Aside from the in-depth Corsair 600C case review we just posted, the past few days have been slower than the preceding, high-paced weeks. We've had one major content hit after another, largely thanks to game launch season and Black Friday, and the past five days have served as a slower resting period as we ramp into CES. And that's the next big thing – CES – where we'll be working absurd hours through the first week of January.
Similar to what we do for our Patreon backers, largely comprised of YouTube subscribers, I try to write these one-on-one pieces for regulars. The goal is to keep everyone up-to-date on what we're doing, keep everyone as excited about the content as we are, and have a bit of fun while doing it. Less formal in nature, clearly.
Here's what's up:
- Our primary bench motherboard died – the X99 one. Ouch. We were running an X99 Classified board that threw a few red flags leading into its untimely failure: Half the memory slots stopped working, the seven segment display threw PCI initialization errors, and then boot failed altogether. Because benchmarking demands an identical part, lest we introduce test variance, we reached-out to EVGA for a replacement to hopefully bypass the RMA process. We need to be back up-and-running quickly and are expecting our replacement board tomorrow. I'll likely follow-through the usual RMA channel as well, mostly as a non-media 'tour' of warranty support. We try to do these when given the opportunity (a dead part) as it allows us to evaluate the RMA process as a user.
- Once that new board is setup, we'll be benchmarking a PowerColor PCS R9 380X, competing against our R9 Sapphire 380X, and might forge ahead with a CrossFire config just for fun. It's pretty unlikely anyone would configure two 380X cards in CrossFire, but we've got 'em – why not?
- The GTX 970 Hybrid is here. This is a follow-up to EVGA's 980 Ti Hybrid, a card we reviewed positively earlier this year. That review will hit ASAP. Waiting on the board, again.
- We're working on some entertainment content. This is new for us and won't hit the web in the immediate future, but it's being devised now. With the support of Lyndell and Keegan, I think we can produce some fun, half-way informational, half-way entertainment content.
- Hardware news recap & game news recap due this weekend, in cooperation with Lyndell Chase, our newest YouTube addition.
More soon. Waiting on that board is killing me. We bought the first out-of-pocket; I might go for redundancy on our next bench and buy two of whatever platform we eventually move to.
'Til tomorrow.
- Steve.