Bob Buskirk and Ryan Kerschner from ThinkComputers with PC Gaming Builds – HGG436
We invited Bob Buskirk and Ryan Kerschner from ThinkComputers this week (our second try since their first visit failed due to Jim’s bad internet connection) and talked about the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming ITX/TB3 Motherboard, the Phison SSD Controller for gaming rigs, the Cooler Master MM711 Gaming Mouse Review that Bob recently did and posted to ThinkComputers.org and Corsair’s Insane New RGB Case. I think you will enjoy the show.
Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg436
Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #436 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.
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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, Bob Buskirk, Ryan Kerschner, Icy Dock, Unraid, Gaming Builds, Reviews, Gaming Mouse, Storage,
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Links to the posts we discussed on the show:
ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming ITX/TB3 Motherboard Review
https://thinkcomputers.org/asrock-x570-phantom-gaming-itx-tb3-motherboard-review/
Cooler Master MM711 Gaming Mouse Review
https://thinkcomputers.org/cooler-master-mm711-gaming-mouse-review/
Corsair RGB Case
https://thinkcomputers.org/corsairs-insane-new-rgb-case-a500-air-cooler-more/
Phison SSD Controllers
Icy Dock Gear Discussed:
TurboSwap MB171SP-B Tray-Less 3.5” SATA HDD Mobile Rack with 80mm Cooling Fan for External 5.25″ Bay
Jim Collison [0:00]
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 436 recorded on March 12 2020.
Jim Collison [0:21]
Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all your favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home news reviews, product updates and conversation. All for the average tech guy. I’m your host Jim Collison broadcasting live from the average guy TV Studios here in a beautiful Bellevue Nebraska Of course, we post the show and tonight you want to head out there if you can, was some pretty good show notes. We got a couple links to the reviews over computers that you might want to follow as you’re listening along live. head out to the average guy.tv this show h GG forward slash Htg 436 to get access to the show notes. Don’t forget you can join us live on our mobile app every week. Easiest way to kind of listen live and on the road even from home if that’s what you want to do. Some folks are now Gonna be working from home this week. And you can get that out at our site Home Gadget Geeks Calm, calm, calm. Let me say that again. Home Gadget geeks.com I was thinking about something else as I was saying it. You can get both Android and iPhone platform that’s available out there for you. We want to thank our Patreon subscribers who kind of help pay for that each and every month and so we thank you for that as well. Big thanks to James Madison, who came on last week. We covered a lot of really cool stuff. If you haven’t watched 435 you might want to do that little audio, little microcomputers, all that kind of stuff into Jay just always does a nice job. So Jay, thanks for joining us last week, and I appreciate that as well. Tonight, I’ve got Ryan and Bob with me. We tried to do this once. And it just failed hard that night, Ryan Bob, welcome back. Appreciate it.
Ryan Kerschner [1:46]
Yeah, happy to be here
Bob Buskirk [1:47]
Happy to be here as well.
Jim Collison [1:48]
Good to have you guys here. I’d asked you in the pre show. If you guys have done much with Icy Dock. They’re kind of our March. I haven’t trouble speaking tonight. I’m not sure why. The march partner. Maybe I should just slowed down a little bit there our March partner Icy Dock has been around our community for a long time I think about home server show going way back to that 10, 12 years ago. enclosure hard drive enclosures. Guys do you get in the in the builds you’re doing you’re building gaming builds? Is does that does that something that really fits in?
Bob Buskirk [2:20]
I would say not as much anymore because I would most of Icy Dock products are there mainly to go in like a drive that’s on the front of your computer. And yeah, most people aren’t using physical media anymore, right. So in most case designs now if you buy a brand new case, it’s not going to come with that. You know that five and a quarter inch drive by that, you know,
Ryan Kerschner [2:43]
you’re looking looking around my room and the case I’m using now is a flat aluminum front panel. The one next to it’s a flat aluminum front panel tempered glass like I don’t have a spot for them. Yeah.
Jim Collison [2:53]
So for the really nice boxes that so they sent me just so they know they sent me a turbo swap. So it’s an MB171SP-B turbo swap, they sent that to me to take a look at, we had been talking a lot about Uraid boxes. And of course, for guys that are building kind of the server stuff. There’s always that media that open media slot, maybe three, three and a half inch bays together, or two to three and a half inch bays are and Icy Dock kind of specializes in that. Bob, I showed you that one drive, right, that kind of fits in a PCI slot in the back. Yeah, that has an SSD in it that one might be that may work right for
Bob Buskirk [3:30]
Yes, I think that, you know, the big thing about any build really is you eventually run out of space, right? You put all your drives in there, and then you want more storage who doesn’t want more storage? So being in the thing right now is with gaming PCs is that most people are using one GPU. So you have a bunch of empty slots, you know what I mean? So just throw it in one of those empty slots and you have another you know, storage drive, which I think is great.
Ryan Kerschner [3:59]
Yeah, and I’ve kind of gotten to The, you know, multiple drives setup but also utilizing network storage for stuff that I don’t need locally. So, but I think it definitely has a, you know, yeah, a spot in the market for sure.
Jim Collison [4:10]
Ryan, what are you using for network storage?
Ryan Kerschner [4:13]
I have multiple, like, I have a Synology NAS and a place to store right. Yeah,
Jim Collison [4:18]
yeah, that’s kind of the I think, in a lot of cases. Now, this community is probably the exception. Like, I think a lot of folks that listen to this show are running maybe an older box, or they’re building or they they’re using some kind of tower server that was, you know, you could still get a micro server that’s got four drive bays up front, from HP. And so I think in this very in this niche case, maybe the non gaming but but home storage server, I, I’d said to them, hey, I’d like the like the five Bay that goes in the three, three and a half and they’re like, okay, that’s the top of the line stuff. We’re gonna send you this. We’ll see how it goes. So we’ve been doing this on Twitter if you if you’re a regular listener show go out and give Icy Dock some love we’re gonna, we’ll be talking about this quite a bit this week but and let me just go fullscreen really quick here for you guys but we’re going to be talking about this enclosure one day fits in a three and a half tooless so you open that up No, no drive bay or anything needed slide in that three and a half inch drive, lock it in, got a key that goes with it and makes it easy hot swap to get it in. Back backplane back there you got your SATA connection and your power. And so will be I’ve got to actually have a need for this right away I’ve been building out and trying to move some of my hardware mining gear onto one box and I need some some drive space. So this will help get I have at least one drive that’s sitting out in a dock and so I’ll move it from an external dock into the case kind of get it just kind of cleaned it up a little bit. That’ll go in this weekend. I think Vincent over there and Icy Dock for sending it over. Well, we’ll do some pictures and Mike is back next week by the way, Mike’s out on assignment he’s traveling to he’s suffering in San Diego
Ryan Kerschner [6:09]
poor guy.
Jim Collison [6:12]
But we’ll post some pictures and talk about it more kind of next week. Thanks I for sending that over. And of course they’re big Friends of the network. They have been that that company I mean, that’s one of the early companies from a home server perspective. We talked about Ryan, when did you come into Did you listen to home server show? Are you home server guy? Yeah,
Bob Buskirk [6:31]
yeah, I feel like home sir show and then man it was. It was close to when Wieger started that I started listening to this or Home
Jim Collison [6:39]
Gadget Geeks for that. What do you think were What were you talking about on home server show when you when you join? Oh, man. I don’t have any idea. Oh, yeah. The ears kind of go right. Don’t they do
Bob Buskirk [6:50]
they do I look back? Listen for that long.
Bob Buskirk [6:53]
I was just thinking I remember the first time I saw an icy dock Bay device. Probably I went to a LAN party in Kentucky and I think I was in high in high school. So that’s how long and I’m 35. So that’s how long Icy Dock has been around. They’ve been making products for a very long time.
Jim Collison [7:13]
They have and they they’re, they just they specialize in kind of driving closures of taking. And I think I might have the chat rooms correcting me. I think I might have said three and a half when I meant five and a quarter. You know what I meant. So taken three, five and a quarters and putting five three and a half inch drives in I think that’s what I meant to say. And yeah, you know, Bob I they have been around a long time and they just keep making you know, you can get you can get an enclosure, that’s a three and a half inch drive and get to two and a half inch drives in there in the slot, right. So, and they keep they keep chugging along. And so I’m kind of excited to have them back and and have them kind of focusing on them here through the month of March. All right. We want to focus on you guys and you spent some time at CES 2020. So we’re always at work. from it, we’re going to talk a little bit about that a little bit about some other stuff that you’ve been reviewing. I want to start, you know, Jay, last week when we had him on he, we spent a lot of time about talking about getting some pretty powerful equipment into a little tiny space. So if you haven’t listened to that show, you need to go back and listen to it because it’s pretty cool. And I said to you guys, kind of in pre show, I was kind of like, Oh, hey, but I expect from you guys kind of the big cases, right? But Bob, you just recently looked at an asrock x 570 Phantom gaming rig that is getting smaller. Are you guys also looking at small small stuff as well?
