Pure Incompetence: $5,000 Pre-Built Gaming PC Filled with Mistakes (Skytech Mark 9)

Sponsor: Crucial DDR5 Memory geni.us/XKQaQ
We're hugely disappointed in Skytech for not only dropping the ball, but also failing to recognize what went wrong when the answer was right in their faces. Skytech has done well in the past, but after this experience, it's clear that the company needs some more SOPs and quality control internally for their staff. This was a $5,000 computer after shipping, making it one of the most expensive we've ever reviewed, and it's arguably worse even than Alienware's R13 efforts. The Skytech Mark 9 had backwards fans, was tested with the fans installed that way at the production line, has a bent cooler, some bloatware, and other issues. XMP isn't even on and BIOS isn't configured right.
SUPPORT our efforts & ability to buy these pre-built PCs for independent reviews so that we can keep helping people choose good options -- grab a BRAND NEW GN Coaster Pack on the store, in stock and shipping now! store.gamersnexus.net/product...
Watch our pre-built playlist here: • "Fixing" the Alienware...
Watch when Skytech did a good job here: • One of the Best - Skyt...
And watch our Alienware R13 review here: • The Worst Pre-Built We...
Bearded Hardware had a cameo! Check him out here: / beardedhardware
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - YES, THERE'S A PROBLEM
01:34 - One of the Most Disappointing Builds
02:52 - Tearing it Down
04:03 - Excellent Customer Support
04:50 - More of the Internals
08:07 - The Cooler is Also Bent
09:55 - Gluing Cables
11:47 - Loose Screws
14:10 - Thermal Testing
15:30 - GPU Thermals & Utilization
16:14 - Frequency Loss & "Certification"
19:03 - VERY LOUD
20:24 - Power Consumption Testing
21:30 - Setup, Software, & Installation
22:57 - Incorrect BIOS Settings!
24:30 - Conclusion
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Host, Writing, Test Lead: Steve Burke
Testing, Writing: Patrick Lathan
Video Editing, Camera: Andrew Coleman
Video Editing: Mike Gaglione

[@GamersNexus]

LIVE STREAM ALERT! On Sunday 10/23 at 1:30PM Eastern, we will be live overclocking the RTX 4090 on liquid nitrogen with special guest Bearded Hardware (cameo in this video). Check back for it! Watch our pre-built playlist here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kKXRc6Vjq5eonNU Watch when Skytech did a good job here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jorcc5iPjJl5jpY SUPPORT our efforts & ability to buy these pre-built PCs for independent reviews so that we can keep helping people choose good options -- grab a BRAND NEW GN Coaster Pack on the store, in stock and shipping now! store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-drink-debug-coaster-pack-4-custom-3d-coasters-100x100mm-4x4 And watch our Alienware R13 review here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/i5_ZqYahpq9rn8U

[@patricktho6546]

timezone?

[@noyoureahooker]

Hey GN, I'm friends with Brian Redban (the guy who helped Joe Rogan start his Podcast and currently co/host and producer of Kill Tony) and he had a similar situation with a pre-built unit in the same price point. They're making him buy a new CRATE to ship it back for repairs now (5k PC less than a year old).. should I get you guys in contact with one another before he sends it back? Perhaps you guys would be interested in inspecting what they did wrong?

[@FacialVomitTurtleFights]

130? really? why not 530 or 6 oclock?

[@puciohenzap891]

What time is it CET?

[@robertlawrence9000]

Can you unbox these PCs and show us real time what is wrong instead of messing with it before you tell us what was wrong with it. That way too their is proof of integrity of the review.

[@SkytechGamingPC]

Skytech Gaming would like to thank you for the constructive criticism. While painful, we've earned it. This will only further motivate us to improve and better serve our community going forward. While we have not been thorough enough in our training and QC on custom builds, we have taken this feedback to heart, and are diligently working to address these issues. We welcome further feedback and advice as we strive to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

[@evannewman3997]

Steve! Pin this!!

[@gunslingerspartan]

best response to something like this happening but please, don't just fire whoever made the mistake, please think of this in terms of what SOP's you can change in QC to improve how your custom jobs turn out, for example if a test spits out an operating test of 100C, you could put that into an excel spreadsheet and have it check actual temps vs rated temps and turn the cel to red or something

[@frollard]

Hopefully not just paying lip service...look forward to seeing these improvements. I can understand mistakes slipping through the cracks but this was a lot of mistakes. (@steve maybe it was bumped so hard in shipping it knocked the bios battery loose and reset the overclocks? /s)

[@SkytechGamingPC]

@@gunslingerspartan Nobody is getting let go from this. We are only the ones to blame and as a team we are going to implement new procedures and SOP to make sure we are better moving forward.

[@StrikeWarlock]

Between the comments regarding Skytech's CTO and JonnyGuru from Corsair, why are people immediately jumping on termination? Neither parties resulted to malice with what they did.

[@gamerjorts]

Absolutely embarrassing showing, and the email from the "Chief Technology Officer" was the icing on the cake.

[@JosephArata]

It's pretty ridiculous that they hire upper management based on management skills and not if they actually understand the product and company they're going to be managing. It's a sign that corporate architecture, the business philosophy needs a change.

[@degeneratepervert6255]

@@JosephArata that’s most companies these days. I’ve had multiple managers that couldn’t step into my role, in any capacity, yet were in charge of me and others. Sad.

[@StarekS]

@@JosephArata I work in IT, I'm a manager and I'm more technically skilled than any other employee in my company. So that's not always a case. On top of that, you don't have to be very technical to know that 100 degrees is BAD for any component lol. This company is a joke.

[@LuLeBe]

@@professorofdeath7965 depends on the job. It is okay to have specialists working for you that know about stuff that you don't, and they can do the work, show your the results and explain it. You need to trust them though and show them their worth (mainly via financial compensation, plus of course treating them well and crediting them).

[@__dudewitagun__4607]

I agree. I'd use it as a follow up after teaching ppl why prebuilts are a no go. I recently had to convince someone not to buy an Alienware desktop. I said it's got poor ventilation they immediately interrupted saying "look that looks like ventilation there.." and I said "Ys it LOOKS like ventilation....but it's not good, the i9 will run like an i7 due to thermal throttling." Then I showed them your channel.

[@liquid_shadow8690]

Man I’m glad i learned how to build a pc. The joy of saving money and doing it properly is second to none.

[@yudhaxn1195]

+the joy of putting parts together and working properly is second to none.

[@Underpantswher]

Same. I built my first PC about 2 months ago (Im typing this comment on it rn :)) and I was about to buy a prebuilt because honestly, the thought of building my own scared me. I thought for sure I would break something and waste a ton of money. But after looking around and not being able to decide what prebuilt to get, I saw all the people saying how its better to build your own and how its not hard, so, despite my fears, I decided to do some research and give it a shot. And oh boy Im SO GLAD I did. Not only is it way cheaper for the same or better performance, but the satisfaction of booting it up for the first time and seeing it all work perfectly is unmatched. Seeing something that YOU built actually working as intended is super cool, and it feels way more earned than just buying a prebuilt. And they were right, its not hard. Once you start doing research, you start to notice how all the components fit together in a very specific way, and that you basically cant install something the wrong way. If youre reading this and thinking of buying a prebuilt, I STRONGLY urge you to think about building your own. I know it may seem scary, but trust me, its a lot simpler than it seems and its very much worth it.

[@xmorte]

@Erisa how do you know?

[@j4nm1k3]

Adult lego 😁

[@HonkieWithaBoomstick]

Also imagine how sad/disapoining it would be to actually order a prebuilt without any pc knowledge and you get it and it overheats and is really bad and not knowing what was wrong with it. Thats actually what convinced me to build my own is I was going to buy a prebuilt until my friend told me that it would be a rip off and then he walked me through the build process. and helped me pick out parts Now I have 2 awesome rigs for me and my wife to be set this gen and Im so happy with them. But man if I hadnt learned how computers work and just ordered a prebuilt and it came shipped like this I would have felt so ripped off and deflated with the whole thing because Id have no idea what to do. So glad I built my own rigs, saved me thousands of dollars and give me a strange pride of like "yeah i made this"

[@ggamer7830]

Seeing their professional cable management has made me feel better about my own 👌🏻

[@rexyoshimoto4278]

Haw, ha! Me too!

