WEBVTT

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Waiting what seems like an eternity for games to download

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is annoying enough to start with.

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But when there are multiple people in the house or office

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and everyone wants to grab a hot new title at the same time,

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you can run into some serious bottlenecking.

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So we set out to solve that problem once and for all

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without just spending more money

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on a faster internet connection.

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And now, well, not quite now, Jake's fixing it,

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but soon everyone in this building

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will be able to download games

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from services like Steam at full speed.

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And I'm gonna show you guys how

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after Jake fixes the machine.

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And I tell you about Corsair's next generation

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Strafe Mark II keyboard.

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It features a variety of Cherry MX RGB key switches

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and eight megabytes of onboard profile storage.

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Check it out at the link below.

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If you've been to an organized LAN event recently,

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you were probably wowed by game download speeds

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that seemed like they were from the future or something.

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But unless it was DreamHack 2018,

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the event's internet speed is probably nowhere near enough

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to offer those kinds of speeds

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to even just a couple of people.

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So how do they do it?

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Great question.

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And one that can be both simple and complicated to answer.

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In short, those insane speeds are thanks to the event

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having something called a caching server.

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Basically, when a game is first downloaded on the network,

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instead of the files just going straight

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to the downloader's drive,

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like let's say this laptop that used to be here,

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but instead I'll use this hard drive as a prop.

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Instead of them just going straight to this drive,

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they are first saved to a separate machine

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and then kind of relayed to the user.

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So then the next time someone wants to download

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that same game, let's say to this other hard drive,

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instead of pulling it off of Steam or Uplay directly,

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it'll save a ton of bandwidth to the outside internet

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by grabbing it off of that same server.

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This will help keep latency down for all of the gamers

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that are sharing that same connection.

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So the concept is simple,

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but when you get into sending up Nginx, DNx,

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DNS forwarding, dealing with HTTPS,

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and worrying about when to clear the cache,

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the actual deployment can get pretty confusing.

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Now, thankfully for us,

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there are a ton of different solutions

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that mostly revolve around the same built-in

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Nginx caching solution with the most up-to-date

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being the appropriately named Steam Cache.

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It's pre-compiled for Docker, making it quick to set up,

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and despite its name, there's actually a version of it

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that supports Steam, Origin,

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SiteGames, Battle.net, Frontier Launchpad, Uplay,

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and even Windows Update.

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So it's perfect for your next LAN or even general home use,

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because I mean, who needs Epic Games Launcher anyway, right?

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Yeah, right?

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So let's get started on exactly how it works then, shall we?

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For most people, standard one gigabit networking,

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along with a couple of,

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along with a couple of RAID zeroed hard drives

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will be more than sufficient, but come on,

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you guys know how we do.

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So we wanted to plan to allow every single writer

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here in the office to download games at the same time.

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So that would be about one Gigabyte per second

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of sequential read speeds.

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Now, that's child's play for today's high-end NVMe SSDs,

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like this one, but since we also need capacity,

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and that's not what you're gonna get

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from a single Optane drive, we decided on six RAID zeroed,

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480 gig SATA SSDs from Corsair

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that we pulled out of that dual machine build.

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Rip, rip in pieces.

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Now, it should be noted that a single drive failure here

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would result in a complete loss of all the data on the array,

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but it doesn't really matter

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since this server is not mission critical.

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All it's doing is caching readily available games

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and updates.

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We could easily throw a new drive in and redownload it all.

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The other key specs of our system,

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are it's 64 gigs of DDR4 RAM.

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Lots of RAM lets the server cache files in memory

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for quicker transfers and a 10 gigabit network card.

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So remember, even though we wanna download

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from this server at one gigabit,

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we want multiple people to be able to do that

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at the same time.

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So this one needs a bigger pipe.

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Now we're using an X540T2, but that's kind of older.

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It was cause we had it lying around.

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They're actually cheaper options these days

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from a Quantia and a SUSE.

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So then,

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now that we have a server primed for caching,

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we can get back to the software side of things.