Bob Buskirk [8:38]
I think that like in our space, especially, you know, gamers and enthusiasts, that many I TX is has been pretty popular. It’s just that not a lot of people. You know, they want the big, they want the big tower that they can show off. You know, they want to do multiple graphics cards, whereas when you’re in a mini ITX motherboard You’re kind of you’re limited to a single graphics card, they want extra PCI slots for you know, storage or whatever else that may be. But, you know, I think mini ITEX is great because you talk about building you know, small systems for, for doing storage stuff, but you can build an amazing, ultra small, compact, you know, gaming PC that you can pick up and take with you to your friend’s house, just like, you know, like an Xbox would be. And I know, I used to take, you know, an Xbox over to my friend’s house and we’d have sleep over, you know, you could do the same thing with with this motherboard, and some pretty awesome hardware. It’s a it’s just like I said, I love mini ITX stuff. I think that there’s a lot of great cases out there which would, you know, support this motherboard. And then this is a amd x 570 motherboard, which means it’s going to support the newest rise and processors So, you know, you can fit their highest end rise in processor is 16 cores, so you can put a 16 core processor in there. Plus the, you know, RT x 2080 ti, you know, 32 gigabytes of DDR four memory and you have a computer that’s more powerful than the one that I have, that I have sitting next to me and it’s in such a small form factor. Like I said, it’s like, you know, a lot of people are going that way because like, again, a lot of people are going to land parties, they’re going over their friend’s house and picking up a big tower without dropping it or scratching it, you know, all these new towers that we see are either aluminum, or they have tempered glass on the side and scratching that up or breaking it can easily happen. So for like I said, these boards, there’s not a whole lot I think, in the X 570 line, I think there’s three or four total. So there’s, you know, these companies aren’t making a whole lot of them but I think the ones that they are making like this one, give you that you know, the entire feature set that you would get in a full size board for the most part. You’re not going to get all the slots because of size and everything like that, but it’s an awesome board. I got a case nz XT makes this new case it’s called the, I forget what it’s called. Yeah, the h1. That’s what it looks like, if you’ve seen the new Xbox. It’s super small. And I’m gonna put this with a pretty awesome processor graphics card in a really small system. So, but yeah, like I said, the board itself is just an awesome board. It’s like I said, it’s one of the few you can get in the size so you can use
Ryan Kerschner [11:27]
Thunderbolt three is right.
Bob Buskirk [11:29]
Yeah, so this is the only one only mini ITX x x 574 that has Thunderbolt three and for everybody watching Thunderbolt three is to in basic terms, it’s basically USB three on steroids, USB 3.3 point two Gen one will give you 10 gigabit a second whereas Thunderbolt three will give you 40 and that’s up and down. So you have that connection. So you can you can power displays, you can get superfast storage, I mean you can do so much with that. connection. And again, the super small form factor so you can do a lot with it. One, one night assume this is PCI Express four o slot that’s in there.
Jim Collison [12:11]
Yes. What did you from a from a gaming GPU standpoint, what would you pair with it?
Bob Buskirk [12:16]
I paired it, I just so all of my motherboards use the exact same setup. So I use an RT x 2016 just for our testing. Again, if I was building this out myself, like again, I would do an RT x 2080 or 2080 ti, which is that’s pretty much what I would recommend for anybody doing a new gaming bill that wants to you know, game at 1440 P or 4k. But on the back there, you can see what the where that little lightning bolt is. That’s the Thunderbolt three connector right there, which is basically a USB type C uses the same type C connector.
Jim Collison [12:51]
Yeah, I’m a little confused. Sometimes by type C, I got a new laptop and they were like, okay, there’s three type C ports and they’re like, Okay, this one is the type C you’d use for data and then this one is where the doc goes if you want I was like hey I thought like I thought type C kind of unified all this stuff but pretty made
Bob Buskirk [13:09]
it made the connection easier. The problem is the ryan what is the compare the group of people that do the USB naming,
Ryan Kerschner [13:19]
man, you gotta throw me throw me off.
Jim Collison [13:23]
James Hill look it up
Bob Buskirk [13:24]
over the past two years they’ve changed the, the actual naming of USB to be different things. So when we got USB three, it was just USB three. And then when we went we got USB 3.1 it was just USB 3.1 you know, faster. And now we have USB. So now we have USB 3.2 Gen two, which is USB 3.2 Gen two but then they changed USB 3.1 On Gen One, two USB 3.2 Gen one so they they mess up all these names and you’re just like it’s for the that’s how I understand it because I this is what I do. But for normal consumers you’re like, What? What? Yeah,
Jim Collison [14:15]
yeah, well, but this is an enthusiast market. I think Jay like the asrock boards. Two, he said last week, this is an enthusiast market, right? You’re not gonna have your average consumer picking this up. So if they are picking it up two things that are interesting on the back of this board. One is is this is just like a ps 240. Yeah. And is there some in the gaming world is there some advantages to having that?
Bob Buskirk [14:37]
I will say from gaming, sorry, I’m just jumping in there. Like a lot of people use them in overclocking situations to have that direct access to the keyboard and that input function in case USB isn’t working properly because of failed overclock. A lot of times you’ll find that
Bob Buskirk [14:52]
and I would say as rock isn’t the best when it comes to their bios. It’s good, but it’s not as good as Say gigabyte or a Seuss. So having PST on there gives you direct access to that keyboard. So if you are having an issue and for some reason, your USB devices don’t initialize in the BIOS, you can still use that PS to to access the BIOS and make the changes that you need to make. I never in a million years when I thought we Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, that makes sense, right? It’s kind of a more native control to get that now it’s also got a button down here that says clear Samos I’m assuming that’s for the same reason right over that’s gone bad. Yeah, it’s a lot of times. So most motherboards either have a button on the back here or on the board itself. It’s obviously not in the board itself because once you get this in your system, it’s going to be really hard to access the board. It just makes it easy if you are overclocking or if you just changing settings and you just mess something up that you can easily press that button and it just clears the BIOS and resets everything.
Jim Collison [15:57]
Ryan Have you ever had to press the clear see my Oh, Yeah,
Bob Buskirk [16:00]
yeah. Multiple times I’d like the board I have has like a power button on the back too. So you can just hit that power. And
Bob Buskirk [16:08]
yeah, the world is good. And I see most. The worst is when a lot of boards before I would say before a couple years ago, a lot of the boards had a jumper. So you’d have to find it on your board, move the jumper over power and then power on the system and then move it back.
Bob Buskirk [16:24]
Do it in the right order, right. So yeah, you’re handy so you know, like, Oh, do I power it off and then move the jumper or do I move the jumper then power it? Yeah. Okay, so,
Bob Buskirk [16:33]
Andrew in the chat asked, What’s the display port in Port use four, is that because it has Thunderbolt three, you can bring in a another video source and then output it using the display port as output. So you can get a display port monitor and output whatever you’re inputting.
Jim Collison [16:57]
If that makes sense. Is it and what’s the use case? Is that for streaming? Or is that for what
Bob Buskirk [17:02]
could be for streaming? It could be just for running another display. It’s, you know, it could also be for, you know, your, you’re not using as much resources on the GPU itself. Okay. And again, Thunderbolt three has so much bandwidth, you can do a lot with it. So. But yeah, that’s what you have that on there.
Jim Collison [17:20]
I gave. I mentioned this to Jay, last week when we were talking to him. And it is a good picture of it here on the screen where it seems like everything’s gone to colored, right. Oh, yeah. Is that I mean, is that and I noticed you guys cover that a lot. But that’s everything right now. Right. Everybody’s gym and lights and everything. Yeah, it’s
Bob Buskirk [17:41]
pretty well, like, standardized that most products now are going to have RGB. It’s pretty. And the nice thing is on almost all of them, you can at least turn them off if you don’t like that. But yeah, I mean, RGB is here and I don’t see it going away anytime soon. I see it expanding.
Jim Collison [17:58]
Okay. I’ll ask you lightning round. Ryan, you first a fan of it or not a fan of it. Totally a fan fan. Bob fan, not fan. I’m a fan
Bob Buskirk [18:08]
if it has good software. Yeah.
Jim Collison [18:11]
Yeah. So I’m assuming there’s some janky software out there. Yeah,
Bob Buskirk [18:15]
there’s Well, the problem is, is that every company makes RGB products. And every company has RGB software. And then you installed these different products from different companies in your build. And you have six or seven different pieces of software that don’t communicate with each other or don’t work well. So you have one, you know, one set of fans doing one effect where your other things are doing another effect, and it just doesn’t look right. We’re getting out of that with companies working with each other, but it’s still kind of janky.
Jim Collison [18:48]
And I do see with some of the new boards, like the dashboards in the BIOS are almost more complicated and have more features than some of the ones we used to get in Windows, right? I mean, you It looks as we’re kind of going through this, by the way, you should check this out, head over to the average guy.tv slash Htg 436 to get the link to head over there, so you can just go directly to it. But Bob, you’ve got a bunch of you go, we go through a board like this is it pretty common now to have, you know, maybe 10 or 20,
Bob Buskirk [19:19]
do what you’re looking at right there. That’s actually the software. So that’s, that’s in Windows.