[@Klaytoncalix]

Their cable management isn't as clean as it could have been though, but they did at least put the effort in.

[@rexyoshimoto4278]

@@Klaytoncalix Maybe two people worked on it. One who couldn't do jack 5h!t and didn't care to do better, the another who loved the job, going the extra mile.

[@NobbsAndVagene]

I don't think the cable management is that bad to be honest. It's everything else that's the problem. Talk about nitpicking.

[@xmonstersnipesx]

@@NobbsAndVageneyou can do that when you spend 5k on a gaming machine

[@crowjax8855]

An interesting video idea would be to build what you guys think a $5 000 prebuilt *should* be. Going through the part selection, the build process, and finally the software loading. I'd watch that.

[@cubeislife1675]

GN did something similar where they dropped into a microcenter and helped a fan build his system

[@isbestlizard]

Either pcs got expensive or this build is a couple grand overpriced like.. I'm going to be building a 4090/7950 and expect change from $4000

[@NicolasChapadosGirard]

Great idea

[@Rain1]

This is a great idea.

[@electrified0]

I'd imagine it comes down to: 1. A selection of parts that make sense for the price point they're targetting with good performance optimization 2. Assembling the parts like a competent human being who understands the concept of airflow and securing parts properly 3. Giving a reasonable upcharge for assembly, ideally under 10% the cost of the parts 4. Product arriving good to go with correct BIOS settings and minimal/no bloatware 5. No proprietary parts that prohibit upgrading or repairing it.

[@OrcCorp]

"Is there a problem with the system?" - Chief Technology Officer One for the history books 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@Tyiriel]

"Sir, have you tried turning it off and on again? Hold down the power button for 10 seconds."

[@ChristerHolmMusic]

@@Tyiriel run "sfc scannow" :)

[@jamescollins6085]

It's sad how badly these companies get screwed over by their own employees, but I assume they must not have a very stringent hiring process if systems like this make it out of the door.

[@redsquirrelftw]

Gotta love the total numb brains response. Like, they don't see 100C temps as even being a problem lol. Imagine bringing your car to the dealer after you just bought it because there's smoke coming out of the engine compartment due to a coolant issue and they say "is there anything wrong with the car? It seems to drive fine."

[@Leander_2000]

„Have you tried opening a window while gaming or turning down the ac?

[@kingknossosthebull9796]

I bought a Skytech for around $4,400 from Amazon about 6 months ago with a 3090. Immediately got 10+ blue screens per day. I spent around 2 hours on the phone with them, and they were very nice, however, 2 hours of having me install programs to test things and then getting off the phone, only to have it bluescreen again. Repeat and rinse several 2 more times. After that I thought to myself do I really want to spend $4,400 that doesn't properly from day 1? I returned it and went with Digital Storm. I love my Digital Storm. It was a couple of hundred extra dollars but the case is much larger, no heat trouble at all, and not a single problem since day 1.

[@crows6591]

Your expensive as hell, prebuilt pc had issues so u bought a more expensive one as a solution?😭 I mean if it works do ya thang og

[@JohnDarksoul69]

Not trying to be an asshole or anything but you should really learn how to build a PC yourself. You'd save a lot of money and trouble. As a general rule, pre-built PCs are an expensive lottery. I'm glad your pre-built turned out fine tho and I do understand why people buy pre-built PCs but yeah, try learning

[@kingknossosthebull9796]

My time is worth more. I have no problem paying someone "x" dollars to do the work. When I was younger and made less money, I would go that route. I have a maid, I have someone who mows the lawn, a mechanic for the car, a roofer, and a furnace and water heater service. Why the concern?@@JohnDarksoul69

[@causticchan4617]

@@JohnDarksoul69 There's so many guides on KZbin idk how someone cant just follow one...

[@fluffly8935]

@@causticchan4617prebuilt is much easier and comes with warranty, yes an infant can build a pc but it can take months to get all the parts and can still come out trash

[@scottgaleener]

i would be pissed if i payed 5000 for a pc and it had damage but at least the company agreed to replace it

[@rexyoshimoto4278]

I'm so happy I build my own machines. I use to think pre-builds are the way to go.

[@teeaymusik9811]

@@rexyoshimoto4278 You know what you get then and it's cheaper. You also have another relation to the pc when you build it yourself!

[@rexer7117]

@@teeaymusik9811 So true.

[@KnIf0rTITAN]

@@rexyoshimoto4278 Personally i don't have the time and the knowledge to build my own.... what i do have on the other hand is money.

[@bobrichard6836]

@@KnIf0rTITAN It takes very little effort or knowledge to build a PC like this one. Once you have the parts, it is about a 30 minute process, mainly cable management. Then the install of your OS. But if you have the money, doesn't matter.

[@MafiaboysWorld]

Finally, we get another installment to the "It's better than Dell" series. 🥳👍

[@marcogenovesi8570]

something tells me this fails to get that coveted award

[@GamersNexus]

eeeeeeeeeeh.... this one might not be! haha

[@MafiaboysWorld]

@@GamersNexus Steve, I think I can speak for a lot of us with this idea... Hire some ex-Artesian builders (ones that hate Noah get preference), launch your own GN S.I. PC. I'm sure there's some profit margin for all of you between cost and the $5000 these idiots are charging for computer builds that double as heating solutions for your home.

[@GamersNexus]

@@MafiaboysWorld zero interest in starting an SI. That's not what we do and it's a massive conflict of interest. We serve the community better this way.

[@thomaslayman9487]

@@GamersNexus very glad you hold this position

[@joshwilliams8863]

My favourite part of this is that, if Steve rips you apart for something, he'll give you 5 different ways to fix the problem. That sort of attitude (especially on KZbin) needs to be celebrated more. Good work on the review, and I hope SkyTech reaches out to you with a humble response.

[@XX-121]

what do you mean? he didn't even fix the problem and ran the tests as is

[@evergreatest7644]

@@XX-121 Isn't that kind the point ? An average non tech person might not know how to fix these problems, so he/she is getting less performance for the money. And let's assume that the buyer know how to fix it, a brand new 5K dollars PC shouldn't have these issues in the first place. Fixing these problems, and then testing wouldn't give an accurate representation of experince am average buyer may get.

[@oleg_aka_djmeg]

Provided exactly zero different ways to secure that ARGB connector other than glue despite saying that there are more elegant solutions.

[@sharedknowledge6640]

Steve ripping into Asus for their garbage software is something he needs to do more of along with all the other garbage software out of Taiwan and China. They seem to only care about form not function. Make it look fancy then who cares if it’s total buggy bloatware. That’s the Taiwanese software way and they just don’t seem to get it.

[@darkfur18]

@@oleg_aka_djmeg He said "probably"

[@exzyle2k]

I would like to see how this system performs if everything was done right. Perhaps Steve & Co. could incorporate something similar, where they're like "Ok, we put the fans on correctly, we tightened everything down, now let's see what happens" and post the results. Plus it'll let viewers see how something that could be considered a minor change could mean major performance increases.

[@synthetic240]

I was really hoping to see that too, kinda disappointing.

[@3rdPartyIntervener]

I doubt it would have mattered - that Noctua cooler is way undersized for the CPU its sitting on.

