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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Linus Tech Tips
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I bet an actual ethical review would probably kill the company as much as Linus's video. At the end of the day, I agree with Linus's assessment (minus his hysterics). This thing is over $800. It could be half the price and still be a terrible option. In a way, the video was kinda like those "i made a wish pc" videos where they lampoon a product or an entire company. And LMG makes a ton of those videos.
It's basically sharing a heatsink between the GPU and CPU. There's not much reason to do that even in SFF pcs because the biggest part of the water cooling system is the radiator. And I think this wouldn't work in many sff cases anyway because they tend to be sandwich oriented, using risers to mount the gpu on the other side of the mobo.
I think that may be what linus meant about "reading the room". I think the tone with the video was one of a real review but the content matched more of their videos where they buy dumb garbage online. I'm not excusing it at all and lmg definitely deserve the negative publicity.
But at the end of the day Linus was kinda right, there's no cooling solution worth it at that price point and it is in fact a bad product regardless of how well it cools your card. You can buy a brand new intel 13900k and have over $200 left over
Yet there will still be people that will want the best of the best cooling regardless of how overpriced it is. As ridiculous as it is, he should have given it a fair chance.
LTT prides itself on reliability of testing and so when they aren't willing to go the extra mile to do it correctly, it upsets people. No matter how ridiculous the product is.
Products that are obviously scams or ewaste don't need the full testing treatment, but this is a real product that has a real use for those that have desire for it.
Ultimately it hurts a small company's reputation when they didn't deserve it.
Now you (and GN) have to decide... Either Linus is supposed to give his take and opinion on items they review without any regard to relationships or are they supposed to give this product preferential treatment because of who produced it?
While GN is certainly right in several points (and LMGs selling of the prototype was a really bad oversight for which they need to pay), Linus take from "no cooling performance is worth it at this price point and nobody should buy this) is his opinion and it is not without reason or logic. And GN tells him 5 minutes earlier to do exactly that - give his opinion and take without regard to others, the community or the producers of the products in the name of "journalistic integrity".
it's just not coherent.
when Nvidia releases a new Titan6001 (or whatever) his opinion is usually something like "(massively) overpriced, but the best performance out there", usually without even offering better bang for your buck options.
This is the dumbest take I've read so far. It's not about whether the product is worth it or not... that doesn't play into this whatsofuckingever.
It makes sense if you hold them to high journalistic standards for the wish.com pc builds, fake knockoffs, and I bought 10 stupid things from Amazon and we’re gonna make fun of them videos as well. I watched the video yesterday to see what it was about and the tone is about the same, it was a foregone conclusion that the price was ridiculous and the item would never be worth your money and they were not really going to give it a real rigorous evaluation. I don’t care if you defend folks who spend $8 million on stupid shit because they have more money than sense. That’s not someone I care enough about to defend, but those are the only people that would even think about buying this thing. I’m not a LTT fanboy. The GN video was really good and I hope LTT improves significantly in many ways. Selling the prototype was extremely shitty. But to say this isn’t about whether the product is worth it is a stupid take in and of itself. The value proposition of the product isn’t changed by the way LTT did them dirty. And that was the point I was making originally. I am definitely not contesting that LTT did them dirty, and then lied about it several times, nor am I stating that LTT is the paragon of hardware reviews. I simply stated that with regard to all that, I agree with Linus’s conclusion completely.
I'm going to quote another user's comment on this to show this does have a market and the founders were honest about it:
It's not for you to decide on if someone else should buy it. End of fucking story. I can guarantee you have bought some things that I would deem to be stupid, and not having a positive expected value too. People spend money on whatever the fuck they like, some douchebag named Linus tripling down on his incompetent review is the problem here... again, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the product is overpriced to you or to the general consumer. That doesn't fucking matter.
I'm into tools, I work on all my own vehicles and have a shop. I have bought a gold plated ratchet, I paid twice as much for it over the same thing with normal chrome plating. It's a showpiece. That's what this is. And it's function deserves to be reviewed accurately, or not at all.