Bob Buskirk [19:26]
But you actually get that exact same option in the BIOS as well. So for the BIOS, yeah, most of them Now the great thing about the BIOS is now is that you get full keyboard and mouse support. So you’re not using the arrow keys to go through everything. And then in that, you have so many options. And again, asrock isn’t even as advanced if you go to like an ACS BIOS, when you load in, it’s a full, you know, graphical BIOS where you have, you can see your fans running and they’re spinning there and you can see your temperature and a graph and everything. I mean, it’s pretty pretty in depth. So for the beginner, I think it’s great because, you know, you load into like an old school BIOS and you’re like, what’s going on? Like, what does this mean? What does that mean? And especially the new BIOS as to when you like, hover over with your mouse, you hover over an option on the side, that usually tells you what that option will do. So if you’re not sure you get some more information, which is really great. So I think that especially in the past, like two or three years biases have come such a long way. And it’s just great because I think so many people are getting into PC gaming, or they’re building their first PC and they’ve never seen a BIOS before. So I think that’s really great.
Jim Collison [20:41]
Ryan, I’m gonna ask you this question. Bob did the review on the board. But is this an average guy? When should we think about someone building their own gaming rig and they’re, they’re technical enough to be able to put these things together, but maybe not the biggest geek out there. From your opinion, Ryan? Is this an average guy bored in it What was the cost? Bob? What was the cost on this thing? When after right it
Bob Buskirk [21:03]
is to 19. Sorry, I went there
Jim Collison [21:06]
to 19, which is on the higher end, I think, you know, we kind of think a lot of times when we’re buying storage or server boards, you know, those are probably in the, you know, 125 to 200 range Ryan is it isn’t an average guy board.
Bob Buskirk [21:20]
So I think it can be when you work with mini ITX x system, you run into space constraints and frustrations of cable routing and making sure things can get to places and you’re not, you know, cutting off air circulation or running cables into a fan, things like that. That being said, like you’re still using the same socket that you would use on a full size motherboard, you’ve got that PCI slot, all your power connections are the same all your fan headers, you’re just working in a smaller space now you could surely put this board into a full size case, right? It’ll fit and would work just fine. But I think yeah, there’s there’s no reason that somebody You know, in this in this audience would be able to use it No problem.
Jim Collison [22:05]
And Bob, this is your this is your do you go about it the same way each of the boards that you do? Do you kind of go about it the same way. So you’ve got some kind of
Bob Buskirk [22:15]
testing? Yeah, I think for the most part, I use the same hardware on every system, or every board that I test and like the test, you know, just like this board, it didn’t do great in PC mark. But then unlike the CPU specific benchmarks, it did really great. And all of these benchmarks, they’re going to be pretty much the same. We show you the like, here’s the CPU specific and it did the best out of all the ports that we tested. You know, I think that with the sports, they’re all going to do pretty much the same as far as performance because it’s the same hardware. Essentially, what it comes down to is feature set. And, again, if you want RGB lighting, or any of that stuff on the board, you know, that’s fine. really what it comes down to, and it comes down to, you know, it’s just like buying a car, you a Ford guy or your Chevy guy be like if you’re an asrock guy or your gigabyte guy, you know, it kind of comes down to what you want. So I think that is really what it comes down to. Because again, most of our testing, the graphs are a little bit deceiving, but it’s usually only a few points difference and all of our tests. So yeah, it just comes down to features and like this board is for somebody, obviously, who wants a smaller rig. That’s kind of why you’re buying that board.
Jim Collison [23:32]
This is a screen, at least in our in the community around here that we see a lot of we, we you know, we don’t we haven’t done as much of it the lately but for a long time. You know, we’re always kind of checking. What’s the speed out to the drive? I’m assuming for you guys and Jay was talking about this a little bit last week, too. I’m assuming for you guys to every time at this point, right? Yeah, reload that.
Bob Buskirk [23:56]
Yeah. So on this review, we didn’t test the M dot two on this one. Because it’s on the opposite side of the board. And that was one of the downfalls of this is that the new Gen four m dot twos, they actually have these massive heat sinks on them. And because the, because the actual socket for the M dot two is on the opposite side of the board, if you mount this in the case, you actually won’t have room for an M dot two that has a big heatsink on it.
Jim Collison [24:24]
Do you have a picture of that in here?
Bob Buskirk [24:28]
Yeah, it’s on page. Two, I believe.
Jim Collison [24:30]
Let’s go back. Let’s go back and look, by the way for your reviews if you haven’t gone out to think computers.org and check out the reviews, multi page reviews. So instead of having to scroll all the way through, kind of goes down, click to the next one goes down. Click to the next one. So we’re on page.
Jim Collison [24:47]
The last image Yeah, the last image on Not that one. Right there,
Bob Buskirk [24:54]
right there. Yeah, you can see the that’s where it is. And the issue that I had is most motherboards manufacturers will include their own sort of heatsink for for it that would fit their board specifically. And the problem is again all of the gen four m dot two drives I have had these massive heat sinks on them so any normal person wouldn’t be able to install this in a case with that, you know against the motherboard tray and have their have a Gen four working that wouldn’t throttle so that was kind of the issue that I kind of ran into there. Okay, okay.
Jim Collison [25:31]
You know, I’m not gonna lie I kind of saw the early I got jumped into storage on the early two drives that didn’t seem to perform very well and I kind of stopped paying attention to them and it was easier for me just put us you know, an SSD drive in for a lot of the things I do that was fast enough. But having both hearing both from you guys, and then j last week, I’m thinking, Okay, I think I’ve got a really start feeling urine out this, this m dot two for some of the server guys, I think it’s u dot two. Where I got to start figuring some of that because I think in most case, NVMe is going to be the way to go for storage. And I think I priced them out this week. And I think like 256 is like 100 bucks or something. Is that does that sound?
Bob Buskirk [26:18]
That sounds pretty
Ryan Kerschner [26:19]
high EQ. I mean, yeah, you should be able to get a one terabyte for maybe it was a one terabyte for like 110 bucks, some Yeah,
Bob Buskirk [26:27]
like a Gen three drive will be right around that price, pretty
Jim Collison [26:29]
standard. And so and then any new board I’m buying right now is probably going to have an empty slot in it, right? That’s pretty standard,
Bob Buskirk [26:39]
and whether it’s Gen three or Gen four, that’s something to keep an eye on. And you know, obviously,
Bob Buskirk [26:44]
for me so so I’ll give you the kind of the breakdown. So like a normal SSD. Your fastest SSD will be around 500 megabytes a second read and write the Mac’s a Gen three NVMe drive will be The M dot two will be 3500 megabytes a second. And then the newer Gen four will be right now it’s around 5000 megabytes a second or five gigabytes a second. We’ll probably see it go up to around 7500 as the as it matures as better firmware and better drives come out.
Jim Collison [27:22]
Let’s just go you guys. We also have a link to this. I was gonna save it to later but since we’re talking about hard drives around, you would spend a little time talking about this. I’m assuming this is something you saw at 2020. Right eight terabyte NVMe in 16 terabytes, SATA SSDs. Do you see those? I mean, my hand holding that drive. So how ridiculous is that? And what’s the price point on that thing?
Bob Buskirk [27:48]
pricing unknown right now. And you know, they’re not available, but it was something they were working off. This was actually at Pfizer en suite at CES. They showed us you know, and this is something I was pretty excited about. Just the amount of storage you’re getting on that traditional
Ryan Kerschner [28:04]
NVMe m.to drive
Jim Collison [28:06]
a lot of data to have on a little tiny device that could fail though, right?
Bob Buskirk [28:10]
Yeah, absolutely. Right. So, yeah, eight terabytes of qlc NAND from micron they’re using utilizing pythons controller. That is a Gen three drive. And then yeah, the next one down that you kind of scroll to. They’re getting up to 16 terabytes in two and a half inch capacity. Yeah,
Jim Collison [28:31]
yeah, I know they are definitely in that thing is gonna, that also has gotten away from me a little bit on those sizes were part of it as I’ve been focusing on spinners because we use those for the hard drive mining that we’ve been doing for for burst going. But so in the last year or two, I’ve been focusing on cheap spinners. That’s, you know, that’s good. 12 and I think really, you know, we’re in the 12 terabytes space for the spinners for the most part retail wise that are reasonable. 16 again, this is one of those kind of situations you’re thinking like a limited read and write 16 terabytes. That’s a lot of storage to go to fail on. You did that when they was when they’re thinking about use cases for these do they have special use cases that they’re they’re building these for?
Bob Buskirk [29:18]
Um, I don’t Yeah. So I think we’re gonna see these for your direct Attached Storage NAS devices, they’re going to provision them with enough extra for that, you know, to die off. And really that’s kind of what I’m waiting for. You know, you mentioned those cheap spinners. My Synology NAS is full of eight terabyte Western Digital drives. I’m not going to upgrade them until I can move all to flash districts. Yeah.
Ryan Kerschner [29:47]
I’m very excited.
Jim Collison [29:48]
That is so crazy to think like, you know, hey, I’m gonna take you know I think about the Drobo and it’ll support SSD drives, I could just all I need to do is put them in on you know, put them in an adapter and I see doc adapter Throw them in there. And and I’m kind of thinking now I mean, what do you think a four terabyte SSD is right now? What do you think I haven’t even priced one but what’s the sweetie?
Bob Buskirk [30:11]
Maybe 350 that’s just off the top of my head I could be wrong.
