1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,240 The recent network stress test here in our gaming center was a huge success. 2 00:00:04,240 --> 00:00:07,360 Unfortunately, we also found a big issue that night. 3 00:00:07,360 --> 00:00:10,960 See, it was the vibe. Just, it kinda sucked. 4 00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:16,960 When we did land parties at my house, we had people in the theater room, kicking back, playing couch games. 5 00:00:16,960 --> 00:00:21,840 We had a table set up for board games. We even dragged the bubble hockey game from our staff lounge 6 00:00:21,840 --> 00:00:25,200 into my foyer for some epic late night puck battles. 7 00:00:25,200 --> 00:00:31,840 Which got me thinking. Whale Land needs more than just rows of BYOC tables 8 00:00:31,840 --> 00:00:36,480 and people sitting gaming shoulder to shoulder. What it needs is experiences. 9 00:00:36,480 --> 00:00:41,440 I'm talking like things people wouldn't normally do, like multiplayer VR gaming 10 00:00:41,440 --> 00:00:44,560 or bringing out the stereoscopic 3D gaming setup. 11 00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:51,440 Oh, not that again. That can come later. The first thing I want for our first inaugural third Whale Land 12 00:00:51,440 --> 00:00:56,080 is a rapid deployment 8v8 gaming station that's designed specifically 13 00:00:56,080 --> 00:00:59,520 so that you can look your opponents right in the whites of their eyes 14 00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:03,920 while you roll over them in your warthog. See, that's a big thing you miss out on 15 00:01:03,920 --> 00:01:10,000 when your teammates and your opponents are scattered like ants across a large arena. 16 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:13,520 I also want no bulls*** to sit down and game. 17 00:01:13,520 --> 00:01:17,600 So the machines need to be preconfigured with their game installs and updates 18 00:01:17,600 --> 00:01:20,880 so that we can pack as much gaming goodness into the weekend as possible. 19 00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:25,840 But managing 16 computers, kind of a big undertaking. 20 00:01:25,840 --> 00:01:30,160 How do you manage all the game installs, all the accounts? Do we do 16 physical computers 21 00:01:30,160 --> 00:01:34,240 or can we do it with virtual machines? Can we design it so it can be deployed 22 00:01:34,240 --> 00:01:37,840 in less than 30 minutes? I'm gonna need some help with this. 23 00:01:37,840 --> 00:01:41,280 Well, sounds good. I'm in. What's my budget though? As much as you want. 24 00:01:42,160 --> 00:01:44,720 But don't waste any money. Okay, but how do you want to do this? 25 00:01:45,360 --> 00:01:49,600 I trust you. As fun as it would be to go balls to the wall 26 00:01:49,600 --> 00:01:53,520 with daddy's credit card. He did actually give me some off-camera guidance. 27 00:01:53,520 --> 00:01:56,640 First is about deployment. This thing is for live events, 28 00:01:56,640 --> 00:02:00,080 so we need it to be ready to go in as little time as possible. 29 00:02:00,080 --> 00:02:05,120 And second is power consumption. We obviously have ample power at the badminton center, 30 00:02:05,120 --> 00:02:08,320 but we don't want to be wasteful either. And many local land games 31 00:02:08,320 --> 00:02:11,520 are kind of on the older side anyways. So no 5090s. 32 00:02:11,520 --> 00:02:15,120 And finally, we want easy maintenance for the machines. 33 00:02:15,120 --> 00:02:19,840 It would be pretty annoying if you guys came and sat down at a ready to go system 34 00:02:19,840 --> 00:02:23,280 and were interrupted by updates. I have some ideas on this. 35 00:02:23,280 --> 00:02:26,960 Some are actually inspired by Kenton's Epic Landhouse that Linus got to go visit. 36 00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:32,000 But I'm gonna circle back to them later because I actually need to decide what hardware first. 37 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:36,560 And for that, I've got two solid ideas, both of which actually use a server rack 38 00:02:36,560 --> 00:02:41,040 since it can be wheeled around easy for deployment. And I might get some bonus points from Linus 39 00:02:41,040 --> 00:02:45,840 because you know, me and him are both rack gaming bros. Idea number one is less interesting, 40 00:02:45,840 --> 00:02:52,640 but it's probably the simpler to build. And that's 16 individual machines in two separate racks. 41 00:02:52,640 --> 00:02:55,920 One for each team. The advantages are that it would be using consumer gear, 42 00:02:55,920 --> 00:02:59,440 which is quite typically quieter. And I would expect performance 43 00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:04,320 to actually be a little better as well because they won't be sharing any of the system resources. 