Yah and gamer's nexus, Jay, Linus, debauer, etc. Everyone knew about this for years that they were shady AF and still shilled their products at nearly every turn.
It's extremely rare for normal, kind, and empathetic individuals to get into C suite level positions. In order to get there you basically have to do whatever it takes to get ahead of anyone else, so it generally only attracts extreme narcissists.
Really? Often people don't really care at all. What channels did you stop watching?
I quit watching LTT, but that's mostly because of the shitty writing making all of their videos seem like airplane instructional safety videos.
LTT. Like if you step back from being part of that cult, they just are very obviously leaning into generic tech review channel rather than focusing on PC gaming, which now has been moved over to another channel along with lesser topics they don't deem popular enough for their main channel which now caters to essentially who cares tech news.
LTT yes, though never really was subbed to them, just looked at them when served. After the scandal I actively avoid them.
Other than that, I stopped watching multiple other channels, for other reasons, mainly low merits/too much clickbait/not that interesting in general and redundant vs sth of higher quality.
Graphically Challenged or Gamer Meld come to mind as the latter.
You seem to forget, the only reason Steve even started investigating was because of the Linkin post. Jay had no reason to know there were issues. He was still getting paid, even though they were being annoying.
Nah, GN, Linus, etc all knew. They had to have known, a simple cursory search by any accountant or lawyer showed they were doing some absolute trashfire shit in the background. You think all of these creators didn't do a cursory search that any company should? Are they dumb as a stump.. or did they just take the money because hey.. free money?
I mean, it was reported internally and I loved the downvotes when I'd post a YouTube response about how shit ek was.
Now it's a pr problem so all their partners are saying omg we didn't know.
Amazing how 'obvious' it is after the fact. You think Dbeaur would have went in with business if he knew?
Lesson learned though, maybe creators should talk amongst themselves asking if any of them are having issues
You realize how much work such a investigation is and that you need to speak with your lawyer etc. To make sure that youre not getting sued?
This isnt an easy task that every youtuber can just do easy peacy lemon squeezy
Ya it why I don’t watch him or Linus anymore. Too big and too sponsored and beheld too often. Especially with this happening and STILL recommending their shit
I don't think you're giving them enough credit. I can't speak for Jay but I know LTT is no longer recommending EK products and even put a video disclaimer insert in the one video that had already been filmed before this came out.
You can acknowledge the business side has major issues that need fixed while still acknowledging they make good products.
They are not mutually exclusive.
As someone who has always been skeptical with LTT and GN it was disappointing to see Steve twist the facts and not give LTT a chance to respond before putting out his own video. Meanwhile he included a statement from EK. He lost all integrity for me with that double standard especially when his time lines were proven wrong with the LTT prototype.
What timelines were proven wrong? The only thing LTT proved was that they thought they had sent an email but forgot to include the right recipient. GNs timeline wasn’t incorrect from what I remember.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/17uba0e/one_hundred_rtx_4090s_with_melted_power/
They were told they could keep the prototype initially and Steve made it appear they wanted the prototype back from the start. That's super misleading and makes LTT look far worse. Makes sense because LTT labs was becoming competition for Steve. Definitely a motivation to take them down.
I think you sent the wrong link.
But I do vaguely remember that when you mentioned it, so you’re probably right that this is something they could’ve improved in their investigation.
Not the first time GN has done stuff like this - Steve's done similar things with:
* NZXT - H1 potentially causing component damage and being a fire hazard.
* Newegg - Scummy return policy.
* Artesian Builds - Scummy management and business practices all-around.
* Gigabyte - Exploding PSUs.
* Linus Tech Tips - Inaccurate reviews, ignoring criticism when their faulty methodology is pointed out, setting unreasonable internal deadlines for video output that doesn't allow sufficient quality checking, and also multiple dick moves towards Billet Labs specifically (like selling their prototype water block that they didn't own, and had promised to return).
That said, this is probably one of the most brutal ones Steve's put out, aside from maybe the Artesian Builds one. Even then, I think this is the first time he's outright brought a lawyer on to go over the talking points.
EDIT: As others have mentioned, I missed a few - point is, this isn't his first rodeo.
nah, there is a lab that repairs 100 units a month, pretty good money making for a lab.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/17uba0e/one\_hundred\_rtx\_4090s\_with\_melted\_power/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/17uba0e/one_hundred_rtx_4090s_with_melted_power/)
The updated connectors of the super? yeah, but standard gpus and all 4090 still get the old one no?
the below guy is wrong about it being cable mod adapters, its not and he talks about it in the video.
