Gadgetory

courser hosted what they called a PC master-race panel at PAX East 2018 we were on the panel along with bit wit Kyle and this is an uncut version of the panel you can watch it start to finish here we're also going to do a supercut version with some highlights from some of the questions that Kyle and I tackled including discussions on GPP and things like that that will be coming up later although all the same answers are included in this full-length video if you refer this one so my name is Tracy and I am the community manager at Coursera and I will be moderating this panel but these guys all here are the stars of the show so we will start off just asking I'll ask them some general questions and we'll open it up for Q&A for any of you guys to ask questions later on you might have seen a postcard on the bond when you entered so everybody who's here is going to get a PCM our birthday pin is that cool now I know those weren't the pins themselves but if you just fill out the card put your name your email everything and come to the Corsair booth any time for the rest of the weekend they will give you a pin if you bring this card in and if you will not be here for the rest of the weekend find us after the panel not here in the room but we'll be right outside and we'll give you a pin now if you won't be here for the rest of the weekend but if you will be come to the Corsair booth it's that first booth right when you go down the escalators if you guys haven't seen it already so I will go ahead and get started with everybody so first let's do some introductions so we'll start down here with you Kevin tell us your name your handle what you do and tell us what your favorite thing about PC gaming is so hi everybody my name is Kevin some of you might know me as Noor room ooh I currently am the Radeon community manager at AMD and I handle a lot of our social channel stuff and I'm also the lead community manager for our AMD Red Team if anyone is a member of that which you all should be previously you might recognize my handle I used to work at Kingston and HyperX and at Coolermaster years ago as well and so I've been around shilling for everyone but yeah and my favorite thing about PC gaming is options like how's it going everyone I'm Kyle I have a youtube channel called bit wit it's a PCT DIY tech focused channel and we basically do you know hardware reviews a lot of testing we do the occasional sketch comedy that has to do with tech we like to keep things casual and light-hearted we will occasionally blog that's that's great popular on YouTube right now and like just lots plays and a bunch of other stuff but my favorite thing about PC gaming is probably the social element being able to interact with people and meet new people online from the comfort of your own home in your underwear hey I'm Steve from gamers Nexus and the opposite of casual and don't believe in fun basically we do highly technical computer hardware reviews and everything about PC gaming has seen how stuff works graphics options and stuff like that okay George oh yeah hi I'm Gloria Stewart I make memes for a living I don't know how that happened but I'm really grateful for it and yeah I worked for a questioner as well somehow they pay me to do that and I haven't told them that's a bad idea yet hopefully they're not here so but ya know I've really enjoyed doing it and I can I think the part I love the most about PC gaming is it's a commitment you know you buy a PC game and you own it for life and that means a lot to me and the audience and the people who are into PC gaming it's a long-term commitment you don't unload how to build a PC so hello everyone my name is Phaedra I come from Portugal so please excuse my accent well I'm the founder of PC master race i found a pc master a seven years ago and it's a wonderful community i hope many of you are part of it if you're not maybe you will consider becoming part of it I hope we we can we can we can make you be be part of it well one what concerns PC gaming I think the tweaking is the best part the fact that you can make a PC in your own image regard regard regardless of your tastes you can try to go for Beauty over power the power over beauty and really make it your own I think that's very special about PC gaming and you can find that anywhere else I'm Frances you probably know me as I am one of the senior moderators on PC mark but like Pedro one of the things that I really like about PC gaming is the customizability and I guess the freedom actually I you know everything I am the person that voids warranties and to have a platform that lets me do that without incurring you know network bands from say police station I guess also network commands for Microsoft having having a platform to make it that really is special so before we dive into the questions here just to give you guys a little background about PCMR maybe George or Pedro you guys can kind of explain how many of you are PC users or active PC gamers I would hope everybody in this audience would be good and how many of you are like active community members or follow the subreddit are PCMR okay good good quite a few of you so for those of you who may not be as familiar but you know you're into PC gaming you like PC building and are kind of just curious about this panel maybe one of you guys could explain a little bit more about it of what PCMR is the red the red there's a subreddit yeah so pcmr is a community of dedicated PC gamers and enthusiasts and also these people who don't even want to see but want to get into it it welcomes everybody and there are over 1 million 300,000 subscribers on it currently on reddit reddit if you haven't been to it is the 4th most visited website in the United States and so it's been growing really crazily and it's a really great community of dedicated fans but I think Pedro can say more and by the way I want to thank him for being here because no one's ever seen Pedro before in person and I thought he was Keyser söze and then I met him in person and if I find out later that he's actually a spy that's gonna make a lot of sense because it still is like unreal that you're here so yeah but I think you can explain what the PCMR is to you I think a little better yeah Temari is what you want to make of it everyone has their general idea about PC gaming what we are and we try to be everyday as a friendly community we we want to be a place where everyone can share anything remotely PC related without any special fears we like to have a lot of fun as most of you know the members of the community know friendly banter we we laugh at ourselves as well as we laugh at others sometimes all in a friendly manner but that's I think that's the bottom part of what BCM areas we are a friendly community will we welcome everyone who wants to to to learn a bit more about what it is to to game and not only game on PC sometimes people forget that PC amaizing just about gaming some people don't really like Amy but they like the the tweaking the building pcs the technology or they just use PCs for their work for their anything not for gaming and that's important too and I think that's the bottom line of what we are we were created it's about seven years ago I don't think there was a place at the time quite like this place there wasn't exclusively about technology all business that existed were a bit too tech not that that it's bad but you miss that the parts of the the fun part of being a be seen to Siesta memes we have the meme master here with us and I think we we together we've changed throughout the years but we can hopefully continue to grow as we have I I hope you you enjoy the community and if you don't we were here to listen to what you have to say about it and perhaps maybe make some changes awesome so my my next question is kind of for all of you what is it that attracted you guys to PC building PC gaming or just being part of the PCM art community what do you like most about it Morrowind I I built I built my first PC for morrowind I'm a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls series I was playing it on xbox I was big Halo fan all that stuff growing up all console gaming but then like I had a friend who had a decent half decent gaming PC who later got me into things like Ultima Online and all that my wife just sunk but anyway he loaded up more windows in his machine and I was like astounded by like how much better it looked on his rig than it did on Xbox and so I was like let's go let's do this and so I totally did and the first thing I remember after getting my break together getting in the game loaded up that game opens up you're like on a boat you walk into the town and stuff I just remember how good the water looked compared to Xbox and then like three weeks ago I loaded up more wins just because I was feeling like it and I'm like wow this water looks awful but morrowind it's beautiful answer so I actually first got into PC building and in that whole community after I got a job at new egg it was my first job out of college new eggs kind of like the PC hardware version of Amazon for those of you who don't know and within the first couple months of getting a job there I learned a lot of what I know now the PC hardware from a guy named Paul who has his own YouTube channel Paul's hardware and he taught me a lot of stuff and I just started getting really engaged in it to the point where I was like I want to build my own computer I want to do it I'm surrounded by all this hardware now you've told me all the benefits I know how to do it I want to do it so I remember I bought all my parts and brought him home one day and I just assemble the whole thing watching Paul's tutorial on YouTube it's very good still till this day and I just remember the feeling of booting it for the first time watching all the fans spin up and the lights turned on it's it's pretty cliche but it was like it was like lighting up the Christmas tree on Christmas morning or whatever there was something magical about it and then and I was like wait now I get to game on it this is even better like it just kept going and then I've kind of been hooked on it ever since hence the I think probably fridge off your answer Jedi Academy was I played a lot of Caesar 3 and stuff like that the city builders but when I started my Jedi Knight Jedi Academy I think that's when I discovered modding so texture packs and skins for characters which is also I think where I learned what a zip file was how to use it to mop the game so that was probably the major stepping stone and then morrowind I don't remember four more when it came out before or after if I played that as well I had a different experience from you I love morrowind however when I started the game you talk about you know the boat on water and all that none of the water rendered for it it may have been beautiful for some of us no that was when I discovered I needed to replace the video card I think I think I think that's that was my first experience with changing Hardware parts specifically to play a game because it just didn't work so it's one of those you know you start in it because out of necessity I guess in my case and then find out that actually this is really cool and a lot of fun actually I just wanted to pass real quick 1v1 invested yeah I came a little bit later for me I started with which Tracy dancer event and the star crafts got me hooked I was in my bedroom for a long time playing that and then you know I think that yeah that brought me into it and then a half-life came out a half-life 2 and that that was like wow I guess this is where I live now so yeah I actually used to be a big Xbox gamer a long time ago I was big into the Gears of War community and they got to a point where I realized man like it would be nice if I could keep these games every time there's a new console generation I had to sell everything and after doing that once I was just like no I'm not doing this again so then I dedicated myself to PC and here we are my answer isn't as glamorous think I started with PC gaming in the late 80s I was I was maybe four or five years old was that a system that I I don't think it was very popular in America is called the ZX Spectrum not sure if many of you have heard about this system what brought me into it was the fact that you can actually code your own games you bought magazines and you could the games in I think Sinclair basic like a variation of the base thing but the basic coding language and you could create small games and that complexity is something you really couldn't have in any other kind of system later on and in the the early 90s on what concerns mainstream gaming one can can argue that there wasn't any very obvious advantages about gaming on PCs compared consoles or arlynn concerns mainstream gaming but the more complex games were exclusive to be see as they mostly still are today games like civilization the first civilization civilization - Ultima like a game that wasn't popular helix championship manager games about managing football teams you call it soccer that brought me into this and you really can't can't do that in any other system it's just too complex it's impossible almost impossible to control that a property bar the proper Mouse and it really it brought me into to to PC gaming my answer is I'm not sure but I I started out with PC gaming like you know why do nowadays by fixing things I work and I have a very a very long history with doing so I remember probably when I was maybe five or six years old my parents they had an old IBM PC I don't remember anything he tells about it but they tell me that at one point they couldn't get to turn on and you know I was able to figure it out but it was just sort of like that hands-on feeling that wow I can actually I can actually change this I can make all of it run that's more coming onto PC generally but what really got me into PC gaming per se was hey I have always for a number of years I went to a summer camp and they had a Mac lab that's my name freak the adamak lab and when we were finished doing our work we would all load up the demo version of halo combat Evolved and we would have a glorious you know lamb parties and it was just that communal feeling of being able to physically punch the person who killed you it really ignited a love for PC gaming and that really lived the games came and went I played Sim City a whole lot we actually can imagine the competitive Sim City yeah how do you even do you just compete in building as fast as you can well it was run by a group called future cities the details but essentially they wanted at the time they want kids to begin gaming into architecture engineering city planning and some see was kind of sorry I was just curious it was really a lot of simulation one building I I got my hands on I I cracked it it became mine and then you know Steam for Mac came out tf2 came with a star playing man and well here I am I I can't leave so my next question any of you guys can answer you don't all have to but I'm curious how you guys see with the current our current culture and gaming do you think that gaming culture has shifted more towards PC gaming or do you still think there's a really solid console gamer community or do you think maybe PC gaming is a lot more relevant now than it was what do you guys think yeah let me start well I think many of you will remember how it was a few years ago the dark times of PC gaming when when gaming on PC was considered its consider it's not truly so but considered to be very hard to set up no only very complex games are on DC of course that's a lie but that's what's what people thought it was I don't think we took too much attention people didn't notice as much and I think that has changed tremendously in the last I say four or five years yeah you don't have a crisis I mean everyone knows that hand builds PC that can ruin crisis even today it's simply hospitals and there was love to be it at the time over whether or not it was possible you had a scientists at CERN and you know they they were studying it they were trying to figure out how can we run this you know ten twenty ten 1280 by 1024 on ultra settings I don't think any PC can can run crisis right now at Ultra no but what I think is is now we are here and we're here to stay I think and I think everyone is taking notice of BC as a platform and I think that's only good if if companies if a personality is cater to us we'll probably all have a better experience so that's the win I think that's great I think as far as PC gaming currently vs consoles first of all I guess there's nothing wrong with playing on consoles it's totally valid I don't know that PC gaming has been smaller than consoles in terms of market share for a number of years I think last I checked 2013 PC surpassed the three major consoles combined and software revenue per game sales so we in terms of the PC community has been ahead of consoles for a while I don't think there's anything wrong with playing on consoles or anything like that but I guess as far as dark