Testing out Mystery Chinese CPUs

What the hell, look at this thing, I have never in all my years seen a CPU that looks like that, that's it, that's the CPU, so the bare tint is exposed, it has like this, it looks like a mounting plate similar to aluminum that is then screwed. on what would normally be the mounting plate for the socket where the CPU would fit, the back plate is normal, but wait, here we go, this is it, what are these things? How are you expected to install them? So our story begins with the word. from our sponsor corsair Corsair's Hydrox series of custom water cooling components have great rgb performance etc., you'll find out a lot more about this as the video goes on because we'll be using a Hydrox setup to cool this, okay?

This is a motherboard, but inside this box is something like I've never seen anything like, so it's actually a big long note from Tim, a big fan of the channel and the new local BGA to LGA 1151 CPU supplier and In fact, Tim has sent us a sample of these CPUs to review and the interesting thing about them is that they are laptop processors, so they are BGA or ball grid array chips that are designed to be soldered directly onto a board. base and then, you know, some kind of custom cooling solution applied over them, like heat pipes or whatever the case may be, so these are these laptop

cpus

, these bga

cpus

that are soldered instead of a a laptop motherboard to this support adapter PCB and then in turn, don't wait, okay, so not this. it's actually a super thick PCB that the ball grid die CPU is soldered on and then there will have to be step traces inside it that we can't see and then it's actually just machined on both sides so that this Bottom plate 1151 compatible surface here filled with contact pads can fit correctly into the socket.

Wow, there are a couple of things that are unique about this solution, one of them is of course the adapter and the second is this piece here, so this is the bracket presumably called. For Mr. Sue, who is running this operation now, this does a couple of things, number one is it takes our custom PCB here and allows us to hold it in place, so there are actually four little mounting holes in the corners and correspond to four small pegs. On the inside of this adapter plate, the second thing it does is act as a wedge, which is a way to keep the CPU safe when you mount a cooler on it, now on the desktop processors of yesteryear, like their mobile counterparts had exposed dies like this one, but nowadays, to prevent them from cracking while people apply heat to them and stuff like that, most manufacturers cover their chips with an ihs or an integrated heatsink which now comes with a heat transfer penalty , but it was considered not as important as preventing things from cracking, chipping and breaking, so this pimple around it prevents us from putting a CPU on top of this thing and accidentally making it rock back and forth. back and corner chip or something now let's take a look at some of the CPU options that are available here uh we have a core i7 7820hk which should actually be an overclockable chip.

I'm going to want to try that Sure next we have whatever it is and whatever it is, apparently they are a ql2x and a ql3x, so they are engineering samples that were never formally named, so one of them is runs at 2.4 gigahertz based on one boost of 3.5 gigahertz and the other. it's 2.7 base 3.8 boost and apparently both will overclock in the 4.2 to 4.6 gigahertz range and stay there, so these are unlocked chips and you can get them for as little as $80 to $90, which I guess gives away the point of it all. This is that if you have an old z170 motherboard or something similar and you want a lot of performance for not much money, this could be a very interesting way to do it with the latest chip we have here.

It appears to be a 7700 HQ and this is a qualification sample so most of the cpus we have are not legit cpus that were taken off the boards. These are like grading and engineering samples, so this whole thing we're doing is super dumb. approved by Intel, I'm sure I actually have no idea what's preinstalled on the board here, so we'll find out soon. First I want to make sure it's working so you notice that I put a very small amount of thermal compound here is because the tint is very small, we don't need to cover a large surface area now.

Mr. Sue claims that with this mounting wedge here you can install just normal damn intelligence. stock cooler, so I think that's the first thing we're going to try. I'll be very interested to see what the BIOS reports on this. We are ready for the magical moment. Our RGB RAM turns on. We basically have all the functions. we need now let's see if we can get into the bios here f2 delete this it doesn't seem to list a cpu model anywhere here yeah so we're unlocked ah here we go oh so this is a 6700 hq why would it be unlocked?

