WEBVTT

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Brands reach out asking for reviews every day but if they send the product

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to us directly how do we know that they haven't sent us a

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uh special handpicked

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unit well believe it or not with most

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product categories this isn't a major

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concern you see it costs millions of dollars to develop and validate a CPU

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for example which makes it pretty impractical to send out special or

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different on from the mass production units however we've always been a little

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wary of pre-built PCS you see so much of

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what sets one apart from the next is the care and attention that goes into the

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build so when Cooler Master offered us

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their half five Pro gaming PC it raised

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a lot of questions like since when is Cooler Master a system integrator and

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would they handpick a unit to send us to find out we did accept their offer but

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unbeknownst to them we also purchased a

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second unit for ourselves off of Amazon

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let's see then how these systems stack up both the one they meant to send us

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and the one they didn't mean to send us and let's see how this segue Stacks up

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spine check them out at the link down below and use code Linus for 10% off

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your purchase before our machine arrived we poured over the Amazon listing

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comparing it to cooler Masters Communication in an attempt to figure

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out exactly what to expect and between

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the description and some CSI style zooming in enhancing we were able to put

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together a list of expected Parts we're going to have them all linked down below

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to our surprise and Delight actually when we totaled up the prices on PC part

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picker it was almost bang on cooler Master's 1 99 list price which at the

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time of recording has actually dropped to $8.99 making this a pretty good deal

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at the moment as long as they didn't bung anything up both systems ultimately

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arrived in one piece and we started with a quick non-invasive once over we're

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going to keep the unit from Cooler Master on your left side throughout the

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video and the one from Amazon is going to hang out on the right now we didn't

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want to pull off any of the coolers or move any cables around since that could

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affect our Labs team's results but we were able to confirm at this stage that

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most of the components were as expected and that both systems were identical

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save for the angle of the adjustable fan right here or so we thought we weren't

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at all prepared for what we found when we opened up the back

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panels no no not the different colored zip ties this the unit sent To Us by

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Cooler Master had a loose screw rolling around a screw that that should have

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been holding the motherboard in place that is exactly the kind of thing you

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might expect on a retail unit but that you would not expect on a cherry-picked

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review sample so good job Cooler Master

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not trying to oversell your quality control I guess anyway that screw wasn't

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actually going to impact the testing that we had planned so we put it back

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where it belonged boxed the units back up and drag them over to the lab I

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should make it clear that up until this point we didn't make any adjustments to

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components or even plug the systems in we wanted to be sure that our Labs team

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got them in a fresh outof the-box state or not so fresh the unit from Amazon

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actually wouldn't even post right out of the box after some troubleshooting the

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Labs team discovered that the problem was one of the two RAM sticks neither of

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our systems would boot with that stick installed curiously that stick did work

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in an entirely motherboard so it could be that it's borderline functional I

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mean maybe it worked when Cooler Master tried it but overall not a great

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experience though I have to give credit to Amazon for their handling of the

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situation they offered to send a technician out to fix it free of charge

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for us and time permitting we could have gone through that process and gotten a

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new stick that way but we had spare RAM on hand anyway so we said hey thanks uh

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but no thanks and moved on to testing our system side by side we can deal with

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the warranty service later with both units booted we could finally

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confirm the I5 12400 F CPU and have a

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little poke around in the BIOS both of them came with the very first version of

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the BIOS for this motherboard from way back in October of 2022 that's bad but

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XMP was enabled out of the box and we didn't have any stability issues that's

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good resizable bar was not enabled which

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will hurt gaming performance so that's bad and Labs reported that both systems

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were a little temperamental about using DisplayPort until they enabled CSM

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which is also bad particularly troubling

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in all of this is that there is a BIOS update for this board from March of 2023

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that specifically fixes problems with the RTX 360 gpus that are pre-installed

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in these systems so it's disappointing that they weren't updated but given how

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manufacturing lead times and shipping work it's likely that both of these

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systems were boxed up before the March revision we can't confirm this we didn't

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find any packing dates on the boxes but we did later find that the installed

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NVIDIA drivers were dated February of 2023 which is as close to confirmation

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as we're going to get the Labs updated both motherboards in hopes that CSM

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could be turned back off but found that things still worked better with CSM

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enabled even on the latest BIOS for this

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board we were all set to start installing and testing games then when

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we hit our next snag again again on the Amazon system instead of the outof

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thebox new computer experience that we expected we saw the Windows system

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preparation tool that's supposed to be run by the technician when they're about

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to pack up the new system for delivery seems like whoever was setting this

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machine up forgot to finish the job luckily our lab techs aren't easily

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deterred and both systems were quickly up and running and not only that but

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they were refreshingly bloat free they didn't even preload any game launchers

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on these things that sucks unusual these days wow sorry I was just I was logging

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into steam here and I couldn't help noticing this is a

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spectacularly awful keyboard it was this included with the system yeah Devastator

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3 I'm the one who got devastated how's the mouse oh good it's

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a Devastator 3 Mouse um I mean it feels less

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awful is that both of

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them you know what I'm sorry I'm going to take off our label just to just to

