Smarter Everyday hardware video (closed)

UPDATE & CLARIFICATION: :warning:
I previously didn’t realize that video was sponsored content. I was stressing on from angle of misleading, however after @anotherriddle pointed me about nature of video is sponsored content… which makes everything here null and void… This topic is now useless…Sorry for wasting your time…

Saw this video on smarter everyday…

I don’t get it? What’s the difference between system made by Puget or someone like us, hardware enthusiasts. I don’t think Puget systems setup proprietary components of their own, it’s all the same components… so what’s the big deal? Nothing against smarter everyday or Puget systems… I get it that Puget systems are curated hardware service provider but this video makes it look like something more complicated is at play which enthusiast consumers do not understand… Am I missing something?

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Scenario 1
Person: I want a computer that does x the best 8 hours a day every day.
Pager system: ok, here you go this does that best and we know it.

Scenario 2
Person: … what does x best? … let me google… ok 59 answers… erm… what about this… maybe I should ask a forum
Level1: here’s 50 different opinions because were just making an educated guess, oh and you’ll have to buy the parts and build it yourself. Good luck.

The first scenario the person get what they need without wasting theirs and everyone else time. The second scenario they waste their time and money because they’re building a pc instead of working.

Something more complicated can be at play. Even with bigger companies like dell or hp you call them up if you need something to do a specific job that your not 100% on.

No one comes here for example looking for a build for a specific purpose, and the treads that look like they do get very blurry when you start asking specifics because usually they don’t know what they need and there’s very few people here that actually know in depth what they are talking about.

So you ask a conpany that knows what’s what.

I think even @wendell mentioned in a video not long ago about a purpose build pc he had from a company that did something similar?

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I get it… Purpose built computers are a thing… I am specifically asking in the context of this video because It felt like it’s misleading when I checked their website after watching this video…

I go in their solutions under photography or rendering… their have seperated menu options by softwares and when I go inside it… It’s asking me to choose parts and configure… Which I feel is more misleading… Because otherwise user will do their own research… What I’m saying is, they just have all these terms and labels and segregations… But when it comes to building computers… it all comes down to similar selection parts which any hardware enthusiast would select just by doing little research on tech websites or channels or may even be better parts… The video felt like something is going on which only very specific system engineers understand… They’ve over 2 hours of video explaining stuff on smarter everyday 2 channel… to be honest I didn’t see whole thing but I didn’t find anything different…

Why would a hardware enthusiast have someone else build a pc?

You have a point there… But hardware enthusiasts also build PCs for others… If I were to make a PC for my video editor friend. I would build much better system than what Puget is providing as option… This video is mainstream and people watching would imagine building a system is much more complicated than what you and I would build… which isn’t true…

If you cannot understand the service and value they offer then I bet you won’t be willing to hire them.

I am not talking about the value of their service… I am specifically talking about smarter everyday video… I know curated services are very helpful and I have no issue with that… But video is bit too much on the nose… Or may be I felt that when I checked their website enthusiastically and found underwhelming option of parts being provided as options… yet their claim is kinda extravagant… kinda like distorting consumer perception… It felt like a commercial… I would have no problem if it was sponsored…

~95% of “hardware enthusiasts” are actually just gamers, just like ~95% of “sanitation engineers” are just garbage men. Gamers have blinkers on, only care about things like high FPS figures, try build systems to maximise those numbers, and are pretty-much ignorant about the rest of the computational universe.

A system constructed to get 200 FPS in GTA V will be completely garbage when put to the task of mining big data sets. Heck, even a “gaming-optimised” system is quite different to a “streaming-optimised” system. If you don’t understand that, then yes, you are indeed “missing something”.

Puget (and the like) use automated testing to work out what combinations of hardware actually — as opposed to theoretically — achieve the best results in performing very specific tasks. Folks who use computers for very specific tasks effectively pay them for the “secret hardware recipe” that guarantees (near-)optimal performance, without the need to perform any of the research or testing themselves.

If you use computers to make money, that approach makes a lot of sense. The higher your chargeable hourly-rate is (the more valuable your time), the more sense it makes. If you use computers to recreationally pew-pew and tea-bag your opponents, then that concept is alien.

The folks that pay Puget (and the like) for their services are almost never “hardware enthusiasts”. They couldn’t care less about hardware. All they care about is how easily/quickly they can perform a certain task using a very small number of software applications — often just one.

