I have some things to say - Core i9 & X299
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
2,340 words · ~11 min read
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our coverage of computex 2017 is brought to you by the Corsair one and Synergy
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you can check them out at the link in the video description I have been
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conspicuously silent about Intel's new high-end desktop x299 platform and the
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CPUs that they just announced to go with
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it and this was on purpose but probably
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not for the reasons that you think I've spent the last few days walking the show
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floor chatting with industry folks and generally trying to wrap my head around
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what the actual hell it is that Intel's
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trying to do with this launch before we
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get into that though a primer on x299 so socket 2011 V3 is old news
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socket 2066 is the hot new girl in class with
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the new chipset come support for up to 7
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Series Skylake based Intel Core I9 processors we get up to quad Channel
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ddr4 memory running at up to ddr4 2666
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MHz we get up to 44 PCI Express Lanes
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for massive expansion up to greatly
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expanded NVMe and obtained storage capabilities and up to two preferred
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turbo Max cores that run at higher boost
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frequencies well what's with all this up to
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I'll get to that first let's take a look at the boards so Intel's Partners have
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been out in full force with support for this new tech ASUS was showing about
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half a dozen boards based on the same basic DNA each with some standout
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features the Rampage 6 Extreme includes
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dual water flow sensors to go with the pump headers that are standard on this
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generation their Deluxe board includes 802.11 ad multi- gigb Wireless and an
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OLED Post in system monitoring display and the tough Mark 1 comes with an the
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usual extra thermal sensors Tough Armor
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and a freaking graphics card seg holder
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gigabytes digital RGB header allows lighting effects with individually
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addressable LED strips their smart fan 5
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software now allows fans to be turned off outright if system temperatures
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allow it a huge boom to silence Freaks
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Like Me they've gone Ham on USB 3. one
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10 GB ports including like the others support for the new type-c front panel
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spec and they were showing off four PCIe
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NVMe ssds running in raid which in of itself isn't exactly groundbreaking but
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the fact that they were running off of the CPU and they were
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bootable is MSI on the subject of NVMe
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has boards with Native support for up to five m.2 ssds and is putting a really
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strong emphasis on cooling for them like
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everyone else they've given a lot of thought to the Aesthetics of their
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boards you can even 3D print accessories from templates and swap cooler covers in
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some cases and unlike everybody else
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this is interesting they've got a white or red LED that tells you what kind of
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CPU you've got installed and in turn then how many of the features that
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you're looking at on the board are actually going to be enabled which I
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guess brings us to a fairly natural conclusion to the nicely scripted part
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of this video because I've got some rough notes for some other stuff that
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I've got to get off my back but to do that I think it's probably better if we
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go for a little
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walk going back to my earlier question
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uh what what is this platform quite
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honestly what it looks like to me is that Intel the themselves can't really
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decide it's like they've changed their mind multiple times and the whole thing
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just seems like this this knee-jerk reaction to AMD's announcement of their
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up to 16 core 32 thread Threadripper
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platform and then I mean some of the things they're doing look just kind of
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like a a a half desperate attempt to
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appease enthusiasts and Gamers who if
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they feel anything anything like me where you know the mainstream's been
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stuck with quad core processors for the last 10 years and even on the Enthusiast
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level we're lucky to get another two cores and last time around we even had
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to pay another $700 just for the privilege of going
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from 8 to 10 cores with the new Broadwell E Generation I mean to be
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clear for me personally a lot of this stuff can only be good I mean High Core
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count overclockable water cooled servers
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that's that's right in my wheelhouse that's perfect and when you're someone
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who doesn't pay for Hardware then uh
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it's expensive no problem I mean not to mention that as a hardware Enthusiast
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I'm not going to be struggling to pair the correct board and the correct memory
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and the correct CPU together to make sure that I'm getting the most out of
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the entire platform cuz honestly that's one of the biggest problems with the
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platform right now it's really conf confusing KB Lake X muddies the waters
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in a way that just makes absolutely no
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sense for Intel to do I mean I've spoken
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to system integrators here at the show I'm not going to name them by name or
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anything but they flat out said we're not going to support this this aspect of
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the platform is a mess because what is kbl LX like on the surface it sounds
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like they've gone ahead and they've added latest
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architecture to this platform in some
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you know amazing wow we engineered a new generation overnight kind of way but
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what actually happened was they took the existing kbl Lake processors on the
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mainstream platform and just like
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stapled them on to socket 2066 the only difference between the
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7740 and the 7640 compared to the socket
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1151 versions is that they rated at uh
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20 W higher tdps they're clocked 100 MHz
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higher and Intel is promising uh better overclocking on them but at the end of
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the day am I going to spend another $100
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on a board just for that and why on
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Earth would Intel neuter all the
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features on the motherboard just for the sake of me being able to run a chip at
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like a little bit higher frequency they don't have more PCI express lanes
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they've still only got 16 and making matters even more confusing they only
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run dual Channel memory still so when you go and you buy an x299 motherboard
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it can have anywhere from four to eight
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memory slots on it which might support two sets of dual Channel memory a single
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set of quad Channel memory or two sets
