The_Q42

I don't think it was a BAD business decision, just a risky one. LMG is massive, and it's a good way to drum up interest in your product and potentially gain additional capital to keep afloat/build more stuff. It's totally valid, and they're not the only ones to do it. Their only mistake was to make the entirely reasonable assumption that LMG would use the product as intended, on the correct card that they took the time to send along with the block.

You're not getting it . . . that IS a valid comment (even though it lacks tangible and actionable criticism). Knowing that your audience is pissed is important, even if people are creating an account to basically say "fuck you" then disappear forever. I doubt people are taking the time to create 30 logins/email addresses just to post how mad they are, nor do I believe (reading through what I have) there is a coordinated effort to "take down the man," or anything similar. Even if there are people cranking out 30 logins, they're in the minority, and only a drop in the bucket vs the other discourse here. Also, this is all beside the point that LMG is handling this situation badly. This worry over disingenuous accounts is not really all that important, and I'm not sure why you're fixated on it.

I think the set of circumstances here is . . . unique-ish. LMG has massive power in this space, and could've done a lot to preempt GN's video and/or actively harm GN's business. I don't think LMG would DO that, but I also kinda get where GN is coming from here. Giving LMG a chance to rally its rather massive fanbase could've diluted what are genuine concerns. I'm not saying I AGREE, just that I get it. I think GN should've reached out at some point, but I'm not sure what the best approach would've been there as I'm not a journalist, nor am I a professional YouTuber trying to run a business.

What I'm saying is that you can't discount NEW accounts either because there aren't 1 - 10k comments per topic in the forums like there are for each video. Simply put: a MASSIVE part of the genuine community (that might actively contribute via YouTube content/comments) is just not represented here typically. Calling them out for signing into the ONLY place in which Linus responded is shitty. It's the only avenue they've been given to weigh in on this topic.

Sorry, but it sounds like you're making an awfully convenient excuse there. LMG is massive in this space, but this space is still fairly niche, and MOST people consume LMG content via YouTube. There is a ton of crossover between LMG viewers and GN viewers, and GN raised some really good points. People like me who HAVE posted here in the past (but only rarely) simply signed on to voice our concerns, which is valid and part of the reason this forum exists. I think you think people have more time to do crap like this than they actually have. There's also an interesting thing with this audience . . . I'd bet a lot of people are like me: extremely tech savvy, and not really in need of tech help. I keep up with tech news, and have a group of nerds that I regularly talk about it with in my own social circles. In other words, I don't feel the NEED to post here often, and I don't have the spare time to be an effective tech resource on this forum AND to my entire family AND in my professional life. In short: I'm a long-time fan that doesn't post often here. I DO care about LMG and want it to succeed. I'm disappointed in the response so far, and think it's fair to voice that. Quit trying to shut people like me down just because we don't post a lot or are new.

lol, you're just wrong. While it does matter if you look like a douchebag to a degree, facts submitted by said douchebag are still facts. What you're saying is that if I decided to say "water is wet," but did my best Professor Umbridge impersonation to explain it to you it'd somehow be wrong? Nope, sorry, the douchery doesn't matter when contemplating the facts. You want to point out the merch on the table during the "demonetized" video, go right ahead (that's a valid criticism), but the errors pointed out, and the pure shittiness of the Billet situation are still there, and still happened.

Eh, not if the facts presented are still facts. You can call him out for presenting them in a way you don't like, but it doesn't change the accuracy of the statements. Some of what GN said had some subjectivity, but he was careful to even back all of that up with actual statements from LMG made in video or otherwise.

