There wonāt be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, Iāve already said, and Iāve done so privately.
To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didnāt go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didnāt āsellā the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunicationā¦ AND the fact that while we havenāt sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but Iāve told him that I wonāt be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that Iāll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of āTeam Mediaā. When/if heās ready to do so again Iāll be ready.
To my team (and my CEOās team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - weāve been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and itās clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasnāt built in a day, but thatās no excuse for sloppiness.
Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that weāre not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But itās sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that weāve communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeahā¦ What weāre doing hasnāt been in many years, if everā¦ and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesnāt materially change the recommendation. That doesnāt mean these things donāt matter. Weāve set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you havenāt seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if youāre really looking for itā¦ The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. Iām REALLY excited about what the future will hold.
With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which Iāve already addressed above) is an āaccuracyā issue. Itās more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (againā¦ mystery) would have been impossibleā¦ and also didnāt affect the conclusion of the videoā¦ OR SO I THOUGHTā¦
I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldnāt make sense to buyā¦ so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didnāt really make a difference.
Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesnāt mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip. I missed that, but it wasnāt because I didnāt care about the consumerā¦ it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and Iāve watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. Itās an astonishingly unforgiving market.
Either way, Iām sorry I got the communityās priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didnāt show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasnāt to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because itās an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, yāknow, eat).
With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and Iāve never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient.
We can test thatā¦ with this post. Will the āIt was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and theyāre taking care of itā reality manage to have the same reach? Letās see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but itās been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, Iām a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.
Thanks for reading this.[1]
Check LinusTechās profile for further discussion and comments heās had.[2]
And they wouldnāt watch Linus video on it going on the wrong gpu. Those insane people can do what they want but its clear Linus is typically catering to tech ānormiesā they will do the occasional commercial tech but those are typically using them in ways they werenāt meant to in a rather silly/pointless deployment. Iām not here to say what Linus did to the prototype was great since really auctioning it off is pretty abhorrent but I think people are over exaggerating about him going to be the ādeath of a startupā when local youtuber āfunnyā man makes a stupid video on it installing it on the wrong gpu, which has been clearly pointed out to death in the comments even before this controversy popped up.
From Billet labās own website, it seems custom parts may be their bag and even though the video was negative on the monoblock (as we already established the reasons why) LTT seemed rather positive about the company, just not the product.
Think this is a case of damned if you do and damned if you donāt. Where I can see where Linus is coming from since he is quite frequently told he is out of touch as shown with his recent āhouseā videos. I think this could have easily swung the other way of āWow Linus, of course the techtuber who gets free shit would advertise a 900$ waterblock, we can barely afford the gpus to put these on but he wants us to buy something that cost half the price of the already overpriced gpu its being put onā. Like custom water cooling loop are fucking cool but you get to a huge point of diminishing return. Like if we believe Billet Labās own results, the difference between Monoblock and EK quantum magnitude & EK-Quantum Vector is only about 3-5 degrees. People can burn their money how they want but I am pretty certain LTT has made a video saying they actually donāt encourage consumers to watercool their PCs since while its better its typically just a worse user experience (This is me paraphrasing).
They absolutely would, itās literally the only video on it in huge part because Linus managed to give away the only prototype without permission, accidentally ensuring exclusivity.
And sure, theyād know he fucked up but it might still sway their opinion, maybe even unconsciously.
Oh and when you ask what Linus is going to do to prevent crap like this in the future (after already tripling down on their stupidity with the testing) is ānothing, itās a one in ten years occurrenceā.
The guy absolutely canāt stop jamming his foot in his mouth.
Myself and the guys I was referring to with crazy hardline loops are on first name basis with Linus, we all played left 4 dead together way back when before he even had a YouTube channel (ClosetGamer, anyone?) so his influence with these type of enthusiasts is still pretty strong, at least here in Canada. However he definitely lost a lot of respect with this response of his but honestly I didnāt expect anything different from him