Gadgetory

hey everyone welcome back to another ask GN as always leave your questions in the comment section below for next week I think we're gonna do one main one for this week and then the patreon asked yet in question which can get patreon.com/scishow and axis so we'll probably do another one but we're going to Taiwan in a couple of days here so just for times sake poly lemonade ins one I'm gonna talk more about that Computex trip momentarily so a lot of good questions for this week one of them address on the icy graphite thermal pads a lot of you are really interested I do not blame you at all I'm interested too but we'll get to that in a moment before that this video is brought to you by thermal Grizzlies high-end thermal paste and liquid metal thermal Grizzlies cryo knot is an affordable high quality thermal compound that doesn't face some of the aging limitations of other pastes on the market cryo knot has a thermal conductivity of 12.5 watts per meter Kelvin focuses on endurance is easy to spread and isn't electrically conductive making it safe to use on GPU dies thermal grizzly also makes conductor not liquid metal which we've used to drop 20 degrees off some temperatures than our dee-lighted tests by a tube at the link in the description below okay so first of all the Computex stuff if you're not familiar with it if you're new to the industry or to this channel we go to Taipei Taiwan every year for a show called Computex this is going on our 3rd year now and it's like CES except bigger and more relevant so Computex is gigantic it's over 200 thousand attendees I think it's probably approaching 300 thousand depends on how you count it we're gonna be talking to most the hardware companies in the industry some of its scheduled some of its not because they're just all over a 4-story Convention Center you can it's kind of like memory manufacturers all next to each other in case manufacturers next to each other for the most part so we can just kind of hit each booth and see what's up some of them we do schedule they tend to be in hotel suites if they're American companies a lot of them prefer that route probably for cost-saving reasons so anyway we're gonna be there the show starts June 5th we're gonna start coverage on I think the 3rd or the 4th pretty early we have one factory tour scheduled we have a ton of interviews scheduled and meetings about new products and basically you should subscribe if you're not so you can catch all that stuff should be a lot of fun though if you have really specific requests here's what I'd like you to do so as the shows going on if you see some news of some product that you're interested in that we haven't covered and you think that we can provide a unique perspective then please tweet at me that's the best way to reach us during the show it's at gamers and axes let us know who the vendor is and what the product is we'll see if we can go check it out if time allows and that's probably the best way to get us out there we try to be try to keep the technical approach at these trade shows so I do tend to have more specification information I'm asking for at the booths then I think a lot of channels do and also not afraid to say something that's let's say that something so excited booth anyway let's get into questions so first one here is from Oh also one more thing bring me in Japan briefly after Taipei just basically we decided to stop there on the way back because it's kind of on the way so it should be pretty fun we're gonna go to Akihabara I think and see if we can do a video there but anyway if you have ideas about what we can do in Tokyo that's related to technology please let me know because I haven't prepared for that part of the trip at all so if you know anything about Tokyo and Technology computers anything related to what we do even some what let me know what it is and hopefully we can go make a video about it all right first question Robert dip was to put this I don't know so gamers Nexus I would really like to get your take on the icy graphite throne pads that are supposedly capable of replacing throne pace since they're also reusable they could be great value for the money your in-depth testing is about the only channel I trust with results and I believe your audience would be interested I agree and I'm interested too or probably look at it be looking at it after copies acts for timing reasons I mean the thing is this is something I've been interested in it's just we have so much going on it's really hard to prioritize avers bu and we're working on stuff so I'll try and look at it keep bugging me about it in the comments we get back in June so look at it then but here's the one thing I will say is I think the graphite thermal pads are way over hyped I have done some preliminary looking into them and I think they're really not deserving of the amount of praise they're getting like it's this is not new technology this stuff has been around there's a reason there's not a lot of it on the market and we've done testing of this stuff before where I've tested some for I can only can't share a lot of it right now but I've tested pads of substances that are not thermal paste in the past and often times it's it's sort of billed as a lot more than it is in terms of performance like they're cool they're kind of reusable there's still downsides to using them and ultimately there's a reason why a lot of people use paste so some of these pad like interfaces that I've tested and III don't know what I'm gonna be able to talk about them if ever but because it was a prototype but some