The Science of Case Testing: A Cautionary Tale for Tower Cooler Enthusiasts

As anyone who has ever delved into the world of computer hardware knows, case testing can be a minefield of variables and uncertainties. With so many different components at play, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of trying new things and not always think through the potential consequences. One area where this is particularly true is with tower coolers and their placement within the case.

Some users have noted that running fans on the top of a large Tower air cooler can cause issues with airflow and cooling performance. To explore this phenomenon, let's take a closer look at the design of our current system: a fractal design with three 140mm intake fans and one 140mm exhaust fan.

In terms of placement, there are several factors to consider when it comes to optimizing airflow within a case. The position of the top vent is crucial, as it can either help or hinder cooling performance depending on its orientation relative to the CPU cooler. If the top vent is set as intake, it's possible that it may be stealing air away from the cooler before it even has a chance to make use of it. Conversely, if the top vent is set as exhaust, it may actually improve cooling performance by pushing hot air out of the case.

However, in some cases, having an exhaust fan at the top can actually be detrimental to CPU cooling performance. When the exhaust fan blows air directly behind the cooler, it can create a pressure difference that reduces airflow into the cooler. This is especially true if the exhaust fan is running at high RPMs or creating significant backpressure.

On the other hand, if you're looking to optimize airflow within your case, positioning an exhaust fan in front of the CPU cooler may be beneficial. By doing so, it allows the cool air to flow directly into the cooler without being diverted away by an exhaust fan at the top. However, this depends on a number of factors, including the specific design of the case and the placement of other fans.

One thing that's clear is that case testing can be notoriously unreliable, especially when it comes to optimizing airflow within a system. With so many variables at play, it's easy to get caught up in trial and error rather than taking a more scientific approach.

To mitigate this issue, some manufacturers are starting to use more sophisticated testing methods to optimize their products' performance. However, for enthusiasts who prefer to experiment with different configurations themselves, it's still important to be aware of the potential pitfalls and take steps to minimize any negative effects on cooling performance.

In terms of specific designs or configurations, the key is to carefully consider the placement of each fan and its impact on airflow within the case. By taking a thoughtful and deliberate approach to system design, enthusiasts can minimize any potential issues with tower coolers and optimize their performance.

Ultimately, whether you're looking to improve cooling performance or simply trying out new designs, it's essential to approach case testing with a critical eye. By being aware of the potential pitfalls and taking steps to mitigate them, you can create systems that perform at their best – even if they don't always follow traditional design principles.

In recent times, there have been some interesting discussions about mining video cards in relation to GPU inventory management. According to one independent channel, it's generally not worth dedicating your entire inventory to mining and instead should be focused on running business as usual.

The main reason for this is the significant amount of resources required to mine effectively. While it may seem appealing to put your GPU inventory to use in a lucrative venture like cryptocurrency mining, the reality is that it can take a toll on company resources and expenses. When you consider the costs associated with maintaining a stable operation, including things like bench space, power supplies, and product testing, the benefits of mining are often outweighed by these expenses.

Of course, this doesn't mean that companies shouldn't explore alternative revenue streams – but rather that they should do so in a way that makes sense for their business model. By focusing on established revenue streams like product review and advertising, businesses can generate consistent income without putting themselves at risk due to experimental ventures.

In the case of our own channel, we've found that dedicating resources to more tried-and-true methods has been far more profitable in the long run. By focusing on high-quality content creation and reviewing a wide range of products, we're able to generate revenue through advertising without putting ourselves at risk due to experimentation.

Ultimately, whether you're an enthusiast or a business owner, it's essential to approach GPU inventory management with caution and consider your options carefully. While mining may seem like an attractive idea, the potential risks and expenses should not be underestimated – especially when compared to more established revenue streams.

When it comes to understanding how manufacturers feel about mining video cards, one independent channel reported that the response was overwhelmingly negative. According to the author, the primary reason for this is that even with a robust GPU inventory, companies make significantly more money running their business as usual rather than dedicating resources to mining.

While some may argue that the benefits of cryptocurrency mining outweigh the risks and expenses, it's essential to consider the broader context and long-term implications. By taking a careful and informed approach to your company's strategy and resource allocation, you can avoid potential pitfalls and create sustainable revenue streams that benefit everyone involved.