[@Pakoste193]

@@3rdPartyIntervener hope youre sarcastic xxD

[@LuMnOsITi]

Yeah I was really expecting them to run the performance checks after fixing the cpu fan orientation

[@Radbiker33357]

Ya I was disappointed to see that they were actually charging 5k for it to not be quality checked and insured, only to find out that it was just the CPU fan backwards. Yet they kept drilling how that was unforgivable. Strange that the company emailed why it was that high though, they must’ve been clueless about the CPU fan being on backwards. I was really hoping they’d show the temps with the fans on properly to see if that was the mistake. Mistakes happen, but for 5k those mistakes should be minimized if not zero, but I doubt it’s robots making these computers so I’m not surprised some (new?) person messed up while working for 6+ hours building the same thing.

[@TheButtDr]

ignoring literally all of the problems with this PC, paying $5k for an AIR COOLED 12900k is absolutely wild.

[@HuffYenkem]

Was thinking the same...

[@LEANMACHINE123]

they payed a middleschooler $2,200 to punt the air cooler and ding up the front panel with a baseball bat.

[@UberHypnotoad]

Air isn't worse, it's different. Depending on your priorities, it may even be better. That air block should absolutely be able to handle that processor.

[@yianniskouros1060]

DH-15 can handle the CPU, provided the fans are actually mounted the right way lol

[@MarkLikesCoffee860]

Rich people like paying wild amounts of money for things. they should make an even more expensive PC as well for the filthy rich. As long as the budget builds are good quality, I don't care.

[@b1gDerek]

Steve is getting very good at his comedic timing. I love these pre-built pc reviews!

[@hiiipowerbass2337]

Steve sarcasm and comedic timing have always been absolute S tier. (at least since a few years ago when I found GN) he legit makes me laugh more than any other comedic youtuber

[@JohnDavidSullivan]

Steve has always been very good with timing though

[@Magnosummit]

Good ole' "big ass-enter" is my takeaway quote for this video.

[@Watchfulfox]

He is a joke isn't he.

[@annihilatorg]

I certainly hope you do a "fixing the Mark 9" video where you can show the delta in performance in an appropriately cooled device.

[@burneraccount7052]

This

[@douglasmurphy3266]

I imagine vastly diminished returns beyond "facing the fan the correct direction"

[@mikidof]

Yes! Would love to see you remount the cooler properly, put the fans on correctly and see what kind of temps it can hit

[@zorrothebug]

@@douglasmurphy3266 Do not forget the found BIOS settings and low RAM speed...

[@burneraccount7052]

@@zorrothebug and MAYBE the removal of bloatware but this one was low on bloat.

[@Renegade322]

I would have loved it if you had reinstalled the cpu cooler correctly, to show how easy it is to correct the mistake, and the performance difference

[@dmberger]

perhaps it is not their norm, but I was sitting here throughout the video thinking "just fix the (obvious) mistake and compare." I get that people who have disposable income but are not computer building savvy will fall victim to any sort of mistake like this and it's shameful that a company tested this system and thought "solid!", but how many times have we heard of people building their own computer and only realizing after 2 years that they plugged in their monitor into the motherboard instead of GPU? Mistakes happen; at least they seem to have a great tech support policy.

[@RazorIsEpic]

If they charge 5k it better not have any faults lol.

[@KingslayerSrb]

@@RazorIsEpic well mistakes happen in multi-billion dollar businesses, let alone with 5k products - that's just real life. In reality, you'd return a faulty product and it would hopefully get corrected. Furthermore, I don't see any evidence in this video whether this was a single event mistake, or a whole line was faulty - one computer with a wrongly installed fan is shown, and then tests were run against that. To which I have to posit a question - why? What's the point of 25+ minutes of video of tests for something that clearly had an error in it? Why not either return the product as faulty, or fix the obvious mistake manually, and then test? I guess that wouldn't have made a good video :shrugs:

[@_wayward_494]

@@dmberger because they paid 5 thousand dollars for that pc. There is an egregious amount of errors in that pc, the most telling being that the cpu coolers. They tested it, the problem was literally in their face and they still didn't know what was wrong. I've only built one pc so far and I saw that immediately. That's beyond shocking. Do they hire competent people at that company?

[@karlkarlsson9126]

Maybe not directly related, but I once, many years ago, didn't bother with no fans in my case because I figured the graphic-cards have it's own, maybe I don't have to mention that it felt like a sauna in there after a while, the whole case became hot (lol), so I installed one fan blowing in at the front, and one blowing out at the back, and it became very cool and stable after that (off-course). But yes, cooling in a correct manner is really important.

[@javagoblin1585]

Skytech rep after watching this video: "oh fuck,100c not 100f. oopsies."

[@henryperkins819]

Skytech offered to replace the PC. It would be educational to see if you got a Monday-with-hangover effort the first time, and the replacement is competently built.

[@Sashazur]

Unless he can get the replacement “secret shopper” style, its quality is not going to be representative of what they typically sell.

[@mathiascarlsson7674]

Yes, I feel this is a step GN could have taken in order to test the support further, to see if what they get back is in fact a good and working build. Would be valuable from a consumer pow to see if they manage to fix what's wrong if you as a customer go through their support. Yet again, that email point at fails on several levels so even if they got back a fully function computer, this whole review is a massive fail on Skytechs part.

[@trascendents]

They offered because they knew Steve eye's are on them

[@SqueakyNeb]

Replacements are always going to be better, "uh oh this one's a problem customer, they notice things!"

[@Earthgrand234]

@@trascendents I don't think so since Steve did say he sent the email anonymously when they offered to replace the PC.

[@Cloud.Strife]

The kind of incompetence that makes you believe in yourself more.

[@davisparkour]

you will definitely take more care to your pc than any company will ever do

[@rexyoshimoto4278]

You got that right!😁

[@davecasey4341]

Yep, this is exactly what sites like pcpartpicker are for.

[@charleshines7282]

@@davisparkour It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't cut corners trying to hoard every nickel of profit

[@Paultimate7]

Funny but true

[@ChairmanMeow1]

I always think the same thing with these companies -- doesnt anyone do like a "final check" or something before its boxed up? Some of these errors would take 5 seconds to fix if they just noticed/remembered it.

[@Phoenixx101]

Would have liked to see a quick chart of how great the difference would be in terms of temp of flipping that single fan.

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

my computer does not run more then 66 degrees Celsius and it does not use hot glue to hold anything together🤣

[@xinceras-6542]

Good video. Please keep reviewing prebuilts. We desperately need media to keep hammering these companies until they start selling products that aren't terrible.

[@hjelpen5387]

@GamersNexus do starforge systems next, a new company started by twitch streamers/youtube and looks like some former people from Artesian is working there.

[@rashidal-suwaidi]

@candyman they haven't fallen apart yet, and they've got the former COO from Artesian Builds, the guy who ran the east branch and pretty much kept the company afloat. So they might actually become something

[@Oyamada13]

I hear Dell laughing behind that wall over there.

[@phattjohnson]

@@rashidal-suwaidi Oh true.. the one with actual business sense. Could be one to watch!

[@alexandrebelair4360]

@@rashidal-suwaidi They tried to scam people with a terribly over priced build tho.

[@travis8106]

This is surprising to see. I bought a Skytech Archangel last year (its almost completely upgraded at this point) and it ran perfectly. No issues, solid cable management and build quality.

[@Vataleon]

Im glad you got good customer support, i got mine, had a bad cpu fan, contacted them about the warrenty and they told me that they couldnt do anything about it

[@kylestewart4444]

Imagine going back in time and telling people that in 10 years, high end consumer graphics cards would be selling on eBay for $2,500 and SI’s would be selling $5,000 PC’s outfitted with a $100 air cooler.

[@C-M-E]

I don't think you'd have to go back 10 years, but I get your point of view. There was a time when $3k was a pretty substantial PC not that long ago and is my typical build sheet, and I'm not running a 3090. I've built my own since the AMD 350mhz was a thing, but even pre-builts from like Falcon Northwest where you (at least used to) get what you paid for was acceptably named a high end build.

