Luke's Personal Rig Update Part 2 - Squirtle
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,840 words · ~14 min read
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All right, guys. Welcome to what I think is like part two of my build vlog. This
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is the continuation of Squirtle. We've ditched the 800D disgusting mess that I
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had before, and now we've moved to this partially built test bench. Huge
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improvement. Um, what this video is really about is asking questions about
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what I can do with this test bench. So, I'm trying to figure out things about it
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as there's not a ton of information out there as I went with something fairly obscure just cuz I thought it looked
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pretty cool. Yes, it's 8020 extrusion, so I could have just built this on my
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own, but I didn't want to rip the guy's design off. That's not really fair. What
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I am going to end up doing, though, is butchering this thing like crazy and
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changing it a lot to make it my own. And in that, we're going to be trying to
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figure out how many rads I can fit to this thing because the most I've ever
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seen it with is one triple, and I want
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to fit four radiators on it. I was kind of hoping two uh 3x120s and two 2x120s.
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I don't think I'm going to get quite there, but I still want to get four radiators on it. I want to see where I
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can fit this fairly large reservoir, especially for this style of computer,
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and I want to see if I can do that in a pretty cool place, which you'll hopefully see later. And I want to see
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about how I can access things in the bottom of the computer. So, we're going
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to try and answer all those questions in this video where I kind of mess around
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with this test bench. If you want to see all the rest of these build log videos as they come out, stay subscribed to
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Linus Tech Tips. Let's get a move on.
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First things first, we got to do a little bit of out with the old, in with
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the new. So, I'm going to get rid of that pretty old power supply. I'm going
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to get rid of that old uh not very usable at this point for what I want to
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do graphics card and that gigantic air cooler. I'm going to leave the
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motherboard because while I won't necessarily be using this motherboard
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specifically, uh it's the right size, so
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it's not really that big of a deal. And I do need it to be there so I can kind of see how stuff like cables are going
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to be routing and stuff like that, which I won't need the GPU for, and the GPU
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would be more annoying than anything. Later on, I'll have to have a placeholder GPU so I can see how like
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the water cooling is going to come up and get to that, but for now, it should
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be fine. Now that all the old stuff has been removed, it's time to start
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strapping radiators to it. So, the first thing I'm going to do is grab one of the
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spare alpha cool radiators that we had at work, the 3x120, and try to put it on
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alongside my other in parallel, at least my other 3x120 mm radiator. My current
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one is really thick. This one is not quite as thick, but it's still pretty
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thick radiator. Um, but we'll see how that works. Uh, I know this is going to
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fit. This isn't actually really a problem, but I do need to strap it to
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the bench just to make sure that other things will be able to fit alongside it.
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it itself fitting is not necessarily the most important thing. Everything else
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being able to fit inside the same ecosystem is also extremely important.
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Now that that's strapped to the bench, I need to go to the smaller end cap where
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I find out that as I expected, the 2x120
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mm radiator is too long. I do not want to have it on the outside. I do want it
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to be on the inside of the bench just so it won't get hit by anything or anything
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like that. So, it's too long. It's not going to work. I was kind of hoping it
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would. And I could custom fit the bench to make it bigger to accommodate for it,
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but that would make the bench really big and get rid of the whole compact nature
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of it, which I do like. So, not going to go that route. Moving onwards, the 140
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mm single radiator also didn't fit. This
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got me a little bit worried. I actually kind of thought that one would work. Um,
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but no, it the the the fitting where the fittings should go on that radiator
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collided with another one of the radiators that I had inside. And I don't
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want to swap either of those out. I like the thick 3x120s. So, that one didn't
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work. Luckily, moving on to the single 120 mm radiator. That one fit pretty
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much perfectly. So, we're pretty good for rads at this point. All right. So,
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we're three for three for radiators so far, and we've covered the whole side of
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the bench in radiators that has the kind of like power supply on it at the bottom
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of the motherboard area. Something to take note of here is before I started
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strapping radiators to it, my plan was to have the reservoir come out of the
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cable management hole for the power supply as I thought that would look
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really cool and I space tested it before I put the radiators in. Just hold that
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in your memory for now and we're going to move on to fitting that last radiator. Now, problem with fitting the
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last radiator, I don't have another 120 mm radiator to test here, but I'm not
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worried about the spacing as the spacing is exactly the same as on the other side. So, the idea of fitting a radiator
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here, well, the idea of fitting the radiators all around the bottom is I
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thought it would look cool to have kind of like a radiator blackout on the
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bottom of this test bench. So, that was a huge part of the inspiration of doing
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this. I wanted to make sure it fit. I'm happy it fit. I also kind of need to be
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able to access the bottom of the computer, though. Of course, if I tilt the entire test bench up, I could reach
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up from the bottom and access it there, but that's really annoying. So,
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solution, put one of the 120 mm
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radiators on hinges. That's going to be this side where the top of the
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motherboard is facing the CPU end of the test bench. So, I'm going to put this
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radiator on hinges. I still have to go pick those up, though. But, it will fit.
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I'm not super worried about that. to be able to manage the tubing under there.
