Mod24 Event Recap
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,905 words · ~14 min read
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so Luke and I recently hosted mod 24 a
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24hour like live PC modding yeah
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building Extravaganza yeah spectacular Event Event yeah that's what
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it was and we actually had a number of you reach out asking us to do some kind
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of a recap of the event now we don't have all the footage from it so
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uploading the 24-hour archive isn't really an option no but what we do have
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is some footage of the finished systems so we were thinking we'd do a quick
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overview of the third second and first place systems and kind of talk about the
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event as a whole yeah or as an event cuz
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it wasn't a hole Yeah like not a literal
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mod 24 for me was at least at the start co-hosting with lonus and then by the
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time we were most of the way through it turned into like just clearing the way
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for Linus's zombie walk to be able to be successful so I had to just make sure
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that I could manage where cameras were going to be so that by by the time he
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got somewhere he could just continuously talk and it would be fine that he could
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go and pass out for short little like 20 minute Windows regain a tiny amount of
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energy and then keep going well I think it would have been easier if cuz I
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thought the original concept was we were going to kind of be sitting in chairs
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and then we'd be looking at footage yes coming from elsewhere commentating on it
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that's what I thought it was too but instead we ended up running all over the
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place you know coordinating a lot of it I mean the team there was great oh yeah
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they were awesome but we were kind of going okay uh I think they're doing this out in the
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in the atrium so you camera guy come
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with me let's go luk you do this and
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talk here and then we'll we'll talk about the security thing and figure out when we're going to flip cameras and
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something will happen and it'll work and when we were really organized Luke and I
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would go to two different places and then we would we would tag
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team off and we'd throw the camera to each other and that only happened a
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couple times yeah not not not way too much I think the coolest thing about it
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was being there with all these people whose builds I've seen on the internet
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and uh to actually seeing them work in person even if you know the quality of
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what they could do in 24 hours it's obviously not going to be the same as
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what they could do in months which is what a lot of them are doing outside of
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this event yeah so I guess we'll start with Team kill ninja this is Rich suras
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and Travis Jen um Rich probably better
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known by his Alias Darth beas definitely yeah lots of famous builds for him I had
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really high expectations for these guys but I really wasn't sure about their
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choice of an open airflow test bench style case I think that came because
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they had very very recently done a build in that exact same test bench with a
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very similar style like two external reservoirs the same radiator placement
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all that kind of stuff um so if they were coming into a 24-hour build being
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able to build on a platform that they knew probably helped quite a bit but
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then they did throw in a bit of a monkey wrench in terms of things that they know
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um and my understanding is that that laser cutting machine that they were
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using to make their deal they had only had for about a week about a week yeah
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yeah they had not had it for very long at all they were while we were there
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they were learning how to work with different types of acrylics in terms of
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different colors and different densities and everything and like how something
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would react if it was reflective you'll notice a lot of the deal on the side of the case are actually kind of a
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reflective metal look yeah instead of like a clear blue and I think it worked
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really well for some of them I think you and I both agree that the Titan the main
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Titan the center
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and theot pretty well but I think some
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of them either didn't come out as clearly I think the ships are a good
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example of this and then some of them it was more of a placement issue the guns
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under the reservoirs are kind of hard to see and the middle of both of them is
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basically entirely chopped off from most angles because of that Reservoir so it
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just kind of looks odd and I mean I
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think that if they'd had more time if they hadn't had to spend so much time
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working on the deal themselves they could have come up with a more polished
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build I mean the thing that really hurt them was they had planned a bunch of
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lighting effects for the main Titan the centerpiece That was supposed to tie in
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the you know favorite gaming experiences theme and then they never actually
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managed to illuminate him so they they
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had tried but I don't think they had kind of enough time and this was also
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kind of a newer thing for them just like the laser cutter they hadn't done it a
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ton in the past and speaking of time they also had the problem with their
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coolant coloring yeah this was right near the
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end right as everything was winding down and Darth beas tried to mix colors
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together to make a cool looking orange which probably actually would have
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played together with the build a lot better but didn't have enough time to squirt anything in other than pink right
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so it made his previously white which looked kind of fine coolant turn to this
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crazy vibrant pink which while some people liked it was pretty polarizing
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and didn't work super great with the judges well I think that whoever gets
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this system when they've had more time to polish it and finish it up before
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sending it out is going to end up with something that's a pretty different looking experience than what they were
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able to do in 24 hours definitely I think that's going to be a fairly common
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theme for all the builds but this one especially mainly due to the color of
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the coolant and possibly uh the illumination of the Titan team mongus
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made up of Lee Harrington and Ron Ley Christensen had a kind of a I'd say they
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had the simplest overall game plan yeah they were the only ones that took a real
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case and then they picked a theme that would fall kind of sort of into any of
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the three that NVIDIA might throw at them at the time of the competition and
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they had that whiteboard that had their entire plan every half an hour little
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half an hour slots and everything so they knew exactly what they had to be
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done by different parts of the contest and every once a while we' check up with
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them and they'd say yeah we' we've now uh cut all of our what was that styrene
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y we've cut all our styrene so we know we know we're ahead of schedule now or
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whatever they always seem like they're ahead of schedule speaking of cutting
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styrene I really didn't have much hope for this build at the beginning it
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looked like uh lee didn't seem to really have much to do until the liquid cooling
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started and it seemed like Ron was spending a lot of time cutting out
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little white pieces of styrene and it
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was hard shaving them in different ways and it was hard for me to visualize what
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that was going to turn into but once he started painting them end up looking