times the current memory and graphics card market probably is not too great for growth of PC gaming we can kind of see that on on the reviewer or in your case influence I don't know I don't know if you seen this but you know you track billion sales right through Amazon or whatever else yeah and I've definitely seen a downtrend and I grabbed his card in my references and things like that and a downtrend in memory capacity to most of our users bought 16 gigabytes two years ago and now they're on eight so PC gaming is in good health but also the current current markets not good yeah and I think that's definitely true the state of PC gaming is rough right now you know all the crazy mining stuff and shortages with video memory and whatnot but I think it's temporary I think eventually things will get better for us and it's interesting that you bring up like the software sales combined for for all the consoles didn't even you know out wave for PC and then you kind of wonder like well then why do I keep seeing like Xbox and PlayStation for ads everywhere and like where's all the PC stuff I think it's because like those are like finished goods you know like with a PC or you're literally combining eight or nine or ten components together and it's kind of harder to sell a single part of something bigger to a mainstream audience because they're like what's the motherboard do you know right yeah it's blood back but you know I think in the grand scheme of things I feel like people are drawn to gaming now more than ever because of the like I mentioned earlier like social interaction and I feel like that's taking place at a much faster rate and a much more effective rate on the PC platform because you know the advent of social media and online gaming and just the ability to do more on the PC platform you can stream you know I mean obviously you can you can stream very much more effectively on PC you have multiple monitors like you were saying options right you have options and I think people are eventually are slowly catching on to that so I think even though we're in hatch right now we're still overall growing yeah so unlike maybe some other communities some would say that PC gaming or just PCMR is almost like a lifestyle more than anything else it's not just you know it's not just a fandom it's our life how would you guys say that you know PC gaming has defined my [Laughter] professional life so yeah I also live on and drive and move around computers for a living I thought I was joking I was being serious I same thing I mean every every hour every day is something to do with computers mostly you know mostly work-related I like doing it but also I wouldn't say defines my life for my lifestyle as much as is my life so what about for you guys so you guys are all on PCMR all the time I mean George is browsing reddit at work like 90% I'm sorry on it right now but how did you guys say like that that pcmr has really impacted your life I think the biggest way that well PC gaming itself has directed directly impacted my life based on you can tell what might my finance when they fluctuate based on when their steam sales that's that's been on health that or one like there's a new graphics card release but yeah I think it's just it's kind of opened my eyes to a larger community and that's why I spend all my time there so well on a personal basis I'm here and this is my first time in in this country and I'm honored to be here so it's changed my life it has thank you I think disregarding the personal part I think when you are a PC not just gamer but enthusiast it says a little bit about other facets of your life because you're a person who probably doesn't care abouts losing maybe a few minutes of your time so as to improve everything around you like you you like to tweak you like to make things around you better and you're not afraid to do so you like the hassle it's not a hassle for you and I think that says a lot about you and your personality I also work directly my life is sort of dominated by PCs but that's for PC Amara so made so many stories its PC more has really been it's been shaping force on my life just it's open well first being a mod it's opened my eyes to a lot of wealth back and forth from the industry but that in itself is something that comes with the territory but where it really where things changed in ways I didn't expect was the skills that I gained from it so as as I mentioned I work in IT and a lot of the stuff they learn building pcs you know experimenting with different configurations different software all the hassles of tweaking it directly actually impact it big words what are they they directly impacted my ability to problem-solve to figure out what's going on one example would be Auto modeling I am one of the if you guys have ever interacted with the PC amar you've probably run to automata here there we have some really complex code and it's scary enough I was actually the person who wrote a good chunk it really is a terrifying thought when you think about but the skills I gained from that mostly especially regular expressions legitimate stuff that actually makes money helps people jobs perhaps the health care industry may be a little safe fifty million people would be dead right now it wasn't for PCMR okay so I do have more questions that I want to ask but we have about thirty minutes left in the panel so I really want to open it up to questions from you guys so if anybody in the audience has questions now is the time to raise your hand I don't know do we have a mic oh so if you want to just come up should we have inline what do you guys think how about how do we have you line up and ask questions that would be