44 00:03:04,320 --> 00:03:08,720 More on that in a second. The disadvantage is that while there is management software 45 00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:14,720 out there for maintaining a fleet of systems, it's either non-user friendly, expensive, or both. 46 00:03:14,800 --> 00:03:20,000 And that's where idea number two comes in, virtualization. You've probably seen us build multi-headed gaming systems 47 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:25,520 on this channel before, but if you're new to the idea, instead of building a whole bunch of decent systems, 48 00:03:25,520 --> 00:03:29,840 you build one mega overkill system with enough CPU cores, 49 00:03:29,840 --> 00:03:35,600 system memory, and storage that it can actually be split across as many players as you need. 50 00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:40,000 And then you give them a dedicated GPU to each of those virtual machines. 51 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:44,080 A major advantage is that server hardware is designed from the ground up 52 00:03:44,080 --> 00:03:50,320 for the best reliability and easy management. However, server hardware is typically louder, 53 00:03:50,320 --> 00:03:54,000 and in a room that will already have several hundred people and machines, 54 00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:56,000 I'd rather not add any of this. 55 00:03:58,080 --> 00:04:02,000 You just taken in the noise? It could also be more expensive, 56 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:08,640 depending on the kind of system we choose. An individual Epic CPU can easily run 10 grand or more. 57 00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:11,440 But on the other hand, it can run like 10 systems. 58 00:04:12,320 --> 00:04:16,480 So maybe it works? I think I'm getting ahead of myself though, because I think a bigger challenge 59 00:04:16,480 --> 00:04:20,160 is actually going to be anti-cheat. Some games just refuse to work 60 00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:24,320 if they detect that they're running on a virtual machine. And while there are ways to mask it, 61 00:04:24,320 --> 00:04:29,040 I don't want to constantly be updating or fixing this every time a game decides to update. 62 00:04:29,040 --> 00:04:30,800 I think I need to do a little bit more research. 63 00:04:41,280 --> 00:04:43,040 I think I have a concept of a plan. 64 00:04:44,400 --> 00:04:50,240 I think I'm going to borrow elements from both ideas. For the computer, I think 16 individual machines is the play. 65 00:04:50,240 --> 00:04:55,280 That's because while Linus might be okay playing older games, like Halo CE and Worms Armageddon, 66 00:04:55,280 --> 00:04:58,400 I don't want to be locked in the past. Plus, with a single machine, 67 00:04:58,400 --> 00:05:02,560 a single hardware failure takes down the whole setup. I'd rather hedge our bets. 68 00:05:02,560 --> 00:05:08,640 Also, I think I found a solution to make a multi-PC deployment a bit more manageable. 69 00:05:08,640 --> 00:05:12,000 I'll show you that a bit later, because first, I want to actually build 70 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:15,120 one of the 16 systems here. And we're going to be starting with this. 71 00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:18,880 The mini's form BD790IX3D-US. 72 00:05:18,880 --> 00:05:27,360 That's kind of a mouthful, but it's also a hardware full. This mini ITX board includes a Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, 73 00:05:27,360 --> 00:05:30,720 another mouthful, a total power draw of just 100 watts 74 00:05:30,720 --> 00:05:34,160 thanks to its mobile CPU, enough I.O. for our gaming peripherals, 75 00:05:34,160 --> 00:05:38,960 and maybe more importantly, a 2.5 gigabit onboard network connection. 76 00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:43,040 This is key, because if we end up deciding 77 00:05:43,040 --> 00:05:47,520 to boot over the network, like Kenton did, this will be a major advantage 78 00:05:47,520 --> 00:05:51,920 over a standard 1 gigabit connection. While it's a great board, it does have some drawbacks, 79 00:05:51,920 --> 00:05:56,640 like we're stuck with sodom memory, but we did find a decently priced G-Skill RipJaws kit, 80 00:05:56,640 --> 00:06:01,920 which runs at 5,600 megatransfers per second, and we're going to be loading these up with 32 gigabytes, 81 00:06:01,920 --> 00:06:05,760 which is great for now, and I shouldn't need to upgrade these down the line. 82 00:06:05,760 --> 00:06:09,120 To get to our