In conclusion, while case testing can be an exciting and creative process, it's essential to approach it with caution and consideration for the potential risks and consequences. By understanding the factors at play and taking steps to minimize any negative effects on cooling performance or GPU inventory management, enthusiasts and businesses alike can create systems that perform at their best – even if they don't always follow traditional design principles.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone welcome back to another episode of asgn if you have questions for the next one leave them in the comments section below or you can join our patreon Discord by going to patreon.com Gamers Nexus and posting a question in the ask genn section before getting to some of the discussion and uh questions for this week we have another gift to open from NZXT who have contributed such things as the puck or the puck or there's there's more of them but you get the idea they send a lot of these so uh the newest gift says uh on the back it's a shirt on the back it says NZXT with their new logo I guess their new font and on the front it is a reference to a clip when we were in the Taiwan uh digital Marketplace when a friend of the site came by and said to us Gamers we were just watching your video and that clip by the way a lot of people in the comments for that video that was for the digital Marketplace Vlog a lot of people didn't get that that guy even though we had a subtitle for it is actually a friend of the site and he was just screwing around with us and everyone speaks another language around you so you hear someone yell something in English it's already enough of a catch and then they say something like Gamer's Nexus and you're like whoa so it was a good attemp grab but no he he actually was not just a random jerk but yeah they sent us this so uh thank you ndxt for the thermal paste cleaning rag we put good use to it I have a lot of CPUs and gpus that really need to get a good scrub so I'm planning on soaking this and alcohol uh and then using it to clean things off and I probably burn pretty well after that too so thank you for the shirt though I really appreciate it uh and before anyone freaks out and thinks that NXT is being really rude it's just playful human but thank you that's that's pretty cool so uh that is the gift and then before we get to the rest of it this content is brought to you by EVGA and their CLC kit you can buy one of the EVGA hybrid kits to convert one of your 10 series video cards into a liquid cooled card as we've done a dozen times by now if you're curious to learn more click the link in the description below so the first thing I wanted to show off just briefly for stuff that is to come we just got this in as an ordered last night and had it one day shipped uh so this is going to allow us to clamp current so it's a current clamp we can actually now take more accurate power readings of what's going on uh for example through EPS 12vt cables so we'll be able to clamp those and have a full video on it at some point uh be able to get more accurate readings for the power draw rather than just straight from the wall and that will allow us to see how much power exactly is going through something like a vrm for an x299 motherboard which is a Hot Topic right now this was a good reason to get into more accurate power readings because really there's a lot to discuss with x299 and that leads into the next topic which is Rush launches so before we get into the questions again kind of frontloading these with discussions lately rushed launches x299 was certainly rushed there is is clear as day that the motherboard vendors didn't have enough time almost just like ryzen really they all kind of complained to us they didn't have enough time and the CPUs didn't really have enough time to get information out there technically as to what they're supposed to do who they're supposed to Target how they're supposed to work and there were a couple problems now they're not the worst CPUs ever don't don't take it out of uh out of bounds but I the 7900x is still a damn good CPU but there's a whole we have a whole big review on that talking about all of its ups and downs like thermals and power and on the upside the insane multi-threading capabilities because 20 threads of course it's going to do well in multi-threaded tasks but that's not without its downside the point though to address here rather than just re-review the entire chip which if you want to uh get in more depth on either of those points look at the review and argue with us in those comments because not this isn't the place for that um the point is Rush launches are a bit of a trend right now Vega is another one so AMD said they would ship Vega in quarter two and they did it they shipped it about a day or two before the end of the quarter just like a paper written an hour before due date and it shows Vega is not the worst thing to ever happen either same thing as Intel's x299 they both have their ups and downs Vega's Downs right now are largely relegated to the obvious rushed aspects things like driver stability and things like functional software like radon settings or uh even just general marketing and that's the point I want to mention here so uh the card as people keep copying and pasting at the comment forms is not a gaming card card we spent 5 minutes discussing that in the Vega Fe review but the thing to talk about here is that when you generally have a not a gaming card you brand it something differently and AMD has done something very interesting that with Vega they liked the architecture name so much as they've said that they took the name Vega and they applied it to the video card series whereas normally you have Polaris and you have RX series cards they weren't RX Polaris they were RX 400 RX 500 and so on uh but this is rx Vega or Vega Fe both have Vega in the name and this is where it seems like an uphill battle that AMD has created for themselves for marketing where Vega Frontier Edition is because it leads the RX Vega launch is going to kill some of the search potential for RX Vega because you now have people looking up Vega and what's going to come up Vega Fe will come up unless it's launched they have ARX Vega in which case Google will prioritize prioritize those reviews but Vega Fe will come up and if people aren't informed and don't understand where that card is marketed it will reflect negatively on Vega as a whole even if it's not meant to be marketed to those searching users maybe Gamers for example because it's going to come up with bad gaming performance compared to the price and