Gadgetory

welcome back to another episode of ask GN where we try to answer your questions you have any post questions in the comment section below for next week or if you're part of the patreon a community discord you can go to the discord channel and find the appropriate sdn channel so this week we have a couple interesting questions about one the one I really want to talk about is are we in the Golden Age of computer tech because there's there have been a lot of changes over the past two weeks at various companies Intel AMD working together things like that so definitely an interesting question to get into before we get into that this content is brought to you by the Thermaltake flow RGB closed-loop liquid cooler which is a 360 millimeter radiator plus 3 120 fans that are RGB illuminated the if then we'll take it rain fans at that this is a 4.5 done a detect pump which is one of the faster pumps you can learn more at the link in the description below so the first questions from woful who says in the discord I think are we in the Golden Age of computer tech like is this a what a time to be a live time for all the complaining about memory and GPU prices I was just about to mention those I get the vibe from content creators that there's some really neat tech worth being excited over what do you think maybe give us some general perspective on either how great or not so great these times are so the the games industry in the computer hardware industry tends a kind of operating cycles where you'll get a slow year and then a pretty heavy year this was definitely one of the faster years for computer hardware we had multiple high-profile launches so Pascal finished out its launch with the 1080i that was a pretty big deal when it happened and then right around the same time was AMD Rison there was a thread Ripper Intel life's $2.99 actually z2 70 and KB Lake came out in January kind of forget that with coffee lake coming out in the last month or two so yeah it's been a really crazy year and this isn't always how it is like next year is it's probably gonna be a lot slower I would think I don't know if we should expect anything from Volta you shouldn't expect anything from for na'vi right now that's further out and it never has been planned for next year anyway really volta we're not really sure on what that's doing at the moment so next year I what I'm expecting is less of major architecture launches and more of unveils of architecture names and roadmaps for the following years that tends to be how the cycle works we're from both a product standpoint products and manufacturing standpoint and from a competitive standpoint the major silicon manufacturers tend to launch all their most important stuff all right around the same time as each other and this year was a crazy year for that now in terms of the technology there's I don't know that I would say it's a what a time to be alive time because I feel like there's every other year there's a lot of crazy hardware but none of its really groundbreaking to me there's really good stuff like Rison worked out really well and coffee likes been pretty interesting from an intel actually doing something different standpoint but neither of those things are revolutionary from a pure technology industry standpoint if things like crosspoint that's one of the more interesting sort of bleeding edge type of technologies that will we'll see if that works out to be something useful in the consumer market there's possibility for a cross point DRAM sticks to be really good but we need to try them to figure that out if that's gonna be true or not but yeah in terms of just like legitimately completely new out from nowhere technologies VR is one I would consider to be in that category whether or not it actually worked as a product for people to buy VR was definitely in the like defining a new market segment category risin Coffee Lake the 1080 TI Vega all those things are new and are certainly exciting and worth talking about working on and have really cool stuff to test but they are also all in kind of existing products segments for the audience we work with so although they are exciting I don't think they are the sort of revolution type of technology required to make it a year of what a time to be alive as far as testing though because there's been so much from new architectures and new tech like HPCC or the one we're working on right now which is VF curve scanning and auto overclocking stuff like that there's a lot of new technology to work on and that means from a testing standpoint we get a lot of cool features so what I call feature benchmarks where rather than reviewing an entire product or benchmark and an entire product take a GPU instead of doing power thermals noise gaming production we end up doing just what happens if we turn this off and see how it does versus this on whatever this is or what happens at these frequencies and clocks and voltages so there's a lot of good feature test to be done as we've been publishing over and over but yeah even stuff like consoles on the Xbox side it's a really powerful console as far as consoles go but it's not technically next-generation so there's a lot more in the tank I think for the industry but I don't think we're gonna see much of it in the first half of next year at least cases I cases tend to launch every year in the October to November range and then again in the sort of like May area so that would be right before Computex and then a couple months after Computex is the review cycle generally for cases so we'll see more of those in May with unveils around CES which is in January but until someone like put some mesh in the front and a fan it's not gonna be revolutionary yeah but lots of lots cool stuff lots fun testing and things to be excited about but it is part of a normal cycle and next year is gonna be a lot slower I think but we'll see see if anyone surprises us next question della Troy says hi Steve like the 7700 K and 8700 K are there any meaningful thermal gains