Last year I upgraded my micro ATX PC to an ATX case and motherboard, but I made some mistakes along the way. But now, thanks to Facebook Marketplace, I can make even more mistakes! Kidding, maybe.

I have purchased a new case, motherboard and CPU cooler which I think will improve my workstation PC’s look (and performance) a fair bit.

The items I purchased off Facebook Marketplace (from the same seller) are:

  • MSI MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI (Motherboard) - £75
  • Lian-Li LANCOOL II Mesh RGB (Case): £30
  • Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black (CPU Cooler): £40
  • 2x Lian-Li LANCOOL II-2X (LEDs): Free!

This PC has an AMD Ryzen 5900X CPU and 64GB of Corsair Vengeance 3200Mhz RAM (2x32GB DDR4).

(Link to direct YouTube video)

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone, I’ve recently been scouring Facebook Marketplace for some really good deals on a new motherboard and case, and I’ve actually found a really good deal, which I’ll show off in just a minute. But the reason I wanted to change is last year I upgraded my case and my motherboard, but actually, I think the final effect isn’t that good. I mean, I kept my old white PSU, which, in this entirely black case, doesn’t look very good, and I kept this really old Noctua cooler, which is right-angled for small form-factor builds, and it looks a bit weird and out of place in this particular build.

And actually, even this case, although it’s got a tempered side panel and an RGB strip, it doesn’t look all that good, and it led to one of my subscribers calling me a bit cheap. And they were right, and they meant no offense with it, and I certainly didn’t cry myself to sleep for a week straight when they said that! But certainly, they were actually right because this particular case and motherboard actually did have issues.

That’s why I’ve been spending quite a long time scouring Facebook Marketplace, looking for an alternative. And I found the best deal ever because this is the Lian Li 2 Mesh RGB case—bit of a mouthful—but it’s usually £100 or more, but I actually picked it up for just £30! And it’s completely pristine. I mean, it’s still actually got the little plastic thing on it. I don’t know if you kept it and put it back on because I think this case has actually been built in, but there are really no issues with it. It is in really good condition. Look at it! It’s got hinges—oh my gosh, I can’t believe it! This case is brilliant. Everything’s been thought of. There’s loads of cable routing holes, there’s nice mesh on the side and the front, which helps with airflow but also dust prevention, of course. And these side windows are lovely. I mean, they’re magnetic, so they just clip on, but then you can obviously pull them off as you would want. And because they are hinged, you’re less likely to actually, you know, put them on your tiled floor and have them smash everywhere. This is not just the Lian Li case I actually bought. What I also did was upgrade my motherboard.

So I actually went with an MSI Tomahawk X570 motherboard from the same seller. This is usually over £200, but I got it for just £75, which is actually quite a lot of money, but this motherboard is flawless—there’s no scratches or anything else. And finally, because I was buying a motherboard and a case off this seller, they then offered me the Noctua cooler that they were selling for a slight discount. So this retails for £100, it’s the D15—so Noctua’s flagship one—and I paid £40 for it, which is pretty good. I mean, you can’t buy it for £40 on eBay, at least not in the UK, so it’s a pretty good deal. And I know I said that I didn’t really want—you know, I didn’t really like my CPU cooler in my old case because it took up too much room—but that’s partly because it’s right-angled, and you’ve then got this big brown fan sort of staring you in the face, which there was a time where I kind of liked that, but now I’ve kind of gone away from that. I want to really do a nice black and white build, which, I know, black and white seems like a weird color scheme, but I think it’ll actually look really nice. And this Noctua cooler will fit in really well, you know? It’ll go there, and because this Lian Li case is actually bigger, I think that will work fairly well. And I’ve half been looking at getting like an RTX 5080 graphics card or something like that. And if I do get that, you know, they’re running hotter and using more power than the previous gen, I’m going to need as much cooling as I can get. And that’s why I actually really like this case, because I got these two intake fans here on the bottom, I got three fans here—so that’s five intakes—and then I’ll have two exhausts as well.

And again, I can have this massive Noctua cooler as well. And actually, there’s still a lot of room in the case. You know, it’s going to have quite a lot of airflow. So those were the three purchases—I had the Noctua cooler, the motherboard, and the case. I spent £145, and actually, they’re worth over £400, or even more when you include the fact that they included these RGB strips, the Lian Li ones, which I think retail for like £20 or something. I’ve got two of them, so actually, really, they’re worth like £440–£450, and it’s all absolutely pristine. So I’m actually really happy with my purchase. It also has mechanical hard drive bays, which, actually, the previous seller wasn’t using. They took out this metal shrouding completely, and it was a bit of a pain to get it back in.

But because I do video editing, I actually really want that, because I can have, you know, three mechanical hard drives in here, and I can store all my old projects that I don’t access very often on there, and that is actually brilliant for backup storage. I did actually try getting a mechanical hard drive in here, and it was a complete pain. In fact, I wanted to fit two because I had two old four-terabyte drives, and I couldn’t get the second one in. In the end, I jammed the first one—the first hard drive—down into the PSU shroud here, and it’s a bit janky, really. And the fact that this Lian Li case actually has proper support for mechanical hard drives is completely brilliant. But why exactly have I been trawling through Facebook Marketplace, looking to change my case, and my motherboard, and my CPU cooler?

It’s because this case, as I mentioned earlier, it is just a bit too cramped. Like, you wouldn’t actually think it’s an ATX case, even though it is fit in an ATX motherboard. You wouldn’t really think it—everything is just a bit too crammed in. And that’s partly because of this CPU cooler. I mean, you know, I could have gone for like a Thermalright Peerless Assassin CPU cooler, and I think things would have looked a little bit smaller. But overall, this case, even though it was only £30 and it does have benefits, such as the tempered glass side panel and the RGB strip, I think really it’s just not the best case to build in. And if I am looking at getting a more powerful graphics card, I kind of need all the airflow I can get. So that’s why I looked to change to the Lian Li one.

In terms of the motherboard as well, when I bought it last year, it’s a Gigabyte Aorus Elite one, so it is a pretty good one. But I made two key mistakes. Firstly, the second M.2 slot actually only runs at Gen 3 speeds, not Gen 4. I know—I should have checked that. But basically, what it does mean is my four-terabyte NVMe drive just isn’t running as efficiently as it could be, and I use that for my active video editing projects, so that is a big problem, really. And secondly, the second PCI Express slot, the x16 one, it only runs at x2 on this motherboard. And I know most people don’t use that second slot, but recently, I’ve bought a capture card so I can record from my other computer, my gaming computer. And actually, I get FPS being throttled there. I’ve even tried recording at 4K at 30 FPS, and I get warnings saying “low FPS” because it just isn’t enough. And that’s because capture cards, whether you go with Elgato or AverMedia, they’re often just PCI Express Gen 3. So then, when they’re running at x2, that’s just nowhere near enough. You know, that’s just not enough bandwidth. But in this particular motherboard, the second slot is x4, and that obviously is more than enough.

So that’s partly why I’ve been looking to change the motherboard too. So that wraps up my Facebook Marketplace deals! I’m actually really happy with them, and I wanted to finish this video just by showing a quick build montage of me moving from here to this particular case. I hope you enjoy it! [Music]