I'm a big fan of LTT, and have been watching for years. I, however, have to side with GN on this one: the long response post from Linus does play victim more than it should, and it neatly dodges some of the direct challenges GN raised. I've always been impressed with LMG's openness, which seems an ultra-rare thing in the tech industry, but I'm pretty disappointed in LMG's response. The Billet Labs response/actions are just bad. The room was not misread, but according to GN and Billet Labs, LMG did not follow the instructions given, and still, even in the apology are lambasting their product over it. It's a niche, low volume market where reputation is king, and LMG owes it to Billet to make things right. I fully believe that the intent of LMG and the Labs project is to do exactly what's on the label: provide unbiased, scientifically confirmed data to the masses so we can make better purchasing decisions and hold manufacturer's accountable when they screw up. I also work at a company that went from 30 employees to nearly 200 in the span of 1.5 years. Growing pains are real. Defining proper process and establishing lines of internal comms is hard. I can absolutely forgive all of that, and chalk almost everything GN mentioned up to such pains. What's harder for me to accept is the defensiveness and the tendency to play victim. Linus's post could've been: "Yeah, we definitely screwed up. We're carefully reviewing everything GN said, and we're working directly with them to address their concerns. We're going to make things right the community and learn from these mistakes. More to come soon." Then all you'd have to do is follow it up with real action to fix the issues and tell us about it. Instead you're complaining about "proper journalistic process"? Come on. They don't need to reach out to you unless they want your statement. In this case, I'm on board with GN's approach because they rightfully fear the influence LMG has in this space (you guys are freaking huge, and wield a metric ton of influence). I'm not posting this because I want to jam a pitchfork anywhere unpleasant. I've been watching LTT from pretty early on, and continue to be a huge fan. I put a lot of faith in your reviews, and regularly make product decisions based on your recommendations. Hell, I even own an LTT Screwdriver (lttstore.com), as well as some other merch. I'm posting because it seems clear that Linus and the real people at LMG (who I truly believe care about their community and their ability to produce good content) should hear feedback from the community.

I know this thread kind of fizzled in January, but I just wanted to chime in as someone in Ohio . . . I'd love something a wee bit closer. Keep it in Canada! Do LTX Niagara Falls . . . or Toronto . . . it would make my nerd-heart sing!

True. Dell is willing to replace the heatsink (again), but they've done that twice. I'm concerned that all of the excessive heat the system has experienced due to bad repairs, tuning, or simple design flaws had negatively impacted the longevity of my hardware. So I told them they need to, at the very least, replace the motherboard, CPU, GPU, and heatsink. The GPU is probably fine as it never gets terribly hot, but it's integrated on the MOBO, if I recall correctly. Given the fact that this system has essentially failed 5 times now in less than two years, I don't think I'm out of line . . .

It USED to handle the stock settings just fine. I did use Throttlestop for a while to calm it down a bit, but it's now crashing with that enabled too. Downloading things from Steam shoots the temps into the upper 80's/low 90's in just a few minutes, and they stay there. Sad thing is, the ambient temp in that room is probably 64 - 67 F or so (this time of year) . . . that's 17.8 - 19.4 C for my metric friends. I also shouldn't NEED to drastically reduce power consumption to get reasonable performance out of a laptop that I don't overclock and paid so much freaking money for. It should manage that out of the box just fine . . . and it did, when it was new . . . right up until the first heat problem requiring a repair. Since then, it's sucked. Edit: to be clear, I'm getting crashes after an hour or less. I don't have time to marathon game at this point in my life, sadly. I only ever exceeded an hour or two game session with this machine, across the course of its entire life, maybe once or twice a month on average. That's not exactly beating on the system all the time.

It does (I think), but the laptop spends MOST of its life on my desk right now. It hasn't been moved much. I can check, but I have to take the whole bloody thing apart to do so. That also shouldn't happen if the screws were torqued properly by the last repair guy. I also started getting the kernel-power crashes only a couple of weeks ago, and the laptop hadn't gone anywhere in that time--just sitting on my desk, so that seems an unlikely (if still possible) cause. My temps are mostly OK during idle and low-intensity tasks, and the GPU is fine, but the CPU just bakes any time I do anything even requiring a moderate load. Just about made me throw up playing Beat Saber the other day . . .