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check no it's not our label that hurts

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the value argument a little bit just because it's the right price according

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to PC part picker doesn't mean that it's worth whatever we paid for it or that we

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would have chosen it okay well let's

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play cyber Punk anyway once we finally got to benchmarking we found pretty much

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exactly what we expected for the hardware in these systems we tested

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cyberpunk 2077 Hitman 3 and total War

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Warhammer 3 at 1440p with everything cranked up and our systems cranked out

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virtually identical performance I mean I'm talking one frame per second

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difference at most which is within the margin of error of our runs we also took

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a quick look at csgo and this is to compare against cooler Master's claimed

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performance of 293 FPS and I don't really know what to

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say other than we have no idea how they

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got that number the good news is we ended up blowing it out of the water

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with an average FPS of 432 meaning that if you pick up one of

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these systems all you need to do next is pull on a hoodie from the new pcmr

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collection on LTT Store.com and you are ready to start annoying all of your

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console playing friends now the Labs

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team doesn't quite have their thermal testing suite formalized for desktop

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systems but I can say that we didn't run into any thermal throttling at room

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temperature actually a little above room temperature it's some and our AC is not

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in yet don't worry about it the point is we're not really surprised given the

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amount of air being moved by the ample case fans in here and Cooler Master it

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seems has lived up to their name now the

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script calls for lightning round Linus inspection so I guess this is the part

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where I get to see if I can find any differences between our two

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systems h no big complaints about Cable

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Management though personally I would bring the 24 pin in from up here and

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then I would bring my USB in from right next to it minor thing okay there's a

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random zip tie and the one directly from Cooler Master hold on I can get this

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how's the front panel come off this case oh you have to release the clips

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ha what is going on with this twist

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tie nerd jewelry oh she said

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no I guess I'm pulling panels off I might as well do the same to the back

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this is also a perfect opportunity to plug the upcoming noct to Edition LTT

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screw driver sign up for a notification of stock on LTT

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store.com not bad I do have to wonder um are they

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really saving that much on the natural plastic color zip ties on the back such

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that anywhere that the zip tie is not visible they use those instead of the

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black ones this is hilarious look at

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this all black zip ties on this side

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everywhere all ugly yellowish zip ties

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on the back this seems to be the same on

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both systems but the reset switch goes into the RGB

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controller which oh interesting that is

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not that intuitive and kind of random when they could have just plugged this

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into the motherboard for RGB control wait no no they couldn't have what the

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devil's going on here is this it yeah

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this is it what the why' they do that Cooler Master that's not intuitive I

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would think the reset switch would reset the computer not adjust my RGB

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lighting and also the lead for this is

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right here all you had to do was plug it in there now it's controlled by the

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motherboard with that said we praised them for their bloat Weare free

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installation and in installing RGB software is arguably bloat depending who

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you ask it is nice that they're all the same though now it matches the RAM you

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know like it should what happens if I press the reset switch

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now um oh it disables that oh that's a good

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way for that controller to function cool yeah all I could think is just like it's

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dead simple that way yeah but like you lose the reset functionality which is

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not good I'd be pretty frustrated if I needed to hard reset my computer and it

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didn't hard reset just kept changing yeah just kept changing the

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RGB are you mocking me sir to cooler

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Master's credit though the experience however flawed is consistent on the one

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that we ordered from Amazon seems like they oh not quite consistent they've

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routed the USB cables slightly differently overall though if I had a

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system integrator and my production team turned out systems that were this

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similar I would praise the consistency even if I wouldn't be happy about the

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fact that you know they don't turn on for the customer it's consistent yeah

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you can have the screen any color you want as long as it's black Henry Ford

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approved the truth is cooler Master's been playing the game long enough that

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we didn't really expect to find any significant differences between the

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systems it's extra work to cherry-pick review units and if you take the chance

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and try to handb build something special for a reviewer that's outside of your

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normal manufacturing process you've got a greater chance of embarrassing

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yourself s if a customer posts something significantly different on Reddit so

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it's good that Cooler Master isn't engaging in this practice however the

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bad RAM and the flawed outof boox experience in the retail unit not to

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mention that loose screw in the direct shipped Tower are indications that

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Cooler Master has some work to do on quality control if they want to be a

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serious player in the pre-built game given that their most memorable previous

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attempt at this had a chicken warming chamber I guess these hiccups aren't

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entirely unexpected but I'd like to see them do better as far as specs are

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concerned it would have been nice to see a 13th gen CPU but with the planning and

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Lead times that are typically involved in PC system building not to mention the

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attractive pricing of 12 gen chips right now this is a decent deal at the list

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price I mean you'd pay the same to build it with the exact same Parts yourself

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and at the time of recording it's available at a $200 discount if that

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becomes a regular occurrence I'd say it gets a recommendation even if I can only

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recommend it for folks who have a bit of experience troubleshooting PC

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the if you like this video check out the recent one where we unleashed our secret

00:13:34.320 --> 00:13:39.880
shopper to test some of our sponsors I

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mean somebody's got to keep them honest right