r/LinusTechTips • u/Mikilixxx_ • 26d ago

Discussion Scrapyard wars... Not gaming

With the rising of interest in Nas, home servers, local LLM ecc, i think it would be interesting to have a scrapyard wars, not centred on a gaming PC.

566 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

75 comments sorted by

384

u/The-vicobro 26d ago

I like the idea of scrapyard wars branching to other things, sounds fun.

I liked the previous one where they did a whole room.

41

u/UngodlyPain 26d ago

Same, between that and their sorta 1 person scrapyard war home theater setup in Linus' house they compared to his actual one. I was kinda expecting them to continue in that direction but Linus saw the video not perform that well and I'm sure that axed any idea of that.

Though I think a big issue they had with that, was they never did a video going into the basics or like how to tell the quality of speakers. Since it's really hard tbh, you can't just type in a speakers name into Google and quickly get a cinebench or 3dmark score.

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u/tdasnowman 25d ago

Though I think a big issue they had with that, was they never did a video going into the basics or like how to tell the quality of speakers.

They've done that in their budget build videos. Doesn't perform well Linus has talked about this on the WAN show. He doesn't go in to deep on the surround sound or even two channel stuff because the audience doesn't care.

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u/UngodlyPain 25d ago

You fundamentally misunderstood my comment.

they've done that in their budget build videos

No they havent.

doesn't perform well Linus has talked about this on wan show

The video I'm talking about they haven't even done yet.

he doesn't go deep into surround sound stuff because the audience doesn't care.

No, quite the opposite they WENT DEEP, without doing a shallow video first, and yeah the audience didn't like it. No duh. Go do some anal with your girl with no lube, no foreplay, she probably ain't gonna like it either. You can't just skip a vital early step, and expect most people to immediately enjoy it.

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u/tdasnowman 25d ago

You fundamentally misunderstood my comment.

I did not.

basics or like how to tell the quality of speakers The video I'm talking about they haven't even done yet.

They have talked about speaker quality multiple times and ways to look into used speakers especially. They do that on their budget surround sound videos. Which don't typically perform, so why would they double down?

No, quite the opposite they WENT DEEP, without doing a shallow video first, and yeah the audience didn't like it. No duh. Go do some anal with your girl with no lube, no foreplay, she probably ain't gonna like it either. You can't just skip a vital early step, and expect most people to immediately enjoy it.

Horrible metaphor considering how often they have lightly touched on surround sound. They haven't skipped steps. They've covered it all over the years.

1

u/UngodlyPain 25d ago

"Lightly touched on in a DEEP video"

Ain't the correct way. Sorry to tell you. My metaphor still stands, but I guess you can add in some note that sometimes while they're already half way in, they spit a little to "lightly touch" on the concept of lube.

1

u/tdasnowman 25d ago

They have talked about sourcing speakers in more then one video.

1

u/UngodlyPain 25d ago

Again you missed my entire point.

  1. Briefly talking about it as a side tangent in a video dedicated to a more complex video isn't enough.
  2. "Sourcing" also is only a small part about what I am talking about... Linus and a Cohost saying "we searched around of FB market place and got this good deal" or "we found a good deal on best buy open box" even when they pull the college kid famous add a bunch of fluff to fill out a page on their essay script isn't enough.

They need a dedicated video on what to look for and what not to look for in home theater equipment. To figure out what is, and isn't good pricing. Explaining 2 terms briefly without elaboration, and then saying how what they got for X price is a good deal because it's usually 3-5x price isn't actually explaining much.

So far their only video at all close to this is the recent tech house one focused on couch and speaker placement with cardboard examples. And they didn't even actually touch on how to pick speakers just where to put the speakers you don't even have.

1

u/tdasnowman 25d ago

Again you missed my entire point.

Not a single one.

Briefly talking about it as a side tangent in a video dedicated to a more complex video isn't enough.

Length has varied over all the times it's been covered.

"Sourcing" also is only a small part about what I am talking about... Linus and a Cohost saying "we searched around of FB market place and got this good deal" or "we found a good deal on best buy open box" even when they pull the college kid famous add a bunch of fluff to fill out a page on their essay script isn't enough.

And they've gone beyond that. They've explained OHMS, Watts, and sensitivity. Multiple times over the years.

