyte You can get a 3080 for $1400 now

@@drunkhusband6257 I'd still rather "get" kicked in the balls at that pricing lol

@@BrianCroweAcolyte I bet you'd rather get kicked in the balls than get a legitimate job to afford it also

Insane. I just got an HP pre-built with windows 11 (no option for anything else). I was planning on just wiping it and running Linux Mint anyways, but I played around with Windows 11 just to see if it was as bad as everyone says. Not only was the OS itself bad, but the amount of bloatware pre-installed was infuriating & shocking. If I were an average user, I'd have no idea that all of that extra crap was throttling my performance so drastically and spying on me.

@@-HughJass- I just built a PC with Linux compatibility in mind. Been running Linux for 7+ years now. It's superior at just about anything, especially nowadays. Team RED CPU and GPU + an Intel network chip. It kinda bugged me that I was putting Intel in my otherwise 100% AMD build but Realtek is absolute junk and barely supports Linux which is sad because Realtek has a monopoly (like 80% share) in the LAN/WiFi market chipset.

@@spicynoodle7419 Sure it is bud

@@-HughJass- If you have a SIM card you’re being spied on anyways, get a grip

@@crylune What a shitty argument. So because youre being spied on against your will in one way, you should be okay with being spied on in every way. Also, my comment said bloatware. It didnt say anything about privacy concerns (which are real), so learn to read before you tell others to "get a grip".

at least they didn't do you like Dell would and just "upgrade" you to a single stick of the amount you ordered even though you selected 2xYGB

😂😂

I bought a 2nd hand pc that’s put together from off-the-shelf parts and it still had the ram in the first 2 slots. I mean fixing it didn’t change my performance that much because it’s an old-ass pc, but still, it’s better to run dual channel

OR one stick of ram with twice the capacity

It would have been funnier if Seagate wasn't also in the SSD biz now, lol

It's not as picturesque as Dawid does tech stuff but he's getting there. 😅

Wait what did I miss what did Seagate do?

shhh dont give them ideas before oems use this to say pc's are not safe to repair yourself please buy pay the $200 extra for an extra 8gbram modules when picking your pc

@@SMhMrMurhpysLaw LOL, you know that is in the post.

That was the only option in that 1990s chassis.

They were always diverse and specialised (in their testing) when it comes to PC tech. That's great. LTT is another diverse channel but keeping in style and subject of tech.

I agree. GPU reviews have become a huge turn off and meme now to tech savvy folks (Especially when LTT goes all love-fest on anything GPU regardless of its price.)

Honestly, I might just buy a prebuilt I don't even need just to scavenge a 6800XT, ordered one back in December and it still hasn't shipped. According to TSMC, we'll likely hit RDNA 3 before the shortage ends.

@@MunyuShizumi Depends on the prebuilt machine, if you've seen those proprietary cards from big brands they're absolutely terrible and seems like designed to die. Though you might have some luck with buying a Chinese generic replacement shroud to slap on those cards

@@DangNguyen-xx3zi Thankfully, you can see what you're getting more often than not due to transparent side panels being quite popular these days, and from what I can tell, the local shops are installing whatever they can get their hands on at any given moment. (I don't live in the US, we don't have many megabrand prebuilts here.)

You need to check out the legendary 12-fan Abkoncore Ramesses 780 case

@@rtyzxc was that the one with something like 20 fans that created essentially dead pressure in the case?

@@mrmoosetachio Yep, with Fans Mounted in front of solid panels

@@shaneeslick yes! I knew I remembered this one. It was the most chaotic response to undercooled complaints 🤣

@ZIV installing a turbo in an EV XD

Yeah isnt it! I just posted a similiar comment, damn Steve this stuff should b boring and dry as hell. But for some reason I got to 4:25 just fine then bawled out into hysterical fits of laughing. Lol. That's the best bit 4:25 - 32:00 so good.

Hey it's the song guy with amazing pixel art backgrounds!! I love your stuff!

I consider Gamers Nexus the consumer reports of Pc gaming. We need this or the industry will not improve!

normally i just put GN videos on to listen to while i cook or something because yea they're long and dull but informative. this one though i think is where steve's at his best.

So you are here too... Btw, yout music is what made me love electronic music, and i'll never thank you enough

It's better that way...

I'll never forget it. As a kid my parents bought a computer with Windows 95 on it and then the next computer they bought came with ME......not 2000.....No it had M freaking E on it. And it constantly had errors

@@ram89572 Sounds like user error..... I had 3 systems running WinME that were rock solid.

@@aaronthomas6155 history would beg to differ with you bud. Your experience does not equal the experience of every other person out there. That's like saying "well this game runs fine on my system so there's no way you have problems running it on yours"

@@ram89572 I didn't say my experience equaled everyone else's. I said it sounds like user error.

You forgot the "Tks Steve" :D

i would never trust a factory install anyway.

And they get to market PCs as "16 cores!" And with raptor lake, "24 cores!"