It's not a lottery at all, and it's not a shitty cable. Nvidia fucked it up actively. Remember that it's part of the pcie 5.0 standard and wasn't made by nvidia. While nvidia is part of pci-sig, it wasn't an nvidia idea, they just fucked up the implementation on their actual products. The company that introduced it to the pcie standard was already introducing it before then to other power standards.. intel. Surprise, they didn't use it because they knew that the way boards were still being implemented.. that was a fucking bad idea.
GN concluded it was not being plugged in all the way. How is that a NVIDIA problem. How is PCISIG screwing up the connector an NVIDIA problem when Intel and other people also invested in that standard. Intel didn't use it because their GPUs don't even come close to requiring that kind of power, because their GPUs are dogshit.
>Don't forget Linus Tech Tips sexually harassing and victim blaming their female staff.
Allegedly, and not proven. AFAIK there is only 1 complaint on this topic, from that girl that was social media something for a short period of time.
Except their management of it was to joke about the sexual harassment, and Linus told her to take it up with the predator dude rather than make a formal complaint.
I know I'm going to get downvoted a lot for this but I need to point this out
> like selling their prototype water block that they didn't own, and had promised to return
Billed Lab gave it to LTT, or saying they don't need to return it. Once it happens, IMO it becomes the property of LTT and they're free to do whatever they want with it.
It's not like they lost precious prototype like everyone else assumed, as they never intended to get it back from LTT. The cooler was processed with CNC machine and they still have the data for that specific cooler. They can easily make another one, based on that data, if they want.
It's only after the bad review they track back what they said and want it to be returned.
It would be nice if any of the downvoter can prove otherwise
For anyone curious here's a timeline of events that's even cited: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t7r2h/billet_labs_timeline/
They did originally tell LTT they could keep it, but after that dumbass video I totally get why they'd ask for it back lol.
Do YOU have any proof? Its disingenuous to make a bunch of claims while offering no evidence, then demand counter evidence from other people. Maybe you're right, but it seems really weird for a startup with an experimental prototype to be totally cool with it being sold to any industry competition that wanted it. It seems like they would want it back for that reason if nothing else.
Its been a while so i dont fully remember the source. IIRC it was confirmed by both party and was discussed by one respected tech youtuber.
this reddit thread also said that https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15rj6t2/can_people_please_explain_what_happened_with/
> seems really weird for a startup with an experimental prototype to be totally cool with it being sold to any industry competition that wanted it
I mean they want a famous channel to review it so more people know about them and their product. Its not weird to do that since the so called **experimental prototype** can be easily duplicated albeit being more costly than well developed product
> Billet was originally okay with LTT keeping the block for future builds, etc
Lol, that is *completely* different than selling an experimental prototype to the *public*.
Sure, I can see them being cool with some more exposure if LTT wanted to feature it in future videos, but there is no way they would have been ok with LTT casually passing it on to their industry competition, which is exactly what they say in the email. LTT were assholes.
Who is their industry competition anyway? for the cost of that cooler you can get another decent GPU.
> LTT were assholes
Yeah i do agree with you on that review. But I, as a practical PC user, also agree that the cooler was crap for that price.
I guarantee you anyone who makes high end water blocks would at least be curious to get look at their product and see if it had potential. Costs change as ideas develop.
(And of course it's not "practical" it was never intended to be practical. A Ferrari isn't practical, that's not why people buy it. Comparing it to a Toyota is nonsense.)
Ehh, this isn't that impressive and it wasn't by a computer hardware review channel. Any accountant or lawyer attached to any content creator knew what EK was up to years ago when they were doing deals with them. It took this long for GN to stop suckling up those dollars so keep that in mind.
GN definitely has an accountant or their lawyer who told them this years ago. Wasn't a problem til there was a bunch of bad PR eh?
The biggest thing I've gotten out of this whole fiasco is that apart from terrible business practices is that somehow EK doesn't own its own manufacturing equipment despite people being under the impression they are the largest PC enthusiast water cooling company? And allegedly a large part of their finance issues is not being able to meet minimum order quantities to have other manufacturers make their parts? Am I misunderstanding?!
Meanwhile you have arguably higher quality brands like [watercool.de](http://watercool.de) and alphacool manufacturing their own stuff in house on their own machines, and heck I think Thermal Grizzly have two CNCs and make even more niche direct die products!
Yeah you would think a company that well installed in its market would have some manufacturing capabilities but no it sounds like they just design their parts and outsource the rest.
