So, when will they happen? Will they at all? (Gamers Nexus fan tests already paid for by the community)
Wake up, Steve! You kind of slept through a convenient opportunity to divulge what’s going on with the fan testing that your audience funded a long time ago. Never mind, I’ll blog a bit and shed some light on it myself. I understand that you’ve reached a difficult, stalemate situation that’s hard to come out with to the public and it’s more effective to sweep inconvenient things under the rug (again). That too is the style of Gamers Nexus, history repeats itself.
There was a time when I was really rooting for Gamers Nexus. It wasn’t yesterday, a month ago, or even a year ago. Once upon a time, a really long time ago, I thought they were committed to fighting for a good cause. For a better tomorrow for computer hardware, for things to be clear and for everyone to be properly informed. But they just couldn’t resist the temptation, and as time went on, the team around Gamers Nexus began to abuse the fact that they had gained some experience, in short, that they had a bit of an edge over their audience. And they took it in the most disgusting way, by building a negative marketing aimed at harming everyone but themselves.
The writers of Gamers Nexus and Steve Burke (the performer) have found it more effective from their profit perspective to exploit the fact that the average sample of their viewers doesn’t have the experience or education to be able to properly evaluate that what they are claiming in their videos are often untruths, distortions of facts, the creation of nonsensical bubbles, and a variety of other insidious “piggery”. 🙂
Naturally they do everything in a very sophisticated way with the support of expensive measuring instruments. These are a great tool to make sure that the people who put their trust in them do not doubt them. That seems a bit unfair to us, and that’s why in this blog we’ll focus on the still somewhat relevant topic of fan tests, which Gamers Nexus somehow doesn’t feel up to. Even though they’ve been paid by the community for their methodology, they’ve had all the stuff for over a year now, but still don’t use it. The reason for this is pretty clear. First the bold statements (like they used to do when testing CPU coolers in the “most appropriate” way), a big uproar, and then a 180-degree turn. Even now, the team around Gamers Nexus has found that rather than being a joke to the professional public, it will be more convenient to let the promised fan tests collect dust.
For fan testing, the firefighters at Gamers Nexus (sorry for the pejorative, but… we understand each other) miscalculated. At the time they announced the fan tests, they were probably still convinced that they were masters of the situation and could draw whatever conclusions they wanted and no one would be able to confront them. But they have already missed that train. Because in the meantime, Quasarzone magazine released a huge fan comparison test and if their methodology wasn’t “good enough”, the industry standard AMCA 210 test device (i.e. the exact same tunnel you bought for GN) is already used for fan tests by Aris Mpitziopoulos (a true expert, especially for power supply tests, for which I give kudos). Comparative tests of 17 fans have already been published on hwbusters.com. And then there’s us. What we all have in common, except Gamers Nexus, is that we want to expand knowledge in an exact way, honestly.
The intent of Gamers Nexus here is traditionally the opposite, to do harm. This is evident from the opening video captioned “RIP fan marketing”. Do you see the clear goal ahead? On the one hand, they stand full of confusion next to a test device they know nothing about (which they themselves admit), but they already know the conclusions. These gentlemen are not concerned, going forward, with testing things completely and fairly pointing out a set of eventual negatives as well as positives, but with picking out only the negatives for which people will go to them. The negative stuff (never mind that reality isn’t that black) draws considerably more attention. This damages everyone who tries to do really in-depth tests evaluating all aspects (not just the negative ones, which lend themselves to tabloid video exposure). These are more labour-intensive and at the same time, because of their non-confrontational nature, receive considerably less attention, which in turn determines the intensity of the impact on market behaviour or, ultimately, how manufacturers approach the development of computer hardware itself.
However, the creators of Gamers Nexus are well aware at this stage that they will not have it so easy with mystifying the population, and by creating pointless sensations they can quickly get into unnecessary trouble. If we were to judge the GN’s knowledge from the material so far where they talk about fans, we can borrow the phrase “totally incompetent” from them (such is GN’s ability to evaluate fans). You’ll find out where Gamers Nexus has schoolboy shortcomings in due course, when they happen to get their act together and start spreading misinformation again on a subject we love so much (and therefore we won’t allow some perverts with no conscience to hurt it). Gamers Nexus knows full well that our fan tests have a huge reach in the US and they have no interest in their own medicine. Of course, we are ready to professionally deny any inconsistency that would wrongly shape the view of fans.
That they have perfect equipment for over a hundred thousand dollars? Even the most expensive soccer cleats won’t make a world-caliber star out of a village soccer player. The intellectual capital and knowledge that goes into developing your own equipment is key. Buying a high-end measuring device without the knowledge of understanding how it works is about as useful to the owner as a coat to a dead man. And especially when there is no proper education in aerodynamics. The topics around fans are some of the most challenging to properly understand and in-depth knowledge in various areas of physics is required. I dare say they have no clue about many things they can’t move forward without. But there is some self-reflection there, which is why they swept it under the rag, lest their unwarranted arrogance towards others boomerang back on them.
And maybe I’m wrong and after this blog post, Gamers Nexus will kick in, they’re just learning the lessons they’ve missed and will set the benchmark for objective fan testing. But that’s rather unlikely, because with a professional approach, their financial profit would suffer greatly. The same mistake they made a while ago by introducing an unsuccessful test setup for CPU coolers, they are happy to avoid. Remember that insidious attempt to discredit all those who test coolers in a natural environment, which they later returned to themselves… and nailed it by using Ryzens with significantly worse heat transfer to the cooler than Intel processors.
It’s really hard to watch Gamers Nexus, which has contempt for everyone, appreciation for nothing, with no respect for anything (including their supporters) egotistically distort the hardware market and still have a lot of people applauding them for it. But we know who they are, what they are about, what they are causing… and “people must fight against the evil they feel equal to measure up to at that moment” (Jan Palach, 1969).
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš