WEBVTT

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good news everyone I found a buyer for the valuable workstations you've all

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been using now how are we supposed to get anything

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done

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lus I got new ones they're not brand new

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but they're brand exactly I mean who needs a brand new computer when a

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perfectly good older workstation that someone might deem to be obsolete is

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still perfectly fine for 99% of tasks if

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you aren't playing the latest AAA releases or editing 4K video there's no

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reason that an older sixth or even fourth gen processor with a reasonable

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amount of RAM and an era appropriate GPU

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shouldn't work for basic work so to find

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out we had three Brave volunteers give

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up their high-end systems for about a month swapping them for more Antiquated

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options just like I gave up this more Antiquated segue to our sponsor pulseway

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and start your free trial of pulseway at the link down below when we checked out

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the treasure box PC we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the

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refurbished Dell Optiplex that we received so we reached out to Sky Tech

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Global who agreed to send us a few workstations for this project our only

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requirements were that we wanted minimal downtime enough iio to use our existing

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peripherals and the ability to review 4K footage from our network storage Drive I

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feared that using this old computer it would just be really slow like you'd

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click on things and just have to wait for them to happen but the snappiness is

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pretty much all I feared because I don't do a lot of heavy lifting with the PC

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it's glorified Chromebook I honestly wasn't too worried about it I don't have

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to look through a roll too often so I don't actually need that good of a

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computer I'm mostly just opening word in Chrome biggest problem I figured was

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going to be uh reviewing footage cuz

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those are pretty big files and usually take a lot of of transfer speed really

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to get them to play properly even on a brand new computer I was actually really

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looking forward to seeing how much of a difference I would feel on the CPU side

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because there's been a mad increase in terms of raw CPU performance over the

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last 10 years and uh I haven't used anything that old in a long long time so

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I was really looking forward to seeing how bad would be I don't see the big

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deal businesses are right now divesting

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of machines that have CPUs as recent as sixth generation Intel quad core ddr4

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support I'm even talking native support for NVMe boot drives and that last one

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is super handy because it allowed us to just pop the drives out of our current

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PCS and toss them into these with little to no downtime now we could use a

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workaround to boot from a PCIe adapter on older Generations something that we

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actually did with the latest $69 PC build but our PCI slots as it turns out

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are a valuable commodity we're going to touch on that later our preferred

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machine for this project was the Dell Optiplex 7040 ideally with a core i5

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6500 CPU 16 gigs of RAM and a dual

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DisplayPort GPU but given these R refurb systems and we're Beggars we

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didn't get to be choosers so we ended up with some HP proes 600 g3s and our gpus

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were a complete mixed bag the Radian rx5 50 is perfect for our use case but for

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office use an older 750 Ti or gt1030 could be a problem DVI that would

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require a monitor downgrade what worked well that you didn't expect to work well

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honestly the whole thing using this computer was not very disruptive for me

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I did notice it the first day I booted it up and I was like huh why is this

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taking longer than I'm used to oh right Tanner gave me this crappy computer

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pretty much the computer in general I had complaints I sent Tanner a bunch of

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complaints um cuz every now and then it just like

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wouldn't do something quickly enough and it would drive me crazy but overall it

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it was actually decent it was mostly just slower and uh when you're used to

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computers being like Lightning Fast um that gets frustrating basically

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everything worked pretty well there was you know hiccups here and there that

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were probably unavoidable due to the the speed of the machine and just not

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implementing all the current features but overall things were pretty

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smooth in spite of wanting to kill you a few times now obviously even if we have an

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older GPU out of the box that can be upgraded but we need to watch our power

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budget when converting an older station for modern use a few of the machines we

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received with lesser gpus also contained

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correspondingly lesser power supplies and we just weren't comfortable

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installing more power hungry modern gpus

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to make matters worse clearance for larger gpus can be a big challenge in

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these kinds of systems depending on Drive Bay locations luckily the HPS

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allowed us to pop the drive cages out tooless no LTT screwdriver required this

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time the other issue newer gpus presented was just how many PCIe slots

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they took up we really wanted to have 10 gig networking working so that raw

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footage from the server could easily be accessed it helps out the editors a lot

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when we can scrub through and flag important moments or unneeded Clips

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playback of raw footage if we were doing like a big you know 20 plus gig file 4K

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whatever it would be real choppy uh especially actually after the network

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card died you put in I think a 10 gig card initially and that crapped out kind

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of halfway through but even with that it was still a little choppy and then after

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that things definitely took a turn for the worst and I just didn't touch big

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files unfortunately it doesn't matter how fast your Nick is if your processor

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can't keep up with it aside from a few short bursts our experimental