Jim Collison [30:14]
It’s one terabyte on the SSD side kind of the sweet spot right now. Yeah, that’s the standard during in
Bob Buskirk [30:21]
point right so, Mike rig next to me is my OS and everything’s running on a Gen three NVMe drive and then I have two drives for my games that I run I have a not like a one terabyte and a 750 gig two and a half inch SSD so I’m I’m all SSD on that. And I think you know, that’s that’s kind of how I point people if they’re doing a desktop build is go with a 250 to 500 gig NVMe drive for your OS and most of your frequently used applications and then throw the rest of your stuff onto the secondary drive
Jim Collison [30:57]
and secondary being SSD or secondary being
Bob Buskirk [30:59]
Being SSD and then slower storage on the network on the NAS right and so I’m backing stuff up to it but also utilizing it for you know streaming media off of it looking at images but not keeping I don’t keep a bulk of storage in my desktop any longer. So for a gamer no need for a spinner at all anymore.
Jim Collison [31:20]
Everything can be SSD cheap enough I think that yeah,
Bob Buskirk [31:23]
if it’s cheap enough to do and you can you’re getting the capacity as well. So when SSD is first started coming out, you know you had your your 64 your 128 gigabyte if you look at games now most of them are over 100 gigabytes. So you need the one in two terabyte drives which are relatively affordable right now.
Jim Collison [31:42]
Yeah, so you can easily put a one terabyte drive or like so maybe even 500 meg OS to hold that and then you went to larger SSD to be the one terabyte or two terabyte SSD into all the games, right? That’s so crazy to think I used to be right we do the you do the 500 gig SSD and then you’d have a one or two or three terabytes spinner that’d be your your data storage and that runs cooler, runs faster, more reliable in your your guys’s opinion having an SSD for gaming versus having a spinner there
Bob Buskirk [32:18]
is probably and then especially if you’re you know, some folks we don’t really review them in this capacity at all but like a gaming laptop, right? I have a DELL LAPTOP that uses a m.to drive for the OS and then it has an extra slot for two and a half inch drive. So if I drop that, you know, it’s all solid state storage, so I don’t have to worry about a hard drive you know head hitting a platter and scratching it so from a mobile standpoint, definitely more reliable and
Jim Collison [32:48]
vincit over at icy dock originally wanted me to look at an NVMe NVMe two adapter of some sort and I I’m just not even using them yet. For the most part I haven’t. I haven’t done a piece Built To be honest with you, I’ve been kind of busy doing other things, but I haven’t done a PC building for four years, maybe everything I have still works, right. You know, you didn’t need to some of this technology I really do feel like, since I’ve, we’ve been talking about it, I’m like, holy crap, I need to catch up. Like I I got left behind on some of these things, for sure. And so I was like, No, I really wouldn’t use that. And now that I’ve done these two shows, like, Ah,
Bob Buskirk [33:25]
okay, you’re gonna be buying stuff.
Jim Collison [33:28]
While we’re talking. I can make that adapter figure out, you know, figure out how to make this work better. It did cause me you know, I put this unread box together and I put 100 I had an extra hundred 20 gig SSD laying around from some build. And I thought it’d be plenty for cash and then I put it on Twitter and I Oh, no, no, no, no, you’re gonna want more cash. I don’t want to like I this is I don’t want to pay for this. And then I looked online, I’m like, vault, terabytes. 100 bucks. Like, yeah, why wouldn’t I so it’s just, it’s completely changed I, I think I was gone from looking at those kind of parts long enough that I missed a cycle, right. And so it’s kind of cool. It’s all of a sudden PC builds have gotten exciting again, because I, you know, I Rip Van Winkle that for for a year or two. And all this stuff cycled out. So it’s, it’s, I think,
Bob Buskirk [34:20]
the coolest thing too, that you’ll notice when you move from even an SSD to an NVMe drive one is your windows load time, I mean, you’ll hit the power button, and your computers and your in Windows, like within 15 seconds, maybe probably less than that. And then two is, you know, these big games that I was talking about, when you’re loading the level or whatever it may be, you’re loading the next mission I’m sure you know, you playing games like the load time you’re just waiting, it says loading loading, it would just be instant, you’re just you know, on to the next level, which is really cool as well. And and a lot of people appreciate that.
Jim Collison [34:56]
Well, and, you know, two years ago for most PCs, I flipped I’m all over the SSD for that and that’s still pretty fast like that you know? Yeah the windows load time still pretty quick but now I’m you know, okay it’s time yeah
Bob Buskirk [35:11]
I mean those those random reads and writes between a standard SATA drive and an NVMe you know drive a lot of times you won’t in day to day you see that difference until you really start those sequential reads and writes with larger files from one source to another that you can really see those large numbers right.
Bob Buskirk [35:32]
But ya know, it’s it they’re still
Jim Collison [35:35]
definitely worth it. No right on it’s just a new it’s just one of those new thoughts and it gets me thinking like Oh, so my my studio PC the one I’m using here that I built, I don’t know five or six years ago you know, Core i 740 716 Giga ram in it, and I’ve got a I think a 500 gig SSD and that was just plenty for what I do. And it’s it’s been an awesome Awesome, and I’ve got some 1060s in it that we were doing some mining and now I’m using for a video. It’s fine, I don’t game. It’s not a gaming rig. And it’s been great and it will continue to be great for a couple years. But I’m kind of for especially for podcasting, but now like you guys got me thinking like, Oh, I need to start looking at some new boards and in probably the sweet spot so if I were building today, right maybe if I was building a podcasting gaming rig, I would be in maybe 200 bucks for a good board right probably and in that space. I’m going to be another hundred bucks for the the NVMe drive and then maybe 100 bucks for the for a SSD drive to go in and just Well, I’m going to probably put a video card in now this is GPUs. You guys are the special specialists that this? This has gotten ridiculous, right? GPUs have gotten kind of ridiculous. If I was going to Ryan, if I was going to be on the bottom end of the SE I just wanted to get in today I asked Jay this question last week. If I wanted to kind of get in not bottom bottom, but enough bottom kind of thing. What am I getting into and price and then Bob, I want to know what the top end is from you after, after Ryan.
Bob Buskirk [37:06]
I mean, you know, so we’ve got the two players AMD and Nvidia. I think I’m such a fan of the 2060 series from Nvidia. From a price to performance aspect you know, it’s going to play pretty much any game you want. And look look pretty nice. From the AMD side is on what is the 2016 now 303 or so and then and then like a 5600 from AMD is probably where I would go to
Jim Collison [37:42]
start off on either of those. So I’m getting in like I can get a board in some in some hard drives in in memory for less than Bob’s get his most like the top end. What’s gonna cost me to get into the top of the top end consumer card right now is an RT x 28 DCI depending on which you know which one you go for, because there’s all different kinds,
Bob Buskirk [38:06]
but probably a, you know, 1000 to 1100 dollars just for the GPU. But that will get you 4k Gaming over 60 frames a second. And you can obviously do some mining with that. I don’t know how cost effective
Jim Collison [38:19]
now not anymore now. Yes. GPU mining. Do you think between the two of you and all the reviews that you do where so where’s the sweet spot from a GPU perspective? If I was going to be the average guy and I was getting into this is is it closer to the bottom end? Or is it Do you really need to be up towards the the upper?
Jim Collison [38:41]
from here? Go ahead, right.
Bob Buskirk [38:43]
I’m gonna say it from my perspective because I have a pretty recent build right around Black Friday is when I purchased parts and built I went to the rt x 2070 Super route. That video cards more than I wanted to pay. It was 529 So I mean, that’s when we think about that price 10 years ago or so, you know, like $500 was insane for a video card and now it’s like, halfway towards the the top level. So I’m a fan, mid range, you know, that 2070 series. Okay?
Bob Buskirk [39:17]
What do you I always tell people, or when people ask me, you know, what should I buy? I say what display are you using? Because that’s the, you know, if you if you’re having a 10 Hp display, especially like a 1080 p 60 hertz display, the I don’t know why you’d be getting an RT x 2080 ti. So what’s great about both Nvidia and AMD is they kind of have cards that are just, you know, for that specific, you know, for 10 ADP, or 1440 P and for 4k, and even on the lower end for more like eSports titles that don’t use a lot of you know, they don’t need a lot of GPU power. So I that’s the that’s kind of my suggestion. For people is like what display Are you using get a graphics card that’s built around that display. Or if you think, you know, maybe in six months, I’m going to upgrade my display, make sure I have a GPU that will be able to power that display that I’m looking at. Yeah, or that I would want to upgrade to.
Bob Buskirk [40:15]
Yeah, and that’s why I went with the 2017. Super, I knew, because my previous monitor was a 10 at 75 hertz, right. So nothing too crazy, but I knew I wanted to go to a 27 inch 1440 screen with 144 hertz refresh rate. So I knew that I wanted to, I was going to need something higher than a 2060 or, or similar so that’s why I kind of went that route. So
Jim Collison [40:38]
based on that display, those 1070s before the change, you know, those were three 400 bucks and I think then they tacked on another hundred bucks when they when they when they did the 2070s and it’s as the price dropped at all I mean, mining, GPU mining is over and so you don’t have people going out and buying them in mass is the price come down at all.