[@TotalDbag24]

@@C-M-E Last time I remember it being good was around the 1000 series launch. I built a good 6600k + 1070 computer for $1300 ($300 was watercooling components, so essentially $1k) And I could have gone cheaper with a less flashy case, and mobo. It's actually my current system. Everything's been so stupid since then that only now am I upgrading it to a 13600k and 6900xt (wasn't planning on such a beefy gpu, but the sale was good)

[@vapinggranny2474]

No cap, I couldn’t keep waiting on normal 4090 prices and collecting all these components to build a water cooled so I got digital storm to make me one. I trust they won’t fail like this based on testimonials.

[@vapinggranny2474]

But yeah everything used to priced much more nicely I remember when u could get like a titan and top of the line i7 for and a water cool loop for like 3-4 grand lol

[@mentalasylumescapee6389]

"In 1994, Best Buy was selling notebook computers for about $2,600 and $3,300 (pictured above), which would be more than $4,000 in today's dollars for the one on the left and more than $5,000 in today's dollars for the one on the right."

[@_PsychoFish_]

I love that Steve doesn't call the technicians or qc staff stupid but addresses the issue on a company level with "someone has to teach them". GN are just THE best pc hardware reviewer imo! Big ups!

[@Glornak]

Yea from a consumer perspective it's really only the employee's fault if they're actually being malicious. If the employee doesn't know what they're doing then it's the company's fault for not properly training people. If the employee isn't taking enough time to properly look over their work then the company is at fault for making them feel like they need to rush. The company and its upper management is ultimately responsible for almost every issue and it's great that Steve doesn't play the "blame someone else" game.

[@psedog]

@@Glornak Even if the employee knows better and is taught better. It's still on the company. QC is a thing and that should not be checked by the same person that built it. That's why it's always on the company and it's policies set in place.

[@Glornak]

@@psedog Uhm..... yea? That's what I said.

[@KellicTiger]

He technically did with the certifies incompetence. But call it as it is.....100C within 30 sec should set of alarm bells in anyone doing benchmarks.

[@highlanderknight]

Yes,... and no. In many cases in there are problems exist at all levels, the company and the employee. Blaming just the employee, or blaming just the higher up company level are probably wrong in this case.

[@bucky5869]

I've been out of the PC building world for a number of years so seeing this content is killing two birds: seeing what the current gen hardware is about and getting a laugh out of "professional" fumbles. Thanks for sharing your work.

[@A7X062388]

not all pc builders are like this. The pc i got is half this price and miles better....EVery part is better lol.

[@Arrogan28]

Honestly Skytech may be feeling like this is the worst thing to possible happen to them, but they should be really thanking you Steve for making it very clear they need to stop worrying about taking people's money and more worried about the basics again... From configuration choices, to packing, it's clear they need some serious oversite on each department that is external to that department...

[@KS-nm6rt]

They're belgium.. The only thing they know is how to diddle kids..

[@P5YcHoKiLLa]

For over $5K that's just completely unforgivable.

[@wallywest2360]

"They got a couple loose screws" Yeah, seems to sum it up. I work in QC, for a different industry, but Steve's comments on how to address and fix this issue were spot on. Just throwing someone in a QC role and giving them five minutes of training doesn't cut it. You have to give them the resources to know why they're checking all the things on the list, and then of course have the list itself be complete and well thought out. My company has similar issues. I have a TON of paperwork and various boxes I have to check to do my job, which is fine if there's a point to it and it's not just redundant nonsense. (Guess which way it usually goes). Meanwhile I've been doing the job for over a year and have yet to receive ANY training from the lead QC guy that was promised on day 1. There are still things I'm looking at and checking off that I don't actually know much about. Sadly this is not unusual.

[@quwarq]

Here in the comment sections late expecting to find someone already writing this quote, and upvoting it.

[@nemurerumori5855]

if you remove the front panel about 20 or 30 times you should be able to run it at a stable temp

[@piratelute8934]

I would have liked to see the temp with the fan installed correctly.

[@kikoredog]

still dog, who the fk uses non water cooling cpu coolers???? esp for 5k computer?????????

[@Shiver2002]

It bothers me that these weren't posted. It was a small mistake. It happens. I DOUBT they build them all that way. This one has sensationalization written all over it.

[@jamesnixon47]

I’m surprised you didn’t include a section where you flipped the fan in the correct orientation to show how such a basic oversight can amount to a huge difference. Skytech definitely needs to address their qc procedures and strive for consistency throughout the company.

[@jhesski]

Yes I don’t know what to expect for performance I would like to see what the difference is and not just be told it takes a massive hit.

[@plektosgaming]

With it flipped, it probably still would be at or near throttling. The issue is the cooler - the fins aren't connected (useless fan in the middle design) and they are too closely spaced, resulting in mediocre airflow when put in a high demand situation like this. Tossing a fan on it won't make it move air any faster and you really SHOULD be seeing a water cooler on a beast of a CPU at this price.

[@stuporman]

@@plektosgaming nh-d15 performs like a top 240mm AIO, it would cool a 12900k without issues in typical loads even with a single fan. to make it throttle you'd have to run aida64 torture test which will hammer all threads.

[@BlackSmokeDMax]

The fan corrected and the xmp setup correctly as well!

[@guser436]

​@@plektosgaming the fins are connected by a heatpipe lol, you're highly misinformed if you think this noctua cooler is inherently bad. It's one of the top air coolers

[@ganon1028]

"RAM is socketed properly" You know its a mess when you consider this a W on your $5000 computer

[@sinisa5567]

Yes, its like they are reviewing monkeys from the zoo that learnt how to build computers.

[@Top_Weeb]

But it wipes your ass too tho

[@Watchfulfox]

To be fair it did work out of the box to the specs listed. The fix to exceed those specs and supposedly lowering the temp (we don't know if the fan direction did lower the temps or not, it wasn't shown) took all of 15 seconds.

[@seushimarejikaze1337]

@@Watchfulfox no it wasnt. 100 deg means the cpu will cut power and throttle, physically there will be not much difference, besides reduced component life, but performance will suffer, especially when temps were going up to max almost instantly. my guess its either radiator was damaged and cracked somewhere due to improper shipping (bend is visible but there might be an actual crack somewhere) or even incorrectly installed, or the overall airflow of the case was poor. reversed fan wont, by itself ,cause that high temp spike. it could also be a faulty cpu, but those happen rarely.

[@seushimarejikaze1337]

@@BlackhatAudio my "no, it wasnt" was referring to Watchful Fox(your alt?) comment about "To be fair it did work out of the box to the specs listed". quite contrary, its was a crippled system from the start. messed up bios settings, bend (and possibly even cracked) radiator and cpu trying to double as a firefighter is not a sign of a "working out of the box" build.

[@nodvick]

"the only bloatware was asus..." dude xbox live, xbox game bar, and xbox console companion are right there.

[@WhitneyBuchman]

Holy cow I just saw one of these from Skytech in the wild. A friend's son mistakenly decided to remove Windows from their system. Surprised he wasn't able to reboot. So I fixed it but immediately saw a bunch of problems. I had to check in with them that they didn't drop it or smash it in some way. They said it came out of the box and then went on the desk for the rest of its life. They got it in October. They said the box came fine which means the damage had to be in the workshop. The entire back panel was smashed in as though somebody dropped the entire case from a high height. I cannot foresee this lasting too long because the motherboard back panel is out of shape along with the back panel fan and the PCI plates. This is also causing strain to the graphics card. The glass side panel can't even screw in because of the fact that the points where it's supposed to screw in have been smashed in almost 90° from where they should be. The case paint is all scraped off in those various areas. They thought it was weird but they didn't think much of it. Then there's some cable management for the LEDs from the motherboard and to hide them they just cram them in between the CPU water cooler pump and the RAM. The ram was under so much pressure from the cables being slammed in there that it was actually tilted a good 10° from the pressure caused by the cables. I didn't look too much further because I was just there to reinstall windows. And as a side note the liquid cooler was installed in properly based on the gamers Nexus video regarding AIOs.