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of quad Channel memory so you might actually have dim slots that don't work
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if you install a KB Lake X CPU oh and I
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mean right this is crazy too I even
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forgot the part how x299 boards aren't
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going to have all the connectors for onboard Graphics so the onboard Graphics
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are fused off which wouldn't inherently be a huge problem I expect someone
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spending you know 300 to $600 on a
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motherboard to buy a dedicated graphics card but the issue is that then you
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can't even use features that you would be able to on the mainstream platform
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like uh Quicks sync for example that rely on the integrated GPU in order to
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function kbl Lake just makes no sense at
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all okay so now let's talk about those reactionary High Core count CPUs again
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I'm not complaining an 18 Core Extreme Edition that's overclockable sounds
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great to me but everyone in their dog knows that Intel was only planning to
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use the low core count version of their
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xon processors to create their high-end desktop platform so that was going to be
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up to 12 cores and uh surprise surprise
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here at the show the only chips they're showing are based on that one so what
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Intel did is they saw oh no AMD has
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Threadripper they're they're making us look bad by announcing this stuff that
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people really want uh uh uh quick
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announce something even though you know we don't know how much power it's going
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to consume we don't know what clock speeds it's going to run at we don't know how much we're going to charge for
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it we just we need to make sure we're announcing something so that when AMD
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launches Threadripper we're not caught completely with our pants down and no
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way to react to it but here's the problem they're taking this wait and see
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approach for a reason that I personally
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don't really like they want to see what
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Threadripper turns into before they commit to what they're going to deliver
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to the consumer and that's exactly the problem that they're running up against
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in the first place here here's some corporate strategy advice free of charge
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Intel build the best thing you can for
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the best price that you can deliver it and you're not going to get blindsided
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by a competitor that walks in and delivers something way better for a
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lower price so we've got this really confusing platform we've got these these
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midcore count harvested zons on the
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high-end desktop platform that are going to be differentiated by having lots of
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PCI Express Lanes uh which I think is
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what gives them the core I9 designation we're going to have the normal chips
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some of which still have lots of PCI
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Express Lanes uh and go up to 12
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cores all of the ones I've mentioned so far support quad Channel memory and
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anywhere from 28 to 44 PCI Express Lanes
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then we're going to have KB Lake X which
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only supports 16 PCI Express Lanes and get this the motherboard manufacturers
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have to support any chip that you could
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put in the socket on every single board
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how do you build a board around 16 to 44
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PCI Express Lanes dual to quad Channel
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memory and anywhere from 4 to 18 cores the
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whole launch is so rushed that gigabite
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flat out isn't supporting Thunderbolt 3 on any of their x299 boards because they
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didn't have time to go through the certification process and the whole
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thing is confusing as hell to not just
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the general consumer but even
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enthusiasts and I mean there's other stuff here that just makes no sense to
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me as well v-rock okay so I talked about how
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you can have you know up to you know better support for NVMe storage than
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ever before so this is a really cool feature you can actually run bootable
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raid through the CPU rather than letting
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it get bottlenecked by the chipset now with NVMe devices but out of the box
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Intel is only supporting raid
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zero and if you want to run raid one or
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RAID 10 you need to buy a $99 physical
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key and plug it into the board and if you want to support raid five on top of
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all that other stuff you're going to pay another 300
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$100 like I get that they're worried about cannibalizing their Zeon sales and
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their server and high-end workstation sales with this platform but this seems
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like such a step backwards on a consumer
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product going back to buying like raid keys and sticking them onto a
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motherboard and as if that wasn't anti-consumer enough the word on the
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street now and I really hope they reverse this decision if it is one is
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that this bootable raid this v-rock feature is only going to work with Intel
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branded NVMe ssds they don't make the
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best NVMe ssds at least not till opan lands so they're basically going yeah
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here's the highest end you know Enthusiast thing oh by the way put some
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you know ssds in here for your wicked raate array that aren't even the best on
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the market so I'm sorry if this video was a
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little more rambly than what I usually
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do and uh maybe a little longer than
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what I do these days but I guess it just felt appropriate given the the
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frustration that I've had I mean you know I've been asking for higher core
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counts and I've been you know asking for really a lot of
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the things that they're doing right now which like it's funny cuz here I am
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complaining about it but what's frustrating is not that
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they're doing it what's frustrating ating is my perception of the reasons
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that they're doing it so I guess that's pretty much it like leave a comment
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letting me know your guys' thoughts am I am I being nitpicky or are the
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criticisms Fair um leave a comment below
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and let's uh let's at least talk about it if Intel's going to come across this
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video I'd love for them to get some real feedback not just from me but also from
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you guys so thanks for watching this video
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here from computex 2017 in beautiful
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Taiwan a huge shout out to Corsair for
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allowing us to be here the Corsair one is their 12 L Powerhouse of a gaming
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machine that's available with up to a GTX 1080 graphics card with a 1080 TI
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version coming soon and a huge shout out
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to Synergy for offering 25% off their
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mouse and keyboard sharing software to all of our viewers and you can find
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links to both of those in the video description