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As I mentioned earlier,

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Steam cache comes in the form of a Docker container,

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which is kind of like a virtual machine,

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but instead of emulating the entire operating system,

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then with the specific software that we need on top of that,

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Docker can run specific software as if it's on its OS

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without running an entire separate OS,

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making it a lot more efficient,

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especially if you need to run

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multiple instances of the same software.

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And we will need to do that

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since each different service that needs caching,

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Steam, Origin, Battle.net, et cetera,

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will run in its own instance.

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Now we know all of that was a gross oversimplification,

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so we're actually gonna link a video below

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with a better explanation of Docker if you're into that.

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Docker can run on both Linux and Windows,

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but the Windows version has to actually

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virtualize the Linux kernel on top of Windows,

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so we're gonna stick with Linux.

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We went with Ubuntu Desktop 18.04,

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because we love reading butthurt comments

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from the Arch and Mint fanboys.

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Just kidding, love you guys.

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But don't worry, the guide that we're gonna have linked below

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will work on pretty much any flavor of Linux that you like.

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Now our first step is to get Docker up and running.

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Once you have it, make sure that you run your Docker commands

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either with sudo or by adding your user to the Docker group.

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Do not run any of this as root, please.

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Then, for our installation, we're gonna run it on Linux.

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We're gonna run it on Windows.

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We wanna cache all of the services

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that we use on a regular basis here at the office,

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which means that we're going to need six static IPs,

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one for each of them.

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Since this OS has a graphical interface,

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it's actually super easy to set up our IPs.

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We just need to navigate to network settings and enter them.

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Wa-bam.

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Wa-bam, just like that.

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I type pretty fast.

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Now we can start each of the caching Docker containers

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one by one, and then Steam Cache DNS,

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which will forward all of the IPs.

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All of the URLs that need caching to our server

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instead of the World Wide Web.

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Then, I mean, don't worry.

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Then if something isn't on our server, it won't just fail.

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If the content isn't cached yet,

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it will then get downloaded to the caching server

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and be forwarded to the downloader seamlessly.

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Cool, right?

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So theoretically then,

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we should be good to start downloading some games, right?

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Not quite.

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So we need to set the cache IP as DNS

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on all the systems we wanna use.

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Right, okay.

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So keep in mind that if you intend to run a solution

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like this long-term, it's a lot more elegant

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to set your primary DNS on your router

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to the IP of your caching server

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instead of setting up the DNS settings

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on a computer by computer basis.

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Don't worry, any unrelated traffic

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will go to the usual location.

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Okay, so we're ready.

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So here's the caching server.

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We've got our diagnostics panel running and all of that.

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And then we've got actually a couple of test victims.

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So first up, we've got this guy,

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one of Jake's test benches,

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and we're just gonna do a quick sanity check,

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make sure everything's working.

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This is actually a 10 gig client

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with an Intel Optane drive as its boot.

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So go ahead and hit that.

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I wanna hit it at the same time as you.

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Okay, three, two, one, go.

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Oh boy, Brandon, you're gonna have to get here

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in the next 23 seconds here.

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You got this?

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I'm at 200 megs.

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I'm coming down at 320 megs a second.

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Sir, you're at what?

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223.

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223?

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230.

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250.

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Oh, wow.

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300.

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Are you done the game yet?

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Seven seconds. Who's gonna win?

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Five. Two seconds.

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Two.

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And done.

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I'm done.

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Same time.

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Go check, go check.

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His will be done too,

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so we don't even have to see the actual speed.

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Wonder what the...

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That is disgusting.

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Okay, so we peaked out at 7.2 gigabit.

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7.2 gigabit?

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Yeah, from the cert.

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Show Brandon.

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Seven point, okay.

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So that was the peak, 7.2,

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and then it was kind of averaged around six.

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There's another 6.7 right there.

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Dang flabbit, that's insane.

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All right, for LOLs, I'm just gonna do PUBG

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and see if that one works.

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Oh, yeah, it is.

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It is.