[@B_M_A]

The glue for the aRGB cable imo was about as good as an option as you could use without any serious damage especially with how minimal of an amount they used. 3 and 4 pin aRGB plugs / connections are ALWAYS inconsistent and some are incredibly tight and some are incredibly loose! So it makes sense that they would do that so at least the lighting would always work. And they likely may not do this on every single system just with issues with connectors. Just my two cents.

[@v3xx3r]

Dude I often can't get my own rgb cables to stay put. They really do have a shitty design. I use a piece of electrical tape but that stuff never sticks very long. I wish mobo makers would all agree on some standard that includes a clip.

[@ic_trab]

The whole problem is that aRGB cables were never designed to a industry standard. They were designed by vendors (like ASUS) and there is not an industry body, that I am aware of to properly vet the design for consumer use.

[@drinkingguy3168]

Using duct tape would have been better tho

[@SabisuTR]

tbf I have a P500A myself and the included 3pin aRGB to Motherboard is VERY LOOSE. Just using tape would be less damaging to the components compared to glue though.

[@solacedagony1234]

@@drinkingguy3168 duct tape will just get gooey, fall off and leave residue.

[@sylviam6535]

I wish you had also tested it with the CPU cooler fans mounted correctly for comparison.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

wouldn't really get the point across if you go "yeah, it works well after we fixed it". The point of pre-built is that they must work 100% perfect on arrival, not that you have to spend time fixing everything that's wrong with it. May as well built it yourself at that point

[@KellicTiger]

@@thesteelrodent1796 Yeah I was in that mindset for a second. But it would be nice to know the thermals when it actually was assembled correctly for an understanding what a valid build looks like. But eh.....I could go either way. I usually would rather go towards the outcome that gives more data vs less.

[@outcastexiles]

I would agree as well, should have tested correct config to show comparison. But not for all those who understood already why it was wrong. But if you want to capture your audience to those who ain't as technical but is curious about tech, because I had my girlfriend and friend sitting watching it with me while we just chilling. After the video my friend and girlfriend just said, after all that, talking about the temperature and the effects of it but he never showed the difference or impact it has.

[@theredscourge]

@@thesteelrodent1796 Yeah but it would be a good way to show the difference - they could always put it back to how it was after before shipping it back.

[@OldMobility]

I agree for shitz n Gigs. I have a Skytech PC so yeah lol

[@kneehisniper6209]

Thank you guys for doing what needs to be done so the rest of us don't burn our hard earned cash. I know you guys constantly put your own neck in the noose for us, we do appreciate it! I was thinking of using my Tax return to get this PC, thanks to you I won't be making that mistake.

[@LeviGC93]

My brother came over the other day and he isn't very confident about building his own system so he told me to look up a prebuild. He's still on a 3770k lol. I had a really hard time pricing out a build that I liked, that could also beat a pre build price. A while ago it seemed I gained something when I built it myself, at the very least saved a couple bucks. A good hard drive, faster RAM, or better cooling were all things that I didn't expect a pre built PC to include. Now it's like everything comes with m.2's and I find a lot of builds with real memory instead of weird generic slow RAM. I actually found some pretty good prices on PCs just above ~$1000, with legit PSUs, where I couldn't build it myself for any cheaper. There sure are a lot of JUNK new prebuilts with 10 or 11 gen intel and 10XX series cards that are overpriced and best to avoid, but most of the 12th or 13th gen prebuilts were reasonably priced if you account for the fact all the cards are stupid expensive...

[@bobrys12345]

I build a PC for myself for the first time a few days ago. Kinda makes you feel good about yourself when you do a better job then a company.

[@LiveType]

It's honestly not that hard. I'm sure every SI would agree. It should be a right of passage for every tech enthusiast whether they use windows systems on the daily or not. The hard part is now build 1000 of them. How do you do that?

[@crylune]

@@kaydog890 Less being a pretentious pedantic wannabe professor, more contributive comments or heck, keep the corrections but present them in a friendly and constructive manner. English is not everyone's first language. The comment can be understood, that's enough.

[@crylune]

Yes, the first time I built my PC I spent most of the day on it because I was scared of every step, but I did it and it was so satisfying to see the BIOS screen. It was built better than all of the prebuilts showcased here on GN.

[@crylune]

@@kaydog890 Congrats on deleting your original comment, do better next time ;)

[@ViolentMLG]

@@LiveType As someone who runs a smaller PC building company, scaling isn't really the hard part if you know what you're doing. Now if you scale too quickly or adopt too many options, that's when things can falter. Generally speaking, learning to build and package 1 PC VS 1000 PC''s will yield identical results. On their end, I just think its incompetence. That PC shouldn't have arrived damaged, and its not hard, a large double-corrugated box cost $10 extra, and shipping is $20 extra from a small box at max. Packaging materials is $5 extra. So for $35 extra, you prevent shipping damage. Occasionally we've seen bent CPU coolers, the best way to avoid that (if they're very heavy) is to either package them as they did internally (but failed to do externally) or completely avoid them and go with an AIO instead. At $5000, an AIO should've been used to begin with. Sometimes its not about building a product that will sell, but rather, the best product configuration, that is for specs AND shipping, those 2 have to be heavily considered together, then learning how scale. The fact they have only like 5 case options but have PC's arriving damaged goes to show a failure on their end to address an issue like that. Beyond that, if you can't even hire employees to know that 100C is bad, there is clearly an employee training issue. When we hire employees, one of the first things they're taught is thermal throttling and how to look out for it. Thermal throttling will only occur with installation error (and maybe rarely inventory shipping damage), so its paramount for them to know WHY they're running the test to begin with, its to double-check their work.

[@rostamostmann9657]

I get excited every time GN uploads a pre-built review.

[@cody680]

For those that are curious on prebuilt companies, I recently had a fantastic experience with a purchase of a Digital storm prebuilt pc. Only problem i had upon arrival was a dead case fan, And within a day after contacting them they asked if i wanted to send back in the pc for repairs or if they could send me a replacement fan and i just do it myself. I opted for a new fan and within a few days a new fan was priority shipped to my house. 10/10 I would do business with them again, They also allow you to upgrade your pc with new parts if you choose and still keep your warranty on previous purchased stuff.

[@Margxela]

Skytech is the only prebuilt company I have standards for so it’s disappointing to see something like this coming from them for that price.

[@Tomzski]

Yea exactly Ive had my skytech pc for years and it still works incredibly well

[@BeHappyTo]

most companies are doing this, no matter if theyre building pcs or streaming music. They first aim to capture as wide audience as possible, all while being unprofitable and getting money from investors only then to start squeezing money out due to capturing large market / monopoly. This is the result of easy money, financing, debt. Printing absurd amounts of money and negative effective interest rates practically ensure that money is misallocated to bad buisnesses. Yet some dumbasses will still say that inflation is necessary because without it people wouldn't invest. Yes, they wouldn't invest in these shits. They would invest into actually worthwhile things.

[@nvirevolution2235]

Crazy that this stuff happened on such a high end build.

[@cesarpdc]

5k for this build is absolutely insane lol

[@loowick4074]

5k$ for a computer that doesn't even work properly is absolutely terrifying

[@alexdrad4994]

@@cesarpdc This is why its not worth it to buy prebuilts. Not only do most companies (or at least the big, most well known ones) not give a fuck about QC, they are also obscenely expensive at the high end. I bet you could get a build like this in like half the price in the US if you were building it yourself.

[@subdude1979]

You guys are brutal, and its why I watch your videos. Honesty and transparency are a rare virtue in the tech industry nowadays. You're doing the Lords work fellas.

[@rabin_john]

I couldn't agree more !!!

[@GamerzPro1231]

Not just the tech industry, any industry

[@TomTschritter]

@@GamerzPro1231 these days it seems like every industry …

[@Watchfulfox]

For transparency they should have sent it back and re reviewed the replacement. They obviously had an axe to grind with this video. Maybe they tried and failed to get a lower price on one and this is their retaliation.

[@seriouscat2231]

@@Watchfulfox, they obviously say on the video that they weren't trying to get a bargain on it.

