Idea for the next year. Do a out of the box benchmarks, then fix the bios settings and update the drivers, and run the benchmarks again to see how much it impacted the performance.
while that might be interesting... it seems like a lot of work for very little content. The viewers of this channel are probably savvy enough to run updates right? Updates are important outside of performance anyway (security updates often actually hinder performance).
@@KerchumA222Viewers here are, but your average person buying a prebuilt doesn't really 'get it' when it comes to any updates that are not 100% automatic.
I'd agree too. The single stick of memory was glossed over, but an actual fix and comparison is the only way to know how much it mattered. Do the tests out of the box, then do them with minor fixes applied (drivers/settings), then if needed do it with major fixes (fan adjustments, or part swapping to compare what they did vs could have done).
@@KerchumA222 "viewers of this channel are probably savvy enough"... you'd be surprised how much tech savvy-ness is on the decline, some generations "first computer" is a smart phones, that don't require much knowledge to use tiktok, they never really need to learn a lot of technical things, unless they really are interested enough to actually learn (and not just repeat the words of whatever the tech influencer says)
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@@KerchumA222 lmao I bet most of the current generation don't even know what a file system is.
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I don't mind the gap between episodes, but it would be better to start/finish earlier in the year (maybe finish in November), some people could use your results to decide which PC to buy for holidays presents! Another great season, congrats everyone!
I wouldn't be surprised if the later release had partially to do with getting all of the results first before recording and posting. I'd rather that than getting sub-par results but earlier release. Not everything can be done when we'd like. That last bit's nothing against your statement. Just a general sentiment.
For future seasons the episodes should be much closer together. Basically production should be finished completely and then released 1 episode/week. This season was fantastic. The problem is that the episode were so far apart, you completely forgot the previous ones by the time a new episode is released.
"completely forgot the previous ones by the time a new episode is released" So you gotta re-watch the old episodes. It's a genius 4D chess move by Linus.
The problem is that these are never comparable because a 'build your own' PC doesn't try to hit the margins required to pay for the wages of the build and support staff.
amazing idea, it would give great perspective. im surprised they still havent thought of that or were too lazy to bother. i mean, it took them 3 months to release 4 episodes of this.
Some insight from someone who worked with a local SI for a couple of years regarding the BIOS issue. We get custom BIOSes pushed to the boards we buy with XMP enabled as default so that it sticks even through failed power cycles and so that the technicians don't have to set up XMP for every single machine only for it to reset eventually and left off from there. The downside is the MD5 checksum won't match those from the OEM site so it will need to be force installed via Flashback.
Good to know, but from a user's perspective, this effectively blocks BIOS updates for all but the most dedicated. I hope this video helps push manufacturers and system integrators to fix the issue.
I would prefer out of the box speeds in the comparison. If you want to do a fixed comparison as well that's gravy, but most people buying a pre built aren't touching the bios or updating drivers. The most they'll do is update windows because it happens automatically
I think ideally both would be great, but if your only going to have one, updated is the way to go. Most software updates will automatically install, or at least tell you to update it and what hardware your getting is the more important.
I would have loved a final rundown and grading of the builders just for fun, as a recap (due to how far apart the episodes come out) and build up to decide the winner
I'm amazed there wasn't a final slide with rankings from all the previous episodes and tests. I can't remember the outcomes of these episodes that came out like 3 months before!
I really love the labs graphs now, not only are they visibly more readable but the editing in post which highlights which part linus is talking about really helps!
Quick note about Cyberpower, I thought it was funny to see 1 stick of RAM in the prebuilt, because when I bought my first prebuilt from Cyberpower 5 years ago, they only included one stick then too. Someone at that company really has a vendetta against dual-channel RAM.
sorry to necro but i thought this was interesting because this just reminded me that mine from 2020 also only came with one as well! i wonder what their justification is for that.
Another great series. The only thing I'd say is that this year took too long to release all episodes. This final episode is being released 2 days after Christmas. The best time to have all episodes released by is before Cyber Monday or between cyber monday and christmas so that viewers can actually go buy these systems at holiday prices.
Holiday prices are higher than normal prices marked down to normal prices. Dont get fooled. If something originally at 100usd is marked 20 percent off at 80usd, you didnt save 20usd. You spent 80usd.
Inflated though the prices may be, if you are buying a PC as a gift for someone, you’d probably like to at least be able to order it before Christmas, preferably receive it before Christmas.
outside of scrapyard wars, this is my favorite series yall have ever done, really enjoyed this season. like others have said, i would like to see the epidsodes much closer together as they didnt quite feel as tied together as i would like waiting multiple weeks between each episode. other than that, this year was fantastic and shae was fantastic, i loved seeing someone else help with this series this year and it was a nice uplift as SS2 has sarah much more knowledgeable that the first SS. thanks for the great content yall
Yeah and I love how expressive Shae was here. Sarah and her were both excellent picks for this series and I hope they can keep it up with new people as learning is a thing lol. It's easy to find someone who doesn't know much about computers but a bit harder to find someone who's this great on camera I imagine.
Yes. This series should be structured to have every episode release a week after the other. I completely forgot whatever happened in the previous episodes.
Yep, people understand that this stuff is hard and can be unpredictable but I'd much rather have had them start uploading the series months later to allow for more regular uploads and to allow for more production into the videos.
Telling LTT group to do things in a correct and well timed manor, you may as well talk to a brick…. Or You must be new here, most of the staff complain about their time schedule and lack of prep etc…. It’s like that copper cooling block, they did recently knew it wasn’t for 4090 but did it, and then still slated it like the tests they did on a totally different beast of a card weren’t the problem, despite being told it will fail more than likely….
@@Synergy4375 Bro Did you even watch their apology video where they talked about how they are addressing all those issues? Maybe listen to WAN show occasionally, where they have talked very openly about a lot of their issues and how they are fixing them. Don't just repeat things you heard from other people without having done any research yourself to back it up.
@@galacticviper4453 think you need to chill out it’s called a joke (other than the bs testing ) …. Now it depends what point specifically your talking about, as yes I have, for a apology regarding the product mentioned in my other comment , I watched him on the wan show slate it some more, so less of an apology more of a doubling down on incorrect testing, so unless I’ve missed another apology then fair enough… If you mean their content goals etc, I haven’t seen that part yet so no, but that doesn’t mean the way this was executed was better or should be dismissed, just because they’ve spoke about it, (unless this was outside of the new POAs starting point for content creation) …actions speak louder than words, and this situation imo fall under the same banner being rather messy shall we say in the production, timing of EP releases etc. So like the complaint of a few comments on the video and the op of this one, still showing it’s sloppy and not complete as should be or as we would like.
the best part about HP is they are actually trying to innovate with some of their models, like that custom case a year ago that separated the Radiator from the rest of the pc in its own raised section so that it wasn't pushing warm recycled air through the rad. It didn't have totally game changing performance differences, but its stuff like that which really tells me these guys care about trying to make a good product.
I was rooting for HP mainly bc of the customer service lady from the first episode. Awesome to see she made a great recommendation + that sweet $200 off deal !
Pretty good! Only thing I would say is would be nice to have different rankings. As in "Overall" winner, "Service" winner, "Upgradability" winner etc. just so it's better for people to break down what would be important to them.
these vids make me glad im in the uk, between me and my 2 brothers we've had at least 5 or 6 pcs from PCSpecialist and never had any issues, the prebuilts are well thought out and custom build prices are pretty fair and their service is great, really couldn't ask for much more would be really curious to see LTT review them
I appreciate you enabling everything in the BIOS and updating all of the drivers for each so they have an equal test - but you should 100% test them all out of the box as is next time. I would be willing to wager that MOST people who buy a pre-built PC are not going to check their BIOS settings - or know what they're doing if they did. Nor do I think many people would update their drivers unless the game they wanted to play failed or told them to do so.
Updates are probable gonna happen on most components automatically. If anything I wonder if it would not be better for OEMs to ship the systems without proprietary software and let windows update manage drivers.
