Building a Five-Star PC with Worst-Rated Parts

Building a PC with low-rated parts reveals the risks of ignoring reviews, resulting in a disappointing experience.

### Building a PC with the Worst-Rated Parts: A Cautionary Tale
* 💸  Building a five-star PC might seem easy with enough money, but using **low-rated components** can lead to **significant issues and disappointments**.
* 🛠️  The Ryzen 5 8500G, priced at $180, is a poor choice due to its limited capabilities, with only **two of its six cores** being full-size Zen 4 and a GPU slot that may run at just **1/8 the bandwidth** of modern PCs.
* ⚠️  The Asus Prime B650 Plus motherboard, rated at **three stars**, has user complaints about **faulty diagnostic LEDs**, raising concerns about its **reliability for high-performance tasks**.
* 💾  For storage, the $40 SATA Adata Premier SP580 SSD and another low-rated SSD were chosen, both of which have mixed reviews, including reports of **failures and blue screens**.
* 🖥️  The Begears case received a **2.9-star rating** and has multiple design flaws, such as lacking **proper airflow** and having **no secure mounts** for its tempered glass panel.
* 🔌  The Gigabyte power supply has a troubled reputation due to **past failures**, and the Sparkle ecoar A310 GPU, while low power, is more of a **display adapter** than a true gaming GPU, leading to **poor performance**.
* 🎮  Testing the system with poorly-rated games revealed significant performance issues, with frame rates dropping to **as low as 10 FPS** in some cases, highlighting the pitfalls of using **low-quality components**.
* 💔  Ultimately, the entire setup cost **$1,025**, which could have been better spent on a **more capable system**, proving that **ignoring reviews can lead to a frustrating experience**.

building a five-star PC that's easy. All you have to have is money, but what if you don't? I mean, that two-star motherboard could hold the key to incredible savings. Couldn't be that bad, could it? To find out, we built a PC using only the worst-rated parts that we could find on newegg.com, and we ended up with this. And sure, from the outside, she's not so bad, but on the inside, it's a black hole of misery, a disappointment maybe, or maybe it's fine. To find out, we need to go back to the beginning, the beginning, the beginning, starting with the Ryzen 5 8500G. AMD never sent these out to reviewers for evaluation, and if our experience with it is anything to go by, that's probably for good reason. You see, the compromises that AMD made on this chip are a lot, especially if you consider the not very low $180 price. Only two of its six cores are full-size Zen 4, and while the integrated graphics are decent compared to the competition, when the time comes to

upgrade them. You will be shocked, shocked I say, to discover that your GPU slot could be running at as slow as 1/8 the bandwidth of other modern PCs. And it gets even worse. Modern storage drives can end up with their bandwidth cut, and depending who you believe, this chip might only support single-channel memory. Who does AMD imagine this thing is for? Maybe you're building a super power-efficient PC but can't afford the better-balanced 8600G. Well, I urge you, theoretical customer, um, let's name you Grover, please wait for a sale on something else or consider the Intel 14100 with a discrete GPU or almost literally anything else. This truly is the worst current chip. So, in it goes into our motherboard. That is after we look at this message from our sponsor, Acronis. Arm your IT department with centrally managed protection against cyber threats and with backup and recovery capabilities with Acronis Cyber Protect. Check out their easy-to-use all-in-one solution using the link in the video description. [Music]

At first glance, the Prime B650 Plus from Asus seems downright decent. Professional reviewers touted its well-rounded features, so I can see why Grover might be eyeing it, at least until he sees these user reviews. And guys, I know three stars doesn't necessarily mean something is garbage. I mean, we could have found a one-star motherboard if we looked hard enough, but we felt that it was best to limit our search to products that had more than just a handful of reviews. And besides, while three stars is average, would you eat at a three-star restaurant on Google Maps? One where half of the customers say that the food is delicious and the other half say it's defective? Multiple people mentioned that the diagnostic LEDs don't work on this board, which could be an issue if we're going to push our Twar Mushin Enhanced Redline memory to the limit. Yep, this right here is 64 whole gigs of the worst-rated DDR5 RAM we could find. Jealous? Well, you probably shouldn't be. See, it's rated for 6,400 mega transfers per