awesome and then we'll if there's more time I'll ask the rest of my question if you if you say first I will kill you first why is your favorite hardware and Wizards favorite software modification [Laughter] clearly otherwise I'm gonna get it apparently hardware modification I guess the the first one I did is probably my favorite I had an aunt Ike I think it's called the super land boy I came out in early 2000s and had an acrylic panel on it the system was having over temperature issues so I took a 120 millimeter hole saw and drilled some holes into the acrylic panel and that's where the thermal testing started so that's why my favorite modification on hardware Vera modification on software I I guess would just be all the testing tools we have in the house we've written a lot of those internally so that's just all your Python and batch files and stuff like that's really cool to see it all work and especially weird a lot of my favorite stuff that like software or hardware modifications I can't talk about because they end up becoming official so like I did a lot of software work to help we have an integration with farcry now for Corsair hardware so if you have our latest software it'll all be lighting and your PC will change to match the game and I did a lot of work on that and now it's now it's a real thing so I don't I don't even know what I get to call it a mod because it's yeah it's a product now yeah yeah I did I had this case that I rebuilt my PC for when I moved off to college that I can't remember it was like a thermal take armor or a cooler master 1/2 case one of those two because that you know that was cool full towers at the time and it had this blue LED that was in the front that was like 6 million lumens or something and it aimed directly at my bed at night and it didn't lit up the room it was too much and at the time I was working in an electronics lab in the campus and I had access to like all of our ordering guides and so I totally ordered like these purple LEDs which are really expensive for LEDs by the way like red LEDs are like maybe 3 cents if you're buying in bulk purple are like 7 I know I know it's nuts and so I bought this like purple LED cuz purple doesn't really translate well for LEDs and it's great because replacing that was my favorite part of our mod of all time software for my first iPhone for like iPhone 3 or something like that I totally jail broke the thing back when that was a thing that was relevant and I ripped out all the sounds from the PC version of Final Fantasy 7 and modded all the files in the iPhone 4 with frontal fancy 7 noises like all the lots all the chimes like everything was all fine at least 7 and I made my own like graphical interface board and stuff too well not quite PC but you know I used the PC version of a game that was closed down I'll be pretty quick my my heart my favorite part where mod isn't too exciting because I'm not huge in modding I wish it was better at it but when I put together my first custom water-cooled system known as hotline I had to do a lot of spray-painting and sort of get used to spray painting and and figure out like the best way to do it because I've never really worked with it before and I remember just going into my garage and hanging up like a stream line you know basically across like two unused dressers and hanging like the thermal armor of my my AC stuff motherboard ex x99 motherboard up there and I just went to town and like you know spray-painted for like the whole day even though it probably should have taken five minutes so now both of those dressers are half gray but the system came out awesome and I was really happy with the results totally worth it software mods actually when I was like in middle school or maybe high school I had an iPod Touch and I basically photoshopped a custom icon for every single app in game every game every app that I had on there I think like half the apps were just like different versions of my face I remember just people would freak out and say hey that's weird but I got a huge kick out of it well let me stop well I think I'm not too big in mind like you so right now I'm trying to RGV everything on my on my desktop so that's a project going on that's my favorite part of my currents a busy life right now software wise I think modding games I think most of us here have done so in one way or another some more than others I myself I think oblivion not Morrowind oblivion I might it so hard that I think that the Golden Horse armor was the the most sober thing I think of the game that was pretty nice the biggest one for me would be the time I tried to mod an Xbox 360 into gaming easy I've got all the parts I was researching you know airflow and pcie risers the smallest power supplies it can match them and I I wondered how you use a dremel I I can i I'm just going to briefly introducting say that I hate with the burning passion the watches that Microsoft uses on the Xbox 360 they can go die in a fire anyways the project was a total failure but the PC lives on mods I mostly would be just digging really deep into Windows and in this you know tweaking it actually do I want to do that's hard that's really hard Microsoft to make it better thank you for your question for the sake of time just for all you guys asking questions you just say who the question is directed towards or if it's for everybody could say everybody but if nobody you don't want the answer you don't have to but yeah how's it going guys my question is for the three on the right over here do you think that with the really surprising in the past year and the level of I pcs and clockspeed it's at are we going to see improvements in the coming year