Why Bitwit should avoid SFF.

rfarmer

Spatial Philosopher
Original poster
Jul 7, 2017
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See if you can spot the multitude of mistakes he made trying to troubleshoot this build. I enjoy his content and he is usually very knowledgeable but the number of wasted steps is incredible.
 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,839
4,906
I've had issues with DisplayPort not working, with my PC not so long ago even. Using a different cable and a different port on the screen fixed it. It's difficult to figure out why, I wish the screen would tell us more ("cable and graphics processor detected but invalid resolution"). A small speaker on the speaker header also helps, as it often beeps for errors when it doesn't have LEDs and/or code.

Also, one of the best ideas is to try outside the case, with one stick of RAM and a simple but known working GPU. I'm almost through the video at this point.
 
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Gilles3000

Airflow Optimizer
Oct 6, 2018
240
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and he is usually very knowledgeable

Lol, nah, he isn't. He's average at best. Channels like Bitwit and Jays2c are basically for entertainment purposes only the amount of poor demonstrations and wrong information they display is plain stupid.

Tbf, At least Bitwit doesn't do too many technical videos, unlike J2C who's put a ridiculous amount of false and/or misleading info out there, while appearing to be knowledgeable about the subject.
 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
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Jayz2Cents really does need to either step up their technical level by a few levels or just remain entertainment. He's often indeed "I can't explain it, but I have a feeling it's this or that, possibly something else", which doesn't really help much to understand the real problems. He should focus more on casemods and watercooling, although he spends an awful lot of time discussing other 'tuber's content and trying to explain it differently but sometimes also incorrectly. Or he tries to be technical in a completely untechnical way.
 
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rfarmer

Spatial Philosopher
Original poster
Jul 7, 2017
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I've only reached the BIOS flashback part and was already beyond horrified. Also ... every single informations that he needed was on the BIOS download page
That was the first thing I checked and 5800x was supported with all BIOS versions. His attempt at BIOS flashback was pretty horrifying, amazed he didn't brick the board.
 
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GuilleAcoustic

Chief Procrastination Officer
SFFn Staff
LOSIAS
Jun 29, 2015
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His attempt at BIOS flashback was pretty horrifying, amazed he didn't brick the board.

That's a miracle indeed. Also the way he inserts USB sticks at an angle and forces on it, I'm amazed that the USB port still works.

Bitwit: "Could it be the riser ? Nope, it's brand new"
Me: ... 100% sure it's the riser cable

Also, as @Phuncz said ... troubleshooting should be done outside of the chassis with the bare minimum required to boot and if possible with a known-working GPU
 
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Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
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Also, as @Phuncz said ... troubleshooting should be done outside of the chassis with the bare minimum required to boot and if possible with a known-working GPU
I've once had a system not POST inside a case, but does outside of the case. Tried it multiple times. It was many years ago but I believe it was a short caused by a standoff shorting out the motherboard, luckily not permanently.
 
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VegetableStu

Shrink Ray Wielder
Aug 18, 2016
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i don't quite feel it's a fair conclusion or opinion to land on 😓 i mean he's still new to the more demanding importance of order of operations in small builds, but discouraging him like that would loosen his handle to the SFF world, and in turn we'd have one less voice to speak of

at the very least he should sound less authoritative and present in a more explorative perspective when it comes to SFF. we've all cracked our heads at one point in SFF
 

Elaman

Cable-Tie Ninja
Sep 13, 2020
155
119
There has to be a balance between what makes a channel successful, and what is knowledgeable.

Very recently a big chunk of the Linux community woke up to the existence of Linus Sebastian and that brought up lots of criticism. We focus on youtubers clumsily handling a SFF build, or maybe clumsily installing Ubuntu (in my case) because that's our thing, but we forget that they also clumsily handle 3000$ graphics cards and make water loops leak and ruin an entire build, and that brings lots of views.

As a positive note I will say that Bitwit also made a very interesting experiment of bringing an SFF setup to have a mini-LAN party in a plane, and that was funny and definitely helped getting me more interested in the SFF world.

Now, some years later, I have been through a flight with my SFF case in my backpack. Perhaps still too far away from having a LAN party but hey, baby steps.
 

Skripka

Cat-Dog Perch Manager
May 18, 2020
443
544
There has to be a balance between what makes a channel successful, and what is knowledgeable.

Very recently a big chunk of the Linux community woke up to the existence of Linus Sebastian and that brought up lots of criticism. We focus on youtubers clumsily handling a SFF build, or maybe clumsily installing Ubuntu (in my case) because that's our thing, but we forget that they also clumsily handle 3000$ graphics cards and make water loops leak and ruin an entire build, and that brings lots of views.

As a positive note I will say that Bitwit also made a very interesting experiment of bringing an SFF setup to have a mini-LAN party in a plane, and that was funny and definitely helped getting me more interested in the SFF world.

Now, some years later, I have been through a flight with my SFF case in my backpack. Perhaps still too far away from having a LAN party but hey, baby steps.
I will say...LTT's Linux Challenge, brought some welcome focus on usability and bug fixing. Some developers sat up and took notice and fixed points of complaint during production. And TBH as a productivity platform, Linux has become great--which they pointed out...gaming and (admittedly) non-standard peripherals are where things get janky or broken. Nature of the beast.

And ofc, Linus being a clutz is a funny meme at this point.


Above folks mentioned J2C. Well, he did a video today about using the Spectre 3 'case' (basically a vertical workbench) for his new build. Which is no biggie....until you think back to last winter when J2C did a video about the bone-dry air, carpet in his house; and static electricity discharging into his PC-tower/monitor causing his video outputs to spaz. Which would make you think a basically open-air acrylic barely-grounded non-faraday-cage chassis would be a bad choice for his use case....but you know it isn't like he's a car guy who should be acquainted with concepts like faraday cages and grounding.