second, but based on the reviews, it seems very unlikely that we're going to be seeing those speeds, which was a little surprising for me. I mean, Mushin's a real brand, and at $25, it's not even cheap. So, with so many other options at the same price, why would Grover choose these ones? Oh, speaking of price, how much was the motherboard? $180. 180 bucks. I mean, that seems like a god. Motherboards have gotten expensive. This is a B650 board. Yep, that's not even a top-tier one. Well, at least our storage was cheap. That's right, folks. Just $40 for the SATA ad data Premier SP580 with a huge 120 billion bytes of storage, which is what? Enough for Windows in one game. Let's see what the people have to say about this one. Uh, dead, dead, defected. Oh, here's a five-star review. Wait, blue screens, but he's not sure it's because of the SSD. That is a super weird thing to mention in a five-star review for a product, and

Things aren't looking much better for SSD number two, which we bought another junk SSD. I mean, at least the team group gx2 has the potential to be more useful thanks to its 2 tbyte capacity, but again, that's only if it stays functional. You know what's hard to screw up these days though? A case. But you know who managed it? Begears the B. Bigger managed to get only 2.9 stars. The question for me is why. There's a lot to like here: tempered glass, fold my trap. This came untaped at the bottom, and so when you picked it up, it just fell out. It was shrink-wrapped, and then they thought that was a good idea, I guess. What, they never taped the box? No, and so twice people picked it up, and it just flew out the bottom. Oh, so the tempered glass side panel could be a bug, not a feature, if you're going to drop it on the floor. Increased airflow also. The photos make this case look like fans are included and actually make it look pretty sick in

general, but uh, in person, it looks more ill than sick. The glass isn't held in place by anything. There's no little nubbins, no little groove to put it in, or anything like that. Where would you even put front 120 mm fans in this case? It straight up doesn't have the mounts for them. I remember we looked at the pictures of this in script riew. I do you have do you have a picture? Sure it, there, there is no fans in the front of the picture of the. I thought there were. No, no, they just kind of strategically take the picture so it kind of seems like it. Yep, you could definitely infer that that RGB is coming from fans on the inside and the bottom too. Like, where would that, where would the RGB here be coming from? Yeah, that's a straight up lie. There is no RGB coming through there. Realistically though, aside from feeling a little deceived, there's nothing inherently wrong with the case. That is, as long as I don't want to have a ton of

air flow. Not only was there nowhere for fans in the front, there's nowhere for air to come into the case, but that seems like a problem for future lus. Is this like really unstable? This is really easy to tip over compared to most cases. It's so light and it's so narrow. Anyway, we weren't able to find a particularly low-rated cooler, so we're going to throw the stock cooler on here. I can't say the same, however, for our fans. If the reviews of the Z3 pros from Montech are anything to go by, I have very high expectations for them. That is to say, I expect they will make a high amount of noise. I don't want to keep harping on the case, but there is absolutely nowhere to cable manage the cables for these fans or the eight-pin EPS connector for the motherboard. So, good luck, David. Okay, that's why I strategically took the rear fan. These fans literally are mashed up against the VRM cooler of this motherboard. This is a really tight case.

Moving on to our power supply, you may recall that Gigabyte was under fire (pun intended) for setting the over-power protection and overcurrent protection on these units too high, meaning that under heavy load, some spectacular failures took place, some of which took other components with them. Gigabyte ultimately did offer replacements, and they fixed the issue in their newer units, but it's clear from the reviews on this thing that the reputational damage was done. And honestly, I'm kind of surprised that they didn't just relaunch this as a new SKU to move away from the 240 one-year reviews that are on this power supply. While we were wiring it up, we found some serious problems with this case. There's only one spot to mount a 2 and 1/2 in drive down here in the bottom. Every other hole is not properly aligned, so I don't know, I guess other SSD just goes here. But hey, it's got correctly spaced tabs and screw holes for 5 and 1/4 in optical drives, three of them even.