storage, we just take off these two little screws. There we go, 83 00:06:09,120 --> 00:06:13,760 and we're going to be installing one terabyte drives. It's more than enough to handle a handful of games 84 00:06:13,760 --> 00:06:18,640 and even throw a quick game on it if we need to, but we're probably not going to use this drive much, 85 00:06:18,640 --> 00:06:22,800 unless my management solution fails, which it might because I picked it, 86 00:06:22,800 --> 00:06:25,920 but I'm crossing my fingers for now. Building computers goes really fast 87 00:06:25,920 --> 00:06:30,000 when the CPU and the cooler are already pre-installed, and I don't even need to put this in a case, 88 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:34,960 more on that later, because we're already onto our GPU, and some of you are probably going to be surprised 89 00:06:34,960 --> 00:06:40,160 to hear this. We're going AMD. An RTX 5070 would have also been a very solid choice 90 00:06:40,160 --> 00:06:45,920 because of its low power consumption and not to mention all of the NVIDIA features like DLSS, 91 00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:51,360 but in competitive games, especially older ones, we're not going to need any DLSS frame gen. 92 00:06:51,360 --> 00:06:59,200 We'd rather just have raw gaming performance, and that's why we chose the 9070XT from Power Color. 93 00:07:00,960 --> 00:07:07,280 Well, can't really see it. Give me one second. Strongest tape in the world, my goodness. 94 00:07:08,960 --> 00:07:14,320 There we go. It's got 16 gigabytes of VRAM, which buys us a bit of future-proofness 95 00:07:14,320 --> 00:07:18,000 and has measurably better performance in traditional raster rendering, 96 00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:22,160 though it does kind of come at the cost of extra power consumption and money. 97 00:07:23,120 --> 00:07:26,800 $600 MSRP times 16 of these bad boys. 98 00:07:27,760 --> 00:07:32,080 Maybe Power Color is willing to send us another 15, and then Linus won't be mad at me. 99 00:07:32,880 --> 00:07:34,800 Power Color, please. 100 00:07:36,400 --> 00:07:40,800 Please. Last but not least, we need to power the whole thing, 101 00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:46,080 even though it doesn't look like it needs much power. So we picked up a C-Sonic Focus SPX 750W. 102 00:07:46,080 --> 00:07:52,640 We're kind of riding the line here a bit on what AMD's recommended PSU is for this GPU, 103 00:07:52,640 --> 00:07:57,520 but it's C-Sonic. It's quality, quiet, and decently priced for a small form factor unit. 104 00:07:57,520 --> 00:08:01,040 Should be fine. Now that this is booted, we're just going to get it updated to be 105 00:08:01,040 --> 00:08:05,120 as close to as final as possible so it can give you guys an idea 106 00:08:05,120 --> 00:08:08,560 of what we're expecting from these systems. I was wondering why my Windows updates 107 00:08:08,560 --> 00:08:12,720 were taking so long to download, so we opened up hardware info here. 108 00:08:12,720 --> 00:08:15,920 My CPU is at a crisp 100 degrees. 109 00:08:15,920 --> 00:08:18,960 I didn't take that into consideration, so we're going to throw a little fan on it. 110 00:08:18,960 --> 00:08:22,160 There it is. Here you go. The one computer that we're going to be using, 111 00:08:22,160 --> 00:08:26,160 well, we'll need 16 of them. Building one of them was kind of the easy part. 112 00:08:26,160 --> 00:08:31,360 Let's talk about managing them. As I mentioned earlier, IT managers will have lots of solutions available to them 113 00:08:31,360 --> 00:08:34,640 that they can scale beyond our dozen machines or so, 114 00:08:34,640 --> 00:08:37,920 but dealing with game updates and installs is a little bit different 115 00:08:37,920 --> 00:08:41,520 than dealing with Windows updates, which is why we're going to be stealing, 116 00:08:42,880 --> 00:08:47,120 borrowing, that Texas land house idea. Thankfully, Kenton actually documented 117 00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:51,920 the entire process on his GitHub. All I have to do is kind of follow along. 118 00:08:51,920 --> 00:08:55,200 It's a little bit involved, but the TLDR is this. 119 00:08:55,200 --> 00:08:59,440 Before every LAN party, we just set up one of these machines. I'm talking driver updates, 120 00:08:59,440 --> 00:09:03,600 Windows updates, game installs, game updates, any other software we might need, 121 00:09:03,600 --> 00:09:07,920 like Discord or Epic Game Launcher. You know, the entire works. 122 00:09:07,920 --> 00:09:12,400 Then we copy that entire Windows install and create a bootable disk image. 