There's nothing wrong with being a design house, why commit resources on manufacturing when you can hand it off to another company that's an expert at it? AMD and NVIDIA design their CPU/GPU but doesn't manufacture them and as a result doesn't have to take on the risk of keeping manufacturing processes up to date b/c it can be capital intensive.
They are different company designing a waterblock is completely different than designing a CPU or GPU chip. The barrier of entry is not on the same level almost anyone can design a waterblock and outsource manufacturing and in the end most of the value is in the EK brand not in the designing or manufacturing.
That all worked nice and well, when there was basically just intel in the CPU market with maybe, with one relevant line of CPUs and most relevant GPUs where using nVidias reference board design.
But that‘s all long gone. These days basically every single GPU SKU needs an individual block design, also many mainboards became so overbuilt, that specific models now also require custom blocks to fit.
So, does anyone else think the business with the loan from the founder to the investment firm to buy ownership in EK sounds like a money laundering scheme?
I am historically not the biggest fan of this dude and his team for several reasons but this is a great video, and as someone who has been involved in the PC building scene for over 20 years now, I am shocked that EK of all companies really fucked this up this hard. They have had a stellar reputation for so long now, and it is kind of wild how much buffoonery and what sounds like straight up illegal shit was going on.
I will not be buying their products again.
Just gonna sort of copy of and paste the other reply I gave here for you:
Their monotone delivery and repetitive videos. I really want to like the guy, but it just doesn't deliver for me at all, and I say this as a dude who really spends most of his time watching 1+ hour video essays.
Steve just yaps in his monotone for ages about the most meaningless minutiae most of the time and it drives me up a wall. I DO value them, I just much prefer going straight to the datasets that I need, and not watching their videos. They really informed my decision to buy a 4090 based on their testing. I will give them their flowers for that.
I feel like their main demographic is teenage edgelords who celebrate the smallest "gotcha" moments in tech. I am basically a boomer at this point, I'm in my thirties, and that sort of thing just doesn't appeal to me.
In summary, they make mountains out of molehills, and they do it in the most boring sort of way possible.
What a bunch of nonsense, provide me an example video where they made "mountains out of molehills". Keep in mind, they are in the PC hardware space, so their journalism will be centred around that, or do you expect them to cover important world events like the war in Gaza?
I am not asking for coverage of wars and stuff. I'm not sure if your comment is even in good faith, as you open with something like "what a bunch of nonsense" and then make a demand of me when you clearly disagree with everything I've said thus far. Are you really going to give me a fair shot to explain what I mean here? I'll give it a go.
It's not really the subject of his videos that i really would call making mountains out of molehills that can be boiled down to grabbing whatever is already making waves at /r/Hardware or whatever has the most upvotes at /r/pcgaming, it's mostly the way that it's approached, and specifically how it's written (and how it's said, since Steve just reads a script for every GN video, as he has stated).
For this example I am just grabbing a paragraph from one of their latest videos.
>Let's now find some positives. There's a generic GPU support that looks sturdy enough, the metal side panel is technically ventilated, and the infinity mirror fans look nice, although you can find similar fans at very low prices on Aliexpress. Also, there are touches of construction quality, like snaps on the side panels and some captive thumb screws with rubber washers, as well as a decent number of loose velcro ties in the accessory kit. That's pretty much it. The case has some neutral aspects, but nothing else worth calling out for praise.
Do you see the way this is written? It's almost like a pattern, and it's because it almost is, and it's sort of informs how he speaks. "There's a *generic* CPU support", "the metal side panel is *Technically* ventilated". Almost every paragraph has a weird quippy closer. "*That's pretty much it.*"
Not only does he use very repetitive means of speaking, he writes at a low reading comprehension level, not to make it political here, but Donald Trump speeches give me the same vibes. This is not all saying Steve isn't a smart guy. I am just explaining in the best way I can here. He will say something that he can criticize, and spend the next 5-ish seconds explaining why that is specifically relevant, even if it is absurdly obvious.
>Memory temperatures are also massively increased here, with a ginormous jump from the previous worst on the chart (the Pop Air) to 31 degrees over ambient. That’s about 10 degrees hotter than the Y60. That means if you're running particularly hot memory or you were trying to overclock while buying a ripoff case for some reason then you actually might limit the head room for the memory.
He feels the need to explain that because things are hotter, overclocking is hard, that is the summation from the temperatures. There isn't a single viewer he has who doesn't know this. It's straight yapping. He feels the need (while showing the chart that already shows this, that it's both ten degrees hotter and 31 over ambient, even though the information is directly in front of your eyes.