even if it's not meant for gaming that's what they're going to be faced with so you've got one good shot to launch new products and after that point the people who are not day-to-day enthusiasts like most of you don't necessarily keep up with this stuff so they see Vega Fe and they already have an opinion out of where it sits and that's why we spent five minutes talking about what the card is for in the review but uh another Point here the interesting aspect is that the high-end card is Vega Vega Fe the gaming high-end card is rx Vega and presumably other cards will be Vega variant names as well so there's a chance for confusion you lose some of the halo effect marketing whether it deserves it or not of something like Titan I own a Titan everyone knows where that sits on the stack but if you own Vega that doesn't really necessarily mean anything once the other vega cards come out uh so you lose some marketing potential there and then Andy also has a history of changing their names and losing some of the uh we'll call it momentum for known nomenclatures like the R9 series The R S Series which superseded the HD series I believe they were called hd7 th000 for example Series so they have a history of changing the names this time it's just a weird change and the only point of this kind of discussion uh offshoot is to say that the the naming is going to hurt the product marketing overall because Vega Fe will be attached to RX Vega whereas something like Titan XP is kind of distant from GTX even though like many of the other sites when we reviewed it we said this is not a good buy for gaming because it's just it's way too expensive you could buy a 1080 TI and have basically the same performance but that card is at least distant by name and branding whereas Vega Fe is kind of the same boat in terms of naming so there's going to be an uphill battle a hill that AMD has built themselves of trying to claw back an understanding of product positioning for RX Vega versus Vega Fe that's really the only point of bring this up and I bring it up because there were a lot of questions we had that were like we posted that Vega content and people were saying wait Vega launched what like and the reason that people didn't hear about it launching is cuz it wasn't marketed to them it wasn't marketed to Gamers so there's this confusion of like wait a minute this is out um and that's because RX Vega comes later but it has the same name hence the confusion whereas if it were uh if a Quadro card launches you don't really have confusion in the gaming Market or if a fire Pro card launches or WX as they call it now same thing the gaming buyers don't say wait a minute that launched um because it's not relevant to them so very interesting choices on amd's part we'll see how RX Vega plays out no commentary on performance there yet we just we don't have it so there's no point in speculating as we've said since the review of Vega Fe but we do have more comment content on Vega coming up with the Fe card including the rest of the uh thermal results from the hybrid mod okay so enough of that we'll talk more of that with the content on Vega as it continues with the actual product first question is from Travelin travel en who posted on I believe uh YouTube oh no this this was either YouTube or Discord but the question was asked Gan curious if you're using liquid metal delting the CPU or on a GPU would it be okay to use a thin thermal pad around to keep it in keep it contained the liquid metal that is as long as it's not thicker than the D itself so if basically the question here is if you're applying liquid metal which is liquidy as the name suggests uh to the surface of a die how do you contain it from spilling over onto the substrate and the answer is just apply a really thin layer and then if you're still concerned you can use tape I wouldn't use thermal pads for this but if you're concerned you could tape off the uh substrate portion with something like masking tape or electrical tape and um spread your liquid metal on it if there is overspill then you can just pull the tape off what I would recommend is before going even that far play around first with a an analog for the CPU so rather than just going straight to applying liquid metal onto the thing that you care about just apply it on some other non-important plastic surface maybe so you can get a feel for how it spreads and how much you need to cover that surface and then go from there because uh that'll give you an idea of of how much is required next question JL rockefella says I've been watching I've been watching Silicon Valley lately and even in there they are making fun of people who got duped into buying VR what happened to all the hype this is the same as the whole 3D bubble I'm not up to speed on the fourth season but uh I do know what you're talking about so VR we had two opinion pieces on VR before getting into the objective benchmarks the first one was this thing is really cool that was when valve showed it off at the steam booth at GDC two or three years ago it was the first time I played around with anything like that so that it was a really cool experience but it was an experience it wasn't a gaming experience like actually playing a video game it was just a cool thing to do once and then after that all the booths we went to for the previous two years everyone was asking do you want to try our VR whatever and the answer was always no no I don't want to try it I want to talk to you and understand the product I don't want to put the thing on and then that's my 30 minutes at the booth that's it takes too long uh and we didn't get the information so um the next content piece we produced after more time with VR after doing some of those was uh do don't buy don't be a first gen adopter and that video got a lot of people really upset who were early adopters of VR because I was basically saying in an opinion format uh this thing isn't ready wait for second generation let's see how it goes um and some people didn't like that and that's fine but it was an opinion piece so deal with it I don't know um so all that to say that what happened to VR well a lot of the points we made in that video were price still expensive that instantly puts a lot of people off buying uh and then the bigger problem I think and this is opinion territory it's okay if you disagree with me and I might disagree with you but it's opinion territory this isn't like an objective test the thing with VR I think is that there is a lack of really uh mechanically driven games there are a couple good ones Elite dangerous is more of a traditional game but you can play it in VR The