@@ribosoman593 My NVIDIA drivers have never updated automatically. It wasn't until I started playing BG3 this year that the game told me my drivers weren't at their recommended version for the game. And the drivers wouldn't update until I downloaded NVIDIA's specific software to do it. If it doesn't come pre-installed on the pre-built then I'm not sure. Mind you I'm not saying I'm 100% correct. This PC I built myself last year is my first foray into PC gaming as I've always been a console gamer. I genuinely don't know. And with me not knowing I figured the average pre-built purchaser would also not know.
This was incredibly disappointing to me. Out-of-the-box is how most of these systems are gonna be used, so that's how that's how they should be tested first and foremost! I understand updating the drivers before benchmarking, it minimizes the chance for incompatibilities or erratic results, but still a baseline test with the drivers as shipped should be done and any issues that may arise should be noted, rather than avoided by only testing with updated drivers. Now optimizing BIOS settings and even updating the BIOS version? WHAT THE HELL?!! > 95% of pre-built users are not gonna do that! Heck, figuring out the optimal BIOS settings is the most difficult part of building a PC and I bet even the majority of LTT viewers don't run optimal settings on their DIY-PCs! And botched BIOS-settings can not only cause significant performance impacts, they can (and have on previous 'seasons' of secret shopper) even make the PC malfunction or not boot at all! Sure, it's good to know what's the maximum performance these systems are capable of, but most of them are never gonna reach that. FACTORY PERFORMANCE FIRST, OPTIMIZED TEST SECOND!
@@LRM12o8 I agree with changing BIOS settings, and any drivers from the OEM should be out of the question, but now manufacturers can put drivers on Windows Update, the out-of-box test should definitely include those, as after a couple of months they would get installed as part of a routine Windows update.
@@aeonspast So in my pretty limited experience, there WERE OEM versions of drivers Microsoft has validated with OEMs that will update with Windows. However, usually those versions are MASSIVELY out of date, and well off of the current driver versions. They're almost PURELY for stability purposes. I only recall 2 PCs that I ever used that did that, and BOTH of them were a couple of years out of date, compared to the Nvidia downloadable versions of the drivers. I don't know if that STILL is the case, but it was for a while. It's very possible that has changed, since the last time I encountered it was pre Ryzen(Before 2016) so....your mileage my vary.
I Still want to know who was 2nd and 3rd place like the Previous "Spy Themed" Secret Shopper, it was quite informative last time to know their Conclusions and hear their Advice or Criticism to those System Integrator's.
iBuyPower (2), Maingear (3), NZXT (4). They are essentially the same/extremly close to each other so its really down to preference and if you need things like Techsupport. Personally, as a customer, i care much much more about performance than anything else. After all thats why im buying a "gaming PC", right?
Like everyone’s already saying, would love to have out-of-the-box benchmarks and have the episodes of next season be released weekly. Other than that, still love the series!
It's so clean I almost didn't realize, but these graphs are leagues more readable and understandable than they were just some months ago. Kudos to the new processes and labs team. :)
For the MSI motherboard in the IBuyPower rig, uninstall the MSI Center SDK before reinstalling Center. Happened to me on my laptop, might be the same for you guys
I’m really surprised how far HP has come with the Omen. Finally using mostly off the shelf parts, not locking down the bios or power limit. If I was looking for a pre-built I’d probably consider it. That is if I could get a really good price on it.
My previous prebuilt (I have a custom built now) was an HP OMEN with a 1080 TI and 8700k to tell you its age and how long it lasted. Really solid prebuilts even back then (+5 years ago now? Anyway.)
@@ray-conemod8271 I got a similar one around the same time as you, only with a 1060 3GB due to my budget. Next time I upgrade I would not have considered them if not for their scores here as the BIOS is very basic and is missing many settings, and the drivers weren't available when I received it (and I needed a driver update to fix a Bluetooth issue so the support agent had to get me to use a third-party driver update program because Realtek don't have generic drivers)
These are probably some of the most useful videos from LTT. Not as fun as the usual stuff, but so damn helpful. I hope you continue to do these every couple years
I bought a HP Omen 30L at the end of 2022. It shipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 3.8GHz and 3070Ti and is still holding up well. I did have issues where a firmware update bricked the system and I had to send it away to be replaced but the customer service team were very helpful and professional. I’ve had to real complaints with it thankfully so glad to see how they fared so far in this series.
This is great info to have for the PC people who don't want to become personal IT for family members after helping them build a PC. Knowing this comes out on a yearly basis helps consumers know how each companies excel/fail every year. One thing I would love to see is this kind of video series to come out before November so people can shop for gifts during black Friday and/or the x-mas season to help the less informed be able to order gifts for loved ones!
To be fair, this is the 3rd Secret Shopper in like 5 years, so I think there's a gap year each time, so its not exactly annualized (yet? I'm hoping for 'yet')
@@bararobberbaron859 Linus has said on WAN Show that it was always planned to be an annual thing but that things have always gotten in the way, and it's a lot more work than even a review video would be.
My last 2 main PC's have been upgraded HP Omens. The worst thing about them is usually the cheap motherboard and bloatware. But they are great for building from if you don't feel like doing the whole thing from scratch.
Can we all just take a minute to appreciate the fact that Linus was able to say "GaNInfinity" and "Airpyra Tech" with a straight face? Bravo, good sir!
Honestly, I've been finding myself buying more and more HP products. That's something I never thought I'd do. But when you start being more open and honest with your products and tech support, I find it hard pressed to go with anyone else for an OEM build. I personally custom build my PCs, but when I'm shopping for family or office equipment, I know HP has me covered. One downside is everything HAS to have a profile to function fully. I hate having to "login" to use a printer.
I've never bought a pre-built before, and heard good things about starforge. Some interactions with Starforge and these videos have calmed my nerves. I have already purchased the system back in October, my wife ❤'s it. Thank you for these reviews, I feel better knowing I still made a solid choice.
You know, I'd like to see a Part 5 to this - how easy is it to upgrade the cooler, the PSU, the GPU, and motherboard/cpu/ram swap. It would flag up any proprietary problems that end users may have, if they want to upgrade down the road. I would also include looking at BIOS update support, which can be hit or miss depending on the motherboard age/model. I'm just thinking it would show up problems of custom PSU/fan connectors or non standard mounting holes. It's problems I've bumped into in the past with the likes of Dell, trying to do upgrades for friends.
It would be nice. Maybe set a new price tag for upgrades, and try to make the best bang for the buck starting with every tested system. Most of them would get to the same point, while others may make you waste money on a new PSU or cooling system.
Right. Set a budget for the upgrade and choose the best use of that money for each system. Maybe even add in the "extra" left over from the main buying budget?
Would be interesting to do a microcenter brand power spec. I've bought 3 over the years. 2 for business one for personal and they've always been pretty good quality.
Yes! I'd love to see how their house brand stacks up! (Admittedly some people don't have access to micro center but that's changing, and I think they ship to anybody.)
I loved this series, I hadn’t seen the previous years shows but followed all four parts of this years, shay was fantastic as was the wigs and random locations lol
Something I haven't seen mentioned. As someone who chose a 12600k with B series mobo, the K chips will stay at their boost clocks indefinitely if you have the cooling. The non K chips will only boost in short periods before falling back to base clocks. It was that fact that made me get a K series chip even though I have no short term plans to overclock.
Great little video series as usual - I do wish you guys would release episodes a little closer to each other though as the gaps made it difficult to remember which ones were being tested / how well they performed in each stage. October 1st to Dec 28th for a 4 part series is a little too wide, maybe try and get them out within the span of 2 months instead just so the audience can follow along as intended.
@@9.5.9.5 actually, constructive criticism is allowed & encouraged on the platform & by LTT themselves. How else would they get better at what they already do really well? People like you who never wanna see anything constructive or anyone's "negative" opinion just live a life of obscurity - if that's what you wanna do, go do it.
Another incredible Secret Shopper series finished, well done to you all. Love these so much and well done to HP, definitely best balance and bang for your build there.