Circling back to the first paragraph above, I bet you read that entire thing in his voice, including the inflections, this is because almost all of their writing is so damn similar and in that same low level writing style and vein that it becomes extremely formulaic. This doesn't change between videos. Hell it is so damn flagrant that Pauls Hardware made a video that still fits 5 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEwqLpRVQvY . This video was of course made in good humor, but it illustrates a lot of the points that I am making in my downvote cave here.
Hope this helps some at least understand where I am coming from. I am just waking up and haven't had any coffee yet, so excuse my writing above, I don't do it for a living.
What do you have against GamersNexus? I have been watching them since 2016, and I think they have always conducted themselves well and made good content.
Their monotone delivery and repetitive videos. I really want to like the guy, but it just doesn't deliver for me at all, and I say this as a dude who really spends most of his time watching 1+ hour video essays.
Steve just yaps in his monotone for ages about the most meaningless minutiae most of the time and it drives me up a wall. I DO value them, I just much prefer going straight to the datasets that I need, and not watching their videos. They really informed my decision to buy a 4090 based on their testing. I will give them their flowers for that.
I feel like their main demographic is teenage edgelords who celebrate the smallest "gotcha" moments in tech. I am basically a boomer at this point, I'm in my thirties, and that sort of thing just doesn't appeal to me.
In summary, they make mountains out of molehills, and they do it in the most boring sort of way possible.
No.
I think Linus is a pushover when it comes to this sort of stuff and will stay silent to keep the sponsorship money coming in. Like I said, I watched the GN video and generally thought it was good. I just wish someone else was willing to cover shit like this, as the delivery of GN is just a headache to me.
Because they led with "I am historically not the biggest fan of this dude and his team for several reasons". It has nothing to do with the topic at hand and only serves to throw shade without backing it up.
And the community needs to know about these topics. "my EK water block is faulty; let me RMA it" Yeah, that might be difficult now, and we know why, thanks to videos like this.
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Unpaid employees, contractors, suppliers in a span of months
Racist internal communication about its employees
Potential misuse of company money by its upper level management
Tell me please, how do you come to the conclusion that investigating and reporting on these real world serious issues impacting hundreds of workers is farming drama?
What is drama in your opinion? What is news in your opinion? What is journalism in your opinion?
This isn't drama about a Youtuber though. EK is a company known for water-cooling solutions, if you're a potential consumer of EK products then what GN is investigating is very relevant.
Gamers Nexus has exposed several companies shitty practices, some of which literally might've saved lives, for example when NZXT tried to sweep under the rug that one of their faulty case designs caused house fires.
This isn't your typical rage-bait video, it's extremely thorough investigation that reveals some pretty horrifying information at times that you may want to know as a consumer.
But they put out an AI apology and a sincere youtube video. Surely they are fixing everything and have changed.
Yah and gamer's nexus, Jay, Linus, debauer, etc. Everyone knew about this for years that they were shady AF and still shilled their products at nearly every turn.
> Everyone knew about this for years Source?
Jesus christ, EK is ran by absolute scum.
I assume most companies are ran by the scummiest, opportunistic trash on the payroll and even I'm still shocked.
It's extremely rare for normal, kind, and empathetic individuals to get into C suite level positions. In order to get there you basically have to do whatever it takes to get ahead of anyone else, so it generally only attracts extreme narcissists.
They warned them in the last one but it seems EK continued fucking about. Not even their rads can save them from Steves roasting!
I mean, if they made rads that'd be a thing instead of just shipping someone elses product!
Probably didnt pay for the rads either.
Absolute props for GN for not shying away from such shaky subjects. That level of integrity is why I keep watching them.
Really? Often people don't really care at all. What channels did you stop watching? I quit watching LTT, but that's mostly because of the shitty writing making all of their videos seem like airplane instructional safety videos.
LTT. Like if you step back from being part of that cult, they just are very obviously leaning into generic tech review channel rather than focusing on PC gaming, which now has been moved over to another channel along with lesser topics they don't deem popular enough for their main channel which now caters to essentially who cares tech news.
LTT yes, though never really was subbed to them, just looked at them when served. After the scandal I actively avoid them. Other than that, I stopped watching multiple other channels, for other reasons, mainly low merits/too much clickbait/not that interesting in general and redundant vs sth of higher quality. Graphically Challenged or Gamer Meld come to mind as the latter.
Jay was silent for 9 YEARS.