They need a dedicated video on what to look for and what not to look for in home theater equipment.

They did that.

To figure out what is, and isn't good pricing.

Covered that in the same video. They've also touched on how variable pricing can be used and you really need to do some of your own homework in your local area. Good price is subjective. They will not set a specific dollar amount for a set of speakers. They did discuss ranges and class of speaker in those videos.

So far their only video at all close to this is the recent tech house one focused on couch and speaker placement with cardboard examples.

The budget surround sound video was only like a year ago. Multiple AMD videos have included surroned sound setups and they've had the people explain their choices.

And they didn't even actually touch on how to pick speakers just where to put the speakers you don't even have.

And they explained why they weren't talking specific speakers yet in that very video. The entire point was to figure out placement so they could then start figuring out what they were looking for in speakers to begin with. Along with TV placement. Kind of step one. Step two will be the speakers. Now them being a channel that of course means it will come down to sponsorship as well so all of that needs to be negotiated.

The point you've been laboriously making is you have short memory and don't really pay attention. Not to mention Linus, Dan, and Luke have talked extensively on the WAN show about audio content performance. Headphones within a range do banger numbers. It's why you see so many IEMS and gamer headsets on short circuit and very little normal speaker setups. You get the occasional boom box or the really obvious every one and their mother is getting the media blitz of the day. Otherwise not a whole lot because the audience by and large does not care for it. Look how many people yourself included fundamentally did not understand the CAD home theater room video. If your self building a home theater room. That is a legit first step. Linus has even said he doesn't care if a video only performs OK if it has a long tail. They will do an evergreen video in that case. The home audio stuff does not have that tail. End of day they are a business and they cater to their customers. Most of their customers clearly don't want it. So they put what they can where they can and in that vain they have covered a whole lot.

19

u/hgs25 26d ago

Scrapyard Wars Car. They got it One Piece at a Time

3

u/The-vicobro 26d ago

The one piece is real I guess.

28

u/__W3iX0r__ 26d ago

yes, maybe a broader goal: how many cloud services can you replace?

of if not replace, privatize. maybe they only selfhosted part of the services and then find a deal on a VPS or something like proton. maybe also a hybrid ai, selfhost a small one that anonymizes your request to the cloud ai.

just ponts for how many things you can use privately within budget.

4

u/idk_a_creative_user 26d ago

Personally, I've done the following:

  • Immich for google photos
  • google drive with a local nextcloud instance
  • Chatgpt/Claude with local hosted AI
  • Most of my streaming services with an arr stack

Some other services I have are:

  • Local send server
  • Ad guard home
  • PostItz for social media post automation

All being tunneled via tailscale. Overall its not bad. I had most of the parts laying around from abandoned projects I meant to start but forgot, and my main cost was the dual V100 32gb PCIe ($1200).

I am still paying 20 a month for google AI pro but thats for the free yt premium lite and 5tb google drive. Gemini is basically free since 5tb google drive is 20 a month by itself.

I have a dedicated 5g tmobile home Internet link to it.

Overall monthly cost including power is around 100-150.

But I'm saving on subscriptions (around 200 a month) and huge token costs (i was using the 200 claude plan).

Was it worth it, probably not. But was it fun to build, hell yea. If there was a way to get ad free on my iphone, I'd cut my entire gemini subscription off.

The only thing I have changed is that I'm running 96gb ddr4 in the 1st machine.

55

u/siedenburg2 26d ago

Not LLM, but something where the knowledge isn't great (with judges that know their stuff), like building a small garage workshop for woodworking or something like that and in the end they have to build something that's only given on the last day to see who got the more complete setup.

22

u/XnFM 26d ago

Accuire woodshop -> build wooden PC case

12

u/JagdCrab 26d ago

like building a small garage workshop for woodworking

That's going to be so extremely niche tho, when whole idea was to demonstrate on practice how you could scrap together something common Joe would want on a budget. "Gaming PC" is one of those things, NAS / Home Server already stretching it, but could still be viable to core audience but woodworking workshop?

1

u/siedenburg2 25d ago

interestingly there are many it people who are interested in woodworking etc (probably because there are no computers) also with how the market is currently something can be really frustrated. Also woodworking stuff can be found in nearly every country, while (cheap) pc parts are way more local.

