this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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One thing that bothers me about the billets stuff is they stand by their core point, which is that it’s a useless product.
But that’s not the only thing they’ve claimed. They also said it’s a bad product that doesn’t work properly, thus damaging the company’s reputation.
To most people that’s a significant difference for how they view the company:
“Useless” product that works well at what it does = hopefully this company will make something more relevant in future
“Useless” product that doesn’t even work properly = I’ll avoid this company in future
I would disagree. Linus has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth or probably say he phrases many of these discussions in very bad ways. You see this with him talking about "Is using adblocking piracy" or "Warranties are only trustworthy as the company you buy them for" (Trust me bro) or the many other controversial views he has had. Where at the face of it it looks pretty incendiary but if you ignore what he said initially and look at what he is actually meaning to say. I think the whole Billet labs' cooler thing was a stupid video and they should have done it with a 3090 TI FE as it was meant for but Linus meant it was a "bad product" because its a $900 cooler for a last gen cooler on a 1800+ GPU. Anyone willing to spend that amount of money is probably going to spend it on the newest thing, that being the 4090. Now where this comes to bite Linus in the ass is they have a preorder for a 4090 fe (for the same price as the 3090 ti one) here Which is set to release around next month or November. Now its clear many things weren't discussed but off the broken concepts that Linus was presented/or at least absorbed he isn't wrong that noone would want a exotic cooler with a last gen gpu but its clear there was a major breakdown in the communication pipeline here.
Edit: Haven't had any comments yet but I will say LTT really done fucked up with the whole auctioning off the prototype and its clear there is some issues with the organization of LTT. I don't think they did this out of malice more they had a contact who didn't talk to the logistics team or the team handling LTX. So out of mistake the prototype got sold even though they said they would send it back. That is pretty god damn egregious. I can understand why there was a fuck up but man they really screwed the pooch on this one.
Now, selling a prototype that was sent to you to make a video on is not good obviously, but as long as they get compensated for it, it should be no big deal. Logistical fuck ups happen and this isn't new or uncommon. The whole idea of Linus ruining their public image based on a "bad faith" representation of the product has little standing in my mind. The crux of his assessment of the product is spot on and you also touched on this. There's like 4 people willing to spend as much on a cooling block made from billet copper as their GPU. Regardless of current Gen or last Gen. Most people are just going to save that money to buy the next generation graphics card or upgrade elsewhere in their build where the price/performance is much more reasonable.
They might have sold it to a competitor so this could be a big deal. Not to mention this was one of Billet Lab's only prototype and could've set them back months in terms of R&D.