WEBVTT

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PC gamers have been outright lied to for nearly a decade now. A new GPU gets

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announced. We get super excited about the prospect of finally getting a decent

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deal on a gaming upgrade. And then the actual price on store shelves turns out

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to be hundreds or even thousands of dollars more than we were promised.

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Well, I say no more. PC gamers deserve

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fair pricing. And starting with this strongly worded email, I am going to

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work tirelessly to convince industry leaders that

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it's done. Great, Scott. You're right. You can

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finally buy a GPU for MSRP. Who needs

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this anymore? In fact, we got all of the

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components of this system at or below MSRP, making now the best time to build

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or upgrade your gaming PC in what feels like forever. We are still talking about

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$1600 for this build, but guys, this is

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a 4K capable gaming monster. So, if your

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budget is a little bit tighter, we're going to have a couple of lighter weight options in our parts list to save you

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some money without [music] sacrificing on quality. Now, here's a lighterw

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weight segue to our sponsor

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FROM OUR SPONSOR, WAR THUNDER. A GAME THAT MAKES ME FEEL ALIVE even as I

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deliver death to my enemies with over 2500 tanks, planes, helicopters, and

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ships. AND IN MYSELF, EVENTUALLY SENT SCREAMING TO THE PIT, only to rise again

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AND SEEK MY REVENGE ON PC, CONSOLES, OR MOBILE FOR FREE BECAUSE IT'S WAR

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THUNDER.

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It was GPU prices that inspired this build, but we're going to start with our

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CPU. We picked the Ryzen 9600X because

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AMD has been on fire [music] lately. Both in terms of performance, this thing

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has six Zen 5 cores and boosts up to 5.4

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GHz and in terms of value. With a street

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price of anywhere from $190 to $220,

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this thing is way below the $280 launch

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MSRP, which already made Intel blue.

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Well, even bluer. We also like the Ryzen

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9700X for about $20 more if you do some

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content creation on the side or if you want to future proof a little bit. But

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most gamers are not going to be held back by just six cores. And besides, we

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needed to save some money for our motherboard. Modern boards may cost a

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little more than they used to, but even this reasonably priced MSI Pro B650A is

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loaded with pretty much every feature that we really need. I'm talking DDR5

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memory, PCIe Gen 4, both for our slots and our M.2 storage, ample cooling, and

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even some stuff that we don't need, like ripping fast networking. To be clear, we

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did make some compromises. If you were to spend, say, another 30 bucks on a

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board that has PCIe Gen 5 support, you might eek out another 1% more

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performance with a modern GPU, but really that's more likely to be a factor

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with a future upgrade. So, we didn't worry about it for today. We also didn't

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worry about spending a fortune on memory. [music] DDR5 was expensive back

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when it launched, and industry insiders actually predict that it's going to get

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more expensive soon. But hey, that's past and future Lionus' problems.

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>> Oh my god, IT'S ALREADY HAPPENING. IT'S HAPPENING.

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>> This 32 gig kit of Team Group memory was under $100 and it hits that 6,000 mega

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transfer per second sweet spot that is just so sweet. You know, being a

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commodity product, RAM pricing fluctuates so much that it's kind of

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hard to nail down an MSRP for it. But this is faster than what was available

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at launch and is only a third of the price. So, I think I'm just going to

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declare victory and move on to another part that's cheap today, but expected to

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rocket tomorrow. Now, we know this 2 TB

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GM7000 is hot because the first unit we ordered got stolen.

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Really? Really? We got empty box

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scammed. I mean, I can hardly blame the thief. They probably wanted the two gigs

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of onboard cash for himself so he wouldn't have to rely on system memory

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for caching which can add latency. Anywh who, it cost us $120 and we didn't have

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to buy it twice. Uh thank you Amazon for taking the L on that empty box and

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sending us a new one. It's worth noting, by the way, that our B650A motherboard

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has three M.2 slots, one of which is

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routed through the motherboard chipset. We're going to be avoiding that one for

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now and using one of these two slots which are routed directly to the CPU.