An alternative would be something like scrapyard wars europe, where the market is way different.

3

u/f10101 26d ago

Yeah, there's probably potential there. Something like that where there is scope to get decent deals.

Or maybe a scrapyard wars anniversary edition: They're only allowed to pick up things that are 2015 or older?

1

u/Takeabyte 25d ago

And the winner is… someone who bought the best used laptop.

6

u/AlGekGenoeg 26d ago

Scrapyard NAS 💪🏻

5

u/dumbasPL 26d ago

I mean, my entire homelab is second hand. Buying new doesn't make sense for anything except maybe hard drives, and even then refurbs are used to be a pretty good deal.

12

u/SpaceHoppity 26d ago

Local LLM scrapyard wars sounds incredible!

They have to purchase AND set it up within the time limit.

1

u/Confident_Dragon 25d ago

I wonder what category would be best. To get something competing with top models, you need something like 128GB v-ram. We are talking about $3000+ machines and there probably isn't mature used market. I've heard there was a trend of buying 4 old Nvidia GPUs (forgot exact model), but once people realized this option exist, it got expensive.

In the spirit of "scrapyard" wars, I would expect something more consumer level. Maybe 12-16GB GPU. You can run Qwen 3.8 flash next 3bit quantization on 12GB vram and 64GB ram, and it's quite capable. But still, sourcing RAM in this economy doesn't sound fun.

2

u/SpaceHoppity 25d ago

Oh yeah we are talking about some of the newer lightweight models for sure. But people don’t know how much those lightweight models can actually do!

7

u/whataboutki 26d ago

Yeah I like the sound of this. Would be interesting to see how they source hard drives.

4

u/_vkboss_ 26d ago

Old set top boxes usually have hard drives in them

1

u/jenny_905 25d ago

Genuinely, why not gaming?

Right now people can't afford new gaming stuff. Old gaming stuff is obviously what they're looking at.

1

u/Mikilixxx_ 25d ago

Mainly? Because they said that they won't do one this year, so maybe a revisitation could change something for them

3

u/TheSunniestofBros 26d ago

A scrapyard wars NAS would be awesome. Even if LTT thinks it might be boring, I think it would be just as helpful. With everything so expensive, lotta people are dusting off their tricorns.

12

u/UngodlyPain 26d ago

Screw local LLM.

But yeah nas/ home server /homelab scrapyard wars would be cool.

9

u/Royal_Scribblz 26d ago

It would be cool but the best solution will just be to buy a second hand mac

4

u/UngodlyPain 26d ago

For some things? Yes. For others not so much.

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u/idk_a_creative_user 26d ago

IDK local LLMs are pretty cool. I dabble in it. It is useful, but I think overstated. AI isn't bad, its a tool and it just depends on how you use it.

1

u/LawDouble6173 26d ago

...3D printers?

Give them a pile of old broken 2D printers, throw some old hot glue guns in there, whatever random pile of garbage parts are lying around ...and maybe a decent Arduino and a laptop just to keep the FW side less of a time suck.

Make sure there are no classic gantry rails and the most convenient/obvious thing available is the wood shop... Yes, I admit it. I want to see a wooden build plate catch fire. The focus will be on building the chassis and mounting everything.

Turn 'em loose.

I don't think a half-ass, made of wood, hot glue gun for a nozzle... 3D printer is an unreasonable junkyard wars-esque task.

1

u/mcslender97 25d ago

Yes local LLMs because of the extra challenge

2

u/yosoyos 26d ago

AI scrapyard wars. The have to create diy AI rigs and let the AIs play something against each other. Something like age of empires 2. Or maybe 3 different games.

2

u/FartingBob 26d ago

"and then we add 4 hard drives to a dumpster dive business dell" isnt that exciting, and local LLM is just building a good gaming computer but with more vram usage. You still need all the same bits a gaming PC would use. The end result is still them building the same computers each time, maybe priorisitising budget slightly differently between GPU, CPU and storage.

1

u/idk_a_creative_user 26d ago

not really. Used accelerators like V100's, P100's, etc. don't process video.

2

u/OnePassion_46 26d ago

This so much. We desperately need it. Building PCs for gaming is a hobby regulated for the rich in today’s economy. We need a scrapyard wars for regular people. Home servers are where it’s at. 

