WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.240 The recent network stress test here in our gaming center was a huge success. 00:00:04.240 --> 00:00:07.360 Unfortunately, we also found a big issue that night. 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:10.960 See, it was the vibe. Just, it kinda sucked. 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. 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 00:00:21.840 --> 00:00:25.200 into my foyer for some epic late night puck battles. 00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:31.840 Which got me thinking. Whale Land needs more than just rows of BYOC tables 00:00:31.840 --> 00:00:36.480 and people sitting gaming shoulder to shoulder. What it needs is experiences. 00:00:36.480 --> 00:00:41.440 I'm talking like things people wouldn't normally do, like multiplayer VR gaming 00:00:41.440 --> 00:00:44.560 or bringing out the stereoscopic 3D gaming setup. 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 00:00:51.440 --> 00:00:56.080 is a rapid deployment 8v8 gaming station that's designed specifically 00:00:56.080 --> 00:00:59.520 so that you can look your opponents right in the whites of their eyes 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 00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:10.000 when your teammates and your opponents are scattered like ants across a large arena. 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:13.520 I also want no bulls*** to sit down and game. 00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:17.600 So the machines need to be preconfigured with their game installs and updates 00:01:17.600 --> 00:01:20.880 so that we can pack as much gaming goodness into the weekend as possible. 00:01:21.760 --> 00:01:25.840 But managing 16 computers, kind of a big undertaking. 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 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 00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:37.840 in less than 30 minutes? I'm gonna need some help with this. 00:01:37.840 --> 00:01:41.280 Well, sounds good. I'm in. What's my budget though? As much as you want. 00:01:42.160 --> 00:01:44.720 But don't waste any money. Okay, but how do you want to do this? 00:01:45.360 --> 00:01:49.600 I trust you. As fun as it would be to go balls to the wall 00:01:49.600 --> 00:01:53.520 with daddy's credit card. He did actually give me some off-camera guidance. 00:01:53.520 --> 00:01:56.640 First is about deployment. This thing is for live events, 00:01:56.640 --> 00:02:00.080 so we need it to be ready to go in as little time as possible. 00:02:00.080 --> 00:02:05.120 And second is power consumption. We obviously have ample power at the badminton center, 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:08.320 but we don't want to be wasteful either. And many local land games 00:02:08.320 --> 00:02:11.520 are kind of on the older side anyways. So no 5090s. 00:02:11.520 --> 00:02:15.120 And finally, we want easy maintenance for the machines. 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 00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:23.280 and were interrupted by updates. I have some ideas on this. 00:02:23.280 --> 00:02:26.960 Some are actually inspired by Kenton's Epic Landhouse that Linus got to go visit. 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. 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 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 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, 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. 00:02:52.640 --> 00:02:55.920 One for each team. The advantages are that it would be using consumer gear, 00:02:55.920 --> 00:02:59.440 which is quite typically quieter. And I would expect performance 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. 00:03:04.320 --> 00:03:08.720 More on that in a second. The disadvantage is that while there is management software 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. 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 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, 00:03:25.520 --> 00:03:29.840 you build one mega overkill system with enough CPU cores, 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. 00:03:35.600 --> 00:03:40.000 And then you give them a dedicated GPU to each of those virtual machines. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:44.080 A major advantage is that server hardware is designed from the ground up 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:50.320 for the best reliability and easy management. However, server hardware is typically louder, 00:03:50.320 --> 00:03:54.000 and in a room that will already have several hundred people and machines, 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:56.000 I'd rather not add any of this. 00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:02.000 You just taken in the noise? It could also be more expensive, 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. 00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:11.440 But on the other hand, it can run like 10 systems. 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 00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:20.160 is actually going to be anti-cheat. Some games just refuse to work 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, 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. 00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:30.800 I think I need to do a little bit more research. 00:04:41.280 --> 00:04:43.040 I think I have a concept of a plan. 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. 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, 00:04:55.280 --> 00:04:58.400 I don't want to be locked in the past. Plus, with a single machine, 00:04:58.400 --> 00:05:02.560 a single hardware failure takes down the whole setup. I'd rather hedge our bets. 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. 00:05:08.640 --> 00:05:12.000 I'll show you that a bit later, because first, I want to actually build 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:15.120 one of the 16 systems here. And we're going to be starting with this. 00:05:15.120 --> 00:05:18.880 The mini's form BD790IX3D-US. 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, 00:05:27.360 --> 00:05:30.720 another mouthful, a total power draw of just 100 watts 00:05:30.720 --> 00:05:34.160 thanks to its mobile CPU, enough I.O. for our gaming peripherals, 00:05:34.160 --> 00:05:38.960 and maybe more importantly, a 2.5 gigabit onboard network connection. 