This GAMING laptop is FAST - XMG Pro 17
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2021-05-05
·
2,246 words · ~11 min read
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- Fast laptops, I've got two of them. You guys like it when I unbox them
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and I like unboxing them too. We're gonna take these apart and it's gonna be great.
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They're from XMG and they're about as fast as you can get, although they do have Intel,
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so we'll see just how that compares to the last one we did. I'm not totally sure which laptop this is.
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We have two of them, the XMG PRO 17 and 15.
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I believe they're essentially the same, minus the screen size, but I guess we'll find out
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once we take them apart. This concise user's guide.
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I mostly find it funny just because it says, "Concise User's Guide,"
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but is this long.
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There's actually like useful stuff in here. Yep, they have power modes,
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they explain what Max Q is, damn.
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This I believe is the 17, wow, this is a lot smaller than I was expecting.
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Look at this, I'm pretty sure it has a 3080 in it.
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These are direct from Clevo. So these are XMG laptops
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but they are straight from the factories in Taiwan because getting ahold of these is pretty hard.
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I'm pretty sure these are pre-production. So it's like space, like the footprint of this
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is larger than the Neo that we looked at, but I'm quite sure it's thinner.
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Yeah, it doesn't look like a gaming laptop at all. It's very similar in size to Zephyrus,
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if the Zephyrus was just larger.
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Does that make sense? (laughs) Okay, I'm actually excited now, damn.
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I was kind of expecting these to be just massive big porkers of a laptop.
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And the other laptop.
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I think someone screwed up. (laughs)
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- [Man] Did we get the same laptop? - I think (laughs), okay, okay.
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Oh my God, they're the same laptop (laughs).
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Okay, everything that I said about the 15 inch,
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scratch that. Two 17 inches, yay.
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Anyway, moving on to IO. So on the side here, you get two USB type A's
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an Ethernet port. Round back, we have Thunderbolt,
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so that's something you don't get on an AMD laptop.
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HDMI and also DisplayPort, but only the mini one,
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and power input. And finally, on the left, we have mini SD card,
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kinda wish it was full-sized but oh, well. And then another type A and headphone and microphone.
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Are you ready to open it up, (indistinct)? - Yeah. - Aye, aye captain.
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- Let's open it up. - Yes, to the sponsor, iFixit.
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2:38
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2:43
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2:48
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using the links down in the description. So in this one right here, we get a, let's see here,
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an Intel core i7, 1087H.
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So that's eight cores. I think they go pretty close to five gigahertz.
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These things are really fast. 16 gigabytes of RAM and an RTX 3080.
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I'm pretty sure this is a Max Q version, even though Max Q Max P died.
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But it also didn't. I don't know it's confusing. Laptop stuff is really dumb right now.
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The first, most noticeable thing about this laptop is that the display is freaking huge.
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Like it's 17 inches, we knew that going in because of the name
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but at the same time, just like looking at it
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with these small bezels, it's freaking massive.
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Now this is only a 1080p display. It is 300 Hertz.
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So like, if you're looking to headshot people this is gonna be great.
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But if you're looking for like doing a bunch of office stuff,
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I do believe that there's a 1440p version which is the one that I would definitely go for.
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Yeah, it's not super bright. I think it only covers the sRGB color space
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which is just a lot less colors than if you get Adobe or DCI-P3.
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That said, if your plan is to just game on it,
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this seems like a pretty good option. Oh, the other laptop, it's done updating.
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So we finally get to see what exactly is in here. RTX 3070, so it's not going to be quite as powerful.
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Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that I requested both of these so that I could look at the difference between 3070
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versus 3080 in laptops.
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We're not going to do that today. Just going to see how this guy right here runs.
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We wanna look at the actual difference between those two, we'll have to do that on LTT
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so way too much work for right now. Yeah, comment below 3070 versus 3080.
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We have a German keyboard, once again. This is made for XMG and they're German.
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So the keyboard that we get here is also German.
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You can't buy stuff from them that's not German keyboards, but you know, pre-production, we get what we get.
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It appears that this laptop is designed purely for gaming,
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so let's just get straight into that. So up here, it looks like we're getting,
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ah, just dropped to like 120 FPS
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or we're also regularly getting around 200. So somewhere around 150, 170 seems to be about the average.
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We're going into the actual game now though, so we'll see.
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Having the super large display when you're gaming
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is so great. Especially with like the really high refresh rate
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that I'm getting. Yeah, the refresh rate is awesome for those times when you like want to jump
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and do a 180, like those like,
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really easy. If you mainly play like FPS's,
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this is going to be awesome for you.
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If you're the sort of person that plays RTSs for the most part, maybe you don't need this.
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Because it is lower resolution, I probably wouldn't want to use this for like RTS's
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or office work or most things that are not gaming, if I'm honest.
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Like I said, there is the other option
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that makes a lot more sense if you want to do basically all of those things.
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1440p, this generation, is what you want.
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Yeah, we quit the game, but everything's still really hot.