with the release of rise into and do you think that AMD throwing their hat in the ring again is gonna increase some competition in the cpu market and maybe awakens a little bit in the place their toothpaste [Laughter] thank you this question is for the guys in the left few gutters could mu Nvidia I really didn't hear AMD or Nvidia over this where ever gives you the best bang for the buck at the specific time I mean you know you know what you what you can spend you know what what you are trying to achieve and I really think it should be a fanboy for any for any of them or any on it or any brand at all you should buy whatever is best for you at that specific time which may be different later on but just as a choose what's better right now basically what Pedro said practically speaking I've mostly been I actually I when I was younger and more naive I would switch back and forth it would be based on whatever the last unit I had that sale so at some point the graphics card doesn't work anymore where it's not as good and then I would say no I'm not doing that again I'm gonna go to the other side and I went back and forth for years currently I'm on NVIDIA but I'm probably gonna be switching the AMD thank you hi this is a question for Duke Kevin um last year at PAX I was the one wearing that AMD hat at the Intel booth it was on reddit and it had like four thousand votes I never got a check for that where is that I'll connect you with our finance team they're much nicer than I am on a more serious question though this for all of you like what do you guys what's your stance on like brand loyalty like basically like I personally hate like how people put like AMD versus a video or AMD versus Intel like what are your stats is on that so many questions you can't answer specifically you I have nothing wrong with people having a preference I think it's it's good to share your preferences with other people because that might inspire them for influence then to make a decision that works for them but I think it's at the point when you start feeling superior over somebody else's choice I think that's you know some of the toxicity that can exist in the community that we typically try to do without so yeah you know to tell people that you're proud of your hardware and be you know computer hardware and and don't don't knock them for using their choice of hardware just because it works for them yeah I think Pedro feels the same way say if you don't huh but yeah you definitely don't you don't ever want to knock somebody for what they don't have or for what they do have even as far as me I I worked really hard to inspire brand loyalty and I think it's an opinion of everyone at Corsair that loyalties earned so we want people to be loyal but if we don't earn it what good is that so really that's true you should be loyal to the people who treat you well if you're happy why not stay but I think that any any specific time you have to study the market and see and see what's the best choice for you because it can change like every other week we've seen lately unfortunately with the GPU prices and and we know that although you might have a preference and many people do have a preference sometimes the grass might be greener on the other side but if if you're happy in your content and if you are treated well why not stay thank you so you guys mention before that PC has a hard time advertising versus consoles because PCs are a lot of different parts well consoles are like a finished product what do you think about firms like Microsoft releasing like prepared gaming rigs in the future just as directed anybody isn't that wouldn't it be the same as a as a pre film like a prebuilt machine or I wasn't aware we had those well yeah you can get a for instance of course there make something called the Corsair one and it's a entire machine that comes ready to play games you just install looking you want on it so but those are called pre-built and the PC communities there's a little bit of a split there's some people who they really don't like pre builds and I think it's because they really really love building that pcs and they think doing anything else would be not as good or a rating more expensive than those people who like pre builds because it's easier so yeah that exists I didn't really the point that was made was that there's no such thing as an ad for PC gaming by itself which when he said that yeah Kyle said that I immediately wrote down I was like we should start making ads just for PC gaming I'm just trying to start thinking what that would look like and how we could get that on the internet actually is an example of PC advertising and he probably noticed a bit more about than I do but uh around III there's the PC gaming show hosted by Andy it's pretty much the closest thing that you get to say the Microsoft conference sort of the certainty conference but it's not really for a specific product per se but it does focus entirely on PC gaming they don't take they what's the words they make sure that you know it's for PC and you know maybe thank you also for you specifically since you didn't nobody builds exist there's like two ends of things look at like companies like Dell HP etc all have gaming PC lines all have these great things and then the other end and you can see a lot of these say the AMD booth here at PAX East there's also what we call system integrators and these are guys who like AMD for example we provide you know all of our bikes the stuff that you would buy on the shelf like our rice and processors and the graphics cards and whatnot did they go to these system integrators and they use those parts to build you know custom gaming pcs basically