we've talked about fiber optic Thunderbolt cables before and these things are crazy cool they'll do 40 gbit
pers second to distances as long as 50 m
and they're so durable that you can tie them in knots and pull on them like this
without them breaking 50 m i mean that's pretty far but Thunderbolt allows you to
daisy chain multiple docks and peripherals to achieve distances much
much further we have got six spools of
50 m Thunderbolt cables and we are going to be h up this GPU almost 1,000 ft away
from our computer that's right I'm going to show you guys the new unit where
we're going to be doing some more of our benchmarking and testing and we're going to run the cable all the way there and
it's sponsored by NZ xt's build so naturally we're going to be using one of
their gaming PCs as our source except obviously we're going to want to rip
that 380 TI out put it in an external enclosure and then go for a little walk
here
obviously before we go off adventuring we want to get a baseline for what kind
of performance we would expect running a normal just 3ft copper cable from our
Thunderbolt port to our GPU here so we're going to go ahead and fire up
shadow of the Tomb Raider I'm running at the highest settings 1440p exclusive
full screen with motion blur disabled oh
come on all right 60 FPS average now
let's see what happens when we take it somewhere else David do we want to jump
the fence or do we want to like go around or what jump the fence baby you
want to jump the fence all right let's jump the fence baby in that case I'm
going to put the 3080 TI down these
zippers better hold
up oh crap I'm having too much fun
already you need me to hold hold one in here yeah go ahead and plug it in
hopefully our neighbors don't like trip over this I hope this works I only
tested it with two cables ow ow ow ow stop oh my God this
fence is barbed wire David oh no they're backing their truck
in long story we need to run a cable all
the way from this building to one over there you're backing in now right and
then are you guys done for the day oh boy if I got it out of your way now then
would be be be good after that probably Hey look it's Brian oh you're good to
plug in over we're plugged in I will go
plug in the GPU why don't you come back and fire up Tomb Raider where'd it go
oh we're going to make it sure well no I'm not entirely confident because the
thing about Thunderbolt it requires very very tight tolerances in terms of
latency at 300 M we are approaching the
point where even at the speed of light that is a
non-negligible amount of latency for something like a high performance
graphics card so I'm hoping we will make it the full 350 M but this is by no
means a guarantee I actually lied a little because you don't need both a hub
and the GPU at one node at a time so we only need one of these at a time we only
need one of these at a time yeah that's fine we'll test 50 m first okay so is
this is this thing on hello oh yeah yeah
the RGB's on okay oh man these hikes back and forth are going to get pretty
stupid that's a long way around
uh we got the spol let's go we got a
blue screen on the computer so I'm just um restarting
it okay good luck I unplugged it while
the game was running and I think it just got a little confused we are off to a
real good start here ooh that's very interesting we've dropped 15% of our
performance already wow okay uh come
grab this cable then 15% is that because
of the raw distance is it because of the
signal translation that's happening to confirm to Optical and then back will it
get worse I feel like Ned Flanders
just oh oh hi there hi oh I see you
there's a Thunderbolt glory hole going on over here yeah yeah my poor new
jacket all right so let's go ahead we're going to unplug our Thunderbolt GPU plug
in our first Thunderbolt dock which is
acting as a hey Colin hi razor in their
Infinite Wisdom doesn't label this bloody thing does this one support daisy
chaining I think so let's double check that cuz I actually use one of these at
home and I think it might not and I'm going to go get the rest of what we need
so another Hub another jackary and uh I
will be right back ye I believe what
we've done here is supposed to work now something to note is that external gpus
are really not supposed to be hooked up through a hub at all let
alone five hubs we have no idea if this
is going to work at all let alone well oh hi there Hi Neighbor howdy neighbor
would you like a graphics card I would
um and a Cable cable and a jackary oh
right um well here should I just come for a little ride with you you're just
going to ride on the cart yeah yeah I was just going to and I'll tow you scoot it no five bucks say I Biff with this
3080 ti ti ti that's something
one-handed let me tell you
okay we got the 380 TI Linus is I think
scoot scooting the jackary and stuff over really we should have handed it over the fence I don't know what we were
thinking in the meantime we can spool out this cable straight down the parking
lot see see how much further we can get
this line oh oh no there's one more
winding okay that's another 50 m uh the
building we're going to is just the next complex to the right there and it's unit
120 120 yeah okay uh oh I totally need a
oh even better I needed both of these
things thunderboard dock is powered oh
boy it's barbed wire no way I'm aiming for that spot
right there what what could go wrong yvon's
going to kill me now that's
interesting oh I think our performance is actually better this time around I
think it might have just been the driver being kind of like bugged out from the
sudden disconnection before it's starting to rain so this is my genius
idea uh we'll just put a Rubbermaid bin
on top of garbage bags um 55 FPS so wait
no that's worse again I didn't see any weird stuttering or anything in the game
playay the performance is a little bit worse it seems like we're losing there's
a little bit of overhead with each of our hubs that we're going
through man you know as much as it might not be as good performance as you would
expect from a 380 TI it's sure as heck
running if our display and our peripherals were at the other end right
so the computer's got a Thunderbolt connection and we're gaming over on that
side the run is 100 m but actually it has to go round trip okay so you got
your PCI Express run going to your GPU over there and then the GPU actually has
to send back the DisplayPort information all the way back to us here
so it's going 200 M you guys are good to
unplug okay here we go so unplug that yep you
want to handle carrying the graphics card M this is our third 50 m cable okay
we're just going to plug it in willy-nilly keep it kind
of Y yep yep mhm MH oh jeez
mhm fiber optics don't mind being run over right we're going to just drive