[@erikcarrillo7378]

Got an Omen 40L for 1800 and its working great with no problems. I can't imagine how pissed I'd be if I paid 5000 for that

[@smiles0013]

I also have a skytech pc from 2021 it cost 1000 dollars. I took it apart recently to make some upgrades because my cpu was running at 100c. I went from a ryzen 5 3600 6 core cpu to a ryzen 7 3700x 8 core cpu and went from the cpu cooler that came with the cpu (which they hotglued to the mounting bracket that screws into the a backplate behind the motherboard so was difficult to remove) to a 5 heatpipe cpu cooler that after I installed has me keeping it around 70c. I also put in an m.2 drive and added 32 gb of ram for a total of 48gb of ram. the motherboard was only held in with 3 screws i managed to scrounge up some more to fill the rest of the holes. I felt I needed them to support my massive new cpu cooler. also i had to go in and fix some bios settings such as boot priority and my ram only running at 2166 mhz when my sticks are 3000 and 3200 mhz. managed to fix that issue in bios and getting it all running at 3000mhz for the ram. the cpu can hold around 4 ghz under heavy load and can top out at 4.20 ghz before the cpu gets too hot.

[@pattonpending7390]

It's always fun to see Steve go on a tangent. Having a background Retired-Hells-Angel-Now-A-PC-Tech character really hit this video out of the park!

[@BatteryAz1z]

Using 2-component expanding foam stuff like that can be extremely risky. In this case I think what happened is that the top of the heatpipes pinned itself in the foam while it was still slightly expanding.

[@madatu]

So, do you think the foam was put in before the testing was done?

[@amnottabs]

@@madatu judging by the other issues we can't rule out this possibility either

[@CRneu]

@@madatu i dont think you understand. The way those foam packs work is you "activate" them inside of the container they're securing, so they expand in place. It's just expanding foam with a preset volume. So you pop them to activate, put them in, close the case and they expand in place. What @batteryaziz means is it expanded unevenly and put pressure on one side of the heat stack. That's why these can be "risky" because they have the ability to apply pressure.

[@zimmerman1031]

@@CRneu No he didn't say it expanded unevenly, he said the heatpipes were pinned in the foam while it was expanding.

[@CRneu]

@@zimmerman1031 it would only bend to one side if it expanded unevenly, or applied uneven pressure. Don't get bogged down in a small detail when the main point is the same.

[@f.stopperrmedia1606]

love this channel so much haha. Awesome videos and so informative!

[@Ladioz]

You basically paid them $5000 to humiliate them. Full respect to you

[@operatoncreation6396]

low key gaped. t

[@AlyxSharkBite-2000]

I would have been curious to see if you fixed the cpu fans what the thermals were like.

[@ricex2]

it seems the bend heatsink might be a problem as well

[@wobblysauce]

Bent is nothing, it can still work well.

[@oldfrend]

i feel like this was an essential part of the review that would've highlighted how good the system could've been, and showing the delta between optimal and as-shipped would've been very important.

[@hellsterp1893]

Yeah I was kind of surprised they didn' flip the fan and see the difference in temp

[@TheIceblade711]

Yes please do a short review after the fan problem is fixed. Thx

[@frosty6333]

I previously bought the skytech shiva (rtx 2060, ryzen 5 2600) it was advertised to come with a 750w psu and only came with a 500w, the cpu cooler was broken, everything was hot glued and a couple pins on the motherboard were bent.

[@Cementeater8]

😬

[@herbertwalter8693]

just buy the components and build one yourself. it's not rocket science trust me

[@xenorac]

@@herbertwalter8693 It's not, but if you are a clumsy bugger and have arthritis then you hope the "pro's" can help

[@Pensnmusic]

@@herbertwalter8693 agreed. I considered a prebuilt this upgrade only because it was cheaper than buying the components Even then, I am worried they'll muck it up. Not to mention it's slower waiting for them to build it. If it's even relatively similar in price to buy/build yourself, that's the way to go.

[@Cementeater8]

@@herbertwalter8693 seriously, my first build was 90 percent just screwing stuff in and being careful it is not as hard as it seems lmao

[@metax73]

Would love to see you review a StarForged pre built, see how they hold up

[@docn1ght]

LTT did this a while ago, but that was also you know, a while ago

[@FuzzyImages]

17:14 OMG, imagine watching this channel and seeing your signature showing up on that QC card 😵

[@L3Harris]

I have this case and it is a truly outstanding one for airflow and cooling, all temps below 60c, which brings home how truly abominably this pc was built to be hitting 100c on CPU!

[@barneyorama]

What case is it?

[@panglima]

​​@@barneyorama phanteks p500a

[@CarthagoMike]

I know inflation is rampant, but even so, this thing is not worth 5 grand. And that is _without_ the many mistakes and peculiar build-choices made. Great video as always!

[@NuttGreez]

4090/7000 Ryzen sitting around $4k prebuilt ATM... This is definitely some holiday season 2021 pricing...

[@Dyonivan]

@@NuttGreez The computer was built and shipped out on April 28th, 2022. Says so in the QC letter Steve showed @26:33. GPU prices had already fallen off in February, so not much of an excuse.

[@m8x425]

Right now a Skytech Prism II with a Ryzen 7950x, a 3090ti, 32gb RAM, 360mm aio, and a 1kw PSU is $3800usd. I guess the prices have come down a little. This is from their non-customizable list.

[@TiagoMorbusSa]

Inflation is rampant because of corporate greed. Blaming corporate greed on corporate greed is circular logic.

[@chuck7024]

You could build this PC yourself for like $3000 at most.

[@mrfilipelaureanoaguiar]

Loose screws on a cooler mount could detach the cooler from the cpu in an angle or with shaking . I am happy to build myself my builds. Takes time but it worth it, when you take the time to check everything one by one and be sure everything is tight not too tight and pasted and clean. Good review Steve 😎👍🏼

[@ultimaIXultima]

so glad you brought up the "big ass enter key"... i loathe keyboards with that configuration...

[@DeeDee-pw9pm]

The most important thing i've learned from your videos is, to just buy and build myself. Not just to save money, but also to have better build quality.

[@gamerk316]

There *are* some good companies out there that have some decently priced configurations; you always pay a premium of course but in theory a company that does it's job should root out any major issues. I tend to buy prebuilt, and the only issue I've had with my choice in company (aside from that one time ages ago I thought building around the 790i platform was a good idea) was a RAM stick that failed after a few months, which does happen from time to time. But yes, always do your research before hand.

[@DeeDee-pw9pm]

@@gamerk316 You are right, but there's another thing i don't like about pre-builts, which is them being shipped as a whole. There's less risk for damage when the individual parts are nicely packaged and wrapped in Styrofoam and air packets. A pre-built system has everything mounted, hanging and sticking out from their slots making it all more fragile during transport. I decided to spend 2 weeks to research and slowly build my pc, and it's been much cheaper and absolutely worth it. It also gave me absolute control over unique aesthetics & styling, fan placement, painting, cable management and parts variety. Pc building companies tend to have limited options for parts and customization.

[@gamerk316]

@@DeeDee-pw9pm I agree; my choice of companies has done well with the packing to ensure everything is padded well without it being so overly padded the padding itself becomes a problem. But yes, that is a risk with pre-builts.

[@r3tr0c0e3]

@@gamerk316 it's not just premium, you can build another similar spec for what they charge you, it's ridiculous 3k components 2k build fml

[@ravevolution]

I am honestly shocked. Not just cause of the high marks Skytech previously received from prior reviews of their systems from you guys. But also that I personally own two of their pre-builts and have never had an issue from a QC to performance issues, aside from a minor one (which was the XMP memory was not default in the BIOS). Way to let the ball drop Skytech and love the straight to the point no sugar coated review from GN

[@Tobez]

The thing I really appreciate about this series is that I can see other peoples mistakes and learn from them.