Mechanics Work pretty well uh another game would be the what is it Robo Rally or something like that um some of those games are okay as well raw data is pretty cool but developers are still learning how to build for this new type of input a new type of output and until there's a turning point where they really understand how to build a game that's not a wave shooter and not a traditional game that just happens to use a different form of monitor then maybe there will be more adoption but right now there aren't enough applications out there for people who don't are not loaded with money to pick up VR that's kind of what I think is happening and as far as the hype you had companies like all of them really AMD Nvidia Intel all the big three have been and continue to push VR because it's such a stressful application that if they can slap a sticker on their box that says we can play We're VR ready then they think it sells more units so of course there's all your hype right there and it starts bubbling away because there's just not a ton of adoption it's still doing quite well don't get me wrong uh the VR Market is okay right now but you're not hearing about it as much because these three big companies already made their push and now they're in the wait and see territory um so I think that's what happened to a lot of it is it was a huge marketing push everyone wanted to make a buck off a VR and the adoption wasn't instant because even though it's really cool there's not a strong enough draw from a uh a mechanical perspective to draw those types of players and there's not a strong enough draw from a financial perspective to draw on the people who are more budget conscious because they just don't have the money or the physical space to set up VR and get the full experience um so you have all these companies who were trying to make the money marketing and then they just I mean the the marketing funds were spent and so you're not hearing about it as much that's not to say VR is dead uh we still test it it's still an interesting application to test and Benchmark but it's also I I would agree with you that yes the marketing hype has slowed down and that's because it's shipped uh it's a thingin now people can buy it and the companies don't really I spent all their marketing money so I think that kind of answers part of that question but some of that's opinion take it for what you will uh you don't have to agree with it that's fine it's not going to hurt my feelings all right so next topic gets uh back to more objective stuff and easy to answer things that are straightforward and not just opinion on how the state of VR is uh which I know is going to be a bit touchy for some people but uh yeah again no commentary on how VR is doing in terms of market share or anything but that's what I think for in terms of adoption and that's the next one Mitchell jeo I don't know that's my best attempt says it's not a Hot Topic anymore but I've always wondered and never found an answer why does the overclocked r7700 perform nearly exactly the same as the overclocked 1800x and all tasks I know it's the same architecture and all but that's the point if both CPUs are the same and perform almost identically why would the more expensive one exist is there really no difference between the two uh what did Andy put in the 1800 act that made it more expensive but not better uh when overclocked I guess is the question we talk about this in the 1700 review so the 1700 review we basically said the 1800 Act is Superfluous uh if you're comfortable with overclocking which all of you really should be if you're an Enthusiast user and you're not like a business user where maybe you have warranty concerns or maybe just company policy is no overclocking we need stability but if you're an enthusiast our recommendation was basically get a 1700 and overclock it because of the same and so that is the answer to your question they're the same the product is the same the only difference between them is the uh 1800x ships with a higher clock out of the box than the 1 1700 so out of the box it'll perform better but if you can overclock it and you can uh if you overclock it to the same clock rate as 1800x they will perform the same assuming the testing is done correctly if you overclock it Beyond 1800 X it'll do better than the 1800x stock because not only is the architecture the same but the CCX are the same same course same threads same really everything except for clock rate out of box um so why should it exist well that's sort of what we said in the 1800x review uh and then later in the 1700 review there is a market for it people who don't have the uh corporate policy Headroom or who don't want to overclock for whatever reason I would rather spend $200 than spend 10 minutes minutes overclocking that is the audience it sells to but seriously it's like it's 10 minutes of work to get a basic overclock that's stable and then it's kind of fun to tune it anyway at that point and uh and optimize things so we would still recommend save the $200 put it towards anything else in the system and um and overclock is 1700 but yeah that's the answer to your question is there's no difference just out of clock out of box clocks um so I think that answers that one uh it is a bit too Pro Superfluous for our audience just because you're dealing with people who either know how to overclock or are willing to learn so why not um but yeah hopefully that answers that one the answer is there's no difference uh next question is pants are good says I recall that you mentioned top exhaust fans can cause issues with large Tower air coolers in some cases can you go into more detail on this possibly uh running a fractal design Define s with three 140 mm intake and one 140 mm exhaust and trying to figure out if I'm better with an additional exhaust at the top or not so that uh the comment I made is let's get this out of the way first case testing is the least scientific of all because there are eight different variables for Hardware seven or eight um that can influence the results that said if you're working with a tower cooler generally speaking in some cases and they are all different uh like the kubl 04 whatever it was we tested this on originally in some cases if you set the top as intake it's better if you set the top as exhaust it can be worse for CPU cooling than if you have no fans up there at all well no exhaust fans up there at all anyway and the reason for that is if you have the think of where the intake or the exhaust or whatever the ventilation port in the top of the case think of where that's located relative to the CPU tower cooler if it's