though there would be nowhere for them to slide into. I love this thing. Also, if you have the top fan installed, there is no way to install an 8-pin power connector on the top of this board. That might not be an issue with every board, but it's definitely an issue with this one. I could rip the clip off. Do it. I need a knife. Okay, nice. Wow, this cable management is awful, and it's not about to get any better. At least it won't get much worse. Our Sparkle ecoar A310 4 gig GPU does not require an external power connector. Wow, that's one of the best things about it. Though it's been our position for a long time that there is a class of GPU that is less Graphics Processing Unit and more display adapter for your PCIe slot, and that's pretty much the story here. Unless, like Anonymous, you are a video transcoding enthusiast, where it can offer a pretty good value, not to mention outstandingly low power consumption at just 50 watts. If like

some folks you buy this and expect to be doing any gaming on it, though you're going to be sorely disappointed, especially with this one that apparently has issues with the cooling fan. [Music] Wait, I know I'm interrupting b-roll to talk about the case again, but to put a glass side panel on this, did they literally just take an existing chassis, drill four holes in it, thread them, and then put it on? Like, it's got mounting for a regular metal side panel, it's all visible, and if they were going to just put the holes anywhere anyway, why didn't they make them symmetrical? It took me three attempts to put this glass panel on, they couldn't even put the little grommet on the right spot, so there's just a second hole in it. Getting into the rest of the setup, I don't know what's so bad about this monitor. I mean, yeah, it's only 1080p, but 165 HZ, 1 MS moving picture response time, ah, 2.8 out of 5 eggs, and mostly comes down to

reliability issues break down after 6 months. Cool, this is a fun one. You've probably seen this desk pad somewhere. In fact, you might have even seen it on our channel before, and the reviews across every Marketplace it occupies are bad. But what caught our attention more than anything is the awful seller ratings for it. How is this store given a top-rated status on New Egg if they have so many negative reviews? I mean, three stars on 402 reviews ain't good, and it's the packaging that seems to be the primary issue. They apparently fold it instead of rolling it, and my notes just say talk about why they would do that. Based on everything we've learned from selling desk pads, David, there is no reason to fold the desk pad instead of rolling it. And what's funny is we did buy this from that seller, and they did roll it. They just put it in a plastic bag. So, I don't know when they figured it out, but hey, they finally did. Either way, at 20 bucks, this is a terrible value. Just pick up a

mystery desk pad from LTT store.com. It's bigger and better, and it doesn't identify Winnipeg as one of the three important cities in Canada. Our Capital Cities not on here. In fact, the American capital's not on here. They got New York, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, and Los Angeles. Where the is Washington? As bad as it is, though, it is nothing compared to our Ruckus 4-in-1 Pro gaming kit. This has two and a half stars out of five on Walmart, with one user calling it the worst thing I've ever used and saying, I feel ashamed just to own it. Why does Southern Telecom Inc even make gaming peripherals? Remember when lightning was cool? Never stop being cool. Yeah, me neither. Wait, this is a super weird Legend. They put WD on the arrow keys. What? And there's no windows key. What? It has a Windows lock. Unless this is a Windows key and the lock is you function Windows. No, that would be so stupid. I'm a reasonable person, and a 2.5 is not good.

enough for you, so I got you a 2.6 keyboard, and it's ergonomic. You got two sets of peripherals, just the keyboard. Wow, I'm a reasonable person. Internet and multimedia hotkeys, three-color illuminated backlight, and split key design. You know what though, I did a lot of my early gaming on an ergo keyboard. Huh, I don't think you know that. No, but you accidentally put me back in my element. This is what was missing. Now you're a pro again. Seems serviceable as far as these go, and hey, it's got two windows keys to make up for that last one you missed. The most important upgrade, another mouse pad. Oh good, wow, the... Oh, that's what makes it 4 in one. Nice, and it almost lies flat. This is remarkable. This may be the single worst feeling headset that I have ever touched. Oh, that's pretty good. Touch the ear cups. What is wrong with these? Why? Also, this driver is... It's like right there. You look like a game. This is terrible, and in order to justify the