Bob Buskirk [41:00]
Initially, so when the RT X series launched, it was, that’s only saw actually the big jump in price from the previous generation where the reason or Nvidia’s reason for saying that the price went up so much is because we have this, this new technology, this RT x or real time ray tracing, which only when it launched only there was only one game that supported it. And I think there’s, you know, a handful of games that support it. And then since then, because these cars aren’t selling so well and Nvidia’s stock hasn’t been great. They drop the price a little bit when they introduce these new super cards. But I still think that it’s decently high, but I think it’s more on the level of what people are kind of expecting to pay for a graphics card.
Jim Collison [41:46]
Andrew was talking in the chat room and he said Are there many it exports that don’t have integrated ships for for use, you know, are you seeing where you’d have to put a GPU on there. You know, many have us right when we were building servers. You wouldn’t put it you wouldn’t put a card in it. You didn’t have to write in the integrated graphics. What are you guys seeing in that in that space? Is it still I didn’t even think about to look for a graphics built in graphics on that card that we were looking at didn’t have it.
Bob Buskirk [42:16]
It does not have it. It would all be run through Thunderbolt. Okay. But it would use a discrete graphics card so it wouldn’t use the actual there’s no on die graphics on Reisen processors. So you could
Jim Collison [42:32]
tell thing
Bob Buskirk [42:33]
Yeah, and because them as well though, yeah, AMD does have them but for, for what we were looking at as far as rise in 3000 series desktop, not any of their GPUs which have it built in. It doesn’t have it I think most of the boards that we look at are gaming focused anyways. So like that, that asrock board as part of their Phantom gaming line, where people are going to have a discrete graphics card. So you’ll see a lot of them. I know ACS has the Republic of Gamers board that’s not going to give you any of those options because they just know people are gonna put it on screen graphics card in it.
Jim Collison [43:08]
They’re gonna they’re gonna put it on there. Anyways, J had mentioned last week also about noise on the smaller on the smaller, you know, one, two challenges, right. One is cooling to noise. Did you Bob as you were going through that that board and as we kind of just think about, you know, we’ve we’ve removed harddrive noise, but now we have these big ass fans. Yeah. GPUs.
Bob Buskirk [43:32]
Yes. So for GPUs, it all depends on I would assume you know which one you’re getting. Both Nvidia and AMD have all of these board partners which make custom cards with, you know, fans that actually will turn off when the GPU is not news and, and things like that. So that I don’t think noise is a big issue. For the most part. Good, right?
Bob Buskirk [43:54]
Yeah, one thing I’ll mention with x 570. I believe there’s only one board that doesn’t have a chip. fan. So with x 570. We got, you know, years ago, you used to see fans on like, those extra chipsets, we came back to that with x 570. Just because they were running so hot. So while those devices have small fans on them now, I really don’t notice when I’ve got an X 570 board here that has a fan and I don’t hear it over any of my system. So yeah, he’s absolutely right. You know, getting all that heat in a compact space and trying to get that heat out of the case is has the potential to create some noise for sure. Are you guys when we think about cooling? Are you fans of the the more active cooling when we think about liquid or, you know, whatever we’re moving to, I’m assuming that’s the today that’s kind of the best way to get it out. Or some of the more passive fan driven cooling. I imagined the smaller box that’s harder.
Bob Buskirk [44:49]
Yeah, I think I mean, for this build, specifically, I had to use an all in one liquid cooling unit. I think most people are just for the fact that I wouldn’t say there either. easier to install, but it’s easy. They’re not as hard with a big heat sink. You have to find ways to fit it in there and do all that with it all in one unit. It’s just like that pump block that you put on there. And then you just mount the radiator which is nice. Yeah,
Bob Buskirk [45:15]
yeah. You don’t have to worry about usually ram clearances, right, you get a big heat sink and you have to worry. Is this going to hang over my Ram? Is my ram too tall to fit under this heat saying, What’s this fan doing? Yeah.
Jim Collison [45:28]
Well, I wasn’t, you know, in the early days of, of more liquid cooling, they were messy. They would break. Yeah, it would get your right is have we solved all those problems. You’re seeing all the new stuff has that gotten to the point where it’s fairly bulletproof,
Bob Buskirk [45:44]
for those all in ones, I would say? So. Right there. They’re sealed units. Some of them do have the options, you know, take apart a coupler or a fill port to expand the loop, but for the most part, they’re a closed loop system. And they’re going to last you for probably as long as the system For the most part, now, you can definitely go to a custom cooling solution with, you know, cutting tubes, whether they’re soft or hard, do your own, you know, lengths that you need and setting up those water blocks with their fittings, you definitely have potential there for leaks, which so we always recommend, you know, doing leak tests before you actually supply power to that CPU and the rest of the system so
Jim Collison [46:21]
but you wouldn’t need to be gamer a couple Andrew and Joe in chat room saying I’m not a really gamer, I’m more active or more happy. But if I if I put any load on the system, and these all in ones sound like a way to go, or it’s not the complexities of building the cooling system, like you used to have to do kind of put it on set and forget it is that Yeah,
Ryan Kerschner [46:40]
absolutely.
Jim Collison [46:42]
Are those run typically if I’m gonna, if I was going to put an all in one cooling system in generally
Bob Buskirk [46:47]
from the low end, probably around $80 all the way up to I mean, I have one sitting right next to me that is to something What’s that?
Jim Collison [46:57]
Why wouldn’t you? Yeah.
Bob Buskirk [47:00]
It’s a little little more fancy. It’s got a screen, like a little LCD screen on the pump block, and things like that. But I think it’s like 200 and some dollars. So you’re right around the
Jim Collison [47:13]
100 to $150 range for a pretty standard 240 millimeter or 280 millimeter all in one. When when you guys are doing reviews on boards is the expectation you’ll supply all the other parts and then in this case, when you’re testing it, you put a cooler on it just to make sure you don’t burn it up for Bob, how do you as you’re approaching a build, you have enough stuff that you can just yeah,
Bob Buskirk [47:35]
so typically, we supply you know, if I’m reviewing motherboards I supply everything else. And for the most part, I use, again, the same hardware on all of the reviews. So everything is uniform. So yeah, that’s kind of the expectation that the motherboard manufacturer has.
Jim Collison [47:51]
Okay, that’s cool. We talked about RGB cases. And in of course, Bob, you’ve got a post out there from From early January, I’m assuming is this a Is this a CES find? Or is this just something that was sent to you?
Bob Buskirk [48:08]
No. So this was this was at CES, this was sort of a prototype of where a company called course there who’s huge into RGB products. They they had this prototype that had RGB lights on both sides, you know, the front panel, which is glass, the side panel, which is glass, and it’s their new technology. So they actually been developing this technology for a couple years. And the again, the RGB lighting is built right into the panel, but you can’t see any wires, which is the crazy heart.
Bob Buskirk [48:43]
Yeah, when we walked into their suite, like I looked over to the right side and saw this and like, that’s all I could think about the whole time we were at in their suite, and I mean, they, you know, they have a suite that’s just this enormous conference room because they you know, of course there has multiple companies now under their umbrella and like all All I wanted to do is go back and look at this case and just like stare at it
Jim Collison [49:03]
did did Coursera kind of make because they’ve been around a while like I have I have old equipment that says Coursera on it, right? They have they they’ve been a big ones in pushing this this RGB space as far as getting it more, are they the kind of the leaders on it?
Bob Buskirk [49:18]
There, I would say they’re one of the leaders. So I think two years ago, they used to have software for their gaming stuff, and then software for their lighting stuff and they unified it all into one piece of software. So the software release obviously is controlling your lights, but you can have and then the thing about Coursera is as you said you’ve had stuff from them for a while. They used to only make memory they used to make memory and that was it. Now they make pretty much everything that goes in your computer. Besides your graphics card and motherboards and graphics card, motherboard and processor but everything else. They make cases they make coolers They make storage they make power supplies referral. Yeah, they make headsets, keyboards, mice. They make everything so what they’ve done is they’ve unified all their software so if you have a course their keyboard, you can match it with the coarser lights on your case and all that so yeah, they’ve really made an effort to make that whole process for the user because they want you in their ecosystem you know if I buy this course their case I’m going to buy a course their keyboard and mouse so all my all my RGB is matched together. Do
Jim Collison [50:35]
Ryan what’s your infested infatuation with with this like, I mean, what is it that dry like I get? I am not this is not my favorite when I see you know, when I see PC builds that are all wired it up. That’s not my thing. But what what draws you to it.
Bob Buskirk [50:50]
So, I mean, with this one in general, I’m already kind of a, let’s say, I don’t want to call myself a Coursera fanboy, but of Coursera fame, right. I’ve just always been a fan. Other products before I was reviewing them, you know, and everything. So as far as RGB goes, like the customization, each one of those on that case image there, each one of those lights, each one of those LEDs is fully controllable so I can set each one to whatever color on or off whatever I want. So I’ve got it just gives you so much potential to whatever the mood is right? If it’s Christmas time, it’s Halloween, I can put an animated animation across those lights. They had this nice like gold twinkling look to it for a while. And so it’s not I’m not a big fan of the rainbow puke that’s showing there. Right, right. Like, yeah, it looks cool sometimes. And people are like what in the world is like your computer doing? But sometimes you’re like, Alright, I want everything to be black. But then every now and then I want them to twinkle gold or white and just like the customizability and the fact that they can put that many LEDs on those glass panels with almost invisible leads between them and have it look as good as they do is just a pretty cool engineering feat, I think, well, and I’ve noticed the fans have gone out of control.