00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:43.040 This is key, because if we end up deciding 00:05:43.040 --> 00:05:47.520 to boot over the network, like Kenton did, this will be a major advantage 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, 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, 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, 00:06:01.920 --> 00:06:05.760 which is great for now, and I shouldn't need to upgrade these down the line. 00:06:05.760 --> 00:06:09.120 To get to our storage, we just take off these two little screws. There we go, 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 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, 00:06:18.640 --> 00:06:22.800 unless my management solution fails, which it might because I picked it, 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:25.920 but I'm crossing my fingers for now. Building computers goes really fast 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, 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 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 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, 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. 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. 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. 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 00:07:14.320 --> 00:07:18.000 and has measurably better performance in traditional raster rendering, 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:22.160 though it does kind of come at the cost of extra power consumption and money. 00:07:23.120 --> 00:07:26.800 $600 MSRP times 16 of these bad boys. 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. 00:07:32.880 --> 00:07:34.800 Power Color, please. 00:07:36.400 --> 00:07:40.800 Please. Last but not least, we need to power the whole thing, 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. 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, 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. 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 00:08:01.040 --> 00:08:05.120 as close to as final as possible so it can give you guys an idea 00:08:05.120 --> 00:08:08.560 of what we're expecting from these systems. I was wondering why my Windows updates 00:08:08.560 --> 00:08:12.720 were taking so long to download, so we opened up hardware info here. 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:15.920 My CPU is at a crisp 100 degrees. 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. 00:08:18.960 --> 00:08:22.160 There it is. Here you go. The one computer that we're going to be using, 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. 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 00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:34.640 that they can scale beyond our dozen machines or so, 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:37.920 but dealing with game updates and installs is a little bit different 00:08:37.920 --> 00:08:41.520 than dealing with Windows updates, which is why we're going to be stealing, 00:08:42.880 --> 00:08:47.120 borrowing, that Texas land house idea. Thankfully, Kenton actually documented 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:51.920 the entire process on his GitHub. All I have to do is kind of follow along. 00:08:51.920 --> 00:08:55.200 It's a little bit involved, but the TLDR is this. 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, 00:08:59.440 --> 00:09:03.600 Windows updates, game installs, game updates, any other software we might need, 00:09:03.600 --> 00:09:07.920 like Discord or Epic Game Launcher. You know, the entire works. 00:09:07.920 --> 00:09:12.400 Then we copy that entire Windows install and create a bootable disk image. 00:09:12.400 --> 00:09:15.680 We then copy that image to our central storage server, 00:09:15.680 --> 00:09:18.720 which was upstairs, not here, but at the Padminton Center, 00:09:18.720 --> 00:09:22.080 and our 16 machines will boot over the network 00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:25.840 using that image, meaning the only manual step 00:09:25.840 --> 00:09:30.000 is actually going around and signing into each one with Whaleland 1, 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:32.560 Whaleland 2, or whatever we decide to name them. 00:09:33.360 --> 00:09:38.320 This approach is not only easy, but it offers protection for the player and for us. 00:09:38.320 --> 00:09:42.320 That way, users don't have to sign into their own accounts on our systems, 00:09:42.320 --> 00:09:46.880 and then we can easily wipe the computers in the event that someone tampers with them. 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 00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:55.600 and maybe prosecuted or made fun of. Maybe the entire thing. 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 00:09:58.800 --> 00:10:02.400 we're getting out of this system. Max FPS, 300 right now. 00:10:02.400 --> 00:10:06.560 Our 1% lows are about 120. We're at 1440p, I should mention, 00:10:06.560 --> 00:10:10.400 at 144hz on the monitor. That's as high as I'd want to go 00:10:10.400 --> 00:10:14.560 for our esports-ish settings. There's no need to go 4K, 00:10:14.560 --> 00:10:17.840 and we might even go 1080p if it means we get higher FPS. 00:10:17.840 --> 00:10:20.960 You know, I'm seeing a lot of 1% lows in the 120, 00:10:20.960 --> 00:10:24.480 but it doesn't feel itchy. Like, I'm not noticing the hitches right now. 00:10:24.480 --> 00:10:28.400 You know, just an easy 860 FPS in Rocket League. 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 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:34.640 that people might play. I've never played with keyboard and mouse. This is terrible. 00:10:34.640 --> 00:10:39.520 Our 1% lows, though, are 800 as well. So this is going to feel so great. 00:10:39.520 --> 00:10:42.560 No hitches, and I mean, I've only been playing 30 seconds. 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. 00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:51.520 More than enough power for gaming, especially some of those lighter esports titles. 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 00:10:57.120 --> 00:11:00.960 into a thin little 2U chassis, that's 36Us. 00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:04.960 Plus networking, plus power distribution. This thing's going to be the size 00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:08.640 of a full-height server rack, not to mention really loud, 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. 00:11:17.440 --> 00:11:21.360 What am I going to do now? Do I have to start over? 00:11:21.360 --> 00:11:25.280 Throwing out all of my hard work? It took me so long to find those GPUs. 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. 00:11:30.400 --> 00:11:34.240 But I don't want to do virtualization. Then I'm stuck playing Linus' Boomer games. 00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:35.520 I don't want to play Boomer games. 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? 00:11:41.680 --> 00:11:45.200 What? I said let's make a custom case to put all the computers in. 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:49.360 That's genius! Then it'd be small enough to fit in a server rack, 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, 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 00:11:57.920 --> 00:12:00.640 at the very first Whalen. 00:12:01.360 --> 00:12:04.400 I just hope my check doesn't bounce. If you guys enjoyed this video, 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, 00:12:07.840 --> 00:12:11.920 and they tested it with 100 people at a private LAN. It was pretty cool.