 If you are new to hardware sugar and starting to go through our live streams, starting to go through our videos, this ad will become very familiar. Ang latest version na gusto mo, piliin ang preferred paper and pencil. Wala pang 5 minutes na siizigit ka na para sa windows mo. Maraming na kaming na tulungan. Dati, saan di purchase ako? But now, I'm from a love of my life. Dati, ingresan walang purchase ang life ko. But now, I'm a world-class Zumba instructor. So, web developer ako and content creator for a YouTube channel. And ngayon, ganoon pa rin ako, pero activated na yung windows ko. Kaya ako naghanap ka ng legit, mura at original software. Check out cdkoffer.com. Check out cdkoffer.com. Check out cdkoffer.com. All right, before we begin the stream, let me just check. All right, everything's going. I didn't want to say thank you to ASUS for lending us this keyboard. It's the ROG. Low profile, something, something. Like, to be honest, I can't remember the name of the keyboard. But it's very similar to a keyboard we've already tried for the channel. But that keyboard, actually, let me, I can find it. It's very similar to this one. It's very similar to... So, I was going to review the keyboard like last month. Here. It's very similar to the ROG Falcon Ace, as you can see in the thumbnail. So, this one is very similar. But this is the ROG Low Profile, something, something. So, you know, this is also like the, I think the keyboard guys call this like a 65% keyboard. So, it doesn't have the numpad. It's also not something, that's not something I'm used to. It does have RBG, RGB or the turned off. What's nice about this, it has a unified receiver. So, if you get another ROG product like this mouse, which they also sent over, this is the ROG Strix Impact 3. So, it's wireless. Wait, maybe the keyboard has... The name of the keyboard, okay. This is the ROG Falcon RX Low Profile. So, also part of the Falcon series. The volume control is here at the top instead of here at the side, unlike the previous one that we reviewed. But, yon. So, I also sent over these two things. What's nice about them is that the keyboard comes with a unified receiver. So, I didn't have to use the receiver for this one. One receiver ties it all in together. So, a small thing, but useful. It comes with its own cover also. So, it goes like this, but you can also have it like... I mean, it's a traveling cover, but you can also use it when you plop it down onto a desk. So, it is wireless, wireless. I do sub-zukini. Mayong gabi e? My parents are Sibuan na actually. May mama is from Sibu. So, makasabot at makasutit ko at Bisaya. Thank you for watching from Sibu. So, Hardware Sugar Reacts to Hardware Sugar is the stream that we do once a month where basically we give some behind the scenes, sorry mga like insider things on what went into the making of the videos. So, we'll do that now. The first video we did for this month was this one. The 24 build tips for 2024. This is actually a... That's a clip that you see, that we used a lot of back in 2022-2023. That's actually my old computer. So, Christian Raver from YouTube, good evening. So, itong 24 build tips from 2024 is actually a sequel to a similar video we did in 2023. So, there are 24 build tips and some of them are super practical. You can carry over a lot of your parts from your last build. So, if your last build, you know, you can probably still carry over your SSD, your HDD, your motherboard if you're just upgrading the CPU and things like that. So, there are 24 build tips. Some of them are very practical. Some of them are more philosophical. Like, the last tip is make sure you... Well, one of the tips is that you share your knowledge. I mean, a lot of people who watch the channel are very technically savvy when it comes to computer. So, parang sayang naman kung that knowledge is siloed or kung baka nakahipon lang sayo, di mo you don't share it out into the world. So, one of them is sub-don-don defy from Facebook. So, one of the tips was like, you know, if you have knowledge, share it. So, you know, it's a nice mix of practical tips as well as kind of more philosophical things like that. And the last tip is actually find a hobby outside of the computing space kasi, you know, masayang... Don't get me wrong, masayang yung computers, masayang PC hardware. But, you know, a lot of the maraming enthusiasts na tatakot ako for some enthusiasts na parang all their effort and all of their ego is fixed on the hobby. Kung may nag-criticize sa kanila for their build or kung may nagsabi na, well, you know, I don't agree with your opinion na yung build na yan kailangan ng 750W PSU. Sa tingin ko, kaya lang 650W, they get very upset and they start flaming and they're like, no, takang ka ba? Di mo alam na itong GPU, ito yung power load. Ganito ganyan. 80 plus rail volt, you know, whatever. Multi volt, single rail, whatever. So, because all of their time and effort and their self-worth is invested into the hobby, they get very prickly and they don't take criticism well and I don't think that's healthy for any hobby. I mean, you know, whether you're into bikes, cars, computers, wine, if your hobby starts to take over your life, that's why I think it's good to have a diversity of interests. So, the last tip is that one. So, it's a nice blend of philosophical and practical tips. This is a shot. So, this shot that you're seeing here on screen now is actually here. So, that's in my home office. But the camera is usually behind me over there. I'm facing over there. Then you can see my primary monitor. So, this side which you can't see in this setup because the camera is here to the side. Which is sort of a new angle that we're trying out. I'm only able to do it because I got a new lens recently. So, this is a Korean lens, Samyang lens. Actually, pretty good. I'm not super technical into cameras. But the AF35 1.8, or I forget the F-stop on it. But it's pretty good for portrait style. So, a lot of our newer videos starting this year is with that format that you can see my monitors and my PC here in the background. And then the cameras are shot. Basically, the camera is just there behind me and then you would see things that you can't