to be had by deleting a non reference Nvidia 1080 TI and replacing the Tim with liquid metal similarly is it worth replacing the Tim between the heat spreader and the heat spring heatsink I love your cat thanks so first thing to note here you can't really deal it'd GPUs so the term D lidding is used specifically to refer to the removal of the IHS the integrated heat spreader from the cpu and that would be there's your IHS that's an IHS right there so d Liddy knows when you remove this and you gain access to what is functionally the exposed silicon technically you'd have to kind of grind some layers off of that or remove it from the substrate in the acid or something like that to really gain full access but as far as we're concerned that is the that that is the silicon so when you deal with one of these what's happening is you are reducing that you're reducing two things reducing the silicon adhesive layer that sits around this and prevents the IHS from getting us close to the die as possible and you're also removing probably the thermal paste that's included with with Intel units at the very least and that allows you to put something better on there with GPUs you don't deal with them because they're already exposed you can take the heatsink off that's not deep letting it though but you can take the card apart remove the heatsink you have access to basically the silicon now and at this point you can apply a liquid metal the thing with GPUs and liquid metal is it you don't have as much to gain with them because they tend to cool a bit better than like Intel CPUs and you also and by the way they're not they don't have an IHS on them so they have better direct access to the cooling anyway and the risk is higher so with a GPU if you get liquid metal that sort of just by gravity moves around or gets pushed out the sides because you've just had a little bit too much on there then it's easier to short stuff there's more stuff to short then on a CPU in general the surface area is more populated with things like resistors and capacitors so personally speaking I don't really think it's worth doing liquid metal on GPUs because I think they're good enough as is they're pretty exposed to the cooler as is you gain a couple degrees better with liquid metal but I mean MIT I just don't really think it's worth it for the most part especially because thermal paste is known to withstand a lot of thermal cycles you won't really ever have to replace it for the usable life of the card and you could replace it with better thermal paste that's probably where I would stop though because liquid metal the potential maintenance involved in the the pan it is if you end up applying too much and shorting stuff it's just not worth it but yeah I don't know with a reference card there's more to be had by using better thermal interface material because the coolers are so bad but also it seems like a better solution to just buy a better card it's just a question of whether those are available next question is Hikaru who says I've got a question maybe one builds or it could shed light on as well you always say reference cards should be avoided is that solely due to poor coolers or does the PCB also suck after looking at various reference prm's they all seem over built parenthetically Vega and even our X 480 and 1080 1070 so if I were to be replacing the cooler with an aftermarket one anyway what a reference card be advisable as it would save me some money and help recoup the cost of the aftermarket cooler that is an instance where the reference coolers make the most sense or the reference PCBs rather the reason that I generally say avoid reference cards and the same for build Zoid I think I've seen his content where he talks about it both of us generally have the same reasoning for avoiding them as a recommendation which is primarily the cooler the cooler the Ambu vago on the Nvidia 10 series one they're all bad aha there are specific instances where those coolers make sense the these comes well the main reason these companies and the non-video ship with that cooler is because it's versatile and they don't want to have a million SKUs and they have partners to take care of the rest so the versatility comes from targeting people like high power or cyber power or origin folks like that who either for Wow there's a couple reasons there too but in speaking with the SIS some of them have told us that they have SKUs that they'll ship with blower cards just because the customers like freak out and they have high call volume because the fan isn't spending on some of the open-face cards which is of course a feature for no first Hyland's but customers who know less about computers might think that that's broken so they're putting cards that specifically don't have zero spin fans and another reason reference cards basically evict the heat from the case rather than put more heat into the case so for an IT Xbox in theory that would make more sense which makes them a bit more versatile but it doesn't mean it's a good thing to buy so if you're doing a DIY approach the cooler is the reason I say not to by reference if you are doing something like liquid cooler a hybrid mod bind something like a Morpheus or any other aftermarket cooler the Arctic cooling stuff my suggestion is to go with the reference PCBs in pretty much all cases because they're pretty good in Vegas case they're very good and if it's gonna be cheaper then yep it's a win you get rid of the bad thing which is the cooler so that's that's most of it really next question is from well I had wah deep I don't know 76 question for ask GN I'm looking to find out what type of case fans use in certain parts of the case I use a high airflow fan for the back exhaust and high static pressure fans for the a iOS where the question comes is should I use a high airflow fan or how static pressure fan for the front intake or any intake that has a filter on it what about a case that has a front intake with a filter and about an inch of clearance from