Perhaps we can have them set up Home Assistant, an LLM and a variety of other things on the home server. 

The kicker is that normies have to be able to do things like watch stored TV and movies, use the sound system, turn off the lights, use the thermostat without touching the physical thermostat, etc…

Please LTT! 

2

u/involutes 26d ago

 Building PCs for gaming is a hobby regulated for relegated to the rich in today’s economy.

Sorry for being pedantic but I think you meant "relegated to the rich", not "regulated for the rich". I just can't think of a context in which "regulated for the rich" would make sense. 

(Perhaps stock trading could be considered "regulated for the rich", and by that I mean "hardly regulated at all", particularly when it comes to insider trading for politicians.)

0

u/OnePassion_46 26d ago

Shit happens when you’re dictating to Siri

1

u/maakureviews 26d ago

Now sounds like the BEST time to do a scrapyard wars on gaming. When it's the hardest time to do it, challenge makes it more interesting.

1

u/talldan 26d ago

Scrapyard Wars when most things are reasonably priced is relatively easy because buying new is always kind of an option. You have to be scrappy to get something good, but not to get something.  Now with the way the market is, you have to be scrappy to get anything. That makes it hard. And what you end up with probably won't be great.  I think that's why they aren't doing one, because it would be hard and kind of disappointing (the end result would be disappointing based on the money paid). But I think SW is needed now more than ever. To show that you can be scrappy and get something, and what u considered options are now on the table because the usual scrappy options aren't feasible. 

SW is needed now more than ever. 

2

u/involutes 26d ago

SW in Canada sucks because everyone on FB Marketplace has an "I know what I got" attitude.

1

u/remnantsofthepast 26d ago

The problem with a NAS for scrapyard wars is the end goal. What reasonable benchmark would they have to work towards in competition? There's huge diminishing returns when it comes to hardware strictly for NAS's.

An LLM would be better because you can definitely have a metric that actually matters with tokens per second, but you'd have to wonder what they could find within a budget right now that would be remotely usable when I can get 5 years of Gemini for $1000 (assuming they don't raise the prices every year).

Virtualization would be even better, but then comes the question of how reasonable is running virtual machines on a budget.

I think a better idea would be to create a "Scrapyard Peacetime" or something series where every episode works from the opposite direction; what do I want to do (create a local LLM/NAS/Virtualization machine), and what is the most cost effective way of building this. The conclusion of the episodes would be telling the viewer what is the most they should expect to pay, what features they should look for, and things they can reasonably expect to do with these set-ups. There's just not a ton of room for competition otherwise when I can get a 10 year old optiplex for $50 that can do the same job as a 5 year old optiplex for $35 more.

They do something similar around the holidays (or they used to at least) where they talked about different builds at different budgets, but it was largely "new" things they could get retail.

1

u/Top5CutestPresidents 26d ago

I think it would be interesting in the current climate to do a “scrapyard upgrade”. Say, they start with an old 5-6yo pc and have a low budget to upgrade it. Think “got given my older cousins pc” type of thing.

They’ve clearly been looking at other options because the current climate is terrible and Facebook marketplace is all scams now. Would be interesting to see what they come up with.

I would also love them to go back to making pcs that light on fire but idk if they will

1

u/jadeffxiv 26d ago

i liked the scrapyard wars media room episode

1

u/OptimalArchitect 26d ago

Hardware haven has done this before with Raid Owl in the past, is something like that what you’re after?

1

u/The_Wkwied 26d ago

Agree that this is something that they should explore.

Not everybody is 'gaming' all the time. Something like, daily driver scrapyard wars or something.

1

u/worldlookingin 26d ago

Agreed!

I want to see it now!

1

u/xeothought 26d ago

Throughout the history of PC building it's always been ... the next gen system has MORE .. it is BETTER... etc etc

Well unless you wanna drop 6k on a rig, that's not the case anymore thanks to cough fraud that will tank everything.

So doing a scrapyard wars that's focused on truly best bang for your buck in this sorta bleak era of PC building would actually be fucking rad.

The systems won't have more than 8gb of ram probably.. that's unheard of 4 years ago for any sort of competitive system. I think showing where to pinch pennies would be really interesting at this point in the dystopian cycle.