Had a similar situation with my Cyberpower pre-built as the ibuypower. Had to flash the bios in order to get it 5000 series ready. They had installed an Asrock b450m/ac but had a custom firmware calling it a b450m/ac Gaming. Uefi wouldn't even recognize the bios update.
Hey guys - just so you're aware, when you publish HDR videos, those videos become somewhat unwatchable on certain devices. My Pixel 3a XL can't handle them, even at 720p it's excessively laggy and far dimmer than typical videos. UA-cam doesn't seem to have an option to view an SDR tonemapped version, at least not yet. Maybe push for that?
You guys should do a custom PC build series where you guys walk into a local Best Buy, Canada Computers, Memory Express, etc,. and ask them to sitdown with you and help you pick out parts and build you a PC and see who does better.
Well done HP, there customer service team was a real stand out and they've resisted the temptation to make every part proprietary. Dell could really benefit by replicating some of HP's approaches to it's pre builts.
Interesting video guys, part of me thinks though that the 'performance' results should have been done based exactly on what they sent you and no more. i.e. worst case scenario. There's a high chance users won't know how to enable things like xmp etc.
Great video, keep up the good work. Would have liked to see a note for how many months/days the bios, chips et, and graphics drivers were out of date instead of their release date for ease of digest.
Watching these videos makes me incredibly glad I had a good experience buying a prebuilt computer. I have little faith in younger me’s ability to have dealt with some of these issues on my own and this series, and its predecessors, have assured me that if I had any issues that required contacting the manufacturer I probably would not be PC gaming anymore. These days I custom built so not a big deal but sheesh, I feel for all the holiday gift receivers who inevitably have issues they can’t fix and get incredibly discouraged.
Best bang for buck is definitely cyberpower and ibuy. As long as you shop sales and kind of know what your doing, you can get configurations for the same or lower price as building your own.
It should be noted that on some Next-Gen games, like RE 4 Remake, an 8GB GPU would perform the same as an identical 12GB GPU but the textures do not load properly making it a much worse experience. This is something that would never be appreciated in charts. If I had to choose i would go with the Starforged PC only because of that 12GB GPU because i do play VRAM intensive games
I appreciated the extra yellow flashing indicators on the performance graphs and the pacing on the explanations. I think it's a noticeable step up compared to the graph-vomit you used to do not that long ago.
I forgot this was a series. Glad to catch the last episode. Seeing the lack of quality control validates what I say to friends when they want to buy a prebuilt vs build one as I have done many times.
Actually surprised to see Starforge right up with the competition for gaming, since that is more a metric that would matter to those buying a gaming PC. That AMD card seems to do just as well as team green!
I get so excited for series like this but they take so long to come out that by the time the last one rolls out i'm completely over it. They should at least be close enough together for me to remember the previous episodes without having to rewatch them.
The age of the bios and drivers doesn't really mean much, if it's not compared to how many versions have been released since the system was last updated. Age and iterations behind would be more informative. This way we'd know when the motherboard manufacturer gave up on the motherboard versus the buldier bothering to do an update before shipping. I've had times I've had to fight with manufacturers to take notice of problems, and taking far too long to fix them. Even taking notice of how long R&D normally takes. As we know, Windows doesn't always grab all the drivers needed for a motherboard, but for some reason the latest driver isn't always on a motherboard's website.
@@tzuyd I am a procurement officer for a small IT refurb company, this stuff is sitting on a shelf for months in advance often. They aren't building it to order at this price tier, there's no reason they couldn't have bought a pair. They just know they can get away with only supplying a single.
@@kelmanl4 "They aren't building it to order at this price tier" What an odd thing to say Regardless, a procurement officer would know that a single stick isn't saving a buck over two smaller sticks anyway.
great video so far, only thing i have to say is that it looks weirdly dark compared to other videos? might just be my phone's dodgy HDR but its a bit weird.
You guys should really not turn on rebar and XMP/DOCP for the SIs. It is not indicative of the SI's capability to configure their systems to run at their "best". If you are going to mess with their configs without providing testing data with an out-of-the-box experience (since your average user will not update or change settings in their BIOS basically ever), then all of your gaming and synthetic benchmarks just got invalidated. Also it makes you look bad.
+1 for doing out of the box performance reviews (as well as tuned). Id also mention 3-4 specific games you plan to play to the system builders and just run the testing on those games. Synthetic benchmarks are completely irrelevant to games in most cases
I have had QC issues with Ugreen products being DOA (even just a USB-C cable). However, after going through the process on Amazon to exchange it, my 65 GaN charger is great. Just something to keep in mind when getting their products.
That is not the case here. The only difference I could see was the custom splash screen. Using a 3rd party flash tool to use the generic firmware works fine, but just feels extremely sketchy.
Secret Shopper S4 should mix things up and be across the pond, doing EU/EEA & UK system integrators. I know LTT has tech journalist / content creator friends over here they could work with, and it would be an excuse to do something like a James Bond theme, or Doctor Who
Great series as always! One thing I would like to request though is to be able to see the difference in performance before and after any configuration changes you guys had to make to the hardware, BIOS, and software. If you only showed one, it makes sense to choose the one you did, since you can't know it wasn't a one-off mistake. But, equally, I'd love to know more about the magnitude of the margin of risk with each option in terms of performance numbers.
i think there should be a part five for these videos with one extra feature: upgradability. although HP won, i would still not buy from any OEM so long as they put even one proprietary component inside the pc. they use custom BIOS, custom PSU, custom everything to the point where if something fails outside of warranty, i would have a hell of a time finding replacement for that component. i think a fifth part to show how much these desktops can be upgraded is a must for this series.
The only "proprietary" thing in their system is the bios and that's more on MSI to fix. The PSU is a coolermaster and everything is off the shelf on that system.
I’ve already had the frustration of a proprietary part fail for a family member’s PC and not being able to replace it. I would never trust HP with my money.
I think going in and doing all the updates and bios tweaks makes the test somewhat unfair. If you're buying a rebuilt 9/10 you're not poking around there, and given they're gaming PCs, I'd expect the integrators to deal with that
The point is to get them all to a minimum test fairness to allow each build it's best chance to prove itself. There's little value to allowing a test to be worsened by OEM blunders lowering the perceived performance. Of course, these OEM blunders are important which why they mention them as they come up. IMO there is little value to having a video where they buy prebuilds, see what shows up, then test the prebuilds as is. I'd be disinterested entirely. Also, adding another test scenario on top of what was already done here would cause the video to take even longer to make, and the reward would be small if any reward at all. Therefore, this is what we got.
I think it's good to do a test both as-is and optimized. Helps bring awareness to the issue for potential buyers too, so more people will hopefully check the BIOS for these things. But yes I'd like to see the systems judged as-is, both in terms of hardware and most software and firmware. I'd update just the GPU driver and Windows versions, I think that's most realistic.
@@fateunleashed9680 most of their tests are automated with MarkBench these days so don't take as long as they used to - the whole point of them automating is so they can have multiple configs being tested at once.
@@fateunleashed9680 The WHOLE point of the video series is to tests the integrators. There's hundreds of other videos out there testing the hardware itself, probably a few in the same configurations. Ideally, they'd do both, but if it was one or the other, I'd much rather them test them as is. As someone buying a prebuilt with very little PC knowledge, I think it'd be vastly more useful to see how they'd perform out of the box, rather than after an specialist team has gone through and tuned them. Yeah, if some of them lose out because they shipped a gaming PC without enabaling Resizeable Bar or XMP, then thats on the integrator to sort their policies out and take the L.
Really appreciate this series helps have a better perspective of overall service and ownership of a computer from those providers obviously I prefer to build it myself but thats good information.