I own an Alienware M17 R4 gaming laptop with an i7, 3080, and 32 GB of RAM . . . you may be thinking "wow, that was expensive" or "wow, that's fairly beasty." Well, it was both (especially since it pushes max TDP on the 3080 and maintains a boost of near 4 Ghz on the i7 most of the time). Key word: was. This is simultaneously the most expensive system I've ever purchased (though a couple I built myself were close) and the least reliable. Here's what I've been through: Within a few months of buying the thing, it bricked itself when installing a fresh GPU BIOS from Dell's support site (carefully following all of their instructions). After explaining MULTIPLE times that a GPU BIOS is different from a GPU driver, they replaced the motherboard and I was back up and running. Shortly after THAT, they had to replace the system because my Thunderbolt port stopped working reliably . . . they also tried to tell me that the system wasn't compatible with Thunderbolt docks even though it's really just not compatible with power delivery via Thunderbolt docks, which I wasn't doing (the power brick is 330W!). A few months later, I started getting excessive heat problems that it never had before (20 minutes into a gaming session, I'd be averaging ~90 degrees C . . . a couple of hours in, and the system would just crash after averaging close to 100 C across all CPU cores). They replaced the heatsink. Several months later, the heat was back. They replaced the heatsink. And that brings us to today. After 15 minutes in Civ VI, a game from 2016, my CPU temps are averaging in the mid-to-upper 90s, and I'm getting frequent kernel-power crashes that I think I've tied back to heat (only crashes when the system is hitting these high averages). So, now I'm angry. I tell Dell to just replace the system, as I have zero faith in the repairs, but they want to either take it for 5 - 7 days to their repair facility which has "a very high success rate," or send out another tech. I use the computer for both work and play (and I don't even game on it that often right now as I have a 5 & 3 year old), so I can't really do without it for 5 - 7 days. The techs use crappy thermal paste, which is likely the problem here. Hell, I've even got this system propped at roughly a 45 degree angle on a laptop mount that has space underneath for the vents to suck in fresh air. I've done EVERYTHING I can to give this thing heat headroom (I have an external monitor and keyboard attached, and I use the laptop as a 2nd screen). I COULD re-paste it myself, but this system is kind of a pain in the butt. The CPU-side of the motherboard is facing up under the keyboard, so you have to take the entire thing out to get to the heatsink. I also shouldn't HAVE to since it was just done in freaking February (10 months ago). Why am I posting here? Well, I'm wondering if any of you fine people have found ways to get Dell support to escalate cases to a point where more can be done than just repeating the same thing they've already tried twice (which has failed both times). Anyone? Also, if LTT is looking for a follow-up customer service nightmare video, I have transcripts . . . I also have lots of HWInfo logs . . . the attached screenshot is from about 30 min of OverWatch 2 (not very CPU intensive) and ~16 minutes of light load (web browsing).

3080 here too--though with the i7.

In games? I mean, during normal Windows tasks, I'm sitting around the 4.5 GHZ range, typically, but I find it . . . surprising that you're getting 4.8 - 5.1 GHZ while playing games. What are your temps like? Have you undervolted the thing? I'm planning on doing that to mine, which should be a free bit of speed depending on what my silicon can handle, but with stock voltages, what you're reporting doesn't match the reviews of the i9 I've read. Some said they were even experiencing screen flickering due to significant, sustained heat. The i9 is just a hotter chip, so should throttle more than the i7 in mine. I think my averages while playing Cyberpunk are sitting in the 4.1 - 4.3 range . . . if you're beating that average, then maybe my hypothesis on the i9 was just wrong I'd still be very interested in a performance review. I think a lot of OEMs push the i9s as the penultimate gaming machine, but I'm insanely curious as to how much of a difference it actually makes in gaming. Productivity I can see, but gaming? I doubt it's a massive difference.