AMD Gave Us $5,000 for an Ultimate Tech Upgrade and We Built a Dream Setup

It's amazing what you learn about somebody when AMD gives them $5,000 US to spend on an ultimate tech upgrade. For instance, Robert Lao here has been a product designer at Creator Warehouse for just about 3 and 1/2 years, and I only just now learned that he might have a car floor mats. Wow. He listens to music and he makes food to eat. Next, you're going to tell me you like that exotic bean beverage everyone's talking about. I drink some every day. But in all seriousness, Robert also has some stuff that is a little unusual. TIG, MIG, stick, plasma cutters, multipprocess welders. What am I looking at here?

It melts metal. Cool. Are we going to melt some metal today? Yeah, that sounds metal AF. Hi, we were just going to talk about you. We're going to be deploying this robot vacuum for pet hair management, of course. And of course, we'll be upgrading Robert's PC with some AMD technology. This is a lot to do. It's always a blast doing these AMD Ultimate tech upgrades, especially when we get to help AMD give back to you, our community. And this time around, they're giving away two bundles. Each includes a power color redevil AMD Radeon RX970 XT GPU as well as this custom AMD light to bring a bit of extra personality to your room. The 970 XT is a great gaming card with 16 gigs of VRAM, perfect for your gaming needs, and it has quiet fans that

use temperature detection so they only spin when your system needs it. Plus, this card features a dual BIOS mode builtin with a switch for easy swapping between your profiles. So, get started on your own AMD Ultimate Tech upgrade by entering the draw by following the link that we've left in the description. Good luck. Let's start by clearing some space to build your PC by getting this Flare Espresso coffee maker out of the way. you uh you have a flare espresso maker, but this one's the plus two. For real though, the difference between this one and the one we already have is that this one has electric preheating, so it heats the chamber without needing us to pour hot water into it two or three times

before we make an espresso. It also uses a more standard size basket. So, the standard size basket means we can buy more standard accessories like tampers or other fancy espresso tools that will work with this one that won't necessarily work with the one we already have. Oh, I'm afraid to ask. So, what's a flare plus two worth? I think this one was something in the ballpark of 700 Canadian. 700 US. Oh, 700 US. $700. You don't even know how much you spent on it. That's crazy. Okay. As a not coffee drinker, why espresso? So, espresso lets you make different kinds of drinks than drip coffee. So, espresso would be what you

use to make, say, a latte or a cappuccino. You pull in espresso and you add some different types of steamed milk to it. Terra actually drinks lattes more often than I do. I usually make drip coffee in the morning. So, all that and you're just going to drink drip coffee in the morning anyway. This is an upgrade for our kitchen. Nice. Would you believe I've never tried a latte? Have you? Really? I'm not a cocky guy. Um, should we make one? Sure. I can't believe you already have a flare. You know what? It doesn't matter.

This is exactly the same as upgrading a PC. All right. Okay. You kind of got me there. But you already have a CPU and a GPU. Why do you need a new All right. Okay. Fine. If only there was some tool that could drive things that had screw threading on them. Some type of screwdriver. Wait, Robert's working on something. Let me go grab it. Yeah. Yes. Oh, dude. Okay. This is called the no wobble. It only probably doesn't wobble.

Yeah, it Well, it wobbles a little. Don't worry about that. That's a minor detail. Basically, we do completely recognize that not every application for a screwdriver can accommodate the large multi-bit interface at the end. This especially comes up in PC building when you're trying to install a heat sink or install a PCI card through a slot that has a very narrow and deep opening. So, we're creating the So, basically, this when it's inserted together will behave almost like a standard one piece screwdriver. Uh, and we designed this chuck mechanism so that when this bit gets inserted, it autolocks and it kind of locks down with a tapered mechanism inside and it removes as much wobble as we could with these long bits. No ratchet on

this one because no matter how good your ratchet is, you're going to have a little bit of slop. And our objective here was to have this be as close to a fixed shaft screwdriver as possible, but every fixed shaft screwdriver that you will probably need. Also, this bit case freaking rocks. It just feels so good. We seem to have found a small glitch in the matrix. You can't lift it all the way. It doesn't fit under a counter. This isn't even a line of size countertop or anything like that. This is just really tall. Sorry. We have a preheated basket. Mhm. Okay. We have the bean powder. That seems like a lot. Tamp it. That compresses the coffee. We pour the water in here. And then you lift the handle. And then when you lift the handle, it

pulls the water into the chamber. Are you supposed to go fast or slow? Slow. When you pull down, we watch the pressure gauge to see how fast we're going out. So, this first part is the pre-infusion. It wets the coffee. Uh-huh. And then after about 10 seconds, we pull. And it looks like we ground it too fine because nothing's coming out. While Robert's figuring out the coffee machine, I'm going to figure out what's going on with these PCs. I assume based on the cleanliness that this one is yours. I've seen his desk at work. It doesn't look like this. It look Yeah, it looks like that. You're protect. You cleaned this up before we came. There's no way. No shot.