A much needed suggestion for your driver and BIOS methodology - latest does not always mean *best*. Here's an example - the Corsair firmware for the Harpoon RGB Pro mouse does not work best with it's latest released firmware. It causes some double clicking issues when updated to the most recent firmware. For full and reliable experience, many users need to be on the version prior to the latest one. So much so that it is the recommended fix from Corsair both online and when speaking to support via phone. Now, sure this is a small example, but there are many others out there where newest does not mean best. If the BIOS most suited for a particular CPU was one released a year ago, why should that be an issue. I feel it's slightly misleading to make out that aged = worse. Of course, yes with the OS you are of course missing security updates so that makes sense, but there are other areas where the same does not always apply.
this is also an issue with driver updates for GPUs sometimes. There are times where the latest drivers can cause problems in games. Now granted that's not a super common thing these days, but when you have a GPU working great and then suddenly after an update a game is stuttery and weird, and frametimes are all off, you start to look online to see if it's a GPU driver issue, to make sure something in that driver didn't break the performance.
@@novaxaylos1226 Yeah the messaging in the video of newer = better is at best poorly considered, at worst outright misleading. It's stuff like this that makes me doubt that their Labs project will be a success. They need to tell the whole context, not just part of it.
@@MartinNelson Unfortunately, while they've done a lot better in recent history with this stuff, it does seem like some places still need some work. But at the very least, things have been improving over time, so I'm sure if they do another SS setup, the comments section here will be a place they remember. Though I DO find it strange that this ENTIRE series is about buying prebuilts...and then they just ignore why most people buy prebuilts and just start to change things in them. Like most people won't do that.
@@novaxaylos1226 honestly, I unsubscribed back when I found out how poorly they handle 'corrections'. SS got recommended by the algorithm and I do think it's a decent series but like so much LMG produce there are so many areas where they need to improve. As I've been checking the channel for the next episodes, I've checked out one or two random videos and frankly can't say I've seen improvements. Their corrections methodology is still dreadful in comparison with someone like say Tom Scott. They're still pushing the failure that is Floatplane, and they are still drawing arbitrary standards to judge tech by that bare no relation to how people use said tech. Of course it's entirely possible I'm just not observant enough.
@@MartinNelson So I fully understand where you're coming from. And I admit that they still have a lot of areas that need to improve. There's no two ways around that. However, as someone who watches most of their content(I admit some of it doesn't appeal to me, so I let some pass) they have definitely improved in a lot of ways. I think that their method of handling corrections is probably still egregious(Especially considering this was one of the biggest points people had in the past) but many other places they've definitely improved. In terms of their methodology, I imagine that with so many writers on board, and so much going on, there's likely not a lot of quick easy communication between the writer and the actual testers doing the more technical work, so I really could see there being things like...in this case...not a lot of info about what the labs are testing the systems FOR, and instead of just giving them systems saying they need to be tested, and them having a basic "We're benchmarking, optimize and test" sort of methods, instead of better communication. Especially as the labs are a separate building completely to the normal LMG offices. I also believe I've heard Floatplane is fully self sustained now, despite being owned by LMG, so I don't think pushing Floatplane is the worst thing. Especially as it's an LMG owned platform hosting their own content. I don't subscribe to it myself, but it does seem like they have a lot of content that could be interesting to those who like the BTS kind of stuff. Which to me isn't really a problem at all. I'm not really sure who Tom Scott is but if he does similar testing content to a lot of what LTT does, I'll have to go check his stuff out. I watch channels like Gamers Nexus all the time, which i think is why I can see some of the worse parts of LTT in their videos, and is why I can recognize that while it's still not perfect, it has improved a good bit. And I really hope they'll continue trying to improve going forward. Last of all, thank you for keeping this civil! It's so hard to find actual civil conversation on the internet these days. Everyone is looking to immediately argue, and I just really enjoy the conversation really.
I love watching these videos. They are quite fun, I love the costumes and setups of everything! Keep up the good work guys!! Edit: Also I have to add Thank you guys so much for taking care of Subtitles
Shopping, Shipping, Support, SUPERIORITY! In future series, it would make sense to show the performance of the systems without enabling XMP/Resizable bar if they weren't already enabled. The vast majority of users buying prebuilt machines wouldn't know to enable those options.
@@ChiefArug I agree with the sentiment, but I worked in a call centre during Uni and I only remembered the crazy ones for a day or so, and their stories for a little longer ! Honestly, the likelihood they would recognise her in a year from all the calls they receive would be very low I expect.
@@ChiefArug oh 100% - but I assumed, and I could be wrong, she would use a different name and I'm not sure they would recognise her on voice alone, but any video call assistance in the support videos (if the company offers that) might be an issue.
Idea for the next year. Do a out of the box benchmarks, then fix the bios settings and update the drivers, and run the benchmarks again to see how much it impacted the performance.
while that might be interesting... it seems like a lot of work for very little content. The viewers of this channel are probably savvy enough to run updates right? Updates are important outside of performance anyway (security updates often actually hinder performance).
@@KerchumA222Viewers here are, but your average person buying a prebuilt doesn't really 'get it' when it comes to any updates that are not 100% automatic.
I'd agree too. The single stick of memory was glossed over, but an actual fix and comparison is the only way to know how much it mattered. Do the tests out of the box, then do them with minor fixes applied (drivers/settings), then if needed do it with major fixes (fan adjustments, or part swapping to compare what they did vs could have done).
@@KerchumA222 "viewers of this channel are probably savvy enough"... you'd be surprised how much tech savvy-ness is on the decline, some generations "first computer" is a smart phones, that don't require much knowledge to use tiktok, they never really need to learn a lot of technical things, unless they really are interested enough to actually learn (and not just repeat the words of whatever the tech influencer says)
@@KerchumA222 lmao I bet most of the current generation don't even know what a file system is.
I don't mind the gap between episodes, but it would be better to start/finish earlier in the year (maybe finish in November), some people could use your results to decide which PC to buy for holidays presents! Another great season, congrats everyone!
I wouldn't be surprised if the later release had partially to do with getting all of the results first before recording and posting. I'd rather that than getting sub-par results but earlier release. Not everything can be done when we'd like. That last bit's nothing against your statement. Just a general sentiment.
@@whytho1690 yes, it cannot be done faster but if he starts earlier he can finish earlier
I missed this video and I was looking for it. Took way too long between videos.
For future seasons the episodes should be much closer together. Basically production should be finished completely and then released 1 episode/week.
This season was fantastic. The problem is that the episode were so far apart, you completely forgot the previous ones by the time a new episode is released.
Lol
I gotta agree. I feel like I now have to go and rewatch previous videos
I thought that the series had finished. lol
Agreed
"completely forgot the previous ones by the time a new episode is released"
So you gotta re-watch the old episodes. It's a genius 4D chess move by Linus.
Idea for next year: create your own “Ideal” pc at the end that would beat all the others bang for buck
The problem is that these are never comparable because a 'build your own' PC doesn't try to hit the margins required to pay for the wages of the build and support staff.
amazing idea, it would give great perspective. im surprised they still havent thought of that or were too lazy to bother. i mean, it took them 3 months to release 4 episodes of this.
lmao didnt expect to see jessetc here
I@@Steamrickj❤😢
Yeah but still, it is a good perspective on what you can build yourself, like most of the audience would.
Some insight from someone who worked with a local SI for a couple of years regarding the BIOS issue. We get custom BIOSes pushed to the boards we buy with XMP enabled as default so that it sticks even through failed power cycles and so that the technicians don't have to set up XMP for every single machine only for it to reset eventually and left off from there. The downside is the MD5 checksum won't match those from the OEM site so it will need to be force installed via Flashback.
Good to know, but from a user's perspective, this effectively blocks BIOS updates for all but the most dedicated.
I hope this video helps push manufacturers and system integrators to fix the issue.
It would be nice to show a table with each company and their grades for each test. Similar to what project farm does when he compares tools.
true, but I don't think anybody buys computers based on how good the phone support is.
@@sadmanh0 You don't think that there's any reason LTT made a whole episode dedicated to phone support, given that these are PREBUILT systems?
@@sadmanh0 For a business (even one that's ran from home) phoning in to get immediate support is important
@@sadmanh0 Not true. Esp for older folks who don't google computer problems. Fast and friendly phone facilities are a favourable feature.
@@ElderlyAnteater true, I didn't think about that part.
