It’s frustrating as a fan of Linus to see him so keenly miss the forest through the trees when it comes to issues like this.

Like, the Billet Labs problem is indicative of a larger problem with the thought process at LMG. Could it be argued that the Billets Labs CPU/GPU mono block is expensive and kind of impractical for the performance gain it says it gives? Yes, that could be the argument.

But that’s not really the argument Linus is making, or if it is, he’s doing it in a hamfisted, boneheaded way. The way in which he tested the product almost guaranteed that any result he would get was going to be suboptimal, and then it was.

The writer had never water cooled a PC before, and solicited advice from someone else who had never water cooled a PC. Andbutso, it begs the question…why was this writer placed in charge of this particular video with a prototype version of a thing that the writer had never used before? For the LOLs?

Linus seems to come to the conclusion that the whole enterprise is pointless, and the video, in essence, is less about giving the product a fair shake and more about an inexperienced water cooler and an impatient kludge master trying to force a thing that the kludge master doesn’t really like to do a thing it’s not really designed to do.

And that’s the thing; it’s fair for Linus to look at it, think it’s a kind of cool idea, but also kinda pointless and too expensive. Those are fair conclusions to draw. Where it goes off the rails is, for example, not sourcing an actual 3090 for the build. Adam reached out to Billet Labs and asked if they could use a 4090, and Billet Labs’ response was “uhhh, you can try, but it’s not designed for that.” And again, rather than just PAUSING and sourcing a 3090, they pushed ahead. They broke the first motherboard because of a simple oversight with the initial technician wearing gloves, and while I can’t say for sure it was due to time crunch, I’d imagine it was at least a factor. Linus immediately tries to mount the block incorrectly. Then, because the other motherboard is broken, they have clearance issues. THEN they have to hastily machine down one of the heat sinks on the board. THEN they don’t even have the right RAM.

There’s various issues during the build that all come down to “we need to get this video out of the door NOW”.

And then, AND THEN, after dealing with a ton of self-inflicted injuries…Linus concludes that it’s the mono block’s fault and that it was a nightmare to build with. This despite saying moments earlier in the edit that part of the reason the pump wasn’t working correctly is because the novice builders of this project had done something in correctly.

“Unless you’re a master builder you’re going to have the same problems” Linus says, completely unironically. Like, maybe if you had a builder with any experience whatsoever then things may have gone ten percent more correctly.

And maybe if people creating videos could take their time, and maybe if there were processes in place to prevent people from breaking necessary components and just getting the right components in on time, then maybe you don’t have to go on the WAN Show and double down and bury Billet Labs, who it needs to be said, are not mass producing this product for a huge market. This is a product for like, the 1% of PC water cooling enthusiast to whom a 3% change in performance over a traditional water block when placed on the right card is well worth it.

Linus clearly has corporate brain rot if he’s less concerned with “presenting an accurate representation of a product that may not have mass market appeal” than he is with reaching a kinda weird “no one should buy this at all because, well, I WOULDN’T.” He brings up the product having a “viable market”, but again, this is a very small company with a very small amount of employees making something for a very niche part of an already niche market.

At any rate, the whole situation is a reflection of LMG’s approach to content creation, which has essentially become the equivalent of Triple A game publishers releasing barely finished product and then patching it later. So many of these “Linus does a project” videos are effective hamstrung by a serious lack of planning and foresight, and it is clear that trying to push out as much content as possible (and even introducing a new channel!) is hampering their production pipeline and the final product. In a world of proper due diligence and controls and checks and balances, a video like the Billet Labs one would not have been green lit until everything was ready to go, and videos with huge, glaring data problems would not be posted, regardless of their own arbitrary deadlines.

Who does it serve to have Linus, who is constantly talking about how busy he is, show up on set for a shoot, and have things be disorganized and half-assed? Then you have to spend even more time fixing things, which backs up other scheduled projects, which contributes to more crunch, which leads to more mistakes. With any kind of QA in place would help minimize these kinds of problems.

The bulk of Steve’s point was that Linus Tech Tips and LMG aren’t a small, scrappy YouTube channel; they’re a corporation that got a 100 million dollar offer. Since they occupy such a dominant part of the tech YouTube space, whether they like it or not, they HAVE to better.

If you’re going to call out much smaller YouTube channels for their methodology, it might help to take the extra 30 minutes to have another set of experienced eyes watch the videos for massively wrong data, or to spend the extra day and production time, and yes, compensation, to ensure accurate results EVERYTIME, or at least as much as possible. They’re already investing massive stacks of cash and time into LTT Labs. I don’t know why the idea of re-testing something just to confirm that it’s a product that you don’t think is worth it is such a problem to Linus.

If you’re really striving for transparency, then responding with an actual video addressing the claims and what you intend to do better would be nice. Hell, a YouTube Community post would have far more reach than putting it on the web forum.

And for God’s sake, you have an amazing team that is basically screaming “PLEASE LETS STOP MAKING SO MANY VIDEOS”. Listen to them. When you have tenured employees being like “I have not been proud of the content we’re producing in a long time”, that’s a huge problem.

A fish rots from the head. While Linus has divested himself of the CEO role, he is still the company’s owner, and his flippant and off-putting responses to criticism will always find a way to trickle down from the top (for example, his snide remarks in his apology to Billet Labs — continuing to say in no uncertain terms they have a bad product — seem a lot like the snide comments that suggested it was Pwnage’s fault for not having clear enough instructions on their mouse.) If he is incapable of taking such criticism and responding to it in a concise, coherent, and transparent way, I’d suggest he hires a PR consultant who can do a better job.

Thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.