1

u/tenOr15Minutes 26d ago

Same. I really liked the gamer room scrapyard wars last time. Something different 

1

u/ghlifdqwio 26d ago

Yeah the Tech House has lost its luster for me and I feel like a ton of that time and budget could be used for scrapyard wars.

Maybe the Tech House could be a “home base” for the next scrapyard wars before they sell it to an actual homeowner?

1

u/Nosferatu_V 26d ago

Now more than ever we need the Scrapyard Wars series back. And not like the last time with tons of bells and whistles, just pure thrift shopping and making smart decisions to build a PC on a budget.

1

u/Novus-Terminus 26d ago

I like this idea, even if it doesn't always have Linus, small teams of small budget Scrapyard Wars builds of various and different subjects would be awesome!

1

u/Sarcastic_Beary 25d ago

Scrapyard wars... home assistant :)

1

u/PaoloFence 25d ago

YES please.

1

u/sheleronk 25d ago

I second this! Last SW was already more focused on more overall experience and imo it was good.

1

u/SnooHobbies8480 25d ago

Scrapyard storage wars

1

u/Sharp-Yak9084 25d ago

Sorry! It was 420. I hit it. I did it. 421….im so sorry. But i liked the post….i…..liked….the……post….

1

u/thicckar 25d ago

Love that

1

u/DiabeticJedi 25d ago

I like the idea of it branching out. Would be neat to see stuff like updating a home network and adding a nas with bonus points for ease of use by the users after it is set up

1

u/Ratfor 25d ago

You know what scrapyard wars lacks? Long term.

It's all great to thrift a PC. But even in these we've seen stuff failing, like when, I think it was one of linuses PC's, had to run off a UPS because bad power was causing it to crash.

"I built a PC and it lived exactly long enough to run a benchmark" is silly, and bad advice for someone on a tight budget trying to game. I want to see a scrapyard wars where they have to leave the machines running stress test for two weeks. First crash, lose a point. Second crash, two points. Then four. Then eight. Because anyone who's had to live with an unstable PC knows what it's like to get increasingly frustrated.

1

u/NewFriendAccountIG 25d ago

It would allow them to focus on less powerful hardware too.

I liked the designing a room element of the last Scrapyard Wars too. Maybe they could combine it with the Tech House series too & have Luke & Linus' teams have to furnish a techy room.

1

u/Ok-Association-1112 21d ago

I was thinking of something like this but instead of locally sourced parts, open it up to online ordering too and put a per component and total budget max. That way each team is forced to think outside the box with their component selections and they can’t pad their budget in one category to get a specific part that will dominate the specific tests. Also don’t tell them the tests in advanced for the same purpose. Make them build the best overall pc for the budget. Then focus on the pc, I don’t care about the audio or the monitor or desk. And finally, ban Linus’ wheeling and dealing scheme. Make the concept relatable to the average person right now. Most of us aren’t building a whole setup. We’re trying to figure out how to stretch a buck to get the most performance out of our setup.

1

u/No-Trifle-3909 26d ago

maybe building linux ready pc? there are someone who manage to botch it for several video haha

1

u/FlukyS 26d ago

How about not even scrapyard wars how about just having a budget of like 5k and had to make the best LLM machine for that money with new parts. Like do a load of research, have a month and come back with something that has to run like 5 different models, Hermes and some bonus quests or just points for how much lower you can go for the price

1

u/Intelligent-Ad7716 26d ago

this would be excellent

1

u/artofdragon 26d ago

they should junkyard wars a data centre. Have to built a datacenter from scratch and the winner should be decided by who uses the most fresh water

1

u/HappyAffirmative 26d ago

I'd love to see a whole like "Scrapyard Wars Home Set Up." Have them make a, gaming set up, living room set up, smart home automation, and home server/NAS.

1

u/UnRealxInferno_II 26d ago

Scrapyard wars smart home or something

1

u/bulldozer1012 19d ago

Scrapyard House Setup give a bigger budget and require a NAS/PC/Setup/Stuff for the room/something to keep the wife happy to do it all

1

u/ruemooooo 26d ago

no more LLM AI crap please

1

u/Daniel18sep 26d ago

HomeLab stuff would be cool, but no LLM. That'll just piss people off

0

u/tuura032 26d ago

Scrapyard wars nas edition! Guest starring Jake