I would prefer out of the box speeds in the comparison. If you want to do a fixed comparison as well that's gravy, but most people buying a pre built aren't touching the bios or updating drivers. The most they'll do is update windows because it happens automatically
Yep out of box performance was a necessary test that they just missed.
I think it's fair. Software stuff is not intimidating to me but I've yet to build a computer because of what can go wrong.
Most people watching LTT and this video are aware of these settings, and if they didn't knew about them at least they know now
@@killmeification out of the box perf vs after updates comparison is also important.
I think ideally both would be great, but if your only going to have one, updated is the way to go. Most software updates will automatically install, or at least tell you to update it and what hardware your getting is the more important.
I would have loved a final rundown and grading of the builders just for fun, as a recap (due to how far apart the episodes come out) and build up to decide the winner
Thats a great idea, and showing grades for each section.
Too afraid to do anything that starforged could interpret as an attack
Yeah I missed that one as well. They gave us a winner and loser, but where does the rest sit.
I'm amazed there wasn't a final slide with rankings from all the previous episodes and tests. I can't remember the outcomes of these episodes that came out like 3 months before!
Buy anything but HP
I really love the labs graphs now, not only are they visibly more readable but the editing in post which highlights which part linus is talking about really helps!
Quick note about Cyberpower, I thought it was funny to see 1 stick of RAM in the prebuilt, because when I bought my first prebuilt from Cyberpower 5 years ago, they only included one stick then too. Someone at that company really has a vendetta against dual-channel RAM.
My cyber power pc has dual channel ram.. it is a 4090 tho 😂
Good thing the ddr5 ram they're now using doesn't mind single channel as much.
sorry to necro but i thought this was interesting because this just reminded me that mine from 2020 also only came with one as well! i wonder what their justification is for that.
Another great series. The only thing I'd say is that this year took too long to release all episodes.
This final episode is being released 2 days after Christmas.
The best time to have all episodes released by is before Cyber Monday or between cyber monday and christmas so that viewers can actually go buy these systems at holiday prices.
Holiday prices are a sham to begin with, you’re more likely to pick up a better price now than you would’ve 3 weeks ago
Holiday prices are higher than normal prices marked down to normal prices.
Dont get fooled.
If something originally at 100usd is marked 20 percent off at 80usd, you didnt save 20usd. You spent 80usd.
It will always be better to build your own. Holiday prices are a placebo.
Inflated though the prices may be, if you are buying a PC as a gift for someone, you’d probably like to at least be able to order it before Christmas, preferably receive it before Christmas.
@@dj7291993This guy gets it.
outside of scrapyard wars, this is my favorite series yall have ever done, really enjoyed this season. like others have said, i would like to see the epidsodes much closer together as they didnt quite feel as tied together as i would like waiting multiple weeks between each episode. other than that, this year was fantastic and shae was fantastic, i loved seeing someone else help with this series this year and it was a nice uplift as SS2 has sarah much more knowledgeable that the first SS. thanks for the great content yall
Yeah and I love how expressive Shae was here. Sarah and her were both excellent picks for this series and I hope they can keep it up with new people as learning is a thing lol. It's easy to find someone who doesn't know much about computers but a bit harder to find someone who's this great on camera I imagine.
Ok
This season was great but I'd rather wait for the season to start rather than have it take 3 months for 4 episodes
Yes. This series should be structured to have every episode release a week after the other. I completely forgot whatever happened in the previous episodes.
Yep, people understand that this stuff is hard and can be unpredictable but I'd much rather have had them start uploading the series months later to allow for more regular uploads and to allow for more production into the videos.
Telling LTT group to do things in a correct and well timed manor, you may as well talk to a brick….
Or You must be new here, most of the staff complain about their time schedule and lack of prep etc….
It’s like that copper cooling block, they did recently knew it wasn’t for 4090 but did it, and then still slated it like the tests they did on a totally different beast of a card weren’t the problem, despite being told it will fail more than likely….
@@Synergy4375 Bro
Did you even watch their apology video where they talked about how they are addressing all those issues?
Maybe listen to WAN show occasionally, where they have talked very openly about a lot of their issues and how they are fixing them.
Don't just repeat things you heard from other people without having done any research yourself to back it up.
@@galacticviper4453 think you need to chill out it’s called a joke (other than the bs testing ) ….
Now it depends what point specifically your talking about, as yes I have, for a apology regarding the product mentioned in my other comment , I watched him on the wan show slate it some more, so less of an apology more of a doubling down on incorrect testing, so unless I’ve missed another apology then fair enough…
If you mean their content goals etc, I haven’t seen that part yet so no, but that doesn’t mean the way this was executed was better or should be dismissed, just because they’ve spoke about it, (unless this was outside of the new POAs starting point for content creation) …actions speak louder than words, and this situation imo fall under the same banner being rather messy shall we say in the production, timing of EP releases etc.
So like the complaint of a few comments on the video and the op of this one, still showing it’s sloppy and not complete as should be or as we would like.
the best part about HP is they are actually trying to innovate with some of their models, like that custom case a year ago that separated the Radiator from the rest of the pc in its own raised section so that it wasn't pushing warm recycled air through the rad. It didn't have totally game changing performance differences, but its stuff like that which really tells me these guys care about trying to make a good product.
I was rooting for HP mainly bc of the customer service lady from the first episode. Awesome to see she made a great recommendation + that sweet $200 off deal !
The amount of work & effort you've all clearly put into this series cannot be understated. I've enjoyed every video & watched them each a few times.
Pretty good! Only thing I would say is would be nice to have different rankings. As in "Overall" winner, "Service" winner, "Upgradability" winner etc. just so it's better for people to break down what would be important to them.
I’m already excited for Secret Shopper S4
Hopefully it’s DBrand again 😂
Cool
Yes
I hope Shae is willing to build her own pc like sara did. That was a lot of fun to watch.
building pc sucks theres no warrenty and support
@@Paras-ot2qo No. Each individual part has warranty.
these vids make me glad im in the uk, between me and my 2 brothers we've had at least 5 or 6 pcs from PCSpecialist and never had any issues, the prebuilts are well thought out and custom build prices are pretty fair and their service is great, really couldn't ask for much more would be really curious to see LTT review them
Great to see how new sponsors come in. Intel drops AMD gets in. Anker drops Ugreen gets in
To be fair, they dropped Anker 😜
Anker still wants to sponsor. Lmg does not want them unless they fixed the eufy bs. Linus himself still gets anker products for his household
Ughh. Ever since sponsoring LMG, ugreen have been steadily increasing their prices.
Also Intel still works with them just not the tech upgrade series. I believe the AliExpress laptop water cooling the other day was sponsored by intel
yeah, but they didn't do redux for some reason
I appreciate you enabling everything in the BIOS and updating all of the drivers for each so they have an equal test - but you should 100% test them all out of the box as is next time. I would be willing to wager that MOST people who buy a pre-built PC are not going to check their BIOS settings - or know what they're doing if they did. Nor do I think many people would update their drivers unless the game they wanted to play failed or told them to do so.
Updates are probable gonna happen on most components automatically. If anything I wonder if it would not be better for OEMs to ship the systems without proprietary software and let windows update manage drivers.
@@ribosoman593 My NVIDIA drivers have never updated automatically. It wasn't until I started playing BG3 this year that the game told me my drivers weren't at their recommended version for the game. And the drivers wouldn't update until I downloaded NVIDIA's specific software to do it. If it doesn't come pre-installed on the pre-built then I'm not sure.
Mind you I'm not saying I'm 100% correct. This PC I built myself last year is my first foray into PC gaming as I've always been a console gamer. I genuinely don't know. And with me not knowing I figured the average pre-built purchaser would also not know.
This was incredibly disappointing to me. Out-of-the-box is how most of these systems are gonna be used, so that's how that's how they should be tested first and foremost!
I understand updating the drivers before benchmarking, it minimizes the chance for incompatibilities or erratic results, but still a baseline test with the drivers as shipped should be done and any issues that may arise should be noted, rather than avoided by only testing with updated drivers.
Now optimizing BIOS settings and even updating the BIOS version? WHAT THE HELL?!! > 95% of pre-built users are not gonna do that! Heck, figuring out the optimal BIOS settings is the most difficult part of building a PC and I bet even the majority of LTT viewers don't run optimal settings on their DIY-PCs!
And botched BIOS-settings can not only cause significant performance impacts, they can (and have on previous 'seasons' of secret shopper) even make the PC malfunction or not boot at all!
Sure, it's good to know what's the maximum performance these systems are capable of, but most of them are never gonna reach that.
FACTORY PERFORMANCE FIRST, OPTIMIZED TEST SECOND!
@@LRM12o8 I agree with changing BIOS settings, and any drivers from the OEM should be out of the question, but now manufacturers can put drivers on Windows Update, the out-of-box test should definitely include those, as after a couple of months they would get installed as part of a routine Windows update.
@@aeonspast So in my pretty limited experience, there WERE OEM versions of drivers Microsoft has validated with OEMs that will update with Windows. However, usually those versions are MASSIVELY out of date, and well off of the current driver versions. They're almost PURELY for stability purposes. I only recall 2 PCs that I ever used that did that, and BOTH of them were a couple of years out of date, compared to the Nvidia downloadable versions of the drivers. I don't know if that STILL is the case, but it was for a while. It's very possible that has changed, since the last time I encountered it was pre Ryzen(Before 2016) so....your mileage my vary.
I Still want to know who was 2nd and 3rd place like the Previous "Spy Themed" Secret Shopper,
it was quite informative last time to know their Conclusions and hear their Advice or Criticism to those System Integrator's.
iBuyPower (2), Maingear (3), NZXT (4). They are essentially the same/extremly close to each other so its really down to preference and if you need things like Techsupport. Personally, as a customer, i care much much more about performance than anything else. After all thats why im buying a "gaming PC", right?
Like everyone’s already saying, would love to have out-of-the-box benchmarks and have the episodes of next season be released weekly. Other than that, still love the series!
It's so clean I almost didn't realize, but these graphs are leagues more readable and understandable than they were just some months ago. Kudos to the new processes and labs team. :)
For the MSI motherboard in the IBuyPower rig, uninstall the MSI Center SDK before reinstalling Center. Happened to me on my laptop, might be the same for you guys
In their case its the bios that can't be upgraded as far as I understood, don't think a software reinstall can solve this.
Not necessarily, It could be a false solution. You never know until you try @@helloukw
Or just uninstall both and leave it uninstalled. That's the best solution, imo! 🤣
I’m really surprised how far HP has come with the Omen. Finally using mostly off the shelf parts, not locking down the bios or power limit. If I was looking for a pre-built I’d probably consider it. That is if I could get a really good price on it.
I have an omen laptop and it's really good as well. HP seems to be the only corporate brand which is actually doing well in PC tech
I find Lenovo is really good as well.@@yellowflash511
My previous prebuilt (I have a custom built now) was an HP OMEN with a 1080 TI and 8700k to tell you its age and how long it lasted.
Really solid prebuilts even back then (+5 years ago now? Anyway.)
@@ray-conemod8271 I got a similar one around the same time as you, only with a 1060 3GB due to my budget. Next time I upgrade I would not have considered them if not for their scores here as the BIOS is very basic and is missing many settings, and the drivers weren't available when I received it (and I needed a driver update to fix a Bluetooth issue so the support agent had to get me to use a third-party driver update program because Realtek don't have generic drivers)
a mate regret hp...Hes not savvy with tech...loads of problems sadly. Should had asked for advice
These are probably some of the most useful videos from LTT. Not as fun as the usual stuff, but so damn helpful. I hope you continue to do these every couple years
secret shopper is my favourite series of your channel. i'm always happy to see it pop up in my feed.
I bought a HP Omen 30L at the end of 2022. It shipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 3.8GHz and 3070Ti and is still holding up well. I did have issues where a firmware update bricked the system and I had to send it away to be replaced but the customer service team were very helpful and professional.
I’ve had to real complaints with it thankfully so glad to see how they fared so far in this series.
This is great info to have for the PC people who don't want to become personal IT for family members after helping them build a PC. Knowing this comes out on a yearly basis helps consumers know how each companies excel/fail every year. One thing I would love to see is this kind of video series to come out before November so people can shop for gifts during black Friday and/or the x-mas season to help the less informed be able to order gifts for loved ones!
To be fair, this is the 3rd Secret Shopper in like 5 years, so I think there's a gap year each time, so its not exactly annualized (yet? I'm hoping for 'yet')
@@bararobberbaron859 Linus has said on WAN Show that it was always planned to be an annual thing but that things have always gotten in the way, and it's a lot more work than even a review video would be.
My last 2 main PC's have been upgraded HP Omens. The worst thing about them is usually the cheap motherboard and bloatware. But they are great for building from if you don't feel like doing the whole thing from scratch.
Can we all just take a minute to appreciate the fact that Linus was able to say "GaNInfinity" and "Airpyra Tech" with a straight face? Bravo, good sir!
Honestly, I've been finding myself buying more and more HP products. That's something I never thought I'd do. But when you start being more open and honest with your products and tech support, I find it hard pressed to go with anyone else for an OEM build. I personally custom build my PCs, but when I'm shopping for family or office equipment, I know HP has me covered. One downside is everything HAS to have a profile to function fully. I hate having to "login" to use a printer.
Definitely love the secret shopper segments
I've never bought a pre-built before, and heard good things about starforge. Some interactions with Starforge and these videos have calmed my nerves. I have already purchased the system back in October, my wife ❤'s it. Thank you for these reviews, I feel better knowing I still made a solid choice.
Is this the first official HDR video?
It looks fantastic.
Yay for HP. You pulled through this time 🎉 instead of making one major fumble
Can’t wait for secret shopper 4 a few weeks from now!
You know, I'd like to see a Part 5 to this - how easy is it to upgrade the cooler, the PSU, the GPU, and motherboard/cpu/ram swap. It would flag up any proprietary problems that end users may have, if they want to upgrade down the road. I would also include looking at BIOS update support, which can be hit or miss depending on the motherboard age/model.
I'm just thinking it would show up problems of custom PSU/fan connectors or non standard mounting holes. It's problems I've bumped into in the past with the likes of Dell, trying to do upgrades for friends.
It would be nice. Maybe set a new price tag for upgrades, and try to make the best bang for the buck starting with every tested system. Most of them would get to the same point, while others may make you waste money on a new PSU or cooling system.
Right. Set a budget for the upgrade and choose the best use of that money for each system. Maybe even add in the "extra" left over from the main buying budget?
Wow we are actually getting part 4! I was really starting to think they forgot. Better late than never
Would be interesting to do a microcenter brand power spec. I've bought 3 over the years. 2 for business one for personal and they've always been pretty good quality.
Yes! I'd love to see how their house brand stacks up!
(Admittedly some people don't have access to micro center but that's changing, and I think they ship to anybody.)
I loved this series, I hadn’t seen the previous years shows but followed all four parts of this years, shay was fantastic as was the wigs and random locations lol
Something I haven't seen mentioned. As someone who chose a 12600k with B series mobo, the K chips will stay at their boost clocks indefinitely if you have the cooling. The non K chips will only boost in short periods before falling back to base clocks. It was that fact that made me get a K series chip even though I have no short term plans to overclock.
so great to see another video in HDR, i wish more people did it!
tbh, hdr seemed cool to me, but when i tried enabling it on my oddysey g5 i almost had a stroke. my eyes went 🤡. did i do something wrong lol
Great little video series as usual - I do wish you guys would release episodes a little closer to each other though as the gaps made it difficult to remember which ones were being tested / how well they performed in each stage. October 1st to Dec 28th for a 4 part series is a little too wide, maybe try and get them out within the span of 2 months instead just so the audience can follow along as intended.
Nobody asked for your opinion
@@9.5.9.5 actually, constructive criticism is allowed & encouraged on the platform & by LTT themselves. How else would they get better at what they already do really well?
People like you who never wanna see anything constructive or anyone's "negative" opinion just live a life of obscurity - if that's what you wanna do, go do it.