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I'm fully expecting to utilize a combination of putting key rings over
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the tubing and then hooking those key rings up to springs so that when I pull
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the uh radiator out, the tube will pull
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along with it but not kind of go everywhere. I want the springs to be able to manage it properly. It's going
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to be an interesting project, but that's for a different video, not this video so
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far. All right, so that kind of concludes rads. We're essentially four
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for four at this point. The last one, while I don't have the hinges already on
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it, where that'll mess with the spacing a little bit, will fit. If it doesn't
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work with the hinges, it'll work with the flat plates. That's fine. I can just access it from the bottom, but I'm
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pretty sure it'll work with the hinges regardless. So, we're fine for radiators
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at this point. Not too worried about it. Need to move back to the reservoir. Need
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to figure out how I'm going to mount mount it from the bottom. Okay. Well,
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this is where the figurative poop started hitting the fan. Things were not
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okay. The radiators were in the way. The 7-in power supply, which was actually
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longer. My my power supply personally was longer than the one that I used to
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have on the bench. Things were not going to work. I would have needed a reservoir
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that was less than half the diameter of this one to be able to make it actually
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work. Not good news at all. How am I
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going to fix this? Well, there's a lot of fancy extrusion work that I could do
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by taking the motherboard support braces and chopping them off at the end of the
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motherboard so they don't go all the way down. Um, I could take the power supply
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support brace, which also supports the motherboards, and shift that up more
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towards the motherboard and then add a little bit onto the side to make sure
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that it could still support the power supply. I could do a whole bunch of this
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stuff with the extrusion to try and open up that space. Still didn't solve the
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problem, though. The radiators aren't going to move, and I already don't have
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a thick uh 3x120 alpha coal radiator
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like on the other side on that side of the computer. So shrinking the rads
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isn't really going to help a ton either. It might help a little bit, but not much. What really needs to happen is the
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power supply needs to be swapped out. Again, the power supply that I have
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personally was never actually tested on this bench, but it's just over 7 in. And
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I tested one that was just over 7 in. That was not going to work. First
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solution that I came up with was a Silverstone short SFX 600 watt power
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supply, which you guys have probably seen in a video featured by Lionus. It worked. It made sense, but it
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didn't look good. and it's only a 600 watt. There's not a ton of flexibility
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in terms of cabling and or power. So, I
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wanted something a little bit more. I wanted an ATX size power supply because
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it looked kind of weird having an SFX on this bench. So, I found Silverstone's
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other kind of short power supply, which is one of their 850 watts. More wattage.
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Cool. More flexibility in terms of cabling. Cool. And also an ATX format.
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So, it fit. Cool. Triple cool. It worked. And it worked by what I would
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say is less than millimeters. How the reservoir fits in there right now, it is
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touching on every single side. It is touching the motherboard. It is touching
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the radiator on its other side. It is touching the other radiator and it is
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touching the power supply. There is literally no extra room at all. I can't
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believe I got this to work. Um, there's a couple options that I can do for
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fitting the cables around it, but it's
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going to work. You can ask Brandon. I was pretty freaked out at this point in
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the build. I was like, "Wow, my entire plan is not going to work. I'm going to
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have to change how I'm mounting a whole bunch of stuff. I might have to ditch
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some radiators all just to be able to fit a reservoir in there. I might even
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have to ditch this reservoir altogether cuz it's too tall to realistically fit
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into the bottom of the case. Unless I can have it poking up the top. My whole
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plan from the beginning was to have this reservoir poking up through that hole
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and it might not have worked. So, pretty stoked that it did. So, with that all
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figured out, what are my actionable items? Well, I need to figure out
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exactly how I'm going to mount this. To be able to do that, I need to finish
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that extrusion job. So, I'm going to have to go shopping at a metal shop, try
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to figure out the exact lengths of all the extrusion I need and do the tedious
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job of setting that all up. Then, I need to figure out how to mount this, which
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will probably be an extrusionbased box with a plate on top of it, so it can sit
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there and I'd screw it into that. Hopefully, that will work. We'll have to
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see. That'll probably be next video. I also need my motherboard RAM and CPU to
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kind of show up. So, that'll happen at some point, but I'm not too worried
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about that. Then, I need need to figure out my like fittings set up. The bottom
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of the computer is already set up with how the radiators are orientated so that
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um they kind of feed into each other in a big square, which is fine and logical.
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Because of how messy the area where the reservoir is going to be is, I'm going
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to have to have the water cooling for the graphics card come up just below the
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motherboard on this side. And then I'll have a right angle on the graphics card
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so it can grab it from there. Then I would just go straight up to the CPU and
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have it drop down just above the motherboard on this side. Obviously, I'm
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going to have to see like, oh, should I have a right angle here? Should I not have a right angle here? All that kind
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of stuff. But it's fairly straightforward as of now. So, I need to
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go shopping for fittings. I need to get some extrusion and I need to have my
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you for continuing this adventure with me. Hopefully, I can keep doing Squirtle
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updates. Um, there's definitely a lot more work to do, so I'm sure I will. If
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you liked the video, like it. If you disliked it because you hate Squirtle,
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dislike the video. Uh, subscribe as usual so you can see all the rest of our
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stuff. Comment in the video down below or on the forum. If you're on the forum,
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this one was easier to understand. I know there's a few complaints people couldn't understand what I was saying.
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Sorry about that. We just thought it would be kind of a cool video. I don't
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know. Oh well. Sorry. Uh if you guys want to see the one with Linus painted
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up, you'll definitely be able to understand him properly in that video and that should be coming up fairly
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soon. Stay subscribed. Thank you guys for watching and I'll see you next time.