in front of the cooler and it's exhaust what's happening is that sort of stealing air it comes in the front and gets stolen out the top by the exhaust fan before it ever makes its way to the tower cooler so that's what happens there bit different if you have a radiator but again it's the the least reliable testing of all just because there's so many variables everyone builds it a different way um but yeah it comes down to does the fan pull air away from the cooler before it makes it through the cooler if the exhaust is behind the cooler there's a better chance that it helps cu the cooler is pushing that air out and it's just getting either sucked out through the top or through the back um if you already have a back exhaust generally you're fine it just kind of depends on on what kind of RPMs you're running how much pressure you're pushing through those front fans um but that's the idea it's based it's just where is it positioned in the airflow channel to the cooler does it steal air from the cooler uh and that more or less answers it and then the last question was just kind of interesting so this was on the um how do manufacturers feel about mining video and the question is from zun algebra says GN as an independent channel is it more profitable to use all your GPU inventory in mining I mean according to what you earned from this channel uh the answer is no um a very definitive hard no because the thing is even with our G our GPU inventory we make more money running a business reviewing those products then could be you don't put a dent into company expenses by making a couple dollars per day off of video cards I played around with mining for a little bit to do that how do manufacturers feel about mining video it was a really brief thing uh to learn how it works and I mean from from a financial perspective absolutely not it's not worth it we tore it all down after learning how it works uh and and probably won't be pursuing it further um but uh that's because this is a business so those resources are already allocated to things the bench space we've got only so many spots for benches to be set up and if I can have it set up so that two benches are next to each other one does production tests and one does gaming tests and then the third bench does thermal tests I can just switch the card one two three and go through all the tests really quickly whereas if I've got a machine running mining on one of them first of all room ambient is way higher uh so that skes the the thermal test but more importantly now I have to tear down and rebuild benches so that I can make a few dollars per day um so no it doesn't make us more money to to mine with our video cards the the amount of expenses to run a business are so far beyond $8 a day or $6 per day per video card it's not even funny um so you're better off trying to use the space and the resources and the power and products like I mean it takes motherboards too and power supplies to actually review stuff that gets views which generates money through advertising than uh sitting in a corner for internet money basically that you hope will have value later um so that's my view on it but that's just I mean if you're a business is a lot different perspective as always so that's all for this time as always you can leave your questions in the comment section below for next time subscribe for more you can go to patreon.com Gamers Nexus to help us out directly and then Gamers nexus.net for the website stay tuned for more stuff this week and thank you for watching I'll see you all next time fck me fck youhey everyone welcome back to another episode of asgn if you have questions for the next one leave them in the comments section below or you can join our patreon Discord by going to patreon.com Gamers Nexus and posting a question in the ask genn section before getting to some of the discussion and uh questions for this week we have another gift to open from NZXT who have contributed such things as the puck or the puck or there's there's more of them but you get the idea they send a lot of these so uh the newest gift says uh on the back it's a shirt on the back it says NZXT with their new logo I guess their new font and on the front it is a reference to a clip when we were in the Taiwan uh digital Marketplace when a friend of the site came by and said to us Gamers we were just watching your video and that clip by the way a lot of people in the comments for that video that was for the digital Marketplace Vlog a lot of people didn't get that that guy even though we had a subtitle for it is actually a friend of the site and he was just screwing around with us and everyone speaks another language around you so you hear someone yell something in English it's already enough of a catch and then they say something like Gamer's Nexus and you're like whoa so it was a good attemp grab but no he he actually was not just a random jerk but yeah they sent us this so uh thank you ndxt for the thermal paste cleaning rag we put good use to it I have a lot of CPUs and gpus that really need to get a good scrub so I'm planning on soaking this and alcohol uh and then using it to clean things off and I probably burn pretty well after that too so thank you for the shirt though I really appreciate it uh and before anyone freaks out and thinks that NXT is being really rude it's just playful human but thank you that's that's pretty cool so uh that is the gift and then before we get to the rest of it this content is brought to you by EVGA and their CLC kit you can buy one of the EVGA hybrid kits to convert one of your 10 series video cards into a liquid cooled card as we've done a dozen times by now if you're curious to learn more click the link in the description below so the first thing I wanted to show off just briefly for stuff that is to come we just got this in as an ordered last night and had it one day shipped uh so this is going to allow us to clamp current so it's a current clamp we can actually now take more accurate power readings of what's going on uh for example through EPS 12vt cables so we'll be able to clamp those and have a full video on it at some point uh be able to get more accurate readings for the power draw rather than just straight from the wall and that will allow us to see how much power exactly is going through something like a vrm for an x299 motherboard which is a Hot Topic right now this was a good reason to get into more accurate power readings because really there's a lot to discuss with x299 and that leads into the next topic which is Rush launches so before we get into the questions again kind of frontloading these with discussions