@@25Dzone Why are you so upset
@@9.5.9.5 because I have to read responses from smooth brained 12 year olds like you.
@@25Dzone You are so mature for insulting others
This series need to be a Netflix show or something cuz man it’s freakin good
This series is so informative. Pulling back the curtain on these companies is truly a community service.
Another incredible Secret Shopper series finished, well done to you all. Love these so much and well done to HP, definitely best balance and bang for your build there.
Had a similar situation with my Cyberpower pre-built as the ibuypower. Had to flash the bios in order to get it 5000 series ready. They had installed an Asrock b450m/ac but had a custom firmware calling it a b450m/ac Gaming. Uefi wouldn't even recognize the bios update.
Hey guys - just so you're aware, when you publish HDR videos, those videos become somewhat unwatchable on certain devices. My Pixel 3a XL can't handle them, even at 720p it's excessively laggy and far dimmer than typical videos. UA-cam doesn't seem to have an option to view an SDR tonemapped version, at least not yet. Maybe push for that?
Maybe push yourself to upgrade your 5 year old phone?
@@bloodclotThat aint a reason at all to upgrade functional phone.
I was wondering why my iPhone screen was so bright. It’s in HDR
It's dim even on my pixel 6 pro. Don't know about other phones but I assume it's a pretty widespread issue especially on midrange phones
Sounds like it's time for a new Phone
You guys should do a custom PC build series where you guys walk into a local Best Buy, Canada Computers, Memory Express, etc,. and ask them to sitdown with you and help you pick out parts and build you a PC and see who does better.
Well done HP, there customer service team was a real stand out and they've resisted the temptation to make every part proprietary. Dell could really benefit by replicating some of HP's approaches to it's pre builts.
Interesting video guys, part of me thinks though that the 'performance' results should have been done based exactly on what they sent you and no more. i.e. worst case scenario. There's a high chance users won't know how to enable things like xmp etc.
This is such a great series. You got 4 videos out of it, but dang, this was a lot of work.
Great video, keep up the good work. Would have liked to see a note for how many months/days the bios, chips et, and graphics drivers were out of date instead of their release date for ease of digest.
Watching these videos makes me incredibly glad I had a good experience buying a prebuilt computer. I have little faith in younger me’s ability to have dealt with some of these issues on my own and this series, and its predecessors, have assured me that if I had any issues that required contacting the manufacturer I probably would not be PC gaming anymore. These days I custom built so not a big deal but sheesh, I feel for all the holiday gift receivers who inevitably have issues they can’t fix and get incredibly discouraged.
Best bang for buck is definitely cyberpower and ibuy. As long as you shop sales and kind of know what your doing, you can get configurations for the same or lower price as building your own.
I have had several HP computers and they are awesome. Nothing has broken on them. I have a desktop that is 15 years old and still works.
I'll never get tired of Linus in that wig
Glad you started doing HDR in your videos. Looks great on my QD-OLED. Really noticed it during the Maingear segment.
It should be noted that on some Next-Gen games, like RE 4 Remake, an 8GB GPU would perform the same as an identical 12GB GPU but the textures do not load properly making it a much worse experience. This is something that would never be appreciated in charts. If I had to choose i would go with the Starforged PC only because of that 12GB GPU because i do play VRAM intensive games
I appreciated the extra yellow flashing indicators on the performance graphs and the pacing on the explanations. I think it's a noticeable step up compared to the graph-vomit you used to do not that long ago.
I forgot this was a series. Glad to catch the last episode. Seeing the lack of quality control validates what I say to friends when they want to buy a prebuilt vs build one as I have done many times.
Actually surprised to see Starforge right up with the competition for gaming, since that is more a metric that would matter to those buying a gaming PC. That AMD card seems to do just as well as team green!
This is the content I love, you guys need to do more of this kind of stuff. Bring back junkyard/scrapyard wars!!!
Really need to have the episodes closer together with release, like maybe once a week. Other than that, love the series as always.
This series just makes me very glad that I build my own PCs
I get so excited for series like this but they take so long to come out that by the time the last one rolls out i'm completely over it. They should at least be close enough together for me to remember the previous episodes without having to rewatch them.
Damn HP comeback is real, happy to see company like HP change for the better.
The age of the bios and drivers doesn't really mean much, if it's not compared to how many versions have been released since the system was last updated.
Age and iterations behind would be more informative. This way we'd know when the motherboard manufacturer gave up on the motherboard versus the buldier bothering to do an update before shipping.
I've had times I've had to fight with manufacturers to take notice of problems, and taking far too long to fix them. Even taking notice of how long R&D normally takes.
As we know, Windows doesn't always grab all the drivers needed for a motherboard, but for some reason the latest driver isn't always on a motherboard's website.
Love to see HDR videos on the channel, hope there will be more soon!
Assumed I wasn’t the only one to notice. Hope this becomes more the norm than the surprise.
Its actually super interesting to see the prebuilts shuffle around so much during benchmarking on diff resolutions.
Love these series along w/ similar series!
So much fun & great job LTT 👍🏻👍🏻
It was said before, but shipping with a single stick of RAM is probably preferred to shipping days/weeks later in the event of supply issues.
Everyone else managed it, it's not like we are in a ram shortage. Ram is more available and cheaper than previous years.
No, you clearly don't work in the industry.
@@tzuyd I am a procurement officer for a small IT refurb company, this stuff is sitting on a shelf for months in advance often. They aren't building it to order at this price tier, there's no reason they couldn't have bought a pair. They just know they can get away with only supplying a single.
@@kelmanl4 "They aren't building it to order at this price tier"
What an odd thing to say
Regardless, a procurement officer would know that a single stick isn't saving a buck over two smaller sticks anyway.
great video so far, only thing i have to say is that it looks weirdly dark compared to other videos? might just be my phone's dodgy HDR but its a bit weird.
it's been great on my Pixel 8 Pro, guess your HDR might be weird, or something else is the reason
It's also really dark on my Pixel 4a 5g
@@xnutzii i have a Galaxy S20 FE and its really dark on my phone.
@@xnutzii Viewing on iPhone 14 Pro. HDR is really dark and generally much uglier than their non-HDR uploads
@@masterbawler You should turn the brightness up, makes it look good on mine
You guys should really not turn on rebar and XMP/DOCP for the SIs. It is not indicative of the SI's capability to configure their systems to run at their "best". If you are going to mess with their configs without providing testing data with an out-of-the-box experience (since your average user will not update or change settings in their BIOS basically ever), then all of your gaming and synthetic benchmarks just got invalidated. Also it makes you look bad.
+1 for doing out of the box performance reviews (as well as tuned). Id also mention 3-4 specific games you plan to play to the system builders and just run the testing on those games. Synthetic benchmarks are completely irrelevant to games in most cases
I have had QC issues with Ugreen products being DOA (even just a USB-C cable). However, after going through the process on Amazon to exchange it, my 65 GaN charger is great. Just something to keep in mind when getting their products.
Often the bios on identically numbered OEM boards will not work because there are actually hardware components missing.
That is not the case here. The only difference I could see was the custom splash screen. Using a 3rd party flash tool to use the generic firmware works fine, but just feels extremely sketchy.
Secret Shopper S4 should mix things up and be across the pond, doing EU/EEA & UK system integrators. I know LTT has tech journalist / content creator friends over here they could work with, and it would be an excuse to do something like a James Bond theme, or Doctor Who
Happy to see HDR content! I watched this episode on oled iphone and it looked great. Hope i catch next hdr piece of content on my hdr monitor.
Great series as always! One thing I would like to request though is to be able to see the difference in performance before and after any configuration changes you guys had to make to the hardware, BIOS, and software. If you only showed one, it makes sense to choose the one you did, since you can't know it wasn't a one-off mistake. But, equally, I'd love to know more about the magnitude of the margin of risk with each option in terms of performance numbers.