Most of this bloatware is built on Electron (because web devs are cheaper), so I wouldn't be too sure it will be happy running on an efficiency core.

Interesting thought. I bet their 'benchmarks' are going to include extreme amounts of bloat to exaggerate "performance increase."

I have literally crashed Brave from too many tabs...

I have 32gb, and two sticks failed so I had to send them in for RMA, and the computer felt so slow until they shipped me new ones... I usually have around 50-60 tabs open

I was about to comment this on older videos but I thought I may be exceptional so I didn't express it. We are in this together my brothers, united, the 32GB 'too many tabs' gang stands proud.

@@dominic6542 dude how the hell did you kill ram sticks

@@thatslegit Maybe he got corsair ones. extremely known to die quickly

It's GN même of the year

@@NicolasChapadosGirard meme of the decade imo

Gigabyte is good for motherboards and graphic cards. But in terms of PSU, I prefer other brands

Gigabyte is good for motherboards and graphic cards. But in terms of PSU, I prefer other brands

@@solouno2280 idk man, you're probably right, but it's difficult to trust a company if act *waves hand* Like this

Also, if you're a regular beta tester - 'in development' software is usually very poorly optimized as it's constantly being changed and updated, so it ends up requiring more memory to function than the finished product.

So true. KSP with a decent set of QoL mods (no GFX mods even) eats 10GB on start (and don't get me started on Unity-based games and the 1.5GB+/hr RAM leaks). Add a browser window for anything and 16GB RAM is gone pretty much right away.

Also - want to run some VMs? 16 gig is just too little - 32 is the minimum. Found out the hard way when my online computer course required from us to run 5 VMs at the same time - one server and 4 clients

@@battlecommando stop using chrome, firefox eats less ram. And watches you less

Another thing I observed is how Intel built in graphics likes to work. Currently have 32gb usable in my laptop out of 64gb because half of the system memory is being reserved for the graphics side of the Intel APU.

I paid my local tech store 80 bucks to order all the parts and assemble them for me. I could have assembled it myself but ordering every part individually just sounds like big potential for risk. Bottom line, 80 buckaroos is nothing in comparison to the markup OEMs add to their pre-builts. I browsed another store and noticed some PCs with similar specs, they were 400 more expensive lmao.

That’d essentially have be a Windows reinstall guide though, if I’m honest - a lot of this stuff roots itself so deep that even if you kill it with fire it will still haunt the machine. So it’s best to just reinstall the OS before you install anything on it and go into sunk cost fallacy mode (been there done that).

Install Linux

Yeah best way is to find your windows key in the OS, create a bootable usb with windows OS on it, and do a fresh install before you even use it. Sped up my dell laptop a lot

just reinstall a non-branded version of Windows. This is the least labor intense.

@@Tra-vis What about the proprietary BS? Can you just download their drivers?

They wasted perfectly good tree sap on the solder used in these builds.

they are not wrong in that aspect. because the cpu runs at XXX speeds, and with how throttling works, that statement is legitmate unless theres a error in installing. but hey im not a leading company in the prebuilt space.

@@mikeymaiku Not wrong but certainly not good

@@mikeymaiku Uh... what? Do you know what dual channel memory is, and that on Ryzen it can create a 10%+ increase in CPU performance?

@@tifforo1 I think he is talking about the overheating part of the comment

@@mikeymaiku canadian youtuber dawid does tech stuff called them up for a dell xps prebuilt with a 3070 mind u, that he asked for dual channel ram and got single channel, he also got that cpu cooler for an i7-10700, and got sent on a rolercoaster with the departments.

Agreed, or even just a history of Dell's insane bullshit.