Jim Collison [52:09]
That’s really right. This is really where this kind of lives is in the fan space is that
Bob Buskirk [52:15]
Yeah, yes, they’ll be like, Okay, I’m gonna put white LED fans are there going to be red or they’re going to be blue or green. Or maybe I get some that have a button and I can cycle through three colors. And now it’s like, I’ve got 20 LEDs on my fans, I can change the color of each one of them individually. And, you know, run that pattern like Bob said, have everything integrated. So like my courser headset I have on can cycle through the same colors as my keyboard and mouse like
Bob Buskirk [52:40]
to see it
Jim Collison [52:41]
like it’s just
Bob Buskirk [52:44]
the way that’s the way it is. But I just reviewed of course a new fans that have 36 RGB LEDs in the fan. And yeah, you can control each LED individually through software, which I think is pretty awesome. So Yeah I mean it’s just you know yeah people like it
Jim Collison [53:05]
well It must be popular right they wouldn’t continue to make
Bob Buskirk [53:08]
yeah I think if you had a you know in your background on your video there you just had a computer with those fans going I think you get more views that way
Jim Collison [53:17]
it’s crazy so this backdrop here you know, it’s been I move it around and move some stuff but it’s very it’s pretty busy. And I’m okay with it. I don’t I don’t mind if I kind of like it that way some boxes and some stuff, but it worked the heat it like every time I do anything from home, like Could you put a curtain over that or something like they just don’t want to see well? Starting Monday I’m working from home and I have to do and so you know, I’ve been thinking about do I cover this up if I put if I put a lighted say I just went in there and put a bunch of RGB lights that are blinking they would they would lose their that’s
Bob Buskirk [53:52]
what all the streamers are doing. No.
Bob Buskirk [53:57]
I can get the glow going around me. So
Jim Collison [54:00]
Though So, you know somehow we just keep doing it. No, I know it’s I know it’s super popular right now. It’s just it’s never been like Ryan like you said a minute ago. I’ve got one on this box I bought some I bought some fans and had some lights and I kind of turn it on and it’s white and I thought it was cool. It was like good enough right good enough for me. It does make a nice nightlight down here when I shut off all the lights in the basement. It kind of lights it up just enough now that I can see what’s going on down here. So good enough for good enough for me for a nightlight. Bob you’d mentioned that you know court like companies like Coursera and I think you know who’s doing it wrong as Logitech like they can’t seem to get in my opinion. Logitech can’t seem to get any of their software together work in the camera software is different. Now I have noticed they have a new gaming some new gaming software that they’re using where I think they’re trying to if I wrong, I mean this Logitech thing.
Bob Buskirk [54:53]
So the thing with Logitech is they have two distinct I would say companies within Logitech they The consumer, which would be like the webcams and things like that, and then they have Logitech G, which is their gaming and everything, I assume from at least my communication with them. They’re two completely separate companies within Logitech. And the even the PR companies are different for each group. So that’s where you have that disconnect where like, you know, they might have good gaming software for the keyboards and mice, but then you go to their webcam software, and it’s just horrible.
Jim Collison [55:32]
Yeah. It’s, well, I was just trying to help a guy today who has an SI 920 and I was like, Oh no, we need to get the software on there. So you can control the lighting and the you know, the white balance and oh my god going on their site and just trying to find the piece of solder. Oh, yeah, that’s horrible.
Bob Buskirk [55:52]
Unless the C 920 anymore. They have a c 920 s I found. Yeah.
Jim Collison [55:56]
Nice time to try to 930 he Separate controller sought piece of software just for the camera. And then they have, like you said, they have the gaming the G software that does that. And then they have another like a camera. It’s almost like a video capture piece of software, but it’s not very good. And you’re like, What are you guys doing over here. So
Bob Buskirk [56:17]
I think like so many of these companies just need one piece of software, just like I have a capture card where I do my BIOS overview videos since from Elgato. And they make Elgato capture for PC and Elgato capture for Mac and that’s the way it’s been for at least the past five years. That’s what they make. So, you know, just like with Coursera, they went through one piece of software, it’s called IQ. That’s all all their products are encompassed in one piece of software, which makes it great because I think too, if people complain about one piece of software, then you know, Logitech is working on that and then they’re not working on the control software. They’re not you know, just one piece of software just makes things
Bob Buskirk [56:53]
so yeah, I love IQ because like, you know, I plug in a new Coursera device and it shows up in the list of devices up top. And so I can just click on it and go right to its settings. They update that application to be ready for any new products that they are going to release. So as soon as you know there’s an update and a new product that comes out, you plug it in and it’s going to be available right there in IQ for you in one one pain. Yeah,
Jim Collison [57:16]
yeah, well, I think you know, Logitech is for us, at least in our community has been a long standing kind of go to especially on the video camera side, but man, their software infrastructure, something that’s right now. Yep. And the websites are just there. They’re all over the place. You just kind of you don’t know. So Bob, you saying there’s like two different companies kind of working this now? That kind of makes sense? Yeah. Oh, I thought it was all one company. So okay, I’ll have to figure that out. I work with enough podcasters who are using the C 920s. Everybody bought them in and has been using them. And that camera control software is really really good. It’s what I use here. But now I can’t find it anywhere anymore.
Bob Buskirk [57:56]
I don’t think I have it installed. I think I just have the driver and I don’t think I even use the software I guess if you need it and
Jim Collison [58:03]
well in a lot of cases if you like down here I’ve got enough lighting I don’t really need it that much change being able to change the white balance is kind of nice right? Yes it’s those kinds of things where the auto stuff for the autofocus if you move around a lot like I do, you know, I’m constantly it’s trying to refocus all the time. Well, you don’t want that necessarily either. So having that control, it’s kind of a lot easier. Bob last review in this is maybe this is unfair. I had three Bob reviews and only one Ryan review. Bob, are you doing all the reviewing is 99% of
Bob Buskirk [58:35]
I do most of it? Yeah. Brian Brian does a lot of the water cooling stuff and you know some of that stuff. And that’s we don’t feel I mean, that stuff’s exciting, but it’s I don’t think it’s exciting as motherboards and gaming products.
Jim Collison [58:48]
Ryan, you just got thrown under the bus all the time. So the gaming mouse like it Again, this is a space haven’t paid attention to, you know, I’m thinking if I paid $7 for a mouse, I paid two, you know, six. Yeah, he’s gaming my sister coolermaster mm, seven 711 Gaming Mouse, is it worth, I’m assuming these things aren’t cheap, it isn’t worth it.
Bob Buskirk [59:20]
The thing that I The reason why I put this in there as because there’s been a big change. So I have the mouse, I’m still using it actually, it’s right here. Um, there’s been a big change in gaming mice. One use this, you know, gaming mice used to be really heavy, and you would put weights in them and change the weight around and things like that. And we I think last year was when he first started seeing these super lightweight gaming mice. And I thought they were stupid. I’d be in a traditional game or I like my big heavy mouse. And I saw these mice I’m like, this is Tom. This is just like a gimmick. Like, you know how everything is just gimmicky. A lot of times, you know Everybody’s making the same products. That’s kind of a gimmick. And then I got one interview, and I was actually surprised at how much I like the lighter weight gaming mouse. So I think this one, I’m not sure it’s definitely the review. I think it’s like 57, the 710 or weighed 53 grams. Yeah, this one. Yeah, I think this was just over 60 grams, which is very, very light. And if you actually do play a lot of games, it does make a difference because if you think about it, you’re moving your arm around, you’re moving the mouse back and forth. And if you have a heavier device, you’re eventually going to have more strain on your, on your wrist and everything like that. And I feel that the movement is actually better is like, I play a lot of first person shooters, so I don’t need a ton of buttons on my mouse or anything like that. Um, and yeah, I just really like the lightweight gaming mouse and I have two other ones here, that one that I reviewed, and then I have this other one here. You can see they the The way they do it is just kind of like a, like a, you know, racecar they cut out pieces of the actual mouse to, to make it even lighter. And it’s like I said, it’s for me. They, they work so much better. And then the actual the other big change is on the actual cabling. So this is some crazy, they call it ultra weave. It’s super lightweight material. I’ve never seen it on a mouse before. And it works. It just you don’t feel any drag. And I think, again, these were initially marketed towards eSports players people playing professionally. And the biggest problem with a wired gaming mouse is that you have that little bit of drag from the USB cable. And with this I don’t feel it at all.
Bob Buskirk [1:01:47]
Who would ever think that we’re talking about drag on a mouse cable right? Like
Bob Buskirk [1:01:52]
what in the world do you guys
Jim Collison [1:01:53]
know it’s not good gaming is a big deal, right?