molding costs. They have to make thousands of these. Thousands of Gamers, yeah, are experience in two and a half star gaming. Hey, those fans actually look pretty cool, kind of noisy, but that can probably be configured. Don't push a ton of air for how loud they are. I have to be touching the metal to feel any air moving, huh. I hate these peripherals, guys. For around $50 or less, The Cooler Master mm 712 looks awesome, or the Logitech g305. There's lots of options for great budget keyboards. We're going to have some suggested peripherals for the same price as what we paid for this garbage linked in the video description. Uh Decor. Oh, apparently there's decor, and we've limited ourselves to one item, and it's one star. It's one star. Oh, I get. Wait, is that a Mario star with cowboy boots and a cowboy hat? It certainly looks like a Mario star, and I love it so much. Was this poorly rated? No, it's just one star. Oh, I get it. All right, thanks, David. Am I supposed to get an output for

from this, uh, yes. I mean, I guess it shouldn't really surprise us if the lowest-rated PC died. Oh, the RAM. Did I put the RAM in the rear slots? I actually did notice that. I meant to mention it. Wow, what a rookie error. Not that it should matter. It should probably still post, but um, those aren't the best slots to put the first two sticks of memory in. You know what? Other than the fact that the case is a complete piece of crap, I don't hate it. Is that supposed to be color? It looks like it's trying, maybe. Oh yeah, wait. I didn't see any RGB LED on it. No, it was just a Molex, dude. There's two more leads off of this thing. I think this is actually an RGB LED strip, but they... yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, no, you can tell. You can tell 'cause if you cover some of it, it turns a color, but they didn't install the other leads, so there's no control. It's just powered at

least the systems posted though. Let's see if we can get Expo enabled DDR5 6400, I believe. See, let's go. My question is whether it's going to be running in dual-channel mode. We saw conflicting information about the support for dual or single-channel memory on this CPU. It doesn't make any sense to me. Wait, no, it can't be single-channel because we saw the full capacity of the memory. If it only had a single channel, you wouldn't be able to populate both channels with two DIMMs. Okay, yeah, so where did that come from? It's really weird. It's really good that it runs in dual-channel because if you have onboard graphics, you're using your system memory as your VRAM, and slow VRAM is a killer for gaming performance. So, this thing would be way worse than we thought it was. Oh, are we not getting 6,400 though? I don't think so. Hey, hey, hey. Oh, but maybe it just rebooted a couple of times and went back. No, 'cause it would have prompted us to go into

the BIOS. I think we got full memory speed, though it's worth noting that that is as much to do with the integrated memory controller on your CPU and your board layout as it is to do with your memory sticks. So, 6,400 megatransfers per second. Let's go. This SSD is running at 100% usage just booting up Windows. Oh my God. I want to know how many PCIe lanes my GPU is getting. Not that I think it actually needs a ton of them, but it will tell us if we wanted to put a more powerful GPU in here, whether it would be bottlenecked. And the answer is PCIe Gen 4x8 at by4. Is that a power-saving thing, or is it actually only getting four lanes? By the way, this mouse is intolerable. Oh really, let's give it a chance. Oh yeah, put it on this quality. You know what, the desk pad's actually helping a fair bit. The included mouse pad has some really high-contrast lines on it, and cheap sensors can struggle to

track across high contrast lines. We don't even have any m.2 drives installed, no. So it's not like we're using up all the PCI lane somewhere else. I think this thing only runs at by4, unless this Arc GPU only has a by4 interface, does it? I thought that's possible by. It's the GPU that's by eight running it by four, ah wow. So it wasn't reporting the link speed and the active link speed, it's reporting the capability of the GPU and what the active link speed is, wow. That sucks, I'm sorry little buddy. So I haven't actually used HW info for this very much. I usually use GPU, I don't know why I didn't just download that, but anyway we figured it out. I can see why people don't like the fan on this GPU. I know I have firmar running, but still now that our system's up and running, it's time to put Grover's black hole build to the test with some famously review bombed games, starting with Team Fortress 2. Why are they mad at