lately rushed launches x299 was certainly rushed there is is clear as day that the motherboard vendors didn't have enough time almost just like ryzen really they all kind of complained to us they didn't have enough time and the CPUs didn't really have enough time to get information out there technically as to what they're supposed to do who they're supposed to Target how they're supposed to work and there were a couple problems now they're not the worst CPUs ever don't don't take it out of uh out of bounds but I the 7900x is still a damn good CPU but there's a whole we have a whole big review on that talking about all of its ups and downs like thermals and power and on the upside the insane multi-threading capabilities because 20 threads of course it's going to do well in multi-threaded tasks but that's not without its downside the point though to address here rather than just re-review the entire chip which if you want to uh get in more depth on either of those points look at the review and argue with us in those comments because not this isn't the place for that um the point is Rush launches are a bit of a trend right now Vega is another one so AMD said they would ship Vega in quarter two and they did it they shipped it about a day or two before the end of the quarter just like a paper written an hour before due date and it shows Vega is not the worst thing to ever happen either same thing as Intel's x299 they both have their ups and downs Vega's Downs right now are largely relegated to the obvious rushed aspects things like driver stability and things like functional software like radon settings or uh even just general marketing and that's the point I want to mention here so uh the card as people keep copying and pasting at the comment forms is not a gaming card card we spent 5 minutes discussing that in the Vega Fe review but the thing to talk about here is that when you generally have a not a gaming card you brand it something differently and AMD has done something very interesting that with Vega they liked the architecture name so much as they've said that they took the name Vega and they applied it to the video card series whereas normally you have Polaris and you have RX series cards they weren't RX Polaris they were RX 400 RX 500 and so on uh but this is rx Vega or Vega Fe both have Vega in the name and this is where it seems like an uphill battle that AMD has created for themselves for marketing where Vega Frontier Edition is because it leads the RX Vega launch is going to kill some of the search potential for RX Vega because you now have people looking up Vega and what's going to come up Vega Fe will come up unless it's launched they have ARX Vega in which case Google will prioritize prioritize those reviews but Vega Fe will come up and if people aren't informed and don't understand where that card is marketed it will reflect negatively on Vega as a whole even if it's not meant to be marketed to those searching users maybe Gamers for example because it's going to come up with bad gaming performance compared to the price and even if it's not meant for gaming that's what they're going to be faced with so you've got one good shot to launch new products and after that point the people who are not day-to-day enthusiasts like most of you don't necessarily keep up with this stuff so they see Vega Fe and they already have an opinion out of where it sits and that's why we spent five minutes talking about what the card is for in the review but uh another Point here the interesting aspect is that the high-end card is Vega Vega Fe the gaming high-end card is rx Vega and presumably other cards will be Vega variant names as well so there's a chance for confusion you lose some of the halo effect marketing whether it deserves it or not of something like Titan I own a Titan everyone knows where that sits on the stack but if you own Vega that doesn't really necessarily mean anything once the other vega cards come out uh so you lose some marketing potential there and then Andy also has a history of changing their names and losing some of the uh we'll call it momentum for known nomenclatures like the R9 series The R S Series which superseded the HD series I believe they were called hd7 th000 for example Series so they have a history of changing the names this time it's just a weird change and the only point of this kind of discussion uh offshoot is to say that the the naming is going to hurt the product marketing overall because Vega Fe will be attached to RX Vega whereas something like Titan XP is kind of distant from GTX even though like many of the other sites when we reviewed it we said this is not a good buy for gaming because it's just it's way too expensive you could buy a 1080 TI and have basically the same performance but that card is at least distant by name and branding whereas Vega Fe is kind of the same boat in terms of naming so there's going to be an uphill battle a hill that AMD has built themselves of trying to claw back an understanding of product positioning for RX Vega versus Vega Fe that's really the only point of bring this up and I bring it up because there were a lot of questions we had that were like we posted that Vega content and people were saying wait Vega launched what like and the reason that people didn't hear about it launching is cuz it wasn't marketed to them it wasn't marketed to Gamers so there's this confusion of like wait a minute this is out um and that's because RX Vega comes later but it has the same name hence the confusion whereas if it were uh if a Quadro card launches you don't really have confusion in the gaming Market or if a fire Pro card launches or WX as they call it now same thing the gaming buyers don't say wait a minute that launched um because it's not relevant to them so very interesting choices on amd's part we'll see how RX Vega plays out no commentary on performance there yet we just we don't have it so there's no point in speculating as we've said since the review of Vega Fe but we do have more comment content on Vega coming up with the Fe card including the rest of the uh thermal results from the hybrid mod okay so enough of that we'll talk more of that with the content on Vega as it continues with the actual product first question is from Travelin travel en who posted on I believe uh YouTube oh no this this was either YouTube or Discord but the question was asked Gan curious if you're using liquid metal delting the CPU or on a GPU would it be okay to use a thin thermal pad around to keep it in keep it contained the liquid metal that is as long as it's not thicker than the D itself so if basically the question here