Bob Buskirk [1:01:56]
Yeah, I mean when you and the thing is is like Ryan and I have been playing A game called Apex legends a lot. And I don’t know, I feel like I’ve gotten better at gaming, because of the fact that like, this mouse has helped me become at least this semi decent gamer because I can move better. My arms not tired. Again, I don’t have that drag, which I’ve had times where, like, I’ve had that drag and I like wanted to throw a mouse across there. You know, because I’ve missing shots and things like that. So I think for anybody who is a semi serious gamer, or just wants to, you know, not experienced those problems, I don’t know what I can equate it to in the maybe in like in the storage world. You know, if you’re just the wait time, you would have for like a traditional hard drive over an SSD. This is like that drag on your mouse is kind of like the same thing. You’re like,
Jim Collison [1:02:48]
you know, cash or transfer speeds. Yeah, network transfer speeds. Yeah, for sure.
Bob Buskirk [1:02:53]
Yeah, these these mics aren’t that expensive because there’s not a whole lot to them. You don’t have a whole lot of buttons there. To main buttons and then to on the side and that’s it. So I think this is like 50 or 60 bucks, which in the gaming mouse world isn’t super expensive. I think a lot of gaming mice can get up to $100. So yeah, so like, if anybody a boy, you know, is in, you know, in your audience who wants to, I would say, get better at gaming, you could try one of these out, you know, and they come with like these special mouse feet that so a lot of professional gamers ended up buying these mouse feet to put on their own my own mice. But this mouse comes with it pre you know, you have to buy these like aftermarket It’s like putting a spoiler on a car versus a fighter right?
Jim Collison [1:03:41]
It’s Yeah, it just makes it slide a little bit easier. Yeah,
Ryan Kerschner [1:03:45]
yeah. Right. Yeah.
Jim Collison [1:03:48]
Yeah, a little less resistance. I thought when I saw the holes, I actually thought that was for kind of like cooling so you know if your hand is gonna be on,
Bob Buskirk [1:03:56]
it does do that as well. So you do you know your hands You’re not one, you’re not going to get the hand sweat on the mouse as much. And what’s also cool is like the companies thought about it, like the components inside have a waterproof coating on them as well. So, you know, either you’re sweating or you accidentally dropped your beer in your mouth,
Bob Buskirk [1:04:13]
you know, you’re not going to ruin it. So, Jimmy mentioned cooling on a mouse, I actually did like, the first article that I ever had published back in, let’s see if it has a date. Oh, whatever it was, I in 2003 I modified a little Logitech mouse cut a hole in it, put a grill in it and have a little fan that I took out of a laptop actually wrote on the palm of your hand.
Jim Collison [1:04:38]
No, that makes sense. I mean, you’re getting into it in your you know, and sometimes it’s nice you know, these in some of these old mice, you know, wireless mice here, the the the rubber stuff gets a little gummy after a while and you know, it’s just it’s, if you’re gonna be gripping this thing the whole time, it kind of makes sense.
Bob Buskirk [1:04:56]
That’s another big gutter.
Ryan Kerschner [1:04:58]
As I say, the plastics, the A lot of these gaming mice are made out of our PBT. So it’s a lot more resistant to wear than some of the other typical ABS or nylon plastics that you’ll get. So they have a lot better where I know my mouse at work that I use is just like a standard. You know, Dell mouse and I already have wear points from my pointer index fingers and I’ve been using the mouse for less than two years I’ve been using this Coursera harpoon for three to four years. And like the plastic on it doesn’t look used hardly at all. And the rubber grip has worn like on my thumb and pinky on the side. But the materials that they use, like I have some cheaper mice that I’ve reviewed and looked at and the rubber on the sides of them you go to like use it and pick it up and it’s oily and just as you can tell it’s not that good of a plastic or a rubber and it’s just breaking down. This is my daily driver mouse here at my desk that I use, and it’s I’m so happy with like, just the longevity of it.
Bob Buskirk [1:05:57]
I don’t think Jim ever thought that there. Semi detailing in a month
Jim Collison [1:06:02]
no i like it you got me thinking well it’s just a man I we we oftentimes kind of approached it from a more utilitarian like what he you know, we weren’t a gaming site we still aren’t in a lot of ways and so you know you end up I think this is a Logitech 510 which has been a just a workhorse I have absolutely worn off all the paint on this thing it’s been I’ve had it for I don’t know four or five years it continues just to be a workhorse no it’s interesting to see Bob also in that that the the lights the RGB lights on it, RGB right now is after is it RGB or our BG I back at the BG zone? My red red? Red. Yeah, yeah, I always think a KGB That’s right. Um, but the the mouse also and I showed it on the screen here. The mouse also has complete control, right? So you can control all the lighting on the mouse as well. The mouse you were looking at how many different lights are in that thing.
Bob Buskirk [1:06:59]
Do you know There’s so I’m breaking up here again. I’ll do it this way so you guys can see it but there’s just a lighting section here and a lighting section on the the scroll oil.
Jim Collison [1:07:11]
Yeah, so this gives you the controls, right yes. And what’s
Bob Buskirk [1:07:14]
cool about the software too is you can actually finally tune the the sensor as well. So this uses an optical sensor in the bottom here. And in the software you can you know, select your own DPI, I believe it’s up to 16,000 DPI on the mouse and you can fine tune that as well. You can fine tune your liftoff speed you can fine tune a lot of stuff in the news which is like again, if this is like something you want to do professionally or you want to just be better it’s good to be able to not just plug the mouse in but you know fine tune it to where it feels good. And the you know, what you’re seeing on the screen is kind of what you want as far as you know, I’m moving this far the mouse is moving this far. Yeah,
Bob Buskirk [1:07:55]
all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Jim Collison [1:07:59]
Super cool. Yeah, no, I think if you love lights, if you like that kind of feel like that kind of look. You know, there are folks and maybe I fit in this role, although I’m different. I’m a monitor guy, like I want to
Bob Buskirk [1:08:12]
RGB lights on a monitor that’s in front of me.
Bob Buskirk [1:08:16]
And they’re on the front there. Actually, I’m reviewing one right now, where there’s a bar along the bottom that it hooks up to software and it connects with your game. So if you’re getting shot, the RGB S will be red, and it will interact with your game.
Jim Collison [1:08:33]
The network’s like, you like it right? It’s free.
Bob Buskirk [1:08:38]
I just, I just hooked this monitor up to review. So I haven’t really played with that all that much. But my speakers are Razer speakers, and they do the same thing. They connect with whatever game you’re playing. And depending on what you’re doing the RGB is will be different colors. Yeah, it’s cool. I don’t see it being that useful cuz I’m not looking down at this bar, per se. My game so I think it’s just kind of like again it’s kind of gimmicky in that sense. That’s kind of fun.
Jim Collison [1:09:04]
Like we find storage that way like I have 90 terabytes of storage here and that’s we you know people like Yeah, what do you need 90 terabytes for
Bob Buskirk [1:09:12]
your work?
Jim Collison [1:09:14]
Because I wonder like yeah that’s that’s my thing that’s what I like doing you guys also we didn’t spend a lot of time at the beginning of the show talking about this but but you guys also have a weekly podcast that you’re doing if folks and you do it live your your Wednesday night so we’re Thursday so if you’re looking for something you’re listening to this show you’re like man, I’m dying for something to do on Wednesday nights. How do folks find it? What do you guys talk about how does it usually go?
Bob Buskirk [1:09:40]
Um so on the website it just think computers that org and then you can see on the screen there it just says podcast at the on the top menu, you can just go there on all of your just podcasting apps or websites. It’s just think computers all one word, and you should find this on. You know, we’re on iTunes and Google podcasts and everything like that.
Jim Collison [1:10:02]
What about the live? What about live show? What’s the easiest way to get you guys live?
Bob Buskirk [1:10:06]
Just on the page? our YouTube page, if you subscribe to our YouTube, we go live every Wednesday night as you said, so
Jim Collison [1:10:16]
do you have Do you have youtube.com slash? I think
Bob Buskirk [1:10:19]
it’s I couldn’t get through computers I think it’s think computers one.
Bob Buskirk [1:10:23]
Number one really sure. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I hope it doesn’t go to a bad site now.
Bob Buskirk [1:10:30]
Yeah.
Jim Collison [1:10:33]
Yes job. And you’d want to subscribe over there. When you go over there and get that done. Apparently I hadn’t subscribed so we’ll get that done. And you want to subscribe over I thought I’ve been getting notifications from you guys when
Bob Buskirk [1:10:44]
I think you’re subscribed to my personal YouTube. Okay,
Jim Collison [1:10:48]
okay. And okay, and does it go does it do I get the notifications there too, or maybe when you know that,
Bob Buskirk [1:10:53]
that’s just so you just have like, I have my own YouTube or I’d like to talk about traveling and stuff like that. You know, I don’t know if you want to subscribe to that one. But But yeah, so our podcast is obviously very enthusiast and gaming focus. We usually do on the website, we usually do two to three reviews a week. So we talk about those reviews and then our website also covers news. So any of the you know, tech news that’s going on that week we’ll talk about as well.