There is a whole bin of stuff that came off of that desk that is now in the spare room upstairs. Anywh who, don't look. Both systems are getting a makeover. Terra's is appropriately going in the Fractal Terra. And then Robert's machine is getting an upgrade and going in a cute little John's bow case. So, I you tidied it up, but you left a bunch of stuff on the top of it. It adds character. You know what, though? I get it. This clutter all makes sense because you need War Land 4 at your fingertips.

You can tell how often I play it. Some of this though, I couldn't live without fidgeting with. Are these metal Lego bricks? I machine those on the Chromebook at work. Shut up. Um, are you supposed to do that? Okay. All right. Let's get this over to the dining table. Maybe we could unbox something that comes in a big box so that we could lay some cardboard down so we don't scuff this table over there. Um Oh, sure. Floor mats. All right. In that case, here's a quick shot of these going into the car. There. Now they're done.

Weather tech. Question for you. You're going all the way from some random mismatched DDR3 to 64 gigs of DDR5. Uh, do you have any idea how much this is worth right now? Does she need 64 gigs of DDR5? What do you do with your system? Uh, you do use Word documents once in a while and Excel. And I play games sometimes. That's about it, though. I also didn't know we got 64 gigs. Is that actually 64 gig? You ordered 16 gigs. Yeah, that sounds more like it. Well, I can see where the RAM budget came from. An A series chipset motherboard with 64 gigs of RAM on it.

There's a first time for everything. This is plenty of PCIe and USB for one slot. And it even has 2 and 1/2 gig LAN and a 10 GB USB port. Well, this is fine. Just fine. Wait, it has Wi-Fi 6E. The only thing I'm missing is PCIe Gen 5 then. And I don't even need that. Not for a machine that uh What games did she say she plays? Right. Word dock. Word docks. For the rope light, the idea was kind of to have it squiggle up the wall over here. We can always change this whenever we want cuz these are just little stickies and we have a few little anchoring points on the wall.

You know someone's feeling good about their choices when they lead with We can always change it. You can always change it. But anyway, let's turn it on. Oh, that's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, right? Not bad. This light, the light in the corner, adding some ambiance. Cool. Some late night gaming. We don't stay up late. Now we just need some coffee to help us stay up later. If only Robert could.

Truly. I mean, it's only been a couple of hours. He's trying. Is this the Are we on the third attempt or the fourth? This is attempt number three. Just so that I'm clear, when you pull on the thing, coffee is supposed to come out the bottom. That's the idea. Yeah. Okay. I [snorts] heard we got close on our fourth attempt. We did. [clears throat] Very embarrassing. So, we were using this before, which if you look only has the surface to pull through here. We switched to just the regular one and didn't change anything else and it pulled. Okay.

Okay. Well, while you're grinding things, Yeah. Uh I'm going to keep working on this computer. Actually, Robert, you're supposed to be helping me work on the computer. Are you usually the PC builder of the house? I am. So, not your first rodeo then? Not my first. All right. Excellent. That'll make this easier. Although this is my first time building in a case this small. All right, that'll make this harder. We went with a Ryzen 5 7600X. Why did we choose this one? Because it's pretty much the entry level on the AM5 platform, and it will be plenty for Terra's needs. This thing whips up word documents like you wouldn't believe.

This is actually going to be a way more reasonable size for an, you know, efficient office PC that has 64 gigs of RAM in it for some reason. I thought the coffee maker was going to be the bougiest thing in this setup. Terra, we until we figure it out, you can have so many tabs open. Oh my goodness. I actually do have a number on that. Uh, she could handle about a thousand or so tabs. Oh wow. Yeah, technically that RAM is still cheaper than the coffee maker. All right, cooler time. We've gone with the Noctua NHL 9AM5 because it's low profile and quiet. This is interesting. I didn't know Noctua made this. The NFD1 fan duct kit.

Basically, it's a thing of spacers and gaskets, I guess, that you can use to sort of fine-tune the height of the seal between your L9A and the side panel of your case, which will allow your CPU fan to draw fresh air in rather than recirculated hot air, which is a big deal for small form factor cases like the Terra. Very cool. Literally, don't laugh at that. Don't don't don't encourage me. Team effort. That's it. Don't go. Yeah, it's not too tight. Ah, you know that I do these upgrades with people who work in very very different fields even though they all obviously work for our group of companies. Um, so I'll find myself menplaining to engineering folks how to tighten a bloody bolt pattern. I'm like, "Nope, guideline is nope.