It shouldn't be unlocked, why don't we cast one of our wells first? Let's get into Windows. Let's get information about the hardware. Everything here seems to be working relatively normally. There are 6700 HQ running there as you would expect now. The CPU was expected to be running really well, like 19 to 22 degrees at idle, let's go ahead and just throw a quick Blender render at it and see how it looks after that, even this Intel stock one pinner under load, we're looking at 45 degrees. Celsius, so I think it's pretty safe for us to crank that multiplier up to the maximum it's going to go and see what our performance looks like since we're accelerating at just 3.1 gigahertz all the way through.

I think we can do better at all. right, as expected, yes, that multiplier of 35 is indeed the maximum single core turbo frequency of this particular chip, let's just see if we can hit it throughout. Now I have no experience trying to overclock Intel's locked mobile chips, even just to run. all cores at the single core boost frequency because even if Intel allowed this kind of behavior, no mobile, you know, device manufacturer in their right mind would allow you to do that kind of thing because you would overwhelm the cooling and I guess not I have I have more experience than before because as you can see here, it doesn't work, we are still running on 3.1, but that's okay because between the qualified samples, the engineering samples and the unlocked k-series chips, we can still do some overclocking today.

So I was actually in the middle of changing the CPU and realized we hadn't seen this yet, so let's take a look at whether Mr. Su has modified anything about this motherboard. Yes, there seems to be nothing at all. What I've done is I've removed the normal mounting plate here, you know, it would have that little lever and all that kind of stuff, so they just removed that and then the CPU is held on with the clamping plate or the wedge up here. This shim that came pre-installed appears to be pre-production or something because it looks like it actually has some sanding marks on the top, like they were trying to dial in the correct height, so let's eliminate that one, let's use one of the finished samples here, uh, what CPU do you want to use alex?

Do you want to choose one of the

mystery

meat ones or do you want to choose the 7820? HK, the most expensive one, pick a hand, okay, let's go with this one, not only if it's a little more flexible, I think a real CPU, I mean, I shouldn't say it's not a real CPU, it's a real CPU, it's a little bit looser than the one you're supposed to put on oh wow that's interesting uh okay so when I removed the mounting plate before I heard a board that's what it was so here's our plate original back, so I'll have to hold it. while I install the CPU to make it a little dumber, that's fine in my hungry student days, I would have easily put up with so much crap to save like 100 bucks or whatever, just a little bit of thermal compound, now you don't really need a lot on these bare tints look even the amount I put in before almost stuck around the edges, the good news is that means our mounting pressure was pretty accurate which means your adapter height is about right Oh. off, turning it back on, probably memory training or something, nothing yet, so here's a thought, remember how I said I really wasn't sure how tight it was supposed to be because there doesn't seem to be any kind of plug that prevent you from continuing. ham on this thing, I'm going to try to back off a little bit and make sure the tension feels like even you know, okay, let's try that, so that didn't help, what I'm going to do is grab the other one, the one that was on my right hand, let's give that one a try.

Ltt Shirts, also a cloth with thermal paste. Lttstore.com to be clear, I'm not actually recommending rubbing a shirt all over the CPU, it's just what my videographer wants. to get home in time okay bowser has been rebooted beautiful okay let's take a look at what we have here so this little pup runs at 3.4 right out of the box so what does that mean? I'm not sure, oh, this is the boring one. one is locked ok, swapping CPUs again, I must say the review sample ones really look like they have been through hell and this one has what appears to be glue or something or thermal compound on the bottom so we assume the two green. they were like the weird engineering samples and then the blue one wasn't but that turned out not to be the case so what I'm really hoping is that this is the qx 2 engineering sample because apparently it's good for 4.5 to 4.6 gigahertz um well that's not It's a good sign, I mean, it was posted hey, oh, interesting, yeah, so Mr.