123 00:09:12,400 --> 00:09:15,680 We then copy that image to our central storage server, 124 00:09:15,680 --> 00:09:18,720 which was upstairs, not here, but at the Padminton Center, 125 00:09:18,720 --> 00:09:22,080 and our 16 machines will boot over the network 126 00:09:22,080 --> 00:09:25,840 using that image, meaning the only manual step 127 00:09:25,840 --> 00:09:30,000 is actually going around and signing into each one with Whaleland 1, 128 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:32,560 Whaleland 2, or whatever we decide to name them. 129 00:09:33,360 --> 00:09:38,320 This approach is not only easy, but it offers protection for the player and for us. 130 00:09:38,320 --> 00:09:42,320 That way, users don't have to sign into their own accounts on our systems, 131 00:09:42,320 --> 00:09:46,880 and then we can easily wipe the computers in the event that someone tampers with them. 132 00:09:46,880 --> 00:09:51,600 I shouldn't have to say this, by the way, but if you do that, you will be banned for life from Whaleland 133 00:09:51,600 --> 00:09:55,600 and maybe prosecuted or made fun of. Maybe the entire thing. 134 00:09:55,600 --> 00:09:58,800 Just don't do that. Let's play some games. I want to see what kind of performance 135 00:09:58,800 --> 00:10:02,400 we're getting out of this system. Max FPS, 300 right now. 136 00:10:02,400 --> 00:10:06,560 Our 1% lows are about 120. We're at 1440p, I should mention, 137 00:10:06,560 --> 00:10:10,400 at 144hz on the monitor. That's as high as I'd want to go 138 00:10:10,400 --> 00:10:14,560 for our esports-ish settings. There's no need to go 4K, 139 00:10:14,560 --> 00:10:17,840 and we might even go 1080p if it means we get higher FPS. 140 00:10:17,840 --> 00:10:20,960 You know, I'm seeing a lot of 1% lows in the 120, 141 00:10:20,960 --> 00:10:24,480 but it doesn't feel itchy. Like, I'm not noticing the hitches right now. 142 00:10:24,480 --> 00:10:28,400 You know, just an easy 860 FPS in Rocket League. 143 00:10:28,400 --> 00:10:31,440 I don't know how much of a LAN game this is, but, you know, it's a type of game 144 00:10:31,440 --> 00:10:34,640 that people might play. I've never played with keyboard and mouse. This is terrible. 145 00:10:34,640 --> 00:10:39,520 Our 1% lows, though, are 800 as well. So this is going to feel so great. 146 00:10:39,520 --> 00:10:42,560 No hitches, and I mean, I've only been playing 30 seconds. 147 00:10:42,560 --> 00:10:47,600 Maybe once this heats up, we'll get some hitches. But for now, this is doing pretty great. 148 00:10:47,600 --> 00:10:51,520 More than enough power for gaming, especially some of those lighter esports titles. 149 00:10:51,520 --> 00:10:57,120 But there's a major problem I haven't even brought up yet. Even if I manage to squeeze each of these systems 150 00:10:57,120 --> 00:11:00,960 into a thin little 2U chassis, that's 36Us. 151 00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:04,960 Plus networking, plus power distribution. This thing's going to be the size 152 00:11:04,960 --> 00:11:08,640 of a full-height server rack, not to mention really loud, 153 00:11:08,640 --> 00:11:15,760 because I'm probably going to need fans in those 2U cases. Also, I'd be spending like $5,000 on just cases. 154 00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:21,360 What am I going to do now? Do I have to start over? 155 00:11:21,360 --> 00:11:25,280 Throwing out all of my hard work? It took me so long to find those GPUs. 156 00:11:25,280 --> 00:11:29,360 Do I have to go back to a virtualization setup? Server hardware costs so much money, though. 157 00:11:30,400 --> 00:11:34,240 But I don't want to do virtualization. Then I'm stuck playing Linus' Boomer games. 158 00:11:34,240 --> 00:11:35,520 I don't want to play Boomer games. 159 00:11:38,080 --> 00:11:41,680 I don't know what to do. Why don't we just make a custom case that can house all the computers? 160 00:11:41,680 --> 00:11:45,200 What? I said let's make a custom case to put all the computers in. 161 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:49,360 That's genius! Then it'd be small enough to fit in a server rack, 162 00:11:49,360 --> 00:11:54,000 and then we can play it at Whalen. Well, in part two, I'm going to be buying 16 computers, 163 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:57,920 assembling them in a server rack, deploying them at Whalen, and then we're going to test drive it 164 00:11:57,920 --> 00:12:00,640 at the very first Whalen. 165 00:12:01,360 --> 00:12:04,400 I just hope my check doesn't bounce. If you guys enjoyed this video, 166 00:12:04,400 --> 00:12:07,840 go check out the video we did a couple months ago where Jake and Linus built a Steam cache, 167 00:12:07,840 --> 00:12:11,920 and they tested it with 100 people at a private LAN. It was pretty cool.