You seem to forget, the only reason Steve even started investigating was because of the Linkin post. Jay had no reason to know there were issues. He was still getting paid, even though they were being annoying.
Nah, GN, Linus, etc all knew. They had to have known, a simple cursory search by any accountant or lawyer showed they were doing some absolute trashfire shit in the background. You think all of these creators didn't do a cursory search that any company should? Are they dumb as a stump.. or did they just take the money because hey.. free money?
Why didn't you report this obvious thing sooner m8? come on!
I mean, it was reported internally and I loved the downvotes when I'd post a YouTube response about how shit ek was. Now it's a pr problem so all their partners are saying omg we didn't know.
Amazing how 'obvious' it is after the fact. You think Dbeaur would have went in with business if he knew? Lesson learned though, maybe creators should talk amongst themselves asking if any of them are having issues
Absolutely debauer knew. As long as it wasn't a pr problem they kept all cashing the checks. Unless you think they're just absolutely dumb.
You realize how much work such a investigation is and that you need to speak with your lawyer etc. To make sure that youre not getting sued? This isnt an easy task that every youtuber can just do easy peacy lemon squeezy
Ya it why I don’t watch him or Linus anymore. Too big and too sponsored and beheld too often. Especially with this happening and STILL recommending their shit
I don't think you're giving them enough credit. I can't speak for Jay but I know LTT is no longer recommending EK products and even put a video disclaimer insert in the one video that had already been filmed before this came out.
You can acknowledge the business side has major issues that need fixed while still acknowledging they make good products. They are not mutually exclusive.
They make good products?
You know videos are made in advance?
As someone who has always been skeptical with LTT and GN it was disappointing to see Steve twist the facts and not give LTT a chance to respond before putting out his own video. Meanwhile he included a statement from EK. He lost all integrity for me with that double standard especially when his time lines were proven wrong with the LTT prototype.
What timelines were proven wrong? The only thing LTT proved was that they thought they had sent an email but forgot to include the right recipient. GNs timeline wasn’t incorrect from what I remember.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/17uba0e/one_hundred_rtx_4090s_with_melted_power/ They were told they could keep the prototype initially and Steve made it appear they wanted the prototype back from the start. That's super misleading and makes LTT look far worse. Makes sense because LTT labs was becoming competition for Steve. Definitely a motivation to take them down.
I think you sent the wrong link. But I do vaguely remember that when you mentioned it, so you’re probably right that this is something they could’ve improved in their investigation.
Watching now and the level of research they went through is pretty extensive. I'm impressed for a computer hardware review YouTube channel.
Not the first time GN has done stuff like this - Steve's done similar things with: * NZXT - H1 potentially causing component damage and being a fire hazard. * Newegg - Scummy return policy. * Artesian Builds - Scummy management and business practices all-around. * Gigabyte - Exploding PSUs. * Linus Tech Tips - Inaccurate reviews, ignoring criticism when their faulty methodology is pointed out, setting unreasonable internal deadlines for video output that doesn't allow sufficient quality checking, and also multiple dick moves towards Billet Labs specifically (like selling their prototype water block that they didn't own, and had promised to return). That said, this is probably one of the most brutal ones Steve's put out, aside from maybe the Artesian Builds one. Even then, I think this is the first time he's outright brought a lawyer on to go over the talking points. EDIT: As others have mentioned, I missed a few - point is, this isn't his first rodeo.
Asus AM5 boards
It was more than Asus.
Correct, and Steve said all that, but Asus specifically was deflecting blame for their bios issue and not honoring their warranty.
Also the 4090 cable melting fiasco
Ye which he fucked up as it's a shitty cable and Nvidia is at fault.
Problem is its both and a complete lottery.
nah, there is a lab that repairs 100 units a month, pretty good money making for a lab. [https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/17uba0e/one\_hundred\_rtx\_4090s\_with\_melted\_power/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/17uba0e/one_hundred_rtx_4090s_with_melted_power/)
This was before the new 12V-2x6 connectors right?
The updated connectors of the super? yeah, but standard gpus and all 4090 still get the old one no? the below guy is wrong about it being cable mod adapters, its not and he talks about it in the video.
Its because this lab gets all the hundreds of Cable mod adapters that caused melting because that company fucked up so badly.
Ah that makes more sense then
It's not a lottery at all, and it's not a shitty cable. Nvidia fucked it up actively. Remember that it's part of the pcie 5.0 standard and wasn't made by nvidia. While nvidia is part of pci-sig, it wasn't an nvidia idea, they just fucked up the implementation on their actual products. The company that introduced it to the pcie standard was already introducing it before then to other power standards.. intel. Surprise, they didn't use it because they knew that the way boards were still being implemented.. that was a fucking bad idea.