the front panel I have two cases the 600 C and the measure by C so you would yeah I mean you're pretty much already using them out you're supposed to the static pressure fans you'd want to put on radiators which it sounds like you already are so anything optimized for static pressure is going to do better in scenarios where the fan is butted up against something that's creating resistance and/or impedance and in this case that would be a radiator which acts somewhat as a flow straightener as well and it would also be a mesh filter on the front of the case or anywhere else in the case so if you're up against a mesh filter the a good example would be the mesh that we used in the age 500 P mod that's from the top of a fractal case I think Oren will take one if you're fighting against one of those then a static pressure optimized fan should be a bit better how much better it is depends on the fan the RPMs you're trying to push for the noise and the case as a whole but strictly from a an optimization standpoint it would be better to use a fan optimized for a static pressure in that scenario once you start getting into places like exhaust or meshes that are not creating a lot of impedance maybe it's like the metal grading type of mesh where it's got wider holes in the grate and it's not as sort of flexible and flimsy doesn't move around it doesn't create a lot of impedance then you really could go with the airflow fans and be just fine if not better off for it depends on kind of how big that mesh is the H 700 I comes to mind is one where it has that metal grading the holes aren't that big like in the old high airflow cases that 1/2 X for example would be a decent place where you could get away with an airflow fan as opposed to static pressure housewives fan next part of the question that was I have two cases 600 C & metruff IC fan recommendations we found for the the mesh by sea we found that the the NF a fourteens worked really well in that case like they pushed it up to the top of our charts those are a bit expensive you don't need them but they they are kind of our go-to for a fan that will work in basically any case behind mesh without issues and have reasonable noise levels the that servo fan gentle typhoon that's probably one of my favorite fans on the market I don't think it's made anymore but if you can get gentle typhoons those are hands-down my favorite fans it's just they're kind of hard to get yeah that's kind of what I'd look at we send this question over to Bobby ken still a thermal engineer at Corsair this is Bobby's own thoughts and take on the matter and it's not a representation of Corsairs thoughts but as an engineer in the industry who designs a lot of fans we thought we'd ask him Bobby said how to select a PC case fan the ideal solution is to use a good performing PWM controlled fan with a wide control range like the Maglev series fans in every location and then use the fan controller to set the speed as needed for each fan these fans can run from near silent to high power and everything in between if this is not possible for economic reasons it or a lack of a good fan controller use the following high airflow fans are good for cases without obstruction greater than a fan grill these fans perform best in free air conditions the fan locations on the back of a typical PC gaze is a good example they can be used on the front or top positions if the case grill is highly open those filters will significantly impact airflow style fans and will need to be cleaned frequently these fans are often that low noise and low performance and can be run at full speed high pressure fans are good for flow resistant applications such as liquid cooling radiators those filters and highly restrictive case openings popular case designs these days are solid phased with openings only on the sides if the solid front is at least one inch from the fan and if the events are mostly open then moderate pressure fans will perform well however if the solid front panel is closer than one inch or these side inlets are obscured then the user will need a higher pressure rated fans if the front is less than a quarter of an inch from the solid panel and user probably shouldn't use that case or worry about populating those fan positions except as jewelry as they won't be moving very much air at all another thing to look at is the airflow path for the front Kay's fans if the air comes in the side it turns 90 degrees to the back and enters the fan and has one inch or more clearance then they'll probably have a good time with a lot of fans however I've seen several cases where the fan body is actually forward of the side events so the air comes in turns 90 degrees forward turns 90 towards Center and then 90 towards the back these cases are going to have a bad time with all but the most powerful fans so our thanks to Bobby Kim stole for that information next question is from Dave core Baker who says hi according to a steam hardware survey Andy has lost six percent of market share last month and more than 10% since risin was launched and E is now just above 10 percent I think Intel's better IPC and the fresh released coffee lay CPUs are responsible for this considering that Rison was supposed to make an t more relevant do you think rise and 2 will change that so this question I've seen a lot which is why I included it here AMD losing market share in the steam so the steam hardware survey is not representative of the whole that well or not representative of certain markets and if you correlate that that dip and and the market share with recent changes to the gaming environment you'll notice that the China market share on steam has recently surged a ton and you can note that further by looking at the operating system share where I think a couple the last steam hardware survey operating systems like Windows 10 had a lot more share than they do now it looks like there's been a regression if you look at the OS share it looks like users of steam have regressed from Windows 10 