[@harusrl]

if you want a good prebuilt micro center makes rlly good ones highly recommend it

[@calyodelphi124]

I honestly love that y'all have been letting more and more members of your overall team make cameos or have full-on segments they get to host. It really shows how y'all are a team with specialized members who do the very specific things that they do for their relevant chunks of information that you share with us on the channel.

[@clifflenoir4323]

That is Joe from Bearded Hardware who is over as a special guest for the OC challenge. He is more a VIP than another member of staff getting his turn in the spotlight 😉

[@gabrielm.942]

Problem with that is it makes it harder to part ways with employees once they go on screen. Even if the employee is the one who decided to leave.

[@calyodelphi124]

@@clifflenoir4323 Ahhh, alrighty then. I don't consume PC hardware stuff as prolifically as I do math and science stuff, so I'm not subscribed to nearly as many channels. 😅

[@Ryan-ml7ws]

It would have been good to see the cpu temps with the fans mounted in the correct orientation

[@vest816]

I was thinking that too, just to get a side by side comparison. But after thinking about it for a while, I can understand GN considering that to be something like an endorsement. Saying "when assembled right, the PC works great" takes a lot of pressure off the company to fix their QC process. Refusing to review the PC proper as it should be, and instead scoring it solely on how they received it, will ultimately serve consumers greatly industry-wide.

[@electrified0]

I suppose there is something to be said for whether the PC could potentially be viable with simple corrections that a novice should be capable of, though if a novice is capable of fixing the problem that makes it all the more unacceptable for an SI to mess it up.

[@petrwad1423]

Yeah it kind of seems like this one is a bit rushed. I was just waiting for him to show that. I’m guessing they probably didn’t have much time with all the recent new product releases

[@droman655]

I’d fit the definition of novice when it comes to computer design & I know I would not have realized the fans were wrong. Sure I could have seen the placement but would not have known it was wrong. Watching this I’m like ‘well yeah now I get it’ but would not have occurred to me a expert could get that wrong.

[@GamersNexus]

@@petrwad1423 It wasn't rushed at all. It spent like 2 weeks in testing and we waited a few months to even finish it. We just didn't think it was necessary since the end result was "don't buy this computer." There was a lot more wrong than just the fans, like the BIOS.

[@zakking5654]

I cant believe i actually bought a prebuilt for my first pc. I could never trust anyone but myself to build a pc for me ever again after seeing this.

[@coco_rthritis6462]

My first (and current) desktop is an HP prebuild. It has genuinely taken a significant toll on my mental health, I'm not at all joking. I want to destroy it every single day.

[@matriix18]

I got the i7 12700k motherboard ram bundle deal from micro center a few months ago. Paid the $30 for them to install the cpu, dual fan cooler and ram to make sure it goes thru post. And got win 10 on a thumb drive. Swapped out my 2nd gen i7 board in 30min and installed win 10 in 4 minutes on the nvme drive I got. Performs amazing. Temps barely get above 60c on the cpu.

[@TravisSurtr]

I really appreciate your rigor in holding companies accountable. It's basically you're saying to them "Your failure is our content", and everyone ultimately benefits in the end.

[@fynkozari9271]

$4941 USD? what a ripoff. These are the people with confidence to sell PCs. This is proof, intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

[@falxonPSN]

I wish you had done all of the testing and this portion of the video showing the teardown of the original PC, but then allowed them to replace it while still being anonymous. It would have been an interesting data point to see how the second PC came back.

[@mixedup84]

Seconded

[@KellicTiger]

Yeah. But then again it might be 6 months before they got the system back. 🤣

[@PK-lk5gs]

Agreed, would have been interesting to see this PC RMA'd - both in terms of required time and results.

[@Watchfulfox]

But that approach would require an unbiased professional team and this isn't the channel for that.

[@seriouscat2231]

@@Watchfulfox, because every time you buy a gaming PC for grandkids you have an unbiased professional team at home, ready to fix it.

[@soullark]

Great video, definitely learned a lot

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

Here in Canada some (I think bilingual) keyboards have the ISO/JIS-style Enter key (to the left of big ass-Enter in the video) and I can get used to that quickly enough, but another by-product is that there’s an extra key between Z and the left Shift, which means the left Shift is super tiny! Oh the number of times I hold Shift only to end up spamming twenty back-slashes or something.

[@null1023]

man, it feels bad hearing that Skytech screwed up this much, they've genuinely been pretty decent in my experience, you had me double checking my machine to see if there was any weirdness that I didn't notice when I got it lol that foam packing they use sucks super bad though, and they definitely have issues with BIOS configuration (I have no idea why they shipped my machine in legacy BIOS mode+MBR when it shipped with W10, took an evening to fix that shortly after getting my unit)

[@EazyCheeze]

Didn't even know legacy+MBR was a problem until I decided to take steps to upgrade to Windows 11 - W11 HATES both of those. UEFI only+GPT is what we have to do.

[@stevecb89]

I think a great addition to this segment would have been its performance had you "fixed" its CPU cooling issues.

[@phattjohnson]

I wonder if it was sent back 'as is' to get the dent fixed, to see if Skytech pick up the fan issue when they've got it back (they'll surely spot the bent cooler!) But for that to work, GN would need to have already received the replacement PC before this video went up :P

[@zorindaspellsword820]

My husband and I love watching your reviews of pre-built PCs. They are so informative (and hilarious!). Would you consider reviewing Linux machines? We gave up on Windows several years ago after being screwed by it multiple times. We both now use Linux PCs (Ubuntu and Mint). My gaming machine is currently a System76 laptop running Linux Mint. 99% of my Steam game library works fine on Linux with Proton. I'm currently having a blast playing Cyberpunk 2077 with no problems. I would be very interested in a review of, for example, a System76 high powered gaming rig or something similar.

[@key_bounce]

yes! Please do a review on pre-built Linux systems, including driver support for Linux, and how well they can wine.

[@dukenukeman]

Curious what windows did to you? Lol

[@zorindaspellsword820]

@@dukenukeman Worst thing it did to me was screw up the color profile on my monitor when Microsoft published a big Windows update one summer. I was doing art and photography at the time and this destroyed my ability to work. It was unfixable on Windows, so I had to switch to Linux. Fortunately I had a background in using UNIX, so no big deal.

[@ZZPMac]

Suggestion for all air cooled dual fan units like this.... have an arrow to indicate which direction will be "in-to-out" for the airflow

[@xxitz_pr0gxx631]

I would expect some sort of liquid cooling for almost $5k. What the hell?!

[@pwrsocket]

No

[@xxitz_pr0gxx631]

@@pwrsocket You're my spirit animal XD

[@pwrsocket]

@@xxitz_pr0gxx631 Snorlax isnt an animal.

[@xxitz_pr0gxx631]

@@pwrsocket Spirit *Pokemon* My bad.

[@tucci06]

@@pwrsocket Pick your battles.

[@JosePineda-jn8jk]

I’m just gonna start my own company and scale horribly just to make it on GN and get a “at least is starts” as the badge of approval 😂

[@CptJistuce]

Sadly, just working out of the box appears to be high praise.

[@nickllama5296]

You want to shoot for "Better than Dell!"

[@TDarcos]

Did anyone see the illegal notice on the sticker on the Crucial memory in the ad? The sticker says, "Removal will void warranty ." That prohibition violates the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. § 2301) which does not require a product to have a warranty, but if it does, it must follow certain rules, and voiding a warranty for removing a sticker violates them.

[@ryancbarrett96]

I can say that Skytech is a fairly new company still but their customer service is top notch. I had an issue with games crashing on the oem zotac blower 2080 that came with my PC and they replaced it with a 2080 aorus. It's the luck of the draw, as these companies use parts on hand so they can't tell you what you're getting ahead of time which sucks, but it worked out. On the flip side, they formatted my m.2 drive as an MBR partition instead of GPT and I lost a lot of data when cloning, thinking everything was fine because it booted even the old drive was still in the system, but not after I took it out and erased it thinking everything was working. I honestly wouldn't have thought to even check for that cause even in 2018, you should be using a uefi bios.