is if you're applying liquid metal which is liquidy as the name suggests uh to the surface of a die how do you contain it from spilling over onto the substrate and the answer is just apply a really thin layer and then if you're still concerned you can use tape I wouldn't use thermal pads for this but if you're concerned you could tape off the uh substrate portion with something like masking tape or electrical tape and um spread your liquid metal on it if there is overspill then you can just pull the tape off what I would recommend is before going even that far play around first with a an analog for the CPU so rather than just going straight to applying liquid metal onto the thing that you care about just apply it on some other non-important plastic surface maybe so you can get a feel for how it spreads and how much you need to cover that surface and then go from there because uh that'll give you an idea of of how much is required next question JL rockefella says I've been watching I've been watching Silicon Valley lately and even in there they are making fun of people who got duped into buying VR what happened to all the hype this is the same as the whole 3D bubble I'm not up to speed on the fourth season but uh I do know what you're talking about so VR we had two opinion pieces on VR before getting into the objective benchmarks the first one was this thing is really cool that was when valve showed it off at the steam booth at GDC two or three years ago it was the first time I played around with anything like that so that it was a really cool experience but it was an experience it wasn't a gaming experience like actually playing a video game it was just a cool thing to do once and then after that all the booths we went to for the previous two years everyone was asking do you want to try our VR whatever and the answer was always no no I don't want to try it I want to talk to you and understand the product I don't want to put the thing on and then that's my 30 minutes at the booth that's it takes too long uh and we didn't get the information so um the next content piece we produced after more time with VR after doing some of those was uh do don't buy don't be a first gen adopter and that video got a lot of people really upset who were early adopters of VR because I was basically saying in an opinion format uh this thing isn't ready wait for second generation let's see how it goes um and some people didn't like that and that's fine but it was an opinion piece so deal with it I don't know um so all that to say that what happened to VR well a lot of the points we made in that video were price still expensive that instantly puts a lot of people off buying uh and then the bigger problem I think and this is opinion territory it's okay if you disagree with me and I might disagree with you but it's opinion territory this isn't like an objective test the thing with VR I think is that there is a lack of really uh mechanically driven games there are a couple good ones Elite dangerous is more of a traditional game but you can play it in VR The Mechanics Work pretty well uh another game would be the what is it Robo Rally or something like that um some of those games are okay as well raw data is pretty cool but developers are still learning how to build for this new type of input a new type of output and until there's a turning point where they really understand how to build a game that's not a wave shooter and not a traditional game that just happens to use a different form of monitor then maybe there will be more adoption but right now there aren't enough applications out there for people who don't are not loaded with money to pick up VR that's kind of what I think is happening and as far as the hype you had companies like all of them really AMD Nvidia Intel all the big three have been and continue to push VR because it's such a stressful application that if they can slap a sticker on their box that says we can play We're VR ready then they think it sells more units so of course there's all your hype right there and it starts bubbling away because there's just not a ton of adoption it's still doing quite well don't get me wrong uh the VR Market is okay right now but you're not hearing about it as much because these three big companies already made their push and now they're in the wait and see territory um so I think that's what happened to a lot of it is it was a huge marketing push everyone wanted to make a buck off a VR and the adoption wasn't instant because even though it's really cool there's not a strong enough draw from a uh a mechanical perspective to draw those types of players and there's not a strong enough draw from a financial perspective to draw on the people who are more budget conscious because they just don't have the money or the physical space to set up VR and get the full experience um so you have all these companies who were trying to make the money marketing and then they just I mean the the marketing funds were spent and so you're not hearing about it as much that's not to say VR is dead uh we still test it it's still an interesting application to test and Benchmark but it's also I I would agree with you that yes the marketing hype has slowed down and that's because it's shipped uh it's a thingin now people can buy it and the companies don't really I spent all their marketing money so I think that kind of answers part of that question but some of that's opinion take it for what you will uh you don't have to agree with it that's fine it's not going to hurt my feelings all right so next topic gets uh back to more objective stuff and easy to answer things that are straightforward and not just opinion on how the state of VR is uh which I know is going to be a bit touchy for some people but uh yeah again no commentary on how VR is doing in terms of market share or anything but that's what I think for in terms of adoption and that's the next one Mitchell jeo I don't know that's my best attempt says it's not a Hot Topic anymore but I've always wondered and never found an answer why does the overclocked r7700 perform nearly exactly the same as the overclocked 1800x and all tasks I know it's the same architecture and all but that's the point if both CPUs are the same and perform almost identically why would the more expensive one exist is there really no difference between the two uh what did Andy put in the 1800 act that made it more expensive but not better uh when overclocked I guess is the question we talk about this in the 1700 review so the 1700 review we basically said the 1800 Act is Superfluous uh if you're comfortable with overclocking which all of