Might as well explain principles of sewing to a lama day. think these screws come out. Oh, then we screw in these little posts. Just a little something like that. And then the tubes go on that and the tubes go a little something like that. However, we do trim them to length. We will have to trim them to length. They seem a little bit on the long side right now. This worked out great. Look at that. So, we've got a nice little like Pentium 4 era style wind scoop here. We go ahead and close the system.

And that means we're drawing perfectly fresh air to our CPU. I love it. Now, we can throw in our power supply, a 750 W SFX unit from Corsair. Ow. Dang it. I keep leaning on my elbow today because when I'm not doing anything to it, it's fine. But when I lean on anything with it, it really hurts. It's kind of hard to tell, but I got like a big bruise. Did you eat it at Edmonton? No. No, actually, it's a it's so much dumber. Um I was checking the garage to see if Ivonne was home. And right as I went out to see if her car was there, it started to open. I was like, I should

like I should hide somewhere and sneak up on her and like give her a big hug or whatever. Um, and so I went to scoot across my garage and I have epoxy floors and I absolutely ate sh. So I come out, I'm like, look at me go. Boom. Got him. That was a big ball. Just like feet out from under me. Wait, where did you get a coffee? Wait, did you do another one while I was distracted? Okay, now hold on just a gosh darn second here. This is the poll. Don't panic. This is the poll. Okay. Are we ready, guys?

I think I've been ready all day. This will make a perfectly good latte. I'm very happy about this. And we'll dial it in. So, if I had never tried a latte before, then would this be a good example? Uh, so what would be a good ratio of coffee to foam? Well, the foam is just going to taste like milk. Yeah. Okay. I like milk. Uh, so Definitely get underneath the foam. You can have some foam for sure. Okay. Get underneath the foam cuz the foam is a part of the fun.

Mhm. Okay. That's a good ratio. Okay. Here you can take this. Let's see if you like it or not. Oh, that's okay. Go ahead. The odds seem slim. Ah, yes. Bitter. The way that I like my beverages. Huh. Interesting. Mhm. Now I've tried espresso. You have? Wow. And you didn't like it, but that's okay. really glad that other people like it. Their happiness makes me happy. I'm going to go build computers.

I'm going to wash it down with this uh soon to come water bottle design. ltdstore.com. Mhm. That's the side that we need the long bit for. The long bit for Oh, we're going to use the no wobble. Use the Yeah. Oh, yeah. This is a perfect example of what you need the no wobble for. This screw in this corner. Yeah. if only magnetizer TBD. But there you go. This is the kind of use case we're talking about. So, what do you think?

Oh, it's so cute. It's so much smaller. It's way better. There's no reason for me to have something like this tall just sitting right here. This is great. I like the color, too. Front IO. Yeah. I mean, I think this was a really great choice. You picked it, right? I did. This is one of the things I picked right on the computer. Yeah. This is the seat for my motorcycle. fairly plain just kind of vinyl seat that is quite stiff.

Yeah. So, I found this company from Australia and they make a very nice looking multi-panled seat. A little bit of extra foam. So, got some padding on there. So, it'll dress up the bike a little bit and hopefully be a little bit more comfortable, too. Nice. Have fun. Thanks. I'll go build a keyboard. There's a lot more foam. This thing is freaking heavy. Epoaker Galaxy 100. It weighs as much as a Galaxy. I didn't check the weight. I don't know how much it weighs, man. Like, like you can really see. Do you get a sense of the weight?

Like she, you know, she's heavy. She's a heavy boy. She thoughts nice, though. Now to swap all of the key caps. Not a tedious task at all. Do you type in Japanese often? No, I don't. I just like the way they look. And there's the Japanese key caps. Ooh, that's a lot more padding. Wow. Here, I'll stick this back on the bike and then when we go to the garage later, we can get another look at it. All right, big moment. Here it comes.

Goodbye, Rose. Hello, EPO maker. Wow. Uh, hey, did you want to move these monitors around? I'm thinking about it. My one concern is just I don't think this old monitor goes high enough to be even close to the level of this one if I swap them. You would want to put this on this cuz it's a nicer monitor. It'd be nice. Well, nice if it was in the center. Let me show you the vision. So, the vision is I sit here and I do my stuff and I type and type. But when I want to write here, I just slide it right underneath. Uh-oh. Oh, shoot. The volume knob is too high. It doesn't fit under her monitor stand anymore because of this volume knob.

She'll need a new volume knob. Okay. Yeah. Doesn't need to be metal. I mean, yeah. Well, what the We are getting close here. All that I've got to do is move Robert's big tower from this Fantex case to this cute little John's bow one. And then we finally get to check out the welder. I couldn't help noticing, Robert, this is a bit of a weird build. Yeah, the internals of this PC are actually from the Christmas party last year. That's what they all say. And I transplanted it into a case I already had because I thought that this case was nicer than the one it came with. And then I realized it's an MATX build inside this giant tower. Took up so much space on my desk for basically nothing.