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Okay, so with games like PUBG,

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where there's a lot of compression,

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you're limited by your computer.

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So if we look at the cores of this system,

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since this is an i9,

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you don't have a huge amount of single-threaded performance.

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So Steam will only use...

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It will only use a certain amount of cores,

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and it won't bypass that.

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So you'll see...

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90%.

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So we're capped out by our CPU right now.

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Yeah, decompressing.

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Not by our servers.

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So if you see here,

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there's two full cores that are being utilized.

00:09:53.580 --> 00:09:55.800
I think it's normally three or four that it'll use max.

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Right.

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And then past that,

00:09:57.480 --> 00:09:59.520
it won't use any more to not interrupt

00:09:59.520 --> 00:10:00.620
the rest of your system.

00:10:00.620 --> 00:10:01.460
Right.

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And I think it's more optimized

00:10:02.300 --> 00:10:04.960
for like four to eight core systems.

00:10:04.960 --> 00:10:06.920
16 cores is a little too much for Steam.

00:10:06.920 --> 00:10:08.880
So it's a less impressive demo,

00:10:08.880 --> 00:10:10.920
but it's definitely our best case scenario.

00:10:10.920 --> 00:10:12.020
And that means that we could have

00:10:12.020 --> 00:10:12.860
five systems.

00:10:12.860 --> 00:10:13.680
Yeah.

00:10:13.680 --> 00:10:14.520
Hitting it at the same time.

00:10:14.520 --> 00:10:15.360
Well, apparently seven now,

00:10:15.360 --> 00:10:17.000
based on what we saw there.

00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:18.760
So I guess conclusion time then.

00:10:18.760 --> 00:10:21.320
This may not be a solution for the everyday gamer.

00:10:21.320 --> 00:10:24.960
Like many people will only ever download each game,

00:10:24.960 --> 00:10:26.020
play it once,

00:10:26.020 --> 00:10:28.480
then delete it and never download it again.

00:10:28.480 --> 00:10:31.020
And it's a lot more user-friendly

00:10:31.020 --> 00:10:35.100
to just use Steam's own backup feature to a NAS

00:10:35.100 --> 00:10:36.560
if there's something that you, you know,

00:10:36.560 --> 00:10:39.240
think occasionally you might wanna re-download.

00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:41.780
But if you have a bunch of gaming aficionados

00:10:41.780 --> 00:10:42.660
in the house,

00:10:42.660 --> 00:10:45.460
or if you help run a local LAN gaming organization,

00:10:45.460 --> 00:10:48.700
we would definitely recommend giving it a shot.

00:10:48.700 --> 00:10:51.880
Especially if you have an old computer lying around

00:10:51.880 --> 00:10:56.610
that's just waiting to be given a new purpose.

00:10:56.610 --> 00:10:57.930
Speaking of just waiting,

00:10:57.930 --> 00:10:59.230
what are you waiting for?

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So for your unrestricted 30-day free trial,

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go to freshbooks.com slash techtips

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and enter Linus Tech Tips

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in the How Did You Hear About Us section.

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We're gonna have that linked below.

00:11:39.850 --> 00:11:40.970
So thanks for watching, guys.

00:11:40.970 --> 00:11:41.810
Dislike or like.

00:11:41.810 --> 00:11:43.310
Check out our other videos.

00:11:43.310 --> 00:11:44.690
Oh, wait, this is my tech wiki outro.

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Crap.

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Also, get subscribed.

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We have merch.

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And let us know if you wanna see a follow-up to this video

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where instead of like a jank-tastic,

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like rat's nest of SSDs in the back of a regular tower,

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yeah, in Jake's water-cooled test bench,

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if you wanna see us like set this up properly,

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get like every Steam and Origin game possible

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cached onto it and do some cool demos,

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maybe we should do like a LAN center.

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Oh.

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That'd be pretty sick.

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This would be perfect for that.

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Yeah.

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We might need more networking, though.

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Mm.

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Maybe.

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You wanna see us take it to the next level?

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Let us know in the comments below.