maybe partner with gaming historian

To address the non standard parts it would have to be very Dell and HP centric. The non standard parts they use today have no real history outside the company. Looking back at the PC history the progression of standards has been driven both by individual companies and by standards comities. The XT standard was basically created in 1983 when a lot of companies chose to copy IBM XT motherboards. That is what you can call a de facto standard. IBM didn't intend to create a standard but the industry chose to copy their machines closely enough that the components could be interchanged. This was followed in 1984 by the AT standard, which just happens to about the same size as the later SSI-EEB standard, but other than the size there are few similarities. A year later the Baby AT standard came about. It was what IBM used for their PC XT 286. It was much more compact than the original AT standard and was quickly adopted as the standard formfactor for most PC class machines for the following ten years. In 1995 Intel introduced the ATX standard. This time it was Intel instead of IBM that championed the new standard and this time it was intentional that it would be a wide spread standard. It was so successful that we are still using ATX and sub versions of it even today. Intel has kept updating the standard over time and the latest motherboard specification at the moment is 2.2. The ATX standard also included a new standard for power supplies and this part of the standard was last updated in 2020 to the 2.53 version. For being more than 25 years it has stood the test of time pretty well. Inte however did try to introduce a new and according to them better standard, BTX in 2005. This was a pretty radical redesign and failed spectacularly in the market. My personal guess is that the redesign was so thorough that it was totally incompatible with everything ATX. Basically they swapped everything around and tightened up the standard where it came to positioning of components such as the CPU socket in order to allow the heatsinks to he bolted to the motherboard tray instead of the motherboard. While Intel continuously have held the ATX spec some of the derivates has been created by the SSI or Server System Infrastructure forum. These are SSI CEB or Compact Electronics Bay, which is basically the same as the standard ATX motherboard formfactor at 12" by 10.5". SSI EEB or Enterprise Electronics Bay is basically what was often called E-ATX and the motherboards are up to 12" by 13". Finally there's SSI MEB or Midrange Electronics Bay which measures 16.2" by 13", which at least to me is a bit confusing as it's the largest of the three... Intel was not alone in the standards game. Mini ITX is derived from ATX but the standard was set by VIA who continued to release several smaller standards such as Nano and Pico ITX. While manufacturers following common standards is great for the customers and smaller companies, the big players have often chosen to create their own. Sometimes it was in order to provide something that the standards didn't support, but often it was used to cut cost and to a degree to lock in the customers into their ecosystem. Today you often see this in the server sector where custom motherboards allows for higher density servers. To get the most out of every rack unit it's necessary to forgo the standard formfactors, but it does mean that the machines are less likely to be upgradable years down the line when they have become obsolete. The nonstandard parts used in office and apparently some "gaming" machines are of the cost saving kind. Things like the proprietary power solutions were often created before there were a standard such as the ATX12VO. Once they have started to used something like this and sold a couple of hundred thousand machines it often makes more economic sense to keep using the same standard for new machines rather than switch to standard compliant components and increase the number of parts to keep track of. PSU manufacturers like LiteON and Delta will happily sell them PSU's with any particular set of connectors the OEM's ask for. You don't even need particularly large orders to get this service. A company I used to work for ordered PSU's with ATX-GES cabling. This was AFAIK only used for one motherboard, the Tyan S2462 Thunder K7, which was a SSI-EEB size dual AMD Athlon MP motherboard. Though this has ATX in the name the pin-out is quite different. We also bought lots of PSU's with WTX cables which is another standard with connectors that looks a lot like ATX but again differs in the pin-out. These to were used by some server class motherboards and can be said to be the precursor of EPS, which was essentially the ATX connector with four added pins for better power delivery and instead of a 4-pin 12V connector that was doubled to 8 pins. Eventually the EPS standard was absorbed into ATX with the ATX12V 2.0 standard. But for a few years it was an exotic standard and we had to have the PSU's made to order. Now we were a small company that ordered less than a hundred PSU's at a time, and yet the fee for having these made was pretty low. Now if you are a company that buy in lots of 10,000 or more then LiteON will probably not even mention a cost for special cabling.

I have a roll of toilet paper... Because its just shit Nothing has changed from their Packard Bell days AT case and all...

@@hisafe ???

No treat dispenser either

Everything is a cat bed :3

I thought the cat beds were the cardboard boxes.

I thought the cat was the CFO...Chief Feline Officer? 🤔

Acer/eMacines is the longest lasting ewaste manufacturer today, while Packard Bell still takes the cake for the absolute worst even after being defunct (of original iteration as modern ones are made by.............Acer)

Proprietary parts is another one.... They've done it for a reason. I don't agree with it - but it is not a mistake and not even necessarily bad for the audience who are buying these things. If you buy a pre build for the shitty graphics card inside it that's on you. This channel is in danger of getting a bit "uppity" and cute. They're beginning to justify the "elite" branding I've seen on motherboards in the past.

what sticker sir? I have never seen any sticker in there, you forgot to apply it! *hides bottle of 99% rubbing alcohol and razor*

99.99% IPA is every computer maniacs best friend

@@00O3O1B Interesting, I didn't know that. Not that it mattered because I opened it anyway :D

that was freaking me out, I thought it was my 3080, I had to check it on my laptop AND cell phone to be sure :P I've had a graphics card fail on me before and it looked just like that.

@@kylianthehylian Same here. It's at the moment not the time for replacing a GPU.

You don't screw on RAM.

@@sadams12345678 The joke kind of eluded you now, didn't it? :D (Hint: Check his name)

Cmon I think the guy deserves a rest. Go watch his video with Linus if you want to get a bit more background on that infamous Verge video.

Pretty sure it was King Novik who said that and yes I am a turbo-nerd🤓

so ONE application made your computer use 50% of your RAM by itself but somehow this means 32GB is overkill? Hello? Read your own comment and think again?

@@prydzen no ypu

@@prydzen any other thing I do, including streaming, doesnt use close to 16 gigs of system memory. So yeah, for most people it's overkill, and a waste of money that could go towards a power supply that wouldn't explode or a cooler that has more than 8 cents of aluminum.

And again, I can't stress enough how many mods I run. It takes me about 6 minutes to load the game off of a WD SN850 (running at Gen 4, with a 5950x). It's a niche use case.

The employees are probably not paid enough to give a shit.