of the the pad type interfaces that replace thermal paste for CPU to cooler contact are are really pretty bad and some of them are okay but I haven't yet encountered one that's better than comparable their own pay is really good metal depending on what you're doing one interesting thing is the really thin pads I would be curious to see how they perform between the die and the IHS I've done some testing on it it was never the problem with it was if you're using a conductive one that's a bit harder to protect against if especially if it if it has a phase change or something like that which anyway up hopefully I can share more with you something but in the meantime the icy graphite stuff yeah I'll try I see will seriously try when we get back let's see if we get hit with a way of GPUs or not and then I'll know I don't know if we have time but to kind of give you some immediate thoughts though I do think it's way over hyped it's an interesting product it has use cases it's worth playing around with but thermal testings really hard like we revised our thermal testing almost every day I mean we we kind of specialize in it for GPS especially you haven't seen a lot of it cuz there are no new GPS but we've specialized it in for a bit and it's hard to do it right computer software is really difficult to work with there are million variables with a test bench so even if you control everything to the best ability even every single voltage in BIOS which you have to do this software is still hard to control so basically you need like a current clamp on the EPS 12 volt cables you need a reliable software that reads the power of the CPU because power is what generates heat so you need to control those two things very specifically and then also go through all the voltages and bios and manually set them no auto allowed ever for that kind of CPU thermal testing and also use software that you can control to a relative degree of certainty and then run multiple repeat tests instead of throwing out outliers inspect them and see why are they an outlier if it deserves to be thrown out and throw it out but it's it's pretty hard to do thermal testing accurately we revised it constantly I would imagine that a lot of user testing online and I haven't looked at other media outlets truthfully I really haven't looked at other media outlet reviews of these pads but I would be cautious of trusting thermal testing from random sources on the internet because it's hard to do it accurately and also even if they do it accurately it's probably not comparable to person B's test from person a test because there's so many ways to do thermal testing if it's not controlled then you might just be looking at two different scenarios where it might from well and one not the other or you could just have a bunch of useless data so next question game Varys says how are graphics card water blocks made this is a really good question are the machine from bar stock or cast and then finished by a mill I'm not an expert on manufacturing but I can do some research so looked around a bit talk to some people as well EK water blocks plexi parts like their terminals are made out of cnc machined or they are cnc machined from solid acrylic pieces that are cast and most blocks are machined and there's actually a great video from aqua computer will put it up on the screen hopefully if the editors catch this but their aqua computer shows how the blocks are made mostly using CNCs and mill attachments and even polishing attachments to basically the CNC part subtracts out unwanted material to make the channels and a lot of water blocks use milling and machining some of them are cast they tend to be a bit cheaper according to our friend VSG from thermal bench if they are cast but most are machined or or produced in the fashion you've seen with aqua computer some of these companies collect the remaining scrap metals recycling aqua computers one of them so aqua computer basically as they subtract out the copper they don't want it gets kind of pushed aside eventually filtered out recycled goes to scrap material companies and they don't make a ton of money from it but it helps offset costs a bit and then there's also a lubrication solvent that's used as the channels are created so it helps with the heat that's generated from the milling devices they get really hot just from friction and then and speed and also helps with the cleaning things out its solvent and lubricant so that gets filtered actually communities as well it's pretty recyclable unlike water which gets dirty and useless with time so that's pretty cool as well anyway that's about the most I know so I do really like the question hopefully that gives to you the basics of it and this kind of made me think like oh we should just go visit one of these factories sometime and make a video so we'll play do that next question is from the EULA who says downdraft coolers are actually worse in all caps at cooling the VRM then tower coolers they're blowing hot air from the CPU right off on top of the vrm some of that hot air circulates back into the downdraft cooler at our cooler on the other hand blows hot air right out of the PC and sucks some air by negative from the VRM okay so first of all this blanket statement is a really flat place to go saying things like downdraft coolers are worse at cooling the BRM and howard coolers is for sure going to make you incorrect and at least a few instances you might be right insomnia will be wrong on others cooling is complicated the design of the case impacts how it works the design of the cooler