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Remember guys, if you're ever unsure of which slot to use for your storage, it's

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probably in that manual that you were trying to avoid by clicking on this video. Something you won't find in your

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manual is what to do if your SSD includes a heat sink or a really thick

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sticker that prevents you from putting the motherboard's built-in cooler back

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on. In all seriousness, I have no idea if this voids my warranty right now, but

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I really don't want this on here. Sure, there's a logic behind that, but I'd

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rather have this now to put these puppies in their cage. Wait, that's a

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terrible metaphor. Who'd want to put puppies in a cage? But if they did, for

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just $90, the Fantex XT Pro Ultra is a

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very fine looking cage with ample cooling for your puppies, a large side

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panel window through which you can see your puppies, and plenty of space to

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manage cables or show off your distinct lack of cables if you happen to have a

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backto-front motherboard. We don't. Fantex is such a cool company.

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They could pay wall features like this little nubbin that holds my motherboard

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in place while I screw it in, but they don't. They even have plenty of room at

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the top for a 360 mm radiator, which is

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good because when I saw the price of the Thermal Rate Frozen, not 360, I had to

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have it. $55.

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How can they even afford to have decent packaging for $55, let alone a 360

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millimeter all-in-one? Like, I've paid more than $55 for just a 360 mm

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radiator. Never mind fans, pump, copper

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plate. What is the catch? Just this. It

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turns out it kind of catches here before

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sliding into position. And even that can be easily rectified by simply moving

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down this back fan and screwing it back in with your trusty screwdriver from

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ltstore.com. This unit keeps our CPU remarkably cool

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under load. Installs easily thanks to its use of the stock AMD mounting

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bracket and even includes extras like RGB lighting and a tube of TF7 thermal

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paste which retails for $12.99. That's it. Thermal right. You have

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single-handedly irrelevant the rest of the category. Congrats. Moving on to our

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power supply, we've opted for the CIC Focus GX750 ATX3.

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At $140, it's not cheap, but it's 80

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plus gold. It's fully modular, and it came highly recommended by our Labs

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team. If you have some extra room in your budget, we also really like the

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Superflower Lead X300 W. For about the price of a sandwich, that upgrade is

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going to last long enough to see both your kids' first steps and their first

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PC running GTA 7. Now, the moment you've

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all been waiting for. The GPU you can buy at MSRP is

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Damn it. Didn't drop it. The Asus Prime

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RTX 5070Ti.

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What? NVIDIA? I know, right? But the rules clearly

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state that the GPU has to be at MSRP.

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And while AMD's Radeon 9070 XT started

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at $599, which would have been a perfect choice for this build, most listings for

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it today are still $100 to $150 more

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than that. And as much as I love to give NVIDIA flak for their MSRPs being too

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high, at these prices, AMD sits with

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both a technology and value disadvantage, unless you're a Linux

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gamer. Now, you're probably wondering at this point, Lionus, what's the deal with

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street pricing deviating so much from MSRP? Well, Jerry, let me tell you, the

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S in MSRP stands for suggested, and that

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S has been doing some pretty heavy lifting. Coming from the retail side, in

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my past life, it is kind of hard to blame the board makers and retailers for

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taking some margin when they finally get an opportunity to. The GPU market has

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historically been notoriously tight to the point where EVGA's exit from the

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market was driven at least partially by low profitability. But with all that

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said, frankly, I feel like they've taken enough lately. And it seems like they

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finally agree. Or realistically, it

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probably has more to do with competition finally heating up a little bit in the

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GPU space. There are a number of options right now for 570 Ti at $750. And we

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like this card for its 16 gigs of VRAM and its strong 1440p performance with

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the capability to step up to 4K if we're willing to compromise on the details a

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little bit or use frame generation. But

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what's even more exciting than this card is that we found Intel ARC B580s, RTX

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5060 series, and even RTX 5080s all at

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MSRP. [music] 5090s are still way more, but given how

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many people are using those things for AI, that doesn't really surprise me. All

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in, the MSRP of our system is nearly $1,750.

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But we are deep in the product refresh cycle now and it's holiday shopping

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season which allowed us to pick up all these parts for just under $1,600.

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We're going to have all those links down below. Man,

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how good does it feel to build a $1,500ish

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gaming PC, you know, like we used to,

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but not have to cut a bunch of corners because of ludicrous GPU pricing. Like,

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it's still high, but it's not ludicrous

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anymore. It looks great, right? Huh? We even got

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RGB on all the things. Didn't even pay a premium for it.

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You love to see it. Let's start with a game that's going to push our GPU pretty

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hard. Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K. I've got my

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details turned up a little bit higher than I would generally recommend on a

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5070 Ti, but we can also cheat a little bit using DLSS. So, even though we're

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outputting at 4K, we're rendering at a lower resolution, then using machine

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learning to upscale. And wow, [music] I mean, especially if you were coming from

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a console or something, this is a very playable experience with averages about

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50 to 55 frames per second and minimums

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in the 45 frames per second range. Sure,

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we're not getting the most out of our 240 Hz monitor or anything like that,

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but this is an extremely playable experience. I would think this was a

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Christmas miracle a couple of years ago at the price. And what's really

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remarkable is I still don't feel like we gave anything up. Like I can hear the

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fans. They're obviously moving some air,

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but it's not loud. It's not annoying. And

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my GPU is at 65° with my CPU under 65°

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as well, while it casually [music] turbos to 5.25 GHz. What a great system,

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you know, the way it used to be. So, why

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did it take so long for pricing to normalize? Well, it's easy to blame

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retailers and blame board partners, and they did [music] participate in their

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own share of price hikes, but what it boils down to is NVIDIA. They can

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enforce pricing controls with their partners. I know this because I have

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personally sat across from a boardroom table and watched them threaten to cut

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my allocation if I don't adhere to their pricing. They could also reduce the

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pricing for their board partners who make their cards. And finally, they

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could allocate more production to their gaming cards, but instead they're

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prioritizing AI, which I guess makes sense because otherwise, how would I

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figure out if there's a seahorse emoji?

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And how else could I find out this segue to our sponsor? Tired of dinky little

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war games that look like this? Frustrated by in-game vehicle models

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that can't decide whether they're an SU25K ground attack aircraft or a

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ZSU234B anti-aircraft vehicle? Ah, then you need

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to install War Thunder, the most comprehensive vehicle combat game ever

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with over 2500 meticulously detailed tanks, planes, ships, and [music] don't

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Manley, but my friends call me Tiger because I meet them. And I'm here to

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tell you that War Thunders immersive experience is so good, IT SAVED MY

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RELATIONSHIP WITH MY DAUGHTER. SHE BARELY WANTED TO TALK TO me until we

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started playing together. Now she plays the mobile version every chance she

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gets, AND WE'VE NEVER BEEN CLOSER. She

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loves the endless customization options, AND SO DOES TIGER. IF you can't stand

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basic ass games with crude hitboxes and health bars like it's some crypto bros

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vibeccoated weekend PROJECT AND YOU'RE DISAPPOINTED BY A LACK OF ATTENTION to

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detail that makes a mockery of your passion for vehicle specifications as an

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enthusiast of military history. Then try War Thunder and revel in its

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sophisticated damage system that calculates how each vehicle's engines,

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fuel tanks, weapons, armor, and crew will react to specific types of

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So quit playing games AND START WAGING WAR with over 70 million players in War

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Thunder on PC, console, and mobile for JUST FIVE EASY PAYMENTS OF NOTHING

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BECAUSE IT'S FREE. >> [screaming] >> NOW THAT we have our PC put together,

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you might be looking for some inspiration for the rest of your setup. Why not check out how I put together my

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cleanest gaming setup ever? It's easy to find. That's the name of the video.

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Also, we'll have it linked down below. [music]