Sue's partner who sent us these cpus had informed us that they might be a little unstable when it comes to pci express gen 3. It's possible that We may want to change our pci express slots to gen 2 to avoid some complications with the nvidia driver, so let's go ahead and give it a try, but first I want to know what chip this is and we don't know, oh shame I guess. this is the slower of the two engineering samples, ah man, they're not labeled. I'm having a hard time knowing which ones are which, hey here we go, we're on Windows now, hell yeah, uh, hacking, you know what why not?

We didn't check the overclocking settings they recommended here, yeah okay 4.2 gigahertz let's go ahead and do a quick stress test so it's a disadvantage running pci express gen 2 but not a huge disadvantage unless you are executing something. something like a computing application on your graphics card now the problem is if you go to run a stress test and your system reboots like that but yeah that's sample cpus engineering for you so we're pretty close to water cooling the 78 20 hk but before I do I want to try that one that wouldn't be posted one more time, it's possible that it just locked up while I was playing it, it's also possible that we just didn't get a good mount so Oh boy, wow, oh wow, the reset button doesn't work.

Whoa, oh, oh, it's off, oh, oh, it's off, so what we're going to do then is we're going to move on to our real CPU, our 7820hk, which happens. It appears to be the most expensive of the pack, but it is also the only one that is legitimately unlocked and can be overclocked. Something I haven't mentioned until now is that motherboard compatibility with these CPUs is not a guarantee. There are several chipsets including h310 z390 which would be compatible with 7th generation desktop chips but will not work with these even with a modified BIOS and as I am going to get into now if you want your motherboard to work even if you have a compatible chipset, you will need a modified BIOS. that Mr.

Su says that the c1 code will be available for download at some point again. I wonder if it has to do with the tightness in the socket maybe I cooked it a little this time it needs a fidget spinner we have a screwdriver Hello, good experience on the system to boot fails Blah blah blah, load the optimized defaults, like this we have our 7820hk all of our ram is detected everything looks perfectly normal now we're on a2 ok so we did a isopropyl alcohol wipe on the bottom of the cpu just to make sure all the contacts were fine and it looks like it's starting up now, come on honey, come on, just boop, max link speed, okay, so we're already on generation 2, I don't know why we don't try generation 3, so who knows, I wonder.

If it has something to do with our m.2 storage, let's try things. Hey, we're good, so now we're looking good, let's make sure this BMW render runs at standard speed and then we can overclock this puppy, oh come on. It would be mixing slowly, what is this? What is this speed? Yuck, let's overclock it, so challenge number oneWhat we're getting right from the start here is that our xc7 water block has a pre-applied thermal compound in a uh in a much larger. patch than we're going to need for our processor, so we're going to open it up by simply cleaning all our thermal compound and using something much smaller, so the good thing about this mounting mechanism is that both the bottom and the top do not No It interferes with using a completely normal cooler in any way, so I can go ahead and throw my water block in here and it should be pretty good to go, I don't think this is mine or Alex's best wiring. or plumbing work, but let's go for performance, you don't see it here, okay let's see if I have the plumbing right, this is what an unlubricated pump bearing sounds like for the uninitiated, get that air bubble out of there, right? what is it?

Damn I have the radiator actually oh I have everything upside down well realistically it won't make much difference this thing is like a 45 watt CPU we should turn it around no we should probably turn it around I don't think If necessary, we should probably turn it over, it's running through the CPU block backwards do you think it's going to make any difference a couple of degrees you know what, we're doing it, we're turning it over uh, we don't think on this right, so here's the plan, yeah, are you doing it? pinch everything covered, okay, but what about this hole?