that you have options to and you can look at those that you can basically order a built custom PC like as if you built it yourself so that opportunity exists thank you thank you sorry just going oh I'm so tired right now sorry oh this question strictly to Steve from gamers Nexus by chance DC will look from latest tech tips you saw yes here they flip like flow plane yeah whatever we have it's a brag or tiny be overclock there may be a hashtag LTT to stream maybe we spoke with some of the people down on the floor from water cool and from alpha cool and anyone who makes things involving the word cool they're making sure that there will be a hashtag repeal TT to I don't know if they can respond to us though but that doesn't mean I can't just respond twice thank you very much thanks this is just a question for George Howell you're able to see through those glasses there's kind of like Phoenician blinds so I can just see you right through them I see you perfectly so but it's very beneficial when I'm at like busy meetings I'm kind of getting bored and falling asleep they can't tell thank you actually these are made by Mesa tech who is actually redditor so yeah that's a tough one we do a lot of fun videos from time to time well just because she's telling me not to I have to say it now I taught my wife how to build a computer while I was drunk that was as much fun for me as it was miserable for her and I always have fond memories creating that partial memories thank you hello okay it's questions for Kevin hi by the way long time no see college together yes last time I saw Kevin he was doing Wayne parties for the GS at RIT we both went there Kevin I have a question for you though I had this shower thought at one point kind of a horrifying realization I was in I was I was working on my computer one day and I was looking at the news articles about you know the steam steam box and gapes attempt with gabe newell's attempt of that and I was thinking myself oh my god except sometimes seen people on PCMR or other places get flack because oh you're a Mac user or your analytics user oh my god are we all choose from Microsoft because we think about Windows dominates everything and I'm sicker than myself like are we all just perpetuating the Microsoft monopoly and then Gabe comes along in a row like oh let's switch the steam theater box and get another one commentary I think when it comes to PC gaming I think it waits for those of us who are into it for gaming where shills for the games right now we're shells for the games you love and obviously those games are supported on platforms that they you know choose to support them on so a lot of those tend to be Windows or the council platforms which why there's that contention between there and PC gaming and whatnot but otherwise you know as I think Pedro was talked about it's all about you know what we're into yeah I mean like for example I'm in ticketing paycheck so I feel free and be speaking of which when are you banning Bitcoin miners from buying your products there's the real question we all knew that question was coming at some point so so why is a blue alien we're so disliked in the PC community just it's because this is over prices are like more alien we're just I think earlier on before they had a lot of competition from like cyber power high power borage and all the other sis they were kind of out there on their own for gaming and so they were able to charge a premium and they didn't have a lot of competition and that's how capitalism works I think that has that reputation has followed them and it's sort of the assumption that anything we're over charges at this point and sadly I think that reputation also has spilled over to other sis talking about people's earlier some of the pre builds if you don't want to build your own system they're really only like 100 200 dollars more than if you part it out yourself which is not bad to hire someone to build the computer for you alien where remains very expensive but they attach that price to their brand ID and that's how they value their brand and they want to be perceived as the best and oftentimes consumers perceived the most expensive as the best yeah cuz I like a Alienware and I told my friends and they were like bashing on me for that we had like cyber power completely valid on any of them they're all I mean at the end of the day it's all parts made by either this guy or his competitors so how much hand do they really have in it thank you can I get those in prescription [Laughter] when I start to lose my vision on what you know on a serious note I see a lot of warning signs in terms of stuff getting locked down I got into the PC because you had a lot of freedom you could overclock get different components do what you wanted you could break stuff it happened but things have gotten more control you get voltage limits that you can't really go over in the graphics card it's the 1070 TI none of them overclocked out of the factory private servers for video games have started to disappear do you think that's just the way things are gonna have to go now or are these warning signs that we're gonna see more things get locked down in the future or do you think that things will bounce back Steve you you're very technical do you have any I think well there's one thing we were talking about a while ago I fix it as a campaign they run about I think it's right to repair so just on the physical hardware side at a government level which is way above anything we can do here at a government level there's discussion of locking down taking things apart and violating warranties and stuff like that there's some debate whether MSI or any of the other brands