you really should be if you're an Enthusiast user and you're not like a business user where maybe you have warranty concerns or maybe just company policy is no overclocking we need stability but if you're an enthusiast our recommendation was basically get a 1700 and overclock it because of the same and so that is the answer to your question they're the same the product is the same the only difference between them is the uh 1800x ships with a higher clock out of the box than the 1 1700 so out of the box it'll perform better but if you can overclock it and you can uh if you overclock it to the same clock rate as 1800x they will perform the same assuming the testing is done correctly if you overclock it Beyond 1800 X it'll do better than the 1800x stock because not only is the architecture the same but the CCX are the same same course same threads same really everything except for clock rate out of box um so why should it exist well that's sort of what we said in the 1800x review uh and then later in the 1700 review there is a market for it people who don't have the uh corporate policy Headroom or who don't want to overclock for whatever reason I would rather spend $200 than spend 10 minutes minutes overclocking that is the audience it sells to but seriously it's like it's 10 minutes of work to get a basic overclock that's stable and then it's kind of fun to tune it anyway at that point and uh and optimize things so we would still recommend save the $200 put it towards anything else in the system and um and overclock is 1700 but yeah that's the answer to your question is there's no difference just out of clock out of box clocks um so I think that answers that one uh it is a bit too Pro Superfluous for our audience just because you're dealing with people who either know how to overclock or are willing to learn so why not um but yeah hopefully that answers that one the answer is there's no difference uh next question is pants are good says I recall that you mentioned top exhaust fans can cause issues with large Tower air coolers in some cases can you go into more detail on this possibly uh running a fractal design Define s with three 140 mm intake and one 140 mm exhaust and trying to figure out if I'm better with an additional exhaust at the top or not so that uh the comment I made is let's get this out of the way first case testing is the least scientific of all because there are eight different variables for Hardware seven or eight um that can influence the results that said if you're working with a tower cooler generally speaking in some cases and they are all different uh like the kubl 04 whatever it was we tested this on originally in some cases if you set the top as intake it's better if you set the top as exhaust it can be worse for CPU cooling than if you have no fans up there at all well no exhaust fans up there at all anyway and the reason for that is if you have the think of where the intake or the exhaust or whatever the ventilation port in the top of the case think of where that's located relative to the CPU tower cooler if it's in front of the cooler and it's exhaust what's happening is that sort of stealing air it comes in the front and gets stolen out the top by the exhaust fan before it ever makes its way to the tower cooler so that's what happens there bit different if you have a radiator but again it's the the least reliable testing of all just because there's so many variables everyone builds it a different way um but yeah it comes down to does the fan pull air away from the cooler before it makes it through the cooler if the exhaust is behind the cooler there's a better chance that it helps cu the cooler is pushing that air out and it's just getting either sucked out through the top or through the back um if you already have a back exhaust generally you're fine it just kind of depends on on what kind of RPMs you're running how much pressure you're pushing through those front fans um but that's the idea it's based it's just where is it positioned in the airflow channel to the cooler does it steal air from the cooler uh and that more or less answers it and then the last question was just kind of interesting so this was on the um how do manufacturers feel about mining video and the question is from zun algebra says GN as an independent channel is it more profitable to use all your GPU inventory in mining I mean according to what you earned from this channel uh the answer is no um a very definitive hard no because the thing is even with our G our GPU inventory we make more money running a business reviewing those products then could be you don't put a dent into company expenses by making a couple dollars per day off of video cards I played around with mining for a little bit to do that how do manufacturers feel about mining video it was a really brief thing uh to learn how it works and I mean from from a financial perspective absolutely not it's not worth it we tore it all down after learning how it works uh and and probably won't be pursuing it further um but uh that's because this is a business so those resources are already allocated to things the bench space we've got only so many spots for benches to be set up and if I can have it set up so that two benches are next to each other one does production tests and one does gaming tests and then the third bench does thermal tests I can just switch the card one two three and go through all the tests really quickly whereas if I've got a machine running mining on one of them first of all room ambient is way higher uh so that skes the the thermal test but more importantly now I have to tear down and rebuild benches so that I can make a few dollars per day um so no it doesn't make us more money to to mine with our video cards the the amount of expenses to run a business are so far beyond $8 a day or $6 per day per video card it's not even funny um so you're better off trying to use the space and the resources and the power and products like I mean it takes motherboards too and power supplies to actually review stuff that gets views which generates money through advertising than uh sitting in a corner for internet money basically that you hope will have value later um so that's my view on it but that's just I mean if you're a business is a lot different perspective as always so that's all for this time as always you can leave your questions in the comment section below for next time subscribe for more you can go to patreon.com Gamers Nexus to help us out directly and then Gamers nexus.net for the website stay tuned for more stuff this week and thank you for watching I'll see you all next time fck me fck you\n"