Val for Team Fortress. There are bots. There's a bot issue where you any game you join. You just instantly start getting sniped and I just SP. It's still that yes cool. How old is this game now? Like 15 years old7 17 years old good. You'll get old too. What you're in Secure mode. What does that mean? Oh uh. Did seem just crash. What is happening right now. What is. It's almost like we built a bad computer on purpose. Yeah blue screen. I saw it on that one. What yeah no way. Yeah it went. I saw a blue screen appear in the capture. I'm going to try one more time sure. I'm going to try one more time. Not currently connected to the TF game coordinator service. Please try again. Let's turn the ram down. Okay interesting. We turned the ram back to J deck speeds and immediately I was able to queue for a casual game immediately. I really hate wearing these. They're really really uncomfortable. Also the volume wheels like backwards instead of bringing it

towards yourself to turn it up. Yeah, you push away to turn it up, huh? Who does that? What is happening right now? I guess let's try a different, like, join a different game. I can't interact with the game window, or like, I can't bring it back to focus. Should we just move on to another game? To another game? The game runs whatever. We can't see the FPS, but it's getting lots of FPS. It's an ancient game. Our next one is Kerbal Space Program 2 Early Access, which I know about this controversy. Basically, they launched Early Access for the sequel to Kerbal Space Program, and then the developer was shut down, which happens sometimes, you know, business decision. Except you can totally still buy this game. It's not done. It's never going to be done. No, don't do that. Don't set it to high. No. Oh, okay. Medium. Low is hard. Got it. I've never actually played Kerbal. NE. Oh, this really doesn't look that good for what kind of frame rate it's running.

at look at these trees. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Okay, this seems like something. Yeah, hey, we're about 40 frames. Oh, okay, fuel tank. Okay, cool. Okay, nice. Sure, another fuel tank. Lots of fuel. All right, okay, let's see what happens. Let's launch it. Woo, nine frames a second, baby. Let's go. You're going to space. Oh, oh, our parachute is deployed already. We are rocketing into our parachute. Oh God, it's glorious at a glorious 10 frames per second. Like you'd think it would run out of fuel. Oh yeah, no, we're almost out of fuel. We go, the crash is imminent. This is so slow. All right, I think I've seen it. Yeah, I don't think the crash will be spectacular anyway. Last up, hell divers 2, 30 frames per second. I'm getting 30 frames per second. You get 30. Look to be, I'm not saying it looks great. I'm just saying that's definitely 30 frames per second. But let's, let's, let's get you on a planet.

and see what happens. Okay, it doesn't look terrible for all low. Honestly, man, low on Modern games looks not bad. All right, I'm a hell diver. Look at me diving. I'm diving to hell. We're running at Native render scale. Hey, that's hey. 310 might not be as bad as we thought it was. That being said, do you want to know the price of this whole system? How much should we pay? $1,025 just for the tower. For that price, you can get a much better system with like a 7600 and like a 6600 GPU. Uh, you are way better spending your money elsewhere. Yeah, this is a terrible value. Yeah, you know what I want to know? Would we be having a better gaming experience if we didn't buy the ark 310 at all? Oh, I'm curious about that too. We should try our onboard Graphics. Let's do it. Uh, uh, roll. Oh, I think you might have missed it, but uh, that was weird. I don't know if we're going to be gaming on this GPU. Well

first I disabled the AR windows, and we moved the HDMI over, and the system hard rebooted. Then we booted up just now, and the screen came up with the Asus bios splash screen, except there were like green lines everywhere. If only there was some way we could have predicted that this would happen. You know, I've always wondered, like, who's buying these low-rated parts? Who is our hypothetical Grover? Like, obviously, you're budget-conscious, but you're anxious about the risk of buying used computer parts. Um, maybe you shop based on Word of Mouth or brand name rather than, like, looking at reviews. Like, I get it, reviews can be manipulated, so maybe you don't trust them, which is fair enough, especially with overly positive reviews. But I think it's clear from this exercise that if you ignore online reviews completely, you do so at your peril. Bottom line, there are many reasons why a product might get a low review score, and after experiencing all of them for myself, it's safe to say, say, listen to the people who bought it.

