Gadgetory

Linus tech tips coverage of computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital our trusted gaming gear partner is corsair vengeance and our trusted retail partner is NCIX calm so guys it's day 3 of our computex 2013 coverage don't forget we are powered by Western Digital so we're starting out at our home base here in the WD booth we are giving away a ton of stuff after the show guys remember the more you watch the more you win check out the links in the video description for a chance to win all kinds of crazy prizes just by watching our coverage of WD here at computex so we're going to talk a little bit about WD red and this is not going to be a new topic for anyone who's been following me for any amount of time what you see on the table in front of you is an example of what exactly makes WD red special so this is a bunch of different NASA's or network attached storage devices you got to Bay devices you got for Bay devices this particular one is from a su store it actually feels pretty pretty nice and you can see right there there's a red in there you can also see right there that these Reds are packed incredibly tightly so WD red is validated not only for compatibility across a wide variety of nazan closures but it's also optimized for nas operation in a couple of key ways so number one is that it runs extremely cool so the thing about NASA's is your packing these hard drives together as close as you possibly can in order to well save space but what happens with that is there going to be able to pass heat to each other and sometimes they're not very effectively cooled so that's why having a cooler running drive in the first place is going to give you better reliability next thing is with 3d active balance plus you eliminate the danger that comes from lower performance as well as potentially reduced reliability from the drives transferring vibrations to each other this is another thing that makes them optimized for nas now if you buy an azz and you buy a WD red drive and then it doesn't work for whatever reason the other thing that comes along with WD red is premium support you got twenty four seven support call a number talk to someone there's probably something wrong that goes beyond just the driver just the NAS probably something else at play because there's a very good chance that well I don't want to say his pet cock but there you go um let's move on to the stager dynamics lead core this is one of the prizes that we are going to be giving away if we can generate a hundred thousand views average for our WD content here at computex this is a liquid-cooled htpc system that is fully gaming grade so the graphics card in there I actually have no idea what that is but whatever it is it looks like probably 690 or something along those lines very high in graphics card the one we're going to be giving away has a gtx 780 and I want to draw your attention right over here to the similarities between a computer case and an azz so whether you're running in raid or whether you're doing whatever it is you happen to be doing hard drives do tend to get packed together really tight so all that same stuff that applies to WD red and an azz enclosure applies in a computer case as well in this case that's for 3 terabyte WD Reds and they are running in a raid array but being able to avoid transferring that vibration in that heat from drive to drive is beneficial regardless of the application now while the red may be the newest member of WDS one size does not necessarily fit all approach to hard drives the greens been around for a while it's available in capacities up to three terabytes and what's cool about the fact that it's been around for five years is this besides the proven track record it's also still winning awards for eco friendliness the current generation product actually these at RX which we've tested not only maintains the cool operation and quiet operation of its predecessor but it also improved performance dramatically and this wasn't just marketing fluff we were running real world applications like black magics disk speed tests and seeing those actual numbers coming out at us more like wow that's actually really cool because it's not all just about rpm anymore now the other thing about a five year history is the fact that well its got that track record now some people might have the perception that WD green is an unreliable drive because the reality of it is if you google WD green drive failure or something along those lines you're going to find a lot of reports of failed dry at the end of the day any device fails that a mechanical device particularly can fail and the person who it fails for it goes like this and the person who it doesn't fail for goes like this now this is a concept I've talked about a lot and having chatted with the w/d folks I actually got a little bit of insight into the actual members and it looks like because they've sold 120 million drives to date the reason that there are thousands of complaints about it is the fact that even though the RMA rate is very low when you sell that many drives someone is going to have a problem not every problem is actually caused by the hard drive manufacturer many retailers do not pack drives correctly when they ship them to an end user I have seen customers walking into a store to buy a hard drive chucking it in the bottom of a bag putting that bag in their backpack walking out to the bus stop and dropping their bag on the ground you don't treat a sensitive electronic device like that so a lot of the time when someone says oh hey I bought five western digital green drives to them failed all forty percent of them died sometimes there's more to it than meets the eye and the reality of it is with margins in the IT industry if WD was taking back forty percent of their drives they wouldn't be able to afford these fancy uniforms that our lovely WD booth member here is wearing I'm sorry to put you on the spot like that so in short guys WD green is eco conscious not only in power consumption where for you it might not matter but by the time you deploy 121 million of them you save a few watts here and there x 120 million is probably going to add up but also the way they manufacture them with lead-free halogen-free materials and it makes them optimal for not only standalone drive applications in your computer or small for a small form-factor enclosures where you can still put a three and a half inch drive but also things like their own enclosures where they rely only on passive cooling because the green does run so cool don't miss any of our computex 2013 coverage by making sure you're subscribed to linus tech tips and check out the links in the video description you can actually get some deals on WD drives as well as ways to figure out how we can amp up the prizes for our giveaway after the show and all that cool stuff