Well, that was good, done, three, two, one shot, oh that's so many trees, okay, now we're on the right track so that the loop really bleeds and the performance is correct, that was worth it. It's worth it, so apparently this chip will run around 4.6 gigahertz, 1.3 volts, all cores, let's see if it will do it underwater, sure not, so we're stable on Windows or booting on Windows stable, It's a strong word. at 4.4 gigahertz I had to back off a bit. Let's go ahead and try a quick stress test and see if this really works. Are we thermally accelerating or thermally accelerating?

Did you remove the sticker from the bottom? Yes, I did it so you can see that. our shim actually interfered with us getting good contact between our CPU block and our processor. Something that a lot of people don't know is that thermal paste is actually not a great heat conductor, all it has to do is fill like micro spaces between the two pieces of metal, so when you have a thick layer of paste between them you get very poor thermal transfer so I'm not 100% sure how to solve this problem, maybe we could see if it's due to manufacturing tolerances and try a different shim, I mean even just at a glance it looks like it's a little further down.

I wonder if it is based on a cooler design like the original cooler. You see here how the slug on the bottom is actually slightly raised compared to the aluminum fins which puts a lot of pressure, the Corsair water cooler on the other hand is exactly flat, so we remounted the CPU and it won't start now honestly it doesn't matter anyway because clearly this is a very poor contact again what we're going to try to do is use the one that came pre-installed on the dash okay so I'll just put it in there and then see If we get it, oh, that's much better, look at it, okay, I expect much better results this time, assuming that's really the case. posts, okay, it's time to get started and you know, we're going to go straight to 4.6 gigahertz.

Hey, we get into Windows, this time it turns out that having a working refrigerator is a good idea, how about that? What do you know? 4.6 gigahertz there, interestingly one of our CPU cores is not reporting temperatures, let's turn on a Blender render bloop and it goes away, let's try again and it comes back, nope, it turned off. Blender just went away, let's turn the frequency down a little tornado brb, let's see if our rendering program manages to keep up with uh and gone, let's dial the frequency back in, okay, 4.5 gigahertz, let's try that again, hey , that's more promising, wow, the hottest core, 47 degrees, the coldest core, 25 degrees, that's the thing. about having a bear die it's like a very slight difference in the mount can make a really big difference, the performance looks like it's getting a very significant increase, look at this render here, this is cool of course if what we were looking for was 3D rendering, oh yes.

Of course we might need to do the graphics drivers here, if we were going to render all day and had 150 bucks to spend we'd just go with a core i5 8400 or something with six cores as the only reason we'd want a quad core with a higher frequency it would be for gaming, so what is the experience like there? Well, okay, I guess we had to lower the frequency to 4.4 to make it completely stable in the game, but I think the general problem is that What we find here is that the benefits of a solution like this simply do not outweigh the drawbacks.

Right now we're paying $150 which means for less than that we could buy a 6700k or something on eBay for even less or We're really rolling the dice as we experienced with those no-name zero zero zero zero CPUs where we potentially get a great value or we end up with something that won't be particularly useful to us now if you're that type. As a person who likes to game, you have a motherboard that supports the BIOS mod anyway and you just want to have some fun and maybe take something that currently doesn't work and get a decent little gaming rig.

I can get it for 70 or 80 bucks with the odd CPU upgrade, I recommend it, but it's not the kind of thing I would personally handle on a daily basis and I think Alex is on the same page, yeah, you know what I would handle on a daily basis . Although the Massdrop x Bayer Dynamic dt177x Go headphones are made by the renowned German manufacturer Bayer Dynamic, they feature a closed-back design, their latest generation of 45-millimeter Tesla drivers, a wide frequency range and a weight-controlled base, are the favorites for recording studios. Easy to drive from portable sources without an external amplifier, they feature a durable design with aluminum ear cups, a spring steel headband, and metal yokes and hinges.

You can check out the link below to get yours at drop.com today, so thanks for staying tuned guys. If you enjoy cheap upgrades like this, check out our recent video on this strange Chinese x79 motherboard that you can combine with a refurbished CPU to create a very powerful gaming machine without spending a lot of money and it's gone.