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We're looking at like the mid 80s for the CPU,
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actually more like mid 90s. This thing is probably easily thermal throttling,
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if you're doing anything. GPUs normally survive a lot better.
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81 degrees, that's not ideal, hotspot temperature of 87.
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I guess we'll find out when we open it up, but I am going to guess that the cooling system in this
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is nowhere near as sophisticated as what you find in like a Zephyrus.
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And yeah, it's not treating this thing well. I am going to, people complained the last time
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that these mouse mats will be choking it off. I don't think it makes a difference.
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Let's play a tiny bit of Valheim, just to monitor the temps.
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This looks and feels like it's playing very well but let's see what the temps are saying.
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GPU temp is currently, it's climbing pretty fast.
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We're at 77 degrees on the hotspot temp right now,
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78. Oh, the CPU is actually not doing too bad right now,
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it's sitting at like the 70s thereabouts.
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So yes, it does depend on what game you're running. This one might just be, you know, less CPU dependent,
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so that's why it's not just absolutely destroying the poor thing.
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How's the GPU doing?
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Yeah, it's still climbing, I wouldn't be surprised if it got back up close to 90 degrees again.
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Like your gaming experience on this thing is still going to be awesome, but at the same time,
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it's really loud and really hot and it's using Intel,
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so I'm not sure why we're super surprised. 83 degrees on the GPU now.
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That's hotter than I ever saw the Zephyrus, and that also had a 3080 in it.
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Actually our GPU temps are high but maybe I'm giving the Zephyrus too much credit.
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So it looks like we've max gotten 135 Watts of power on the GPU.
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And right now it's sitting around like 90 to 100.
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So the problem might not so much be the thermals but they're just really giving her the beans.
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Okay, let's go to quiet and see what happens.
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Yeah, it's calming down, it's calming down.
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Okay, we're still getting like 80 Watts on the GPU.
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It isn't a noticeably different experience.
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So I think that I might actually avoid going with the like full power setting on this
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and instead just leave it in quiet mode
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and have a much more pleasant time for my ears. If I'm honest, the keyboard's a bit of a let down.
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Some of the keys are just less stable than others and in general they're all pretty wibbly-wobbly.
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Like I'm not pressing the key right now, I'm just flexing it like (groans).
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That one's way worse than this one which you can kind of see is like the big problem.
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Yeah, I push it on the bottom here and it just goes down but if I push it on the bottom with this one,
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it's like (groans). As for the track pad, it's nice and large.
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I don't think it's glass topped although it doesn't really matter given that, you know
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it feels good to use. I'm personally not a fan
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of having the two buttons on the bottom and not being able to click it in.
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But at the same time some people love having buttons down here, so it's kind of up to you.
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Like all of the bits that you press are very stiff
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but again, except for the keyboard, like can you see this Andy?
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- [Andy] Yeah (indistinct). - In here it flexes but then like if I do the same thing up top
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you can see it just doesn't flex at all. Apparently these speakers were tuned by Sound Blaster.
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(bright music) Oh my God, that's bad.
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It's like, it's hurting my ears, it's really loud
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and just unpleasant sounding.
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That might be the worst laptop I've heard in years. I'm gonna get the XPS out
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so you guys can kinda see how it compares, you know
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make sure that it's not just the microphone that's making the sound like trash. But Oh my God, that is abysmal.
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XMG NEO 17, (bright music) changing over to the XPS.
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Totally different. It just, I can hear different instruments
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that I just could not before, my ears don't hurt.
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It's loud, but like, not painful.
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Let's take a look at what we get in here. So upgradability, at first look, is awesome.
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So we have two SO-DIMM slots, two SSD slots, Wi-Fi module.
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And actually now that I look at it this might be made for or of a 15 inch.
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Like if you look at it, these ribbon cables here, this space, all of this space down here
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really suggests to me that the internals are exactly the same for the 15 inch version,
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except probably with a bit smaller heat sinks. Compared to the Zephyrus,
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there's not a lot of cooling in here.
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We got one, two, three, four, five heat pipes.
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Actually the Zephyrus might only be like six, but at the same time, they're way bigger.
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And it's not really comparable to this.
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Oh yep, there's the very first thing that you'll want to do
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when you get this laptop. Normal thermal paste down here, wipe that off,
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chuck some liquid metal in there, actually video right here,
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I show you how to do it but it was also my first time ever doing it. So it's kinda scary.
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Yeah, this probably would be a lot better if it had liquid metal down there.
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If you're considering buying this I would consider considering the XMG NEO 15.
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So it's not quite as slim, but at the same time
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you get that AMD processor, which is just so fricking fast
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and also you don't have to worry about thermals as much as just the heater cores that Intel is these days.
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And if you want that slimness, get a Zephyrus.
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As far as just daily usability, way better,
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night and day compared to this thing. So, sorry XMG, I wish that I could recommend this more
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but at the same time. Well, thanks for watching, hit like, get subscribed,
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tick the bell and just have a fantastical day, so long.