to Windows 7 that doesn't make a lot of sense because you think about it once an OS starts clawing its way up the market share chain it's not really going to lose users until a new OS comes out people aren't going to in droves go back to Windows 7 particularly given DirectX requirements so you look at that and you look at the new influx of users from China and I think what we're seeing is more of a a suddenly a wide audience that's been included in the steam hardware survey using older hardware in China like the Intel CPUs that have been around for a while now and I haven't looked at the video card section but I would imagine if you did you'd probably see it increase an older video card Hardware being surveyed as well so if you were worried that Rison caused AMD to lose market share don't because AMD if anything that has only benefited from Rison for the most part right now so that seeming dip is not because MD has somehow managed to lose market share while launching a product and they feel it better than its old one it's because of the the way the survey is conducted and who is surveyed so if you looked at if those players in China were always surveyed then you wouldn't see that huge drop that we just saw next question is that I don't write this I don't think I know here's one r.j. Fleming 82 Steve AI sweets reports wattage consumed by CPU using Watts equals current time voltage I could derive current draw the CPU do you know if a I suite wattage is correct I'm not sure about AI suite specifically but I think it probably gets that from the same place that Hardware inferred actually I don't know about that one specifically I do know about hardware info 64 though so you could check hardware info 64 versus what AI suite says and see if they're the same hardware info 64 tends to be pretty damn accurate it's one of the only sensors the the CPU wattage sensor one of the only sensors that is actually really accurate to what the hardware is doing if you load things like Ada and at times gpu-z stuff like that early in their launch for new products you'll see that the readings are really inaccurate this happens a lot with a 264 with CPUs it doesn't have catalogued we'll give temperature values for example that are below ambient for something that's not cooled by exotic cooling which is impossible physically so the sensors are often inaccurate with software when it's still newer in a launch cycle but the power sensors pretty much always dead on and hardware info 64 and I think AI suite might pull it from the same spot so cross-check those to anyone who doesn't use harder info 64 I would strongly recommend it it's free and it's one of the best tools for just strict monitoring no benchmarking built in or anything like that because frankly it as benchmark is not very good anyway so there's no reason to pay for it but yeah if you're just looking for monitor and use that cross-check with it supa says SG on any updates on a ib Vega kart seems like there are continued delays we just got another one in we and you'll probably see the video for it maybe before this one goes up we just got the power color card in I'm still waiting on the Strix bios power colors asking me to install different bios as well I think so we're still kind of waiting on that but the fact that I got a power color partner card says to me that we're getting closer to some kind of actual availability I would imagine that these companies are probably panicking trying to get it ready in time for Black Friday or at least Christmas sales so it would be reasonable to expect that I don't actually have any information saying that's going to be the case but I have every reason to believe it will be so that would be my guess but yeah I don't know they all the partners have kind of stopped giving estimates because they they've been inaccurate so many times at this point but yeah it looks like hopefully end of November but we'll see that's my guess not theirs I think I had one more in here this one might be from Liquid Paper I think I didn't write down the name I have a question concerning ABX offsets and cable 8 coffee like some people are reporting across multiple boards that AVX offsets don't always work I this issue the CPU clocks to whatever AVX offset is and regardless of a VX workload so I I actually haven't seen this on our coffee like board yet we were mostly using that ultra gaming board we've done a little bit with the Asus board but one thing so I'm sure you've already done this but for anyone who has this question if you're trying to figure out if a VX off that's working you can load prime95 26.6 which is a non AVX version of prime and run that and see if it applies the offset if it does not then that part's working I was expected because it's non ABX so it shouldn't then you load prime95 28.5 or 29.2 both of which are a VX run lfts or something and if it does apply the offset then it looks like it's working you can also use blender if you download blender and one of their sample projects files it should apply the AV X offset in every case that I've tested and most games should not apply the AV X offset I'm not sure specifically of any games that using a VX I'm sure they probably exist somewhere but yeah so I don't know the answer to your question I haven't seen that personally and I haven't heard of it other than your question but the reason I'm including it is because hopefully that other informations helpful of people and then for anyone out there who does have that problem please leave a comment below with the motherboard you're using the CPU you're using and a brief explanation of the behavior so that we can look into it and maybe this liquid paper and chart comes here you can figure out what's going on on there and so that's it for this time as always thank you for watching subscribe for more you can get a store that gamers nexus net to pick up a sticker like this one this is our brand new decal sticker or one of our normal GN shirts thank you for watching I'll see you all next time