Right. Tara uses Word documents. You're apparently the actual computer user and she's got 64 gigs of DDR5 and you've got a single 16 gig stick. To be fair, her build was supposed to be a 16 gig build. I think I'm on to his devious plan. I don't think her RAM is staying in there at all. No comment. This is a 15-year-old drive. I hope you don't keep anything essential on here. I should probably check. Good lord, this is even older. You have an AS, though. I do have an Az. Okay. I'm not sure if I have backup set up though, so that'll be on the list.

There we go. You know what? For a case with no freaking cable management, actually, it kind of comes together. Okay, let's give it a shot. We um could have tidied Robert's desk for a nice before and after. We didn't. First this one. Okay. What else remains? Welder. The welder. Oh, it's welding time. Oh, and vacuum. Not impressed, huh? It's really quiet, actually. Yeah. Are you happier with this one than your old one?

Yeah, it's a lot quieter. I think that makes a big difference. Okay, let's try out the welder. Woohoo. Since we're down here checking out the welder, I love the new seat. Yeah, that's a huge difference. Yeah, some extra padding. I think it breaks up the lines of the seat as well. The old one was sort of one big mass. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Okay, let's have a look at the welder. Speaking of things that could end us. Oh, that's a lot of dials.

This is a TIG welder. Yeah, it can do a little bit finer, thinner materials than a MIG welder would be. Cool. But it takes a little bit more technique, I would say. So, okay. So, I've watched a couple of YouTube videos and played with it for 2 hours, so I'm basically an expert now. I'm going to need a helmet. All right. Rock on. And you've got a you got a new mask, too, right? I did. That's pretty cool. Sweet looking mask from ESOB. Why do I get the little brother mask? This is the torch that creates the arc for TIG welding. And there's a couple of adjustable pieces. This pink piece is the cup that helps direct the shielding gas

coming out of that tank. Mhm. And that protects the weld area from too much oxidation. So this is argon. Got it. And then once that cup is in place, this is a piece of tungsten that is what's connecting the electrical current from the welder and pointing it at the part. And that can adjust how far this sticks out. So depending on the stickout and the size of tungsten, you kind of tweak that. I don't want to be that guy, but that's the LTC workshop jacket. And that is not sure is like fire rated. The nice thing about TIG generally, it doesn't throw a lot of sparks like MIG. So I'm pretty comfortable using this.

It pretty much is blocking the UV rays from the welding. You have another one, Rob, if you want to give it to him. Oh, I do have another jacket. Yeah, you have a navy one. I have the uh the prototype of the workshop jacket. Oh, is this the one that This is the one that's made out of the cargo pants material. Yeah. And somehow it ended up at Rob's house. You know, I didn't think your name was literal. And what are you making right now?

Right now, I've got some parts that are going to turn old wheels into barbell weights. So, you have a $700 coffee machine, but you need to make weights out of old wheels. Yeah. Okay. The wheels do have a story. We used to have a van that came in as a super project van. We had to tow it home, right? And we refinished the wheels and unfortunately that van is no more. But we do still have the wheels that we spent a bunch of time repainting. You see those old timey bodybuilders lifting the wheels and the barbell? That's kind of what we're going for.

Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. And we're going to And this will go on there. And this will go on here. And then so wheel studs go on there. And that bolts to the wheel and the barbell goes there. All right. I like it. It took me a while to come around to it, but now I get it. I get This is steel welding wire. So, this is the filler that's going to melt into the base metal. Yeah. And then this torch is what creates the heat. So, the first thing we do to hold the materials in place is called tacking. So, in a couple of spots, we melt the metal in.

I think I get it. Okay. So, we pop that through there. And look at that. I assume you have some nuts. Let me grab them. Beautiful. Look at that. Okay. All right. Oh, that is uh what is this? So, like 160 lbs or so. Something like that. I think I haven't weighed these wheels. Ready? No. What's your personal fitness goal like around this kind of is the goal just like you know deadlift this or is the goal like this right now is probably a deadlift goal first and then we'll see what we're going to get from there.

Don't let your dreams be dreams. You know what an upgrade. We got a K swap for Robert. We got a new system for Terra in the Terara kitchen accessories, including the most challenging of coffee makers. This manager of bear hair that uh good gravy already picked up enough hair to make another dog. Good job, buddy. And the Coobo Clara that we didn't even mention because when would Robert ever have time to read with all these hobbies? The welder's pretty cool, not going to lie. And you know what else is pretty cool? AMD for sponsoring AMD $5,000 ultimate tech upgrade. We really appreciate their partnership. And if you guys are looking for something else to watch, maybe check out one from the

business team who makes all these upgrades possible. Mr. Steve Chan, businessman. That's not what he called himself in the video. He went Steve Chan Asian man. Yeah, he said it, not me. Well, I said it this time. Oh god, I'm going to leave.