impacts how true this statement is so we've as someone who has done testing on this properly and in depth the thing is and I see you mentioned hardware and box - I haven't seen their video but it looks like what you're doing here I'm not saying anything about their content I haven't seen it but what you are doing by commenting on their content you're saying they have a tower cooler outperforming Wraith and cooling the BRM well there are different coolers so it's possible yes that is how a cooler especially with a low enough fan which we've tested can cool vrm components better in some instances than a downdraft cooler it's also possible as we've tested that a tower cooler with a Crabby fan particularly one that's that's higher up from the socket doesn't get any air over the vrm both will be better in general than a front-mounted CLC which is just pulling it's pushing a hot air into the case because well it's pulling in cold air and that's going through a radiator it's pushing hot air into the case and if you have no other fan than the case we're assuming a basically closed system then that would be the worst case if you have a tower cooler and no other fans in the system that would be better than what I just described but a tower cooler versus a downdraft cooler the answer is it depends so the first two things are more or less concrete for the most part and tower versus downdraft efficacy is going to depend on what kind of fan is used where is it positioned and are there any other fans in the system also where the mesh ventilation ports if there are any how small is the box is it an ITX box if it is then it's possible that in some instances a downdraft could be better and some could be worse because you don't it depends on where the ventilation ports are if there are any again and and also just how crammed it is in there so to say just flat out that downdraft coolers are actually worse at the BRM cooling than tower coolers is incorrect because it's a blanket statement that's correct sometimes and it's very wrong on other times so for the point of its blowing hot air from the CPU on to the vrm okay but it's blowing air on to the vrm so it's still getting air onto these components potentially even over a heat sink in most cases which is going to be better than stagnant air flow which is what you'll get with some tower coolers that have their fan position too high up or just a really bad low pressure fan and a lot of those exist especially some of the hybrid two 12's because not all of them but hybrid t12 is these different fans depending on what production run you get and some of them stock more than others so yeah I mean any airflow is better than no airflow the fact that the air air has been warmed is really sort of irrelevant because you're talking about an air temperature that's maybe like 40 degrees Celsius a vrm can get up to like 100 plus like for a MOSFET so you're not making it worse that's for damn sure next one demage I don't want to give my real name okay that's easier it says some question is it better to plug in the computer then turn on the power supply or is it better to turn on the power supply and then plug in the computer or does it not matter same question reverse no reason I'm including this is because actually kind of is very simple but also a good question and also brings us back to basics of it the only reason it would matter is if you sometimes you get an instant-on signal from it depends on like the last state of the motherboard in the system it may have been powered down in a way that it's going to attempt to boot as soon as it detects PS arm or as soon as it detects standby voltage from power supply once you flip the switch so if that's the case or I've had some power supplies that'll just turn on when you plug them in even if you know with the switch set to on by the way even if you don't push any kind of button or trigger anything a lot of that is just gonna depend on the motherboard so what's the last known stay to the motherboard is it trying to send a signal to the power so I turn it on so I would just recommend plug it in and we or actually plug all your cables in first of all and then turn on the power supply last so plug in the cable flip the switch later it doesn't really matter a whole lot but just in case there's like a non signal coming from the motherboard as soon as you plug everything in and flip the switch just make sure all your cables are plugged into the motherboard but it really doesn't matter a whole lot it's just kind of just make sure your stuff's plugged in just in case because like for example in a nightmare scenario you could have me forgotten PCIe cables maybe one of them to a video card or something that can actually cause damage in some instances as depends on the video card what kind of protection everything that the motherboard the video card in power supply have but you don't want to cause any damage unnecessarily so next one is a hand let me read that plug theater turn on power supply or turn the power supply plug in the computer yeah I go with what I said next doesn't matter a whole lot though next one T mmm this is a bit of a shot in Freud but question but would you care to elaborate a bit on what were the very worst products that went through the GN gauntlet the Zalman z1 was one of the worst that was a case man that was that was bad case it's also not a great video I mean like it was good content from us but the video quality was not good it's a long time ago so the z1 was bad enough I'm fine sharing this publicly now given how much distance there is right