[@Grotski]

QC was always pretty stringent while I worked with skytech a couple years ago. Really enjoyable job, would do again. Something meditative about assembling computers all day. The glue was always a thing on the RGB headers though lolol. Justification was that the dumb thing would come out in shipping.

[@leesweeney8879]

That RGB conn is a bad design, so I do understand.

[@Xerpocalypse_]

I’m so glad you guys recently learned about the existence of big-ass enter. Possibly one of my favorite bits of computer lore.

[@theredscourge]

lol I hate that big-ass-enter layout, I always had to change how I typed when I went from home to work and back because my work keyboard had the big one and my home keyboard had the small one

[@benjaminphillips5808]

I had one of their machines in my shop a couple months ago. 12900k, 3090, ddr5. Knock off Lian Li case. The customer payed about $4,500. Ram in wrong slots. Only one Power lead with pig tails from PSU to 3090. 360 Rad with 10 crappy fans on a Molex powered non-pwm fan header(sounded like a server rack), but was ~ 70c in bios. Bios version was A1 or whatever the factory installed. And the i9 had one core running 30-40c higher than all the others. Performed a $1,600 makeover with new 13900k, Full Noctua cooling, and a 1200 watt PSU. Before it left my shop, it blew my old benchmarks out of the water, and only ever hit 60c.

[@thisfoomikey4526]

Thats nuts. I bought a skytech 7 years ago for about 700 and still to this day its alive. Old ddr3 gigabyte board and upgraded myself.

[@norjia]

i love the little details on the side of the benchmark screens that basically show the time of each benchmark section ticking down. very nice touch

[@notmyrealname8686]

5:25 "or you could just install them pointing opposite directions" was so dry I believed him for a second.

[@DimzDaDude]

yeah exactly i had to double take ahhaha

[@roberthoadley5285]

Please consider reviewing Digital Storm, default components at around 5 Grand. Also show us how the systems are packaged when shipped.

[@Keriys]

Damn, I'm glad I'm learning how to build

[@Hezkezl]

For the 'gluing cables' section... to be fair, I have that exact case and motherboard, and one of those headers somehow has absolutely NO tightness on it at all. My solution was to reroute things a little and use a different header, but I'll wager the person who was putting this together didn't want to do that and just used glue instead. But yeah, something about that case/mobo has one header where it's literally impossible for the RGB header to stay connected :(

[@TylerRaber]

I feel like all 3 pins are garbage. I hate that they went with that connector and not like aqua computer/Corsair and use JST connectors

[@kessilrun6754]

I used to work for a business that designed rugged servers. That hot glue should not be hot glue, it should be RTV staking to keep components from unseating. We used it on ALL connections. Even SATA. I’ll have to scroll back to the grease but but they could also be using di-electric grease. We used that for filling in the PCIE and DIMM slots, to prevent moisture damage when these things got deployed overseas, or in scenarios where the hardware was water cooled. The loose screws probably happened when they first put the board in and they started with the individual corners, only putting the screws in just enough but not too tight so you can still maneuver and align the board. You can forget to go back and tighten some of them. Oversight. When you get into manufacturing these builds you learn not to just tighten everything down and make sure the back plate, and even the position of the board isn’t forcing the mount up points for the expansion cards to put stress on the PCIE ports. So you might even put a card in with the mobo screws loose, so that the board self-aligns with the expansion card.

[@SickNick08]

i must say. right before the 30 series were about to drop and the giant gpu rush happened, i was in need of a pc and even tho i love LTT, GN, and J2C, im totally not confident in buying parts and putting it together, i wont even take a cooler off and apply thermal paste im afraid. so i ended up going with a pre built from i buy power. i know you guys have done a review from them before and not had any luck but i must say i purchased one for 1750. i7-11700KF, 2070super, 32gb ram, 1tb nvme, ;iquid cooling, asus z490p. i use it extremely hard every day, smoke around it, have cats, works like an absolute beast. arrived in great condition with everything but the usb3.0 attached {think it came loose in shipping} so i just wana throw it out there not everyone fucks up but also some ppl do and to a point its understandable, but who reads 100c and says oh ya heres our tests lol. prob just a consumer helper and not a tech.

[@cyberwaste]

I have a 12900KF in my prebuilt system under a corsair 360mm AIO and it still thermal throttles in a CPU stress test. I'm really starting to think they forgot to take the plastic cover off the AIO pump or something. There are 6 intake fans and 4 exhaust (3 through the radiator). I've ordered some Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and a Thermalright contact plate. When they arrive, I'm going in there and getting to the bottom of this.

[@adenseay7406]

Pretty sure it’s normal. It’s because of intels turbo boost

[@pguth98]

That fan noise graph was funny as hell. Even my old HP laptop with a malfunctioning fan controller didn't do that.

[@phattjohnson]

Does the tester walk around with his Beats by Dre at full volume the whole time?

[@pguth98]

@@phattjohnson He's gone deaf from having to test these jet engines

[@iDeagles]

For 5k I’d expect a custom loop but seeing as how this went, it might’ve been for the better. At least it’s salvageable now.

[@niedas3426]

Honestly, it's kind of sad that I'm glad that it was only a fan installed backwards. At least that's an annoying, but feasible fix, even for a user that didn't know much about PCs (troubleshooting would be the harder part).

[@CycahhaCepreebha]

A custom loop, at least with soft tubes, would also be less vulnerable to shipping damage. A waterblock, even with hoses filled with water, is a lot less weight on the motherboard than an NH-D15. It's not something you can reasonably sell to the people who buy prebuilts though. They're going to want clear tubes and coloured coolant, because ZMT and clear coolant isn't "cool" enough, which means annual water changes (including sometimes taking the blocks apart to wash the microfins), and if they were able and willing to do that maintenance they'd just build their own computer anyway.

[@caseyronson603]

THAT THING GOT DROPPED, THE FRONT IS ALL DENTED UP. CRAZY!

[@googletarded8300]

I got a chronos. The build was fine except it lacked any spare HDD screws-- even the spare M.2 raiser, and one of the standoffs on the motherboard was absent entirely. Even garbo $50 cases come with screw sets in a cardboard caddy.

[@onphyre]

These video's are my favorite that you do! I love all your content, but I love seeing how things can go wrong if someone doesn't pay attention to details. I also love all the detail you go into on all your videos, and how well GN does such great testing on PC parts and builds.

[@NuttGreez]

I definitely recommend not ordering with the "airbag" style foam. I had to carefully cut mine out on an IBP build recently. They expand and form fit, which can put tension and strain on everything. No damage for me, but the potential is there.

[@davecasey4341]

I wish I had seen this earlier. I just got a refurb Dell system from Amazon, built and shipped by Skytech and I can say it is not without its issues. For the most part, it does work, but the short comings are things like, instead of installing a wireless / USB card, they send you a couple of cheap USB dongles to take care of that activity. I already installed a card that does a much better job that the dongles ever could. Then, the first time I turned the system on, I got the high-speed tick tick tick of a fan obviously hitting something. I mean, if they turned on the system and heard that, wouldn't that be a warning sign that something isn't quite right? Now that I've got things ironed out, I'll use this system for a year or so, but then I'm just going to source my own parts and build my own system. I certainly can't do any worse than this.

[@cmdrpickles]

“Refurb Dell from Amazon, built and shipped by Skytech” Skytech Gaming doesn’t deal with refurbished machines. Are you sure you didn’t get one of the “STGAubron” garbage machines that are literally a scam? They use the name “Skytech” just to trick folk…

[@Cameron_the_Robot]

I purchased a 700 dollar gaming PC from them that lasted me 3 years before I upgraded from it all. a few of my friends got a cheap skytech as well and we all grew out of the PC. It was a great PC and really bought me time to get my money together to get what I really wanted. I felt like their cheaper version was better than the one you are presenting.