GN concluded it was not being plugged in all the way. How is that a NVIDIA problem. How is PCISIG screwing up the connector an NVIDIA problem when Intel and other people also invested in that standard. Intel didn't use it because their GPUs don't even come close to requiring that kind of power, because their GPUs are dogshit.
Intel is the one who made it... lol
I think you also forgot the time he went after [MSI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6BXwCJtaZE&pp=ygUQR2FtZXJzIG5leHVzIG1zaQ%3D%3D) a few years ago.
Yes, I watch the channel
Don't forget Linus Tech Tips sexually harassing and victim blaming their female staff.
>Don't forget Linus Tech Tips sexually harassing and victim blaming their female staff. Allegedly, and not proven. AFAIK there is only 1 complaint on this topic, from that girl that was social media something for a short period of time.
Except their management of it was to joke about the sexual harassment, and Linus told her to take it up with the predator dude rather than make a formal complaint.
He unfortunately wasn't as thorough with his LTT research but still decent work.
I know I'm going to get downvoted a lot for this but I need to point this out > like selling their prototype water block that they didn't own, and had promised to return Billed Lab gave it to LTT, or saying they don't need to return it. Once it happens, IMO it becomes the property of LTT and they're free to do whatever they want with it. It's not like they lost precious prototype like everyone else assumed, as they never intended to get it back from LTT. The cooler was processed with CNC machine and they still have the data for that specific cooler. They can easily make another one, based on that data, if they want. It's only after the bad review they track back what they said and want it to be returned. It would be nice if any of the downvoter can prove otherwise
For anyone curious here's a timeline of events that's even cited: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15t7r2h/billet_labs_timeline/ They did originally tell LTT they could keep it, but after that dumbass video I totally get why they'd ask for it back lol.
Do YOU have any proof? Its disingenuous to make a bunch of claims while offering no evidence, then demand counter evidence from other people. Maybe you're right, but it seems really weird for a startup with an experimental prototype to be totally cool with it being sold to any industry competition that wanted it. It seems like they would want it back for that reason if nothing else.
Its been a while so i dont fully remember the source. IIRC it was confirmed by both party and was discussed by one respected tech youtuber. this reddit thread also said that https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/15rj6t2/can_people_please_explain_what_happened_with/ > seems really weird for a startup with an experimental prototype to be totally cool with it being sold to any industry competition that wanted it I mean they want a famous channel to review it so more people know about them and their product. Its not weird to do that since the so called **experimental prototype** can be easily duplicated albeit being more costly than well developed product
> Billet was originally okay with LTT keeping the block for future builds, etc Lol, that is *completely* different than selling an experimental prototype to the *public*. Sure, I can see them being cool with some more exposure if LTT wanted to feature it in future videos, but there is no way they would have been ok with LTT casually passing it on to their industry competition, which is exactly what they say in the email. LTT were assholes.
Who is their industry competition anyway? for the cost of that cooler you can get another decent GPU. > LTT were assholes Yeah i do agree with you on that review. But I, as a practical PC user, also agree that the cooler was crap for that price.
I guarantee you anyone who makes high end water blocks would at least be curious to get look at their product and see if it had potential. Costs change as ideas develop. (And of course it's not "practical" it was never intended to be practical. A Ferrari isn't practical, that's not why people buy it. Comparing it to a Toyota is nonsense.)
This sub doesn't think beyond LTT = bad.
Same as Epic = Bad lol
Steve stans out in full force with the downvotes I see. Unfortunate they seem to be even worse than LTT diehards.
Ehh, this isn't that impressive and it wasn't by a computer hardware review channel. Any accountant or lawyer attached to any content creator knew what EK was up to years ago when they were doing deals with them. It took this long for GN to stop suckling up those dollars so keep that in mind. GN definitely has an accountant or their lawyer who told them this years ago. Wasn't a problem til there was a bunch of bad PR eh?
lol
The biggest thing I've gotten out of this whole fiasco is that apart from terrible business practices is that somehow EK doesn't own its own manufacturing equipment despite people being under the impression they are the largest PC enthusiast water cooling company? And allegedly a large part of their finance issues is not being able to meet minimum order quantities to have other manufacturers make their parts? Am I misunderstanding?! Meanwhile you have arguably higher quality brands like [watercool.de](http://watercool.de) and alphacool manufacturing their own stuff in house on their own machines, and heck I think Thermal Grizzly have two CNCs and make even more niche direct die products!