0:15 SPEED. It would be a nice pun too considering the start
i think there should be a part five for these videos with one extra feature: upgradability. although HP won, i would still not buy from any OEM so long as they put even one proprietary component inside the pc. they use custom BIOS, custom PSU, custom everything to the point where if something fails outside of warranty, i would have a hell of a time finding replacement for that component.
i think a fifth part to show how much these desktops can be upgraded is a must for this series.
The only "proprietary" thing in their system is the bios and that's more on MSI to fix. The PSU is a coolermaster and everything is off the shelf on that system.
I’ve already had the frustration of a proprietary part fail for a family member’s PC and not being able to replace it. I would never trust HP with my money.
PLEASE do Canada Computers next time
I think going in and doing all the updates and bios tweaks makes the test somewhat unfair. If you're buying a rebuilt 9/10 you're not poking around there, and given they're gaming PCs, I'd expect the integrators to deal with that
The point is to get them all to a minimum test fairness to allow each build it's best chance to prove itself. There's little value to allowing a test to be worsened by OEM blunders lowering the perceived performance. Of course, these OEM blunders are important which why they mention them as they come up. IMO there is little value to having a video where they buy prebuilds, see what shows up, then test the prebuilds as is. I'd be disinterested entirely. Also, adding another test scenario on top of what was already done here would cause the video to take even longer to make, and the reward would be small if any reward at all. Therefore, this is what we got.
I think it's good to do a test both as-is and optimized. Helps bring awareness to the issue for potential buyers too, so more people will hopefully check the BIOS for these things. But yes I'd like to see the systems judged as-is, both in terms of hardware and most software and firmware. I'd update just the GPU driver and Windows versions, I think that's most realistic.
@@fateunleashed9680 most of their tests are automated with MarkBench these days so don't take as long as they used to - the whole point of them automating is so they can have multiple configs being tested at once.
@@fateunleashed9680 The WHOLE point of the video series is to tests the integrators. There's hundreds of other videos out there testing the hardware itself, probably a few in the same configurations. Ideally, they'd do both, but if it was one or the other, I'd much rather them test them as is. As someone buying a prebuilt with very little PC knowledge, I think it'd be vastly more useful to see how they'd perform out of the box, rather than after an specialist team has gone through and tuned them.
Yeah, if some of them lose out because they shipped a gaming PC without enabaling Resizeable Bar or XMP, then thats on the integrator to sort their policies out and take the L.
This video looks amazing on my OLED thanks to the HDR. Nice work LTT.
Really appreciate this series helps have a better perspective of overall service and ownership of a computer from those providers obviously I prefer to build it myself but thats good information.
HDR?! First LTT Video in HDR? Can’t remember anotherone…
I love it! Please keep up the awesome work!
You're 3.5 years late, their first HDR video was for the ASUS PA32UCX monitor.
A much needed suggestion for your driver and BIOS methodology - latest does not always mean *best*. Here's an example - the Corsair firmware for the Harpoon RGB Pro mouse does not work best with it's latest released firmware. It causes some double clicking issues when updated to the most recent firmware. For full and reliable experience, many users need to be on the version prior to the latest one. So much so that it is the recommended fix from Corsair both online and when speaking to support via phone.
Now, sure this is a small example, but there are many others out there where newest does not mean best. If the BIOS most suited for a particular CPU was one released a year ago, why should that be an issue. I feel it's slightly misleading to make out that aged = worse.
Of course, yes with the OS you are of course missing security updates so that makes sense, but there are other areas where the same does not always apply.
this is also an issue with driver updates for GPUs sometimes. There are times where the latest drivers can cause problems in games. Now granted that's not a super common thing these days, but when you have a GPU working great and then suddenly after an update a game is stuttery and weird, and frametimes are all off, you start to look online to see if it's a GPU driver issue, to make sure something in that driver didn't break the performance.
@@novaxaylos1226 Yeah the messaging in the video of newer = better is at best poorly considered, at worst outright misleading. It's stuff like this that makes me doubt that their Labs project will be a success. They need to tell the whole context, not just part of it.
@@MartinNelson Unfortunately, while they've done a lot better in recent history with this stuff, it does seem like some places still need some work. But at the very least, things have been improving over time, so I'm sure if they do another SS setup, the comments section here will be a place they remember. Though I DO find it strange that this ENTIRE series is about buying prebuilts...and then they just ignore why most people buy prebuilts and just start to change things in them. Like most people won't do that.
@@novaxaylos1226 honestly, I unsubscribed back when I found out how poorly they handle 'corrections'. SS got recommended by the algorithm and I do think it's a decent series but like so much LMG produce there are so many areas where they need to improve. As I've been checking the channel for the next episodes, I've checked out one or two random videos and frankly can't say I've seen improvements. Their corrections methodology is still dreadful in comparison with someone like say Tom Scott. They're still pushing the failure that is Floatplane, and they are still drawing arbitrary standards to judge tech by that bare no relation to how people use said tech. Of course it's entirely possible I'm just not observant enough.
@@MartinNelson So I fully understand where you're coming from. And I admit that they still have a lot of areas that need to improve. There's no two ways around that. However, as someone who watches most of their content(I admit some of it doesn't appeal to me, so I let some pass) they have definitely improved in a lot of ways. I think that their method of handling corrections is probably still egregious(Especially considering this was one of the biggest points people had in the past) but many other places they've definitely improved.
In terms of their methodology, I imagine that with so many writers on board, and so much going on, there's likely not a lot of quick easy communication between the writer and the actual testers doing the more technical work, so I really could see there being things like...in this case...not a lot of info about what the labs are testing the systems FOR, and instead of just giving them systems saying they need to be tested, and them having a basic "We're benchmarking, optimize and test" sort of methods, instead of better communication. Especially as the labs are a separate building completely to the normal LMG offices.
I also believe I've heard Floatplane is fully self sustained now, despite being owned by LMG, so I don't think pushing Floatplane is the worst thing. Especially as it's an LMG owned platform hosting their own content. I don't subscribe to it myself, but it does seem like they have a lot of content that could be interesting to those who like the BTS kind of stuff. Which to me isn't really a problem at all.
I'm not really sure who Tom Scott is but if he does similar testing content to a lot of what LTT does, I'll have to go check his stuff out. I watch channels like Gamers Nexus all the time, which i think is why I can see some of the worse parts of LTT in their videos, and is why I can recognize that while it's still not perfect, it has improved a good bit. And I really hope they'll continue trying to improve going forward.
Last of all, thank you for keeping this civil! It's so hard to find actual civil conversation on the internet these days. Everyone is looking to immediately argue, and I just really enjoy the conversation really.
I love watching these videos. They are quite fun, I love the costumes and setups of everything! Keep up the good work guys!!
Edit: Also I have to add Thank you guys so much for taking care of Subtitles
Gotta give credit for the shooting location. Love the Lazer (I think it's a lazer) in the background, and the little lamp! Great combo
Shopping, Shipping, Support, SUPERIORITY!
In future series, it would make sense to show the performance of the systems without enabling XMP/Resizable bar if they weren't already enabled. The vast majority of users buying prebuilt machines wouldn't know to enable those options.
Love this series
Took a hot minute - as always a fun series. Hope Shae returns for season 5 - she was great !
I don't think they'll use the same person for two secret shoppers.
If someone recognises them then there goes the secret part.
@@ChiefArug I agree with the sentiment, but I worked in a call centre during Uni and I only remembered the crazy ones for a day or so, and their stories for a little longer !
Honestly, the likelihood they would recognise her in a year from all the calls they receive would be very low I expect.
@@Montyh7 I mean recognise her from LTT videos, not so much from a call the previous year.
@@ChiefArug oh 100% - but I assumed, and I could be wrong, she would use a different name and I'm not sure they would recognise her on voice alone, but any video call assistance in the support videos (if the company offers that) might be an issue.
I didn’t think there will be a Part 4
They talked about performance testing in earlier vids. They would have missed the heart of the series without part 4.
I'm glad you and Dawid does tech stuff rail against single channel memory so much.
Secret shopper is a fantastic series and very insightful, but we need more scrapyard wars!
Loved the series! Thanks for the HDR video❤