Like I said, I'm not invested enough in rich people who buy dumb shit to defend them online. I just don't care, and I don't care if all content online doesn't cater to them, as you seem to suggest. You seem to suggest some kind of violence even, in not catering to idiots with too much money and time. Sorry man, but no, that's no the "hot take" you think it is. LTT and Billet labs can be dumb simultaneously.
wtf does this even mean. this sounds like the kinda shit someone who buys a gold plated ratchet would say
Yeah? Where? You're fucking delusional.
Does every single item in your house serve a practical purpose and you have nothing that serves aesthetically? And also, you have never paid more for one item over another because it provides better aesthetics? Do you not have hobbies? I guarantee I could take one look through your house and point out much dumber shit you have bought in a matter of two minutes. You're a moron, with dumb takes.
Also, the tools I've bought over the years have saved me literal thousands of dollars and have given me skills and experience that you can't buy... so paying another $20 for a gold plated ratchet is a problem to you? Spoken like someone with no life skills, and no money.
It does make one think, if the block was only compatible with such a specific configuration and a fraction of a niche market, what was the intention of shipping a prototype for review?
The only thing I can think of is brand exposure, but even then not many people would have been able to purchase anything. While Linus shouldn't have handled it the way he did, it does also put into question Billet's strategy in the first place..
Yeah sure Billet Labs is at fault here... Even if their strategy was idiotic what does that have to do with anything? That doesn't mean they deserve this.
You send a prototype like this out to a big outlet like LTT at least for two reasons: get outside expert feedback (which they obviously failed miserably at, I don't expect other small brands trust LTT with their in-development products) and garner interest in the product and the brand. For smaller companies this kind of coverage is critical because they don't have unlimited marketing budgets like the big brands do.
Certainly not implying that they deserve this treatment at all (no one does, and LMG has no excuse for it).
And again, there's no cookie cutter ways to running a business. It's purely on one's risk vs benefits appetite. I personally wouldn't risk delivering a prototype for review until a production-ready product is available, especially to a volatile media group like LMG (maybe GN or L1Tech). But then again, I'm not running the business 🤷
Would they or should they have known that? Before all this I would've assumed LMG to be trustworthy, especially since "prototype" means it's at least super rare if not one of a kind, and with that kind of baggage you would've assumed that people understand that it should be handled with care, especially when you don't own it.
I guess one thing Billet Labs failed on is to have an agreement before sending the product, which I assume (don't know) to be standard practice in cases like this.
But originally I was just trying to call out your whataboutism, since it doesn't really have anything to do with how it was handled on LMG's end.
It was absolutely not my intention to detract fault from LMG and shift blame to Billet. LMG needs to take accountability for the faults in its process (which I'll touch on in a sec). My intention was to understand the full context of the situation, and understand Billet's reasoning for taking those risks, not to deflect nor "whataboutism".
That aside, this demonstrates a clear gap in policy on how to handle prototype products on LMG side (among other major major policy gaps in logistics, finance, HR, production).
As you pointed out, Billet (and LMG) should have had written agreements, which shows gaps in policy on both ends. But Billet is a startup, LMG is not, and I would expect LMG to demonstrate more policy maturity than what they have shown at this stage.
Yeah we can agree they both could've done better. A lesson learned for the smaller startup at least I believe. And for me if I ever happen to be in a similar situation.
I came on you too harshly, these threads tend to drift always at least a bit off topic which I here interpreted as malicious even though it wasn't. I apologize.
Don't apologize, I fully get where you're coming from. It's part of the nature of socialization on forums :). I've been guilty of the same thing, especially on Reddit.
However, what I appreciate about Lemmy is that, with a smaller community, we can have better conversations and these threads don't completely explode into subthreads of miscommunication and get amplified the way Reddit threads do. Thanks for sharing your perspective!