Awesome Tips I Bought a $300 Gaming PC on TaoBao
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Have you ever wondered what Chinese consumers might be buying from their version of AliExpress? We didn’t, at least not initially, but when we saw the specs and price of this Frankenstein gaming PC listed all over Taobao, our tune changed completely. What’s going on inside this $300 14-core xeon beast of a computer? Who makes these parts? Why is it so cheap? And why is hwinfo64 telling us that this motherboard has specs that straight up shouldn’t exist?
When we fantasy-built our own workstation equivalent to the Taobao gamer special, here’s what we came up with:
Build 1:
– HP Z440 ($130) + $39 shipping within US
– Updated version of the PC we used for the latest $69 PC
– Add on E5-2690 V4 $22.22
– Add on 2070 Super for $150
– Includes 700W power supply
– Uses 2133 RAM, same as the Taobao
– Has Front USB 3 x4
– RAM and SSD were included in a few of the listings we found
Build 2:
– Dell Precision T5810 ($67) + $35 shipping within US
– Add on E5-2698 V3 $24.99
– Only does E5 V3 processors
– 2698V3 is only slightly slower than 2690V4 at CPU mark
– Includes 825W PSU
– Has Front USB 3 x1 USB 2 x3
– Uses 2133 RAM, same as the Taobao
– 16gb ram included in the model we found on ebay
– Add on a 240gb Kingston A400 for $25
– Add on an RTX 3070 OC for $200 + $15 shipping on ebay
Discuss on the forum:
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Intro animation by MBarek Abdelwassaa
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
2:06 Mystery Case
3:32 Accessories
5:15 Cable Management & PSU
6:28 They sent the wrong unit?
6:43 SSD
6:57 RAM
7:37 Motherboard (more on that later)
8:30 Firing it up and solving some mysteries
11:03 Green Internet Explorer & Ham
12:34 Gaming
13:32 A chipset only a motherboard could love
17:15 Should you get one?
Deals for Days. Big home savings are happening now.
If that thing was phoning home, it would make sense that the CCP or any entity with intelligence would buy aws storage, a vm at some level3 datacenter, leverage Azure vms, or something common like that. Encrypt the data using SSL, and have the machines check in to something in a large US datacenter to conceal the check-in information, and then export the data back to China from the US based server.
So, I'd also think it would be safe to assume, by now the CCP would also realize this technique has 2x fronts.
1. If they were stealing data even from their own people using this method; Chinese IT folks would assume Americans were trying to steal data from them,
2. circumvents the geo-blocking feature built into many routers., and makes it look like typical traffic going to a google/aws/microsoft.
To the Chinese IT folks, the data mining would look like the US was orchestrating it.
And to the Americans, it looks like typical traffic.
Because the data is encrypted, so you are gonna have to do DPI-SSL on that thing to inspect everything its actually sending. Isolate it in the network, maybe put a snort box inbetween that and the internet. Who knows, it might even be sophisticated enough to break up the data to make it incoherent, this way you wouldn't actually see it send a password anywhere, just a few bytes to 5-30 different servers, and send them to multiple locations, to be reassembled later.
Remember that thing has meltdown/specter vulnerabilities, and if the hardware has a bootkit/rootkit, maybe sub-virted which is why it cant establish network connection, because the network and configuration didn't exist for the subOS to build them. Might even fake your bios and give you the impression you are making changes. Also, you know how dangerous that USB keys are. What's to say that keyboard/mobo (anything usb) doesn't have anything "built-in", they can be re-flashed right? so there is memory there.
Thank you for these wonderful videos. Take care.
This is just Linus being a China apologizer for 20 minutes. Do NOT buy Spyware machines from China , regardless of what tech tips you heard.
If I had to take a guess, it’s because the case is made out of recycled Coke cans
It is ukrainian guys, not russian. Hryvnia is Ukrainian currency
"Starting with a case, which is a case" – LTT, 2023
I bought a laptop from Aliexpress as a testing device and it arrived with an English Windows 11 OOBE but I kept seeing the same synaptics errors. MalwareBytes flagged it as a virus, so I wiped it and used an ISO I installed.
16:47 – "E-Sports Helper" ?? XD
Its pronounced as Zhan Dao not Jin Dao. Jin dao means golden knife
This kind of content is where Linus shines.
Device Manager… crap. Device Manager… crap. Device Manager?….crap. Device Manager…. crap. lmao
Ooh, another time where I clicked on a "background noise" title and ended up discovering something really cool! Thanks for the info about the parts harvesting.
6:42 Taobao does archive the description page at the time of purchase for every order. I suspect it was taken down by Taobao because it was fraudulent. Those weird motherboards have legit uses, but this particular prebuilt is clearly fraudulent.
12:05 The Qihoo 360 browser was popular because it provides compatibility over traditional IE extensions (for use cases like online banking). It does spy on its user, but so do every other security software or browser vendors.
In general, that's not something average Chinese consumer would buy at all. People make memes about this kind of offering all the time. I guess you and your team probably chose it for the show, but it's probably not a good idea to claim that's what people in China would buy.
I cannot hold my laugh anymore when the "vellygood" patch cable arrives. hahahahaha
Velly Good 🤣
mate, if you paid $600 for a $300 item, your taobao agent ripped you off
I'm rocking a Xeon E5-2690 v4 in my current rig. Works well enough with my 1060
That is one hell of a Frankenstein monster PC. All manner of incompatible parts made compatible.
Gotta love Chinese ghetto tech engineering! 😂🤘
China is the world's super power
that chinese board from computex looks like my old gigabyte OC board from 2015 ish
Who IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would buy ANYTHING on AliExpress, let alone HARDWARE? 🤨😂
These Wish videos are getting old.
Just curious since it was mentioned at the end of the video, but where are the "couple of really good options linked below" for going down the "liquidated hardware route"? I don't see any links for that in the video description. Thanks!
business idea, Buy the domain, put a million ads on it and just wait for traffic. boom
anyone that still finds linus "trust worthy" ummm he aint and i hope he looses money and his wife leaves him
Damn you really got scammed for that 300$ shipping
15:28 – russian experts💀and afterwards you see screenshot with prices in hryvnia(UAH), which is Ukraine currency
anyone has the source to 14:32 looks satisfying to watch ngl,
x99 still a big thing down here in brasil, i am watching on one right now
This gives “Made In China” a Hole New meaning 💀