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workstations were effectively limited to gigabit speeds which made playback a

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little bit choppy and unfortunately that

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wasn't the end of our issues so parac just kind of stopped working I had to

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get tanner to go and just uh completely reboot my computer and launch parseek

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because we encountered a weird lock screen bug that I was never running into

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before and I've been using Park on this machine well I guess my own machine uh

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for the last 3 years just fine we switched to the oplex and all of a

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sudden we encounter an issue and uh that was incredibly frustrating because I'm

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pretty sure my computer was swapped out when the snowstorm happened so I

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couldn't do a whole lot and it was very frustrating especially on YouTube I

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found there was a lot of problems with playback there the screen would just

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flash black randomly like weird kind of driver acceleration issues in the

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browser browser plugins were another actually where we use uh something

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called one page to capture a web page that worked maybe one% of the time on

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the old computer and I don't really know why I had two or three main issues that

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were recurring first one um the headphone jack on the front of the

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machine is is just that it's not a combo Jack it seems to just be a headphone

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jack so I found out in the first meeting like nobody can hear me uh that was

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annoying the other thing was my RAM kept maxing out when I had launched a bunch

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of tabs in Chrome and part of our job is

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opening a lot of tabs and doing a ton of different research and making sure you

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keep everything uh sorted so you can just kind of grab whatever little

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section you need at any moment second thing was intermittent like just little

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click from my monitor don't know what that was about I learned very quickly

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just don't turn the computer off that was kind of the key startup took for

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ever like absolutely forever and

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normally I do have a bunch of apps starting up in the background Discord

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teams it's normally fine now all of a sudden it took like a couple minutes at

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least even with an SSD it was driving me nuts uh the first couple times I did

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start up it was you know set it go downstairs make a coffee whatever come

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back and it might be good after that that it was just leave it on permanently

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and just lock the computer when you go home and the third thing I didn't notice

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until we had an outage at the office and the internet was down so we had to use

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Wi-Fi and I didn't have a Wi-Fi card um actually there was Wi-Fi in

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Bluetooth for each machine it was an external dongle also interestingly it

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has a speaker on the chassis so like if I unplugged my headphones in the middle

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of a meeting suddenly people could just hear the meeting out in the room not

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used to a tower having a speaker on it that was funny I did not really find any

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solution the uh lock screen bug I think

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that was when I started caving and I was like please give me my computer back I

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need my computer back I think that I just slowly encountered minor issue

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after minor issue after minor issue of just performance not being where I need

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it to be I say My overall experience was like out of 10 I'd give it like a seven

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at least maybe even an eight it was fine

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snappiness uh was totally workable I think if I wasn't spoiled with the kind

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of tech we have here it probably was as good as what most people are using at

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work if not better I would say day one was a challenge getting things logged in

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and just running in general by the end of the process I could have kept going

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if I had to everything worked worse but

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not worse enough to be a deal breaker in

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most cases it wasn't the worst experience I think that we could

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probably use Optiplex just ideally not ones that are as old as these ones were

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obviously if the budget is there for it there is a reason that businesses

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account for regular upgrades to their it equipment and we're going to be going

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back to our modern workstations but I

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think what we've shown is that if you need a PC for basic tasks even a 10year

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old machine can get her done if you're willing to be understanding of longer

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wait times and the odd bug which got me thinking about our own approach to

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Rolling Out systems to our staff I mean compared to a more modern obviously pre

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built system do we really need high-end motherboards and Overkill cooling or

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could we just equip our staff with modern versions of these you know basic

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computers and let them age out gracefully please don't ever give me an

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Optiplex again I don't think we quite need the computers that we have

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currently at least I don't but I do need something that's newer give me like a

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13100 like I don't like give me or give me like a 13400 Max I don't need

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anything all that crazy I don't need anything overclockable as well I mean

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certainly some people like our editors or the folks who do CAD as part of their

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daily work are going to need more powerful systems for tools like Adobe

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After Effects or solid works but those are the exception to our standardized

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workstations not the rule and yes there are some folks on our team who are more

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sensitive to even the smallest amounts of system

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leg why did you cut to me but with the cost Savings of a pre-built there's room

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to have a fleet of identical systems on standby that can be swapped in without

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the user ever even really noticing I get

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it I'd notice so we aren't downgrading

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at least not for now but I do think maybe it's time that we stop assembling

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every PC in house and only build the ones that are really fun or Cutting Edge

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or otherwise used for more demanding or specific tasks what we will still

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assemble in house every time though is our Segways to our sponsor ground news

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today if you guys like this video check out the ridiculous treasure box PC that

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video literally took Blood Sweat and Tears to make all right any final notes

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do it to somebody else next time