Jim Collison [1:11:21]
Yeah, I see it subscribe down here. Yeah, that one up there. Okay, so yeah, so yeah, you guys. So think about what we do here on Home Gadget Geeks except it’s really kind of gaming gaming rig high end focus. Yeah, we
Bob Buskirk [1:11:36]
you know, we start the review Off we go over our that week’s reviews right we kind of give a recap of what we’ve looked at and then kind of the news stories of the week. You know, what’s coming up what are the new rumors? A so and so found a leak on the CPU or here’s, you know, the latest financial call from who was it, that we AMD MDS financial calls, right. We’ll talk about that kind of stuff, talking about what we’ve got coming up in the next week. reviews to look forward to. And then kind of like a review of page two anything tech related over the week, you know, yeah, I put in this cooler or I play this new game just kind of casual there.
Jim Collison [1:12:11]
Okay, quick lightning round. As we kind of wrap this up. Ryan, I’ll start with you one thing that you’re looking out into the future, maybe it’s coming up on a review or maybe not that you’re super excited about.
Bob Buskirk [1:12:22]
I’m excited to put this cooler into my test rig. I’ve got that in z, z, cracking z 73 here, I kind of mentioned it earlier, have the screen on the pump housing so I can customize that. So I’m really kind of looking forward to putting that together. Also, I’m kind of planning to do a full custom hard tubing water cooling build in my main rig, not in my my testing system, but in my main rig right, I have a really nice case that I like, I just want to kind of showcase all of that. So that’s it. Those are the things I’m looking forward to. Alright, Bob, what about you?
Bob Buskirk [1:12:55]
Um, as far as reviews, I got a I have a new case that came in that we saw it See, it is this I mean, it looks it’s like this crazy. It looks like a transformer. And it’s very high in case I think the case itself is $500. And I was actually surprised the company was going to send it because some of that stuff usually only goes out to a few people, but we were lucky enough to get it in. So I’m really excited for that. It’s called the T wings. And it’s from a company called FX f SP. So I’m really excited for that. And then future stuff. I will be so just like how you said, you were thinking about doing you know, redoing your podcasting brain. My main gaming and video editing and podcasting rig is just like the sides open right now and one of the fans doesn’t work and I’m going to be upgrading that I already have a case and I have all these parts ready to go into it. It’s a high end desktop build, it’s going to I’m upgrading from 16 gigabytes of RAM 264 like it’s gonna be it’s gonna Have a ton of RGB lights in there. I’m putting seven of those fans that have 36 RGB lights each in in there and I’m hooking it all up and be all be able to control via software. So I’m really excited to do that. I haven’t had time to rip this all apart and do that. I’ll be doing that soon. So maybe just put a cube put up cam a webcam on the on the build. And
Jim Collison [1:14:22]
yeah, I’m not on Twitch right.
Bob Buskirk [1:14:24]
Yeah, we will be doing a video like I so once a week, I try to make an actual video for YouTube. So we’ll definitely be doing a video on that. So I’m pretty excited for that as well. Yeah, yeah.
Jim Collison [1:14:38]
It’s sick when you start thinking about like, Am I What can I stream on Twitch? Yeah, you know, what’s gonna be what’s that thing? And it’s, you know, twitch has gotten kind of weird in some ways. I mean, there’s still a lot of gaming that goes on out there. Yeah, there’s a lot of strange. There’s a lot of strange streaming that’s going on out there as well. So if you haven’t again, think computers.org just remember that head out there. And they get subscribe, watch him on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast. Get caught up on Wednesday nights. That’s a great time you guys are are slowly becoming my Wednesday night kind of background and
Bob Buskirk [1:15:12]
we’re gonna take we’re gonna convert you to a gamer.
Jim Collison [1:15:18]
Usually I might be okay, but this I you know, it’s funny I gained with my kids when this would have been early geez 297 98 we make a lot of Command and Conquer and I put in a network. I had three PCs at the time I was dirt poor, but somehow I had three PCs. And we networked them. And then we would play in the network version of command conquer and we played a lot of games and the kids started playing more and more. I just played less and less. And I just, I think after a while you drop out a little bit and then you’re like, it’s so hard to get back into today’s games. Like, if you haven’t been gaming and you just start and you start playing the The real games right for night and you know that group. Um, it’s hard. Like, I’m not that good at it. And I had
Bob Buskirk [1:16:08]
the same thing. So I mean, I I run thing computers as a full time business. So finding the time to game instead of working on my business. Yeah, you know, but and the thing is I hadn’t played games, you know, I play a game every once in a while, but not really. But I’ve gotten back in this past year, I think probably because of apex. Oh, no, we put it kind of as work since we’re going to stream it now. It kind of allows me to gain more but it does take a while to get back in I think I think you just need a lot of time to really devote to playing these games, which,
Bob Buskirk [1:16:44]
you know, it’s hard for so complex to write so many things that like you go from Mario and the NES of having two buttons and the D pad and then you know, you got your SNS and we’ve added more gate buttons and now like fortnight’s not just a first person or third person shooter. It’s like I got to build now and I gotta be able to build better than the other guy. And so, yeah, I can definitely see that learning curve. I have five kids and maybe life was just complicated
Jim Collison [1:17:10]
for me, you know, I just never got into it. I even bought an Xbox, you know, you did good. And I bought it for a while, right? I did. I did play some Forza for a while and then I just was like, you know, it was just I don’t know, I I found myself watching YouTube and taking a nap as opposed to gaming and maybe it’s just maybe it’s my age and whatever. But but good good for you guys for really being in a space. It is one. It’s a it’s like, like what we do on the server and storage side. It’s a pretty tight niche right now, right? I mean, I think you got some, there’s a lot of gamers, but a lot of gamers who are doing their own builds like this has got to be a pretty nice, pretty tight niche, which I think makes you guys very valuable to the companies that are selling these things right and because they Gotta get the right people to be able to have the right influence to be able to do the reviews to be able to understand it. And that’s just not everybody. And you guys seem like you’ve got that nailed down really well. So good job. Awesome. Thank you, Jeff on that as well. You guys hang tight for just one second. Let me let me close things. We’ll do a little bit of post show. If anybody’s got any additional questions, I will remind everybody and say thanks to our Patreon subscribers, are you guys? Are you getting us to Patreon you have never got into the Patreon never got into that into that space. So it’s all it’s all funded, like commercial funded. to Bob to put it together, folks paying you for sponsorship type stuff. Yeah, this is how you do it. So well, we thank our Patreon subscribers, they help kind of pay the bills when it comes down to the things like our mobile app. And so that’s not free every year. And so we appreciate that if you want to support the show in what we do here, head out to the average guy.tv slash Patreon. If you want to join us in discord, the average guy TV slash discord if you want to join some face For the average guy that TV slash Facebook, you see the pattern there. It’s, it makes sense. You should be able to get us over there. You want to see me send me an email and many of you do and I appreciate those emails. Just if you want to shoot the you know shoot the stuff, you can send me an email Jim at the average guy.tv check me out on Twitter at Jay Collison. Some of you and actually Twitter’s picked up. Do you guys do much on Twitter? Do you find that to be a pretty good I think there’s a there’s great conversations on Twitter,
Bob Buskirk [1:19:25]
I just have I don’t get enough time or have the ability to really take a look at it during the day at work. So I’m, I’m not on there as much as I wish I could be. And then at nighttime, it slows down and the folks that are having the conversations during the day that I do want to participate in. I just stay out of them because that’s all news, right?
Jim Collison [1:19:45]
Yeah, I don’t know. I’m finding it’s picking back up again. Bob, you’re Bob TV. That’s pretty easy to read. Yeah, over there. Ryan, you’re just writing kershner. So that’s pretty easy for the two of you. If you want to follow those guys over there. I’m actually finding Twitter to be a much more friendly place than it’s ever been.
Bob Buskirk [1:20:00]
I would agree, I think it’s gone through like a transformation because that’s where everybody was when Twitter first started. And then it kind of just like, with Facebook getting more popular was on Facebook. I think a lot more people are going back on Twitter. Yeah. Because I think that’s where like, you kind of make the separation because everybody has Facebook now. But not everybody has Twitter. So you get kind of like, especially like in our, you know, computer enthusiasts world, you get like the smart people on there and the people that would actually want to help I see so many people on Twitter actually helping each other which is nice.
Jim Collison [1:20:32]
Yeah, no, I think it’s kind of reinvented itself in a lot of ways. Yeah, I’m enjoying my time on Twitter. Many of you guys listening right now. I think Tony and others Joe, who are doing some live tweeting during the show and such I always appreciate that. So if you haven’t joined us on Twitter at Jay Coulson, you can do that as well. And in I don’t Well, I tweet the show as we post it out, but we’d love to talk to you out there as well. Don’t forget the average guy TV platform both web and media hosting powered by Maple Grove partners. Get secure, reliable, high speed hosting from people that you know and you trust. And of course, that’s Christian plans start as little as $10 a month for pretty great hosting both web and media if you want to do it that way. Maple Grove partners.com thanks to Christian and congratulations on Christians getting married this summer. And so we’ll be heading out that way to get that done as well. You can also don’t forget, listen to us on the mobile app. It’s best way to listen on the road and a great way to get it done. And we appreciate you doing that as well. We are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern Big thanks to icy dock and they’re kind of the focus on icy dock for the month of March. We’ll be back next Thursday, Mike is back and we’re going to spend some time talking about gear again, and we’d like to have you join us 8pm Central nine Eastern out here at the average guy.com slash live. Stay around if you’re listening live for a little bit of post show. With that we’ll say goodnight
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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