it was bad enough that we when we met with Zalman the next time at an event basically the entire time was spent talking about that case and then later they called me they talked about like this is a long time ago this before we really sold a lot of ads or anything like that it really had much income they called me and they were like we want to round it out with you and I thought okay this is seems like strange timing but but let's talk business and I gave them a couple numbers they came back with really bad offerings and and then after we kind of had a loose agreement on a potential deal they were like okay can you remove one last thing can you do the review I said no like no you no of course not that's not how this works so that had never happened terminate the agreement obviously and we never worked with them again because that's pretty screwed up so that was our last dealing with Zalman because that the z1 was bad but bribing wait worse so anyway that I don't know what their status is even these days their parent company was kind of killed from some kind of scandal so and just to be clear we haven't had that happen since or from any other company it's the only instance we actually published an article talking about some of the underside underhanded things that people in the industry have done it was all anonymous this was years ago I anonymized who did what and just said this is wrong don't do it and we haven't had a problem since so I think the people in the industry got that message and and no more shady to that extent happened since that time other bad products I guess really bad ones I mean I didn't like the age 500p and I would it was certainly not that was more of bad marking though because the the base of it was still an okay product so in terms of like like the frame like literally the shell and the two fans and then they made it into a good really good product that we recommend highly with a chayote match so I wouldn't put that in that category because there was mostly marketing that was bad in that instance man what was a really truly bad product that we looked at Oh another case the Rose will gun near that one just came to mind that was a pretty bad product mostly cases we've worked with some video cards that had really bad drivers but the products were eventually okay I think most of stuff that we really hated was for adjacent reasons that were correct well like like drivers or changing the mesh on the front of the case or whatever stuff like that but really the the worst one was the Zalman z1 the Rosewell Goong near was very bad and we've had a couple of really oddball products like some of the low-end Intel CPUs just don't make any sense whatsoever to buy in terms of the value I don't know that I'd say they're bad because it's not like they're broken or anything they're just really bad value same for something in the AMD CP is like some of the a series ap is the original like the non vague ap is something there's a really bad value also so but not bad products necessarily anyway we've we've reviewed a lot of bad products but we kind of review them then I forget about them so the names of most of them escaped me Oh coolers for sure though they're definitely some really bad coolers out there that we've looked at that Coolermaster cheap on the master liquid one leaked when we used it because the screws they provided with it had enough of a variance in the length that one of them was just long enough to escape tolerance of hitting the radiator when you screw it in and most comp actually like all of the companies from those part with liquid coolers have a little metal shield between the screw and the radiator so that it can't cause a leak and also if not that then they have fins back there instead of a tube so if you do screw in too far because the tolerance was bad from the factory with the screw then worst case scenario it destroys like a piece of a fin doesn't really matter as opposed to going through a tube so that was I would say that was a bad product and then we also worked with an old like a Peltier cooler basically and I can't really but that one was pretty bad - it was it was almost $200 and very complicated had power going into it and everything and didn't cool any better than like a $40 92 millimeter cooler so that was not a bad product can't any of it though all right we have some work coming up - but oh also the scam they like to terabyte USB key we reviewed except it was actually like 8 gigabytes it says 2 terabytes in actually might even last so that's 2 terabytes in Windows but it tricks you so they spoof it and then in reality it's like 4 or 8 gigabytes and as you write more data it'll just it'll either fill up and give an error or it'll start overwriting the previous data so that was really bad product as well cables we worked with some cables that were just straight scams like a now that coming back to me we're going back like years in history now by 6 DVI cable so there are a lot of DVI cables that will advertise as dual link ie more bandwidth and capable of driving a different you know a higher resolution or higher refresh and they'll advertise dual link they'll even have the pins for it but then if you just do a simple continuity check like with a multimeter just check and 1 2 n 2 pin a two pin a on either side and in some of those fake dual link DVI cables that will come back I mean it's it's not continuous there's no wire in there it's just two pins so those are bad products to you the best way to tell a dual link DVI cable is real enough that's relevant anymore is if it's super