The important thing to take-away is that gaming is only one (1) use-case out of tens of thousands. Computers optimised for gaming aren’t optimised for anything else. Many/most/sometimes all of the assumptions made by “hardware enthusiasts”/gamers when they build their own systems simply don’t apply when building systems for other purposes. It’s impossible to build up the required knowledge-base to optimise a MatLab machine by watching Gamers Nexus videos.

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They don’t claim extravagance, they claim pupose built. I watched both the main channel and second channel video, and at some point, in the lab, they detail the value Puget adds for non-enthusiast creators.

If you come to them and say, “I record red 8k footage and need a machine that encodes quickly with x color correction, and has smooth timeline playback”, Puget will come back with a 9900K, a 1080Ti, and 32GB of ram, and build the system for you.

That’s the system they almost built for Destin, until they found out that the de-noise software he was using wasn’t limited to a single core, and it was just a limitation of the trial software, they bumped it up to a 7980XE (They don’t mention this change in either video, but do note the change in the article on puget’s website)

Really that video was just a paid ad (paid in services and hardware, in addition to the casper ad).

There was a TINY bit of SED content in there when he was talking about interfaces, but that was it. For a lot of the SED audience they may have learned something about PCs, but as an enthusiast, the video was likely much less helpful in augmenting your existing knowledge.

If you’re an enthusiast, someone telling you that a 9900K, 2700X, 2950X and 7980XE all have different uses, and the most expensive part might not be the best, is not really a revelation, but for a lot of the folks that watch his videos, it might be something they were never aware of.

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I agree… But that’s a separate point. I am thinking more like hardware engineer and enthusiasts who know their stuff and be updated. Miscommunication keeps happening with me… I’m not attacking on their service and I also understand value of their service. But about the video is like commercial…

Pugetsystems are doing novel work and producing results which I can refer and build for my clients or myself… That saves a ton of time for me too… Information is open… You don’t need to be a qualified system engineers to read and compare information from multiple sources. I can understand a very specialised case would require such interventions… But for video editing, rendering, 3d modelling, game designing, graphic and even for deep learning it’s all out there…

If you watch the entire video including 2+ hour of video on smarter everyday 2nd channel, implied sentiments are extravagant. It really feels like there’s something novel which nobody else understands… I really thought I’ll learn something new whatever they’re talking about… But it’s all the same cross-referencing, micro-benchmarking and segregation… Isn’t what every hardware engineer is suppose to do before recommending a system to client? So if they claim they make the best system and no one else does and everybody here trusts them so my points are invalid?

and lastly… I might be wrong and that’s why I’m trying to understand what’s all the fuss about… Lot of implying and misinterpretations are occurring here… we need to seperate the my points from your sentiments… otherwise there’s no point of this topic here…

You’d hope, but I dont know any that do validate with a large enough sample size, let alone post their findings online for everyone to review.

The fact that Puget posts their findings is what sets them apart from every other system integrator, so folks can refute their claims if they seem biased or inaccurate. I think that’s why no one here is really willing to level any criticism against the company other than “they’re expensive”.

I also don’t know of another system integrator that targets content creators, maybe they’re just slipping my mind. Gamers have NZXT that offers a similar service, but they’re incentivized to use their own parts, so that’s a bit of a grey area.

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did you watch the other longer video on the alternate SED channel?

I get it… Let’s meet at middle ground… Not all engineers do good job and not all specific information are available… that’s why trustable curation like Puget systems exist… It’s just triggered my mind because it really felt like very elaborate commercial video in disguise…

Yeah… not whole. but fast forwarded… there’s a lot explained but nothing of novelty i was looking for…
I love Smarter everyday channel… That’s why it felt wrong…

The video is in deed questionable in its content.

Why are you loosing family time to a render? Sure you can check every few hours, but why would anyone watch paint dry? Makes no sense to me.

The “More cores are not always better” makes 0 sense when using a 7980XE in the build.

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It made sense when they didn’t know the de-noise filter could use more than 1 core. Once they found out it could be distributed that went out the window…especially since it was the primary bottleneck in his workflow.

Have you ever watched a SED video where you were already an expert on the subject matter?

As destin says during the videos… he wanted something better because he was spending 10 hours rendering video… and even his son asked if that meant he could eat supper with the family from now on. So yeah, it was basically an advert for Puget so destin could save time making videos for YT.

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I am not an expert. But I have interests.
yes watched puget systems contents and few other videos…

What i mean is, is it possible it felt more like an ad than say, his vr video, because you were already well aware of the concepts he was talking about?

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Yeah… I have watched quite a few of his videos… I agree his VR video was like commercial too… I am actually into VR/AR and I can say that video didn’t feel like commercial to me for some reason… This did…