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absolutely fantastic he's obviously very skilled with an airbrush and this this
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case just looks really sharp especially for how much time they had to get it
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done and there were some some things I didn't expect like the fact that that
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vibrant top panel ties in so well to the rest yeah the fact that it actually
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works with the rest of the build is is kind of interesting especially because
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he even described the side panels as being muted yeah they were they were it
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was a muted style and then the top was very in your face which is interesting
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and other than a couple stencils for words here and there one of which got
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wanged during the during the build process but it ended up kind of working
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he basically freehanded the whole thing which is actually very impressive uh
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something interesting talking about freehanding they had to move the
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reservoir because NVIDIA kind of changed the game on them with how many graphics
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cards they're going to have so they had to move the reservoir into where I
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believe the hard drive cages would originally go Y and that ended up
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screwing a whole bunch of stuff up like they had to custom cut the power supply
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cover that comes in that in case and I think that is what ultimately cost them
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the competition because theirs was the one that should have been done like they
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could have installed Windows on it by the end of the competition but making
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those last minute alterations ended up causing them to not even be able to post
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their system at the very end of the competition which to my understanding
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was actually the tiebreaker I think that's actually where their extensive
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planning ended up hurting them because they planned so much that they didn't
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plan for anything not going according to plan so when something Mi mixed up their
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plan they didn't have any time allotment left for it and it kind of threw them
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over honestly I think losing points for not posting might not have been entirely
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Fair because looking at the other systems particularly the winter and how
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functional those actually are in spite of whether they did or didn't
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post they all had postcode errors so you can say whatever you want
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about that which leads us to the project that turned out to be the eventual
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winner the team BS mods
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ancient IBM server machine that Bob
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Stewart and Rod Rosenberg chose to tackle I think they had by far the most
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ambitious project in terms of leaving no
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time to spare taking something that they could have worked frantically at for 48
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hours and trying to do it in 24 well we would see we would see the other teams
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go for smoke breaks or like stop for lunch breathe just generally like
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necessity kind of things and these would completely ignore it anytime that we
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were wondering where they were at for interviews just oh okay go to the
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Courtyard they'll be there working on their case they'll be sanding something
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yeah yeah for the first 20 hours they will be sanding something yeah uh they
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had to completely build whole they had to completely fabricate entire new parts
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of their case including a whole new back uh they they had to add in they didn't
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fabricate this but they had to add in an entirely new motherboard tray they had
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to cover up a whole bunch of venting on the inside of the case with they weren't
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going to make it me neither I flat out thought they were not going to have a
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finished system by the end of the project wouldn't have though right that
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brings in the 30 minute extension we were chosen to cap off the stream
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because mod 24 was freaking awesome so they decided to let us kind of finish it
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off um and that gave all the teams an extra 30 minutes which was fine because
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they didn't actually have 24 hours anyways so we allowed them to have a
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little bit more and get close to the 24-hour cap but with all that 30 minutes
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I do not think they would would have finished and you know what I think that
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even if the judges had had a little bit more time to look at the systems or if
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the judges had been a bit more technical it might have gone to team Mongoose
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because frankly it wasn't really done
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the stencil behind the door was not that great I mean I even heard them calling
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it a quote unquote 30-footer when they
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were working on the paint job because they saw how little time they had left
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after the fabrication and metal working that was involved in getting the case to
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even house the hardware that they had yep their fans weren't plugged in I
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believe that radiator is just glued to the back panel well they cut holes for
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the radiator there's a triple radiator hole series cut but the the tubing
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doesn't reach and they had not planned to do custom water cooling because they
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knew coming into the competition that they would have no time for that and
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they'd be spending all their time building the case yeah so while I don't
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necessarily know if the eventual
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winning spot was entirely deserved
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especially because they mostly went with an NVIDIA theme not a gaming theme not
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your favorite moment in gaming it was very specifically your favorite moment
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in gaming which I guess none of them does
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kind of tie into to Phil and I don't think the others really did it any
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better than Yes actually that's a good point because Phil attaches to them through PDX land that's right and you
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could definitely say that their favorite moment in gaming was attached to PDX
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land but their system ALS Al just plain old wasn't finished I mean the front
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fans were just not plugged in yeah even
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though they did manage to post which ended up being what pushed them over the
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edge although we did find that the two systems that quote unquote posted were
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hitting postcode errors and the same postcode era that actually team mongus
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was posting on but for some reason wasn't getting a display output yes so
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overall though with all of that said I was cheering for team BS mods I told
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them that I told you that I thought their project their concept was the
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coolest I think they actually probably had the most amount of people cheering for them including myself as well um
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because it was so ambitious I loved what they were doing and the fact that they
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pulled it off to the extent that they did is amazing I just wouldn't want to
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be them cleaning that system up for the
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eventual Prize winner because I mean those panels don't even go back on no it
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it's going to take them an incredibly long uh amount of time to finish this
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build outside of the event um and much more time than any of the other two
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builds especially team Mong but it sure was a cool concept
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definitely and whoever wins it is going to be super stoked all right so guys
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that was our recap of the mod 24 24-hour
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gaming stream system builds hope you guys enjoyed it I hope that we do an
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event like this again yeah next
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week yes next week let's do it we mod 24
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on the airplane going to Germany we to build little mini ITX systems it's
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cool don't worry about all right guys thanks for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked
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