Ironically enough, this whole debacle with Billet Labs probably is better advertising than a proper review ever would have been.
Ironically enough, this whole debacle with Billet Labs probably is better advertising than a proper review ever would have been.
The shitstorm of a fallout has pushed the community behind Billet Labs more than they ever would have gotten had they just gotten reviewed properly. It may have sucked what had happened but I think they will be better off in the long term now that people are aggressively supportive of them. Funny twist of fate in my opinion.
Unless they get the prototype back, even if they get money, they've lost the time it takes to reproduce the prototype. Also, if they haven't gone through the patent process, some larger company with economies of scale could acquire the unit and beat them to market pretty easily. Ideas are hard to develop but easy to copy and improve upon. LTT/LMG selling the prototype instead of returning it to Billet is just absolutely egregious and indefensible. I'm not even sure how it could have been a mistake.
Billet Labs decided that they don't want it back and just want the compensation instead. They started to make a new prototype as it is likely faster than them getting back the original if at all. Can't say I blame them.
The just seem to have no documentation going on.
They not only accidentally auctioned of the prototype, they also lost the 3090Ti that was send with the prototype, you know the proper card to test that on, they lost the sheet of who they auctioned what to - and that's just the stuff in this single case. I can only imagine that they just have a single crammed storage room where they just randomly drop things and hope to find them later when they need it.
Considering that it's normal for their employes to take anything they want home, i doubt they ever had a working inventory system.
Problem is, we don't know how many companies folded because of flawed reviews.
If you're just a small company, it's already hard enough to compete with the big guys, but if then there's a bad review on LTT, you might as well just close shop. And given how poorly things went over the last months, I wouldn't be surprised if there are 20 more reviews with just as bad preparation.
I guess we will find out soon enough. LTT is currently being scrutinized with a fine tooth comb.
Good. About time Linus was under the microscope.
I still wish we would have gotten a proper benchmark of their prototype :-/
If it actually works well they could always release a cheaper mass produced version down the line.
Oh I am sure we will see a proper review by an eager reviewer soon. The chance to capitalize on the drama is far too enticing.
Somewhere in my imagination the person who got the prototype sends it to Gamers Nexus and they make a proper review.
I mean, the kind of person who would get this thing is the kind of person that pays attention to the industry and to linus tech tips, I am sure they are aware about all of this.
One can only hope. Worst case the individual either works for the competition or got ten times their money back by selling it to a Chinese company.
It has already been confirmed by Billet that they are working on a new one, and is highly implied that it will go to other youtubers to do a proper review. I expect Steve and Jay, at the very least, will end up getting their hands on it.
Who would win?
One metally boior
One early 2000s P!nk-loving hypocritical LesbianLMAO best summary right here
While probably true, they just got really lucky and won a sort of internet shitstorm lottery.
Feel bad for all of the other folks over the last few years whose businesses were damaged by LTT that we've never heard of. Never will hear of.
I bet an actual ethical review would probably kill the company as much as Linus's video. At the end of the day, I agree with Linus's assessment (minus his hysterics). This thing is over $800. It could be half the price and still be a terrible option. In a way, the video was kinda like those "i made a wish pc" videos where they lampoon a product or an entire company. And LMG makes a ton of those videos.
It's basically sharing a heatsink between the GPU and CPU. There's not much reason to do that even in SFF pcs because the biggest part of the water cooling system is the radiator. And I think this wouldn't work in many sff cases anyway because they tend to be sandwich oriented, using risers to mount the gpu on the other side of the mobo.
I think that may be what linus meant about "reading the room". I think the tone with the video was one of a real review but the content matched more of their videos where they buy dumb garbage online. I'm not excusing it at all and lmg definitely deserve the negative publicity.
But at the end of the day Linus was kinda right, there's no cooling solution worth it at that price point and it is in fact a bad product regardless of how well it cools your card. You can buy a brand new intel 13900k and have over $200 left over
Yet there will still be people that will want the best of the best cooling regardless of how overpriced it is. As ridiculous as it is, he should have given it a fair chance.
LTT prides itself on reliability of testing and so when they aren't willing to go the extra mile to do it correctly, it upsets people. No matter how ridiculous the product is.
Products that are obviously scams or ewaste don't need the full testing treatment, but this is a real product that has a real use for those that have desire for it.
Ultimately it hurts a small company's reputation when they didn't deserve it.
Now you (and GN) have to decide... Either Linus is supposed to give his take and opinion on items they review without any regard to relationships or are they supposed to give this product preferential treatment because of who produced it?
While GN is certainly right in several points (and LMGs selling of the prototype was a really bad oversight for which they need to pay), Linus take from "no cooling performance is worth it at this price point and nobody should buy this) is his opinion and it is not without reason or logic. And GN tells him 5 minutes earlier to do exactly that - give his opinion and take without regard to others, the community or the producers of the products in the name of "journalistic integrity".
This is the dumbest take I've read so far. It's not about whether the product is worth it or not... that doesn't play into this whatsofuckingever.
It makes sense if you hold them to high journalistic standards for the wish.com pc builds, fake knockoffs, and I bought 10 stupid things from Amazon and we’re gonna make fun of them videos as well. I watched the video yesterday to see what it was about and the tone is about the same, it was a foregone conclusion that the price was ridiculous and the item would never be worth your money and they were not really going to give it a real rigorous evaluation. I don’t care if you defend folks who spend $8 million on stupid shit because they have more money than sense. That’s not someone I care enough about to defend, but those are the only people that would even think about buying this thing. I’m not a LTT fanboy. The GN video was really good and I hope LTT improves significantly in many ways. Selling the prototype was extremely shitty. But to say this isn’t about whether the product is worth it is a stupid take in and of itself. The value proposition of the product isn’t changed by the way LTT did them dirty. And that was the point I was making originally. I am definitely not contesting that LTT did them dirty, and then lied about it several times, nor am I stating that LTT is the paragon of hardware reviews. I simply stated that with regard to all that, I agree with Linus’s conclusion completely.
It does make one think, if the block was only compatible with such a specific configuration and a fraction of a niche market, what was the intention of shipping a prototype for review?
The only thing I can think of is brand exposure, but even then not many people would have been able to purchase anything. While Linus shouldn't have handled it the way he did, it does also put into question Billet's strategy in the first place..
Yeah sure Billet Labs is at fault here... Even if their strategy was idiotic what does that have to do with anything? That doesn't mean they deserve this.
You send a prototype like this out to a big outlet like LTT at least for two reasons: get outside expert feedback (which they obviously failed miserably at, I don't expect other small brands trust LTT with their in-development products) and garner interest in the product and the brand. For smaller companies this kind of coverage is critical because they don't have unlimited marketing budgets like the big brands do.