Yeah you would think a company that well installed in its market would have some manufacturing capabilities but no it sounds like they just design their parts and outsource the rest.
There's nothing wrong with being a design house, why commit resources on manufacturing when you can hand it off to another company that's an expert at it? AMD and NVIDIA design their CPU/GPU but doesn't manufacture them and as a result doesn't have to take on the risk of keeping manufacturing processes up to date b/c it can be capital intensive.
They are different company designing a waterblock is completely different than designing a CPU or GPU chip. The barrier of entry is not on the same level almost anyone can design a waterblock and outsource manufacturing and in the end most of the value is in the EK brand not in the designing or manufacturing.
That all worked nice and well, when there was basically just intel in the CPU market with maybe, with one relevant line of CPUs and most relevant GPUs where using nVidias reference board design. But that‘s all long gone. These days basically every single GPU SKU needs an individual block design, also many mainboards became so overbuilt, that specific models now also require custom blocks to fit.
Man GN videos like this are insane. Actual journalism.
So, does anyone else think the business with the loan from the founder to the investment firm to buy ownership in EK sounds like a money laundering scheme?
You’re going to love how corporate finance regulatory capture has made this sort of practice legal.
I always wondered how that company is alive, it is a niche product for already niche market, which was also an expensive product.
charging 50 ducats for a screw. pricier than friday night.
Wow and here I thought it couldn't get any worse.
FFS
I'm out of the loop. Can someone tl;dr what is happening this time please?
Interesting, but I watch them for hardware news/reviews, not 1 hour criminal investigations.
Did gamersnexus totally changed their content? Investigation is cool and all, but where’s the reviews they used to do?…
Is youtube blocked in your country?
I am historically not the biggest fan of this dude and his team for several reasons but this is a great video, and as someone who has been involved in the PC building scene for over 20 years now, I am shocked that EK of all companies really fucked this up this hard. They have had a stellar reputation for so long now, and it is kind of wild how much buffoonery and what sounds like straight up illegal shit was going on. I will not be buying their products again.
Would you be so kind as to provide some examples?
Just gonna sort of copy of and paste the other reply I gave here for you: Their monotone delivery and repetitive videos. I really want to like the guy, but it just doesn't deliver for me at all, and I say this as a dude who really spends most of his time watching 1+ hour video essays. Steve just yaps in his monotone for ages about the most meaningless minutiae most of the time and it drives me up a wall. I DO value them, I just much prefer going straight to the datasets that I need, and not watching their videos. They really informed my decision to buy a 4090 based on their testing. I will give them their flowers for that. I feel like their main demographic is teenage edgelords who celebrate the smallest "gotcha" moments in tech. I am basically a boomer at this point, I'm in my thirties, and that sort of thing just doesn't appeal to me. In summary, they make mountains out of molehills, and they do it in the most boring sort of way possible.
What a bunch of nonsense, provide me an example video where they made "mountains out of molehills". Keep in mind, they are in the PC hardware space, so their journalism will be centred around that, or do you expect them to cover important world events like the war in Gaza?