over the fiber optic there okay give it a couple seconds here but the you should
see the GPU real soon let's try and make make this faster
we can run the next line while we wait sorry about the Landscaping uh those are
roses ow ow okay we're in unit 120
apparently I have no idea where that is do you know where unit 120 is which
address are you talking uh I can find out what address is unit 120 located
in this is very interesting I managed to launch the game but I haven't made it
past the splash screen ooh we're hitting a limitation how close are you guys to
the new office I don't know which building we're
in I see the problem it launched with the wrong GPU let me see if I can get
this sorted out on my side still no information on which building I need to
go to classic lus the NVIDIA GPU is not
showing up I'm going to give the system a quick restart and see if it pops up
but you might want to give me an unplug and replug okay I'll walk back to it now
how sure are you that you're plugged into the correct ports on the Razer one
the input is the one on the front oh
then I'm definitely not plugged in the right one okay so we're in the front
Port now I think at the back it doesn't matter okay I want to make it very clear
and this is not just because Corning sent us a bunch of their Thunderbolt cables this is far beyond what is
reasonable for this spec we just want to see the limits I got no GPU showing up yet okay
I just unplugged and replugged it it's still not showing up do you want to try
the same port that I
did already
it's that building right there the the middle one or the right one right the
one with the red oning there okay said it was down the right
side is it showing up at all I'm like kind of worried that the cable got
mushed when someone drove over it wait Colin can you hear me I'm expecting he's
going to team call me y there it is my walkie-talkie battery died a shocker
okay someone myself included and some other guy drove over the cable so
hopefully it's still intact I think it'll be fine do you see it on your side
no oh there should be an LED hold on okay oh okay we got LEDs on now okay so
like the GPU is definitely on now and my system's locked up the GPU just shut off
let's let's try replacing that one cable just to see and we'll go from there
worst case scenario I'll just take you guys and I'll show you where the new
unit is ow ow ow ow ow
ow okay Jamie plug it in are the LEDs
on yeah I just blue screened again what did you do Colin we're trying to turn it
off on on again and clearly it also turns yours off and on again no GPU what
do you think Colin can we maybe try to at least plug in a USB drive at the new
office and I'll transfer a file or something it's the fact that you've got
this PCIe device over on the other side something like USB is not nearly as
sensitive to latency so I have one of those Samsung t5s in my pocket Maybe
just plug in that T5 and I'll see if it shows up okay let's do that a come on
and I'm plugging into the T5 I only see the Seagate fire Cuda so far well the
Corning reps did tell us this is a bad idea I don't think I was cced on that
email we try it are we on all razor
docks so far there's two docks there's one on the other side of the fence and
then one in the middle of the parking lot are you plugged into the one that's
at 100 m then the drive is plugged in at
150 M so you should have one more dock then right no we're plugged in directly
into the Thunderbolt cable that won't work cuz there's no power a you're right
I'm ah okay yep that's a limitation of optical cables while they can carry data
they need to both be powered and you need to provide separate power for any
devices you want to plug in so Colin had a little moment there and he tried to
plug our drive directly into the dock which explains why it wasn't coming up
so he's going to plug in our third Dock at the 150 M mark Mark and let's see if
this thing shows up I'm I'm actually pretty hopeful right now what is
Happ now's as good a time as any to take a closer look at our source here NZ xt's
build systems let you configure your pre-built the way that you would a
custom rig so you can go AMD or Intel they've got a 2-year warranty with two
business day build service and everything else about it is custom now
we actually got an AMD machine originally but because everything about
NZXT build is using off-the-shelf like
Enthusiast grade custom components there was absolutely no compatibility issues
of any sort we're going to have a link below where you can learn all you need to know about NZXT build and let's uh
check in with how those guys are doing people always tell me I look awkward
when I run this is probably the
case okay we're plugged in uh you seeing
anything over there they're going over our Thunderbolt
rest in peace cables but it was wasis of
exciting hello oh my God I wasn't on
speaker nope nothing eh no dice and that
kind of makes sense because nothing would prevent Corning from making a 100
meter or a 200 meter version of their cable other than if just the signaling
didn't handle that kind of distance very well and we were crazy to even try it in
the first place I guess there's a limit to how far you can go with fibers we
tried though we really did honestly I'm pretty pleased we even made it to 100 m
even though we didn't make it to the new office so why don't we head over there and I'll show you guys the new location
kind of talk about what we're going to do there so unfortunately we couldn't find another unit in the same complex
that we're in but we really need the additional space because we want to get
our hands on some new testing equipment and stuff to really take things to the
next level and there's there's nothing
in our complex so oh we saw a for sale
sign here it's only about 150 M or about
500 ft as the crow flies from our existing office but because it's so
winding and roundabout here we're probably going to have to get a handful
of electric scooters so people can kind of scoot back and forth between the two
buildings Unfortunately The Possession date isn't for a little bit and the
existing owners just couldn't be bothered to to let us in just to show it
to you guys today so it's this guy right here unit 120 so it's about 3,000 ft and
obviously we couldn't do any of this without you guys watching and sponsors
like NZXT builds so thanks for sponsoring the video thanks you guys for
watching see you oh if you're looking for something else to watch the last
time we played around with fiber optic cabling was in my house when we had a
single server and then fiber optic DisplayPort and USB running all over
the house so that it could act as the central brain that was a pretty fun
video there was a dead squirrel which was unfortunate but yeah Colin found it
in the Attic