before you did, and it's safe to say, listen to this segue to our sponsor, Grammarly. At LMG, the business team's day-to-day operations revolve around communication, coordination, and writing. That's where Grammarly comes in. They're an AI writing partner that works right alongside them. For example, if they need to draft up an email for a project proposal, Grammarly can help come up with initial ideas and can check for clarity and tone to ensure their email is impactful and appropriate. Grammarly also understands the context of the writing and can provide high-quality suggestions. Because, news flash, writing to Colton is somewhat different than writing to your dad. Also, by upgrading to Grammarly Pro, now they have access to full sentence rewrites, turning those long-winded sentences into something more precise. And their app actions feature makes having all those browser tabs less of an issue, thanks to the ability to quickly insert links, documents, and even GIFs, all within Grammarly. So go sign up and upgrade to Grammarly Pro today at grammarly.com/lt9. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe

You like bad setups. Why don't you check out the one where Luke and I roasted our staff's worst setup? Some of them make this look not that bad.

Building the Lowest Rated PC

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.


Linus Tech Tips

The video explores the idea of building a PC using only the worst-rated components, starting with the Ryzen 5 8500G, which has significant compromises and a high price.

The Asus Prime B650 Plus motherboard, despite its decent appearance, has mixed user reviews and issues like non-functional diagnostic LEDs.

The worst-rated DDR5 RAM and a cheap SATA SSD complete the build, with the overall experience highlighting the potential pitfalls of choosing low-rated parts.

The second SSD purchased has a 2TB capacity but is also junk, raising concerns about its functionality.

The case from Begears has a low rating of 2.

9 stars due to poor design, lack of proper tape, and unstable structure.

The case's photos are misleading, with no front fan mounts or proper airflow, making it difficult to manage cables and potentially unstable.

Issues with Gigabyte's Power Supply and Case Design

Gigabyte faced criticism for setting the over-power and overcurrent protection too high on their power supply units, leading to failures and damage to other components.

The case design has serious flaws, with misaligned drive mounting holes and insufficient space for installing an 8-pin power connector.

The GPU used in the setup offers low power consumption and no external power connector, but it may not be suitable for gaming.

Reliability Issues with Desk Pads and Gaming Kits

The desk pad in question has received bad reviews and has a low seller rating, raising questions about its top-rated status on New Egg.

The store's packaging method, folding instead of rolling the desk pad, has been criticized, but they eventually switched to rolling it.

The Ruckus 4-in-1 Pro gaming kit has even worse reviews, with a user calling it the worst thing they've ever used, and its design raises confusion with missing and duplicated keys.

The gaming peripherals being reviewed are poorly rated and frustrating, with options like the Cooler Master MM712 and Logitech G305 available for a better budget.

The decor item, a Mario star with cowboy boots, is also one-star rated, adding to the theme of disappointment.

The PC build has rookie errors, such as incorrect RAM slot placement, but surprisingly manages to post and run in dual-channel mode, which is crucial for gaming performance.

The computer is running at full memory speed and the SSD is at 100% usage during Windows boot-up.

The GPU is getting PCIe Gen 4x8 at by4, potentially bottlenecking a more powerful GPU.

The system experiences crashes and blue screens while trying to run Team Fortress 2, but adjusting the RAM speed resolves the issue.

Struggles with Game Performance and System Value

The narrator experiences difficulties interacting with the game window and decides to switch games.

They try Kerbal Space Program 2, which has a controversial Early Access launch and is running at a low frame rate.

The narrator questions the value of their gaming system, suggesting that a better setup could be obtained for the same price.

Disabling the AR windows and moving the HDMI caused a hard reboot, leading to a glitchy BIOS screen.

The speaker questions who buys low-rated parts, suggesting budget-conscious shoppers may ignore reviews.

They emphasize the importance of listening to past buyers and segue into promoting Grammarly as a helpful writing tool for their team's operations.