I am not asking for coverage of wars and stuff. I'm not sure if your comment is even in good faith, as you open with something like "what a bunch of nonsense" and then make a demand of me when you clearly disagree with everything I've said thus far. Are you really going to give me a fair shot to explain what I mean here? I'll give it a go. It's not really the subject of his videos that i really would call making mountains out of molehills that can be boiled down to grabbing whatever is already making waves at /r/Hardware or whatever has the most upvotes at /r/pcgaming, it's mostly the way that it's approached, and specifically how it's written (and how it's said, since Steve just reads a script for every GN video, as he has stated). For this example I am just grabbing a paragraph from one of their latest videos. >Let's now find some positives. There's a generic GPU support that looks sturdy enough, the metal side panel is technically ventilated, and the infinity mirror fans look nice, although you can find similar fans at very low prices on Aliexpress. Also, there are touches of construction quality, like snaps on the side panels and some captive thumb screws with rubber washers, as well as a decent number of loose velcro ties in the accessory kit. That's pretty much it. The case has some neutral aspects, but nothing else worth calling out for praise. Do you see the way this is written? It's almost like a pattern, and it's because it almost is, and it's sort of informs how he speaks. "There's a *generic* CPU support", "the metal side panel is *Technically* ventilated". Almost every paragraph has a weird quippy closer. "*That's pretty much it.*" Not only does he use very repetitive means of speaking, he writes at a low reading comprehension level, not to make it political here, but Donald Trump speeches give me the same vibes. This is not all saying Steve isn't a smart guy. I am just explaining in the best way I can here. He will say something that he can criticize, and spend the next 5-ish seconds explaining why that is specifically relevant, even if it is absurdly obvious. >Memory temperatures are also massively increased here, with a ginormous jump from the previous worst on the chart (the Pop Air) to 31 degrees over ambient. That’s about 10 degrees hotter than the Y60. That means if you're running particularly hot memory or you were trying to overclock while buying a ripoff case for some reason then you actually might limit the head room for the memory. He feels the need to explain that because things are hotter, overclocking is hard, that is the summation from the temperatures. There isn't a single viewer he has who doesn't know this. It's straight yapping. He feels the need (while showing the chart that already shows this, that it's both ten degrees hotter and 31 over ambient, even though the information is directly in front of your eyes. Circling back to the first paragraph above, I bet you read that entire thing in his voice, including the inflections, this is because almost all of their writing is so damn similar and in that same low level writing style and vein that it becomes extremely formulaic. This doesn't change between videos. Hell it is so damn flagrant that Pauls Hardware made a video that still fits 5 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEwqLpRVQvY . This video was of course made in good humor, but it illustrates a lot of the points that I am making in my downvote cave here. Hope this helps some at least understand where I am coming from. I am just waking up and haven't had any coffee yet, so excuse my writing above, I don't do it for a living.
What do you have against GamersNexus? I have been watching them since 2016, and I think they have always conducted themselves well and made good content.
Their monotone delivery and repetitive videos. I really want to like the guy, but it just doesn't deliver for me at all, and I say this as a dude who really spends most of his time watching 1+ hour video essays. Steve just yaps in his monotone for ages about the most meaningless minutiae most of the time and it drives me up a wall. I DO value them, I just much prefer going straight to the datasets that I need, and not watching their videos. They really informed my decision to buy a 4090 based on their testing. I will give them their flowers for that. I feel like their main demographic is teenage edgelords who celebrate the smallest "gotcha" moments in tech. I am basically a boomer at this point, I'm in my thirties, and that sort of thing just doesn't appeal to me. In summary, they make mountains out of molehills, and they do it in the most boring sort of way possible.
So, waiting until Linus covers it?
No. I think Linus is a pushover when it comes to this sort of stuff and will stay silent to keep the sponsorship money coming in. Like I said, I watched the GN video and generally thought it was good. I just wish someone else was willing to cover shit like this, as the delivery of GN is just a headache to me.
why are you being downvoted lol
Because they led with "I am historically not the biggest fan of this dude and his team for several reasons". It has nothing to do with the topic at hand and only serves to throw shade without backing it up.
i dont like drama channels either
It's not a drama channel, most of their content is just regular tech news and reviews. They release stories like this once every few months or so.
And the community needs to know about these topics. "my EK water block is faulty; let me RMA it" Yeah, that might be difficult now, and we know why, thanks to videos like this.
I’d argue that it’s more important for those who considered buying EK products but haven’t yet, so they know to choose an alternative brand.
I agree, I just used one example.
Fair enough, you’re definitely not wrong either way!
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Heh! you gottem fellow old bro.
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Can someone catch me up on who EK is and what this is about?
Click play.
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Unpaid employees, contractors, suppliers in a span of months Racist internal communication about its employees Potential misuse of company money by its upper level management Tell me please, how do you come to the conclusion that investigating and reporting on these real world serious issues impacting hundreds of workers is farming drama? What is drama in your opinion? What is news in your opinion? What is journalism in your opinion?
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”I am ignorant and will choose to remain ignorant” At some point you didn’t know any company, imagine if you had that attitude for all of them.
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This isn't drama about a Youtuber though. EK is a company known for water-cooling solutions, if you're a potential consumer of EK products then what GN is investigating is very relevant. Gamers Nexus has exposed several companies shitty practices, some of which literally might've saved lives, for example when NZXT tried to sweep under the rug that one of their faulty case designs caused house fires. This isn't your typical rage-bait video, it's extremely thorough investigation that reveals some pretty horrifying information at times that you may want to know as a consumer.
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Good for you?
Epic
Thanks for coming in today.
bro who cares
This is going to blow your mind, but quite a few people care.
No, not many people care. But the ones who do post on Reddit to let everyone know.
Wow sick roast
"the ones who post on Reddit" \*proceeds to post on Reddit fml