can stick a stick around a box that says warranty void of removed particularly if you have to remove the thing to do something like replace a battery so yes there is a very large concern that things are getting more lockdown for me on a hardware level impacts my audience and my ability to do business on that side you know stay involved and look up right through repair laws and if they apply in your state and what you can do about it because you do want that right to open your hardware and then on the software side Microsoft controls everything so good luck thank you so we have about five minutes left so I'd love to get all your questions in so if we can power through these these answers and these questions and we can get them all in so hello tom some glasses by the way two comments one question a bachelor's degree NIT I know your pain I'm sorry nice glasses which comes to my third question does RGB matter yeah that's another controversial question you know what color you have to it can make your coffee your PC go faster the honest answer to that though is does fancy shoes matter does makeup or you know nice clothes or music matter it's a matter of personal taste and preference follow what you like and follow what you love with all marketing I've done for RGB which I'm wearing it to my head into my toes you can't see my feet but I'm wearing RGB shoes and the even though that's the case that's for me and I don't think that's necessarily going to be for everybody that's why we have options if you don't want RGB fine get it and set all the lights to white that's fine or whatever it is you want so yeah it's all about choice we still make components without RGB because we know it's not for everybody and that's fine that's what my pager said that's what PC gaming is all about is that idea of choice and we want to give as many choice as possible and when your glasses come in RGB please tell me because I want to buy them yeah really cold all right thank you quick question for Steve do you get a lot of pressure from people who give hardware to you to do positive reviews and what sort of the blowback that you get if you if you give a really nasty review of something referencing the recent Coolermaster video we're just sort of case disintegrates and that's terrible air flow what was sort of the reaction to that well we we bought the H 500 P mesh so I think that answers yeah it's fine we begin in effort of T finish or I just answered a really similar question in our ask GN not to self-promote but there's like a 10 minute answer there okay and the short of it is there is I don't know if it's pressure to give a positive review but there's a wink-wink nudge-nudge you know what's gonna happen if you have an excessively negative review and as long as I see that's fair I don't really care I mean I bought a Titan B I can buy a computer case last question what's you guys opinion this very buddy on the g-force participation program and how they're kind of turning the screws on the industry in terms of their gaming friends when is AMD gonna come out poor Kevin now get to low down there Wednesday is gonna come out with a graphics card that can talk like a volt or even a 1080 TI we gave our whole timeline at CES that's all I can say yeah as far as I know like nothing's been 100% confirmed about GPP but if that were the case I don't think it would be ideal for for the manufacturers as well as a consumer because you know like branding is important I think if you're trying to sell units you know people who don't really know computer hardware or who are just getting into it they're gonna go for what they think is the best based on brand sometimes you know if they don't know to look up benchmarks or go to Steve's channel first they're gonna look at the box that says gaming and has like the cool dragon on it as opposed to the one that looks really plain and simple it probably doesn't do as much it won't excite you as much and if GPP is really all that it's touted to be then you know that could that could really hurt everyone involved I think and it just it just limits it just list your options and it seems a bit deceiving to me there's we're still talking to people about GTV if this is something that takes a long time to look into the original story from Kyle from Hart OCP he talked himself about how it took a couple of weeks to get all the answers and that was dropped on obviously all of us at the same time as you so it's taken me weeks to get answers as well and now that the story is out there it's also difficult to distinguish which answers I'm getting are genuine and which ones have been impacted by even political dealings in the industry or by the original story because a lot of people I talk to I'll get phrases that are exactly from Kyle's article at that point I don't know if they're just trying to act like they know something or if they actually do and it is exactly what he said so it gets really tricky to navigate that and without anything concrete either way from the first party it's hard for me to to break the story further we're trying to though I'd agree with the pile in that as it's been presented if the presentation limit is accurate then there is a problem and and we just need to figure out if it has been presented accurately well thank you so this is PCM ours seventh birthday that we were celebrating and we were in fact supposed to have cake delivered here but there was a problem with the delivery I think they may be because of the snow oh it is here oh well we'll have to just celebrate afterwards after party so the cake was in fact alive for this presentation but thank you guys so much for coming out and thank you to you guys