fat because if it is then it probably has the extra wires in there for those pins but a lot of fakes out there a lot of scams that we've looked at I think that's most of it it's probably probably most her right now we've looked at a lot of bad VR stuff but a lot of bad games I think of more I'll let you know next one gamer games is water cooling Ram worth it featuring a data spectryx dat jellyfish and any programs the stras memory not really know it's like it's kind of interesting and the jellyfish stuff is a good way to get some attention as a memory manufac for making a component that for the most part is a commodity at this point where you just pick kind of what's the most affordable so it's a good way to get attention totally unnecessary and ddr4 especially it's already low voltage it's low heat even we were running 4000 megahertz tight timings for that repel tt stream and it didn't need a fan on the memory now older versions of DDR you could do a some cooling but you didn't need that next one commander Flint does enabling the AI GPU on Intel CPUs impact CPU overclock thermals or performance in general some dx12 titles and certainly benchmarks are beginning to make use of explicit multi-gpu and can potentially make use of integrated graphics on Intel CPUs minimal game gains given the relatively feeble nature of it but games nonetheless surely having another piece of silicon act of drawing power and creating heat on the CPI will have negative impact on the CPU itself so potentially if they're using more power jointly than yes you're gonna end up with more heat it's all it all comes down to how much power is being used under that IHS and whenever you have more power being used it's gonna be hotter for everything under it that said in our premiere benchmark we actually found there was a less power consumption by about two there in terms of current it was about two amps less with or two to fewer amps running the IGP versus not and that's because what happens is the IGP is accelerating to a point that the cpu doesn't need to do as much work anymore so you end up with with lower power consumption overall to the extent of like 20 watts 24 watts in that scenario which means that the CPU will be cooler the IGP will be warmer but but not unreasonably warm and so between the two of them you end up actually better off overall as for games DX 12 titles I do not think you'll end up ahead by using an Intel IGP with explicit multigp if it's even supported I would have I'd be hard-pressed to find one use an IDE P with a DGP you I don't think you're gonna end off ahead but yeah I don't know I haven't really tested I'm not aware of any titles that are able to do that but I hope the rest of it answers your question though more powers more heat Boone says I know this is getting really picky but have you considered adding a snap to the left side of the Maud map for a common ground point given where I want to put one I really need the ground connection on the left side of the mat I'm sure I could run an extension to it would be so much neater if I didn't have to Yukio management OC strikes again I'm also open to modding my mom had super meta you need a mod Matt - my other mod Matt any suggestions on adding a snap on my own match without having to buy a minimum pack of 100 or more of these things what are the specs of the snap we have it on the site they're 10 millimeter snaps so on this side if you wanted to mod your own I don't know where you can buy the snaps individually I haven't looked and I don't think you'd really be able to done it you wouldn't really be able to pull this out to cleanly it'll leave a bit of a mess and damage some of the rubber around it I mean I've done it because I when I was prototyping them I put my own hole in the mat and like put a snap in it which I pulled off of another one that I spent like $100 on so not the best solution but yeah it's a this is a 10 millimeter male stud and this is a 10 millimeter female snap so that's the the parts now I haven't looked about where you can buy them I'm sure you can find it on eBay or something and then you'd basically just get something to poke a hole in this side obviously we don't officially recommend modding it but I totally understand why you would want to so if you want to do that you find something poke a hole in there cleanly and find the the snap and everything if you're really concerned about it send us an email support at gamers nexus net and do me a favor do a bit of the work for us cuz I have a support guy who does that stuff but for a technical question I'll have to get in there so do me a favor if you do email specifically some links so the things you're thinking of buying and I'll let you know if it'll be compatible with this common ground point and hopefully make sure everything works cleanly for you as for adding one if more of you want like a second snap on this side I mean it sound off in the comments and we'll look into it I don't think it would be too big of a deal to do that I had a second one and I think that's all for this one so thank you for watching as always go to patreon.com/scishow can next stop directly and get the bonus episode and that'll be it for now we'll do more when we're in Taipei at Computex so subscribe for that gonna store it on Karen's Nexus net to pick up the mod mat I was just talking about we had a quick update these are in stock like here and they're shipping so it's no longer a backorder if you want one it'll basically ship you know within a day of you ordering it so thanks for watching and I'll see you all next time