see with this camera setup. So, this video was a sequel to what we did back in the start of 2023. I like doing this kind of video so it's really quite long. How long is it? Oh, that's really long. It's like 30 minutes long. Ren had a heck of a time editing this. Although, I did more... She did the first revision and then she did the first edit and then I also put in some other stuff just to put in more b-roll to make sure that the video doesn't feel boring. And my only regret for this video is that it came out kind of late. Yung gusto ko sana for this video was that first week of January 2024. But other videos, we had to push out other videos and the 30 minute video is not easy to edit. I mean, hindi b-roll yung pag-edit. I mean, if the final product is around 30 plus minutes, you can imagine the raw footage that we went through to we edited, we cut out and things like that. So, it did take a little while longer. It got released start of February, which is a shame. What I liked about the first one, pang-pang new year, 23 buildtips in 2023 and then 24 buildtips 2024. For sure, we'll probably do another one if we're still in YouTube next year and by all indications, it probably will be. Then, 25 buildtips in 2025 should come out like, January 1 sana. So, mark that date. January 1 2025 we'll have an update naman to this video. So, the next video we did for Feb was this one from Rocky the Programmer. A lot of channels, like, oh, what's a good build for $800? What's a good build for $15,000? But, oh, sapanton, I will be seeing you soon. I am excited for our project. For those watching, it's not PC related. But, I will be talking about it a little bit more. The project, like, once it's done and everything. Speaking of having hobbies outside of the PC space, that's... I really wouldn't call it a hobby on my part, but it is something that I'm interested in and I try to, yeah, yeah. I'm excited to see it. That's something that I do want. That's something that I do take an interest in, but not... I'm not super knowledgeable about it. So, I'm going to Anton to have my car detailed. And, like, you know, super detailed. And, like, there's a graphene ceramic coating and stuff like that. So, I'm excited to do that to my 10-year-old car. Which is, you know, if you watch the videos, you'll notice the CERZ. That's still my daily driver. Like, three years ago. It's 10 years old this year, but it still drives like a dream. Still my daily driver. Although, in the medium-term timeframe, like, maybe a year, a year and a half, I am thinking of getting an oil electric vehicle. So, we'll see how that goes and where the CERZ ends up. But, right now, I'm still saving up for some other stuff and I still love the car. Even if I get a full EV, like, I don't know if I could let the CERZ go. So, Christian Reaver from YouTube, have you heard of Pelladin GPUs? Are they good? I have not heard them. So, I can't comment about that. So, this video from Rocky the Programmer did pretty well, 2,400 views. And, yeah, it's the stuff that you should do after you get a new computer. We do some of it already in hardware sugar, like, making sure all the drivers are updated and things like that. But, I mean, there's some other stuff. Did we time-stamp this? Oh, that was the nice that was a clip of the very nice monitor that ROG lent to us. Oh, I'm not quite sure why that was our B-roll for that. Yeah, make a list of all the parts that's very practical, very boring advice, but super useful. Especially years later you don't quite remember what your parts are anymore than you're wondering if you should upgrade or if there's new drivers for that particular hardware. Having a list of what you have when you bought it and how much was it, I mean, if you want to get a little detail is helpful if you will be upgrading drive, updating drivers, selling at a second hand and things like that. Sup, Kale and Kiel? I'm doing well. I'm a little tired to be honest the channel is always the channel plus the shop plus my kids and everything it's always just go, go, go but sup Michael Chua waving but yeah, you know can't complain. Everybody's in good health the shop is chugging along the channel is also chugging along we just reached actually 120,000 subscribers which is amazing. We only, I mean, we hit 100K I can't quite remember we did it as a live stream but from 100K to 120K there's like a 20% increase in like less than a year I think so sup Maverick Hornet crypto has been on my mind a lot so since I got back into it last August and then got super back into it last November so now I'm into this phase na I really like check every day I'm keeping a trading log I've signed up to telegram channels that cost hundreds of dollars literally hundreds of dollars to join these telegram channels so I went big so that's another thing taking up my time but I went big into crypto because a lot of people are saying that 2024 first half of 2025 would be super big for crypto generational wealth we'll talk about it more when I talk about the live streams but just to sup Mr. Dommels09 sup Dommmer sup Nix, Balgoa I appreciate it I really, it makes me it, like I don't want to sound like an egoist but it makes me feel good when I see comments like this na nakatulog yung mga videos like they understand some computing hardware or term that they didn't before or it helped start them on their PC hobby journey those are really the comments that I really appreciate I think na yeah that's why we do it and that's why we have a channel dedicated to explaining PC parts I mean there are a lot of tech hardware channels but I think ours is one of the few na sort of oriented towards the beginners so we don't use a lot of jargon we try to debunk myths na a lot of other creators are very focused on performance as we're like kumay bottleneck, may bottleneck pero sulit naman yung upgrade you can still, you'll be able to run triple A games so giving sort of a different perspective compared to just the all fast, all efficiency kind of thing so I really like seeing comments like that just as an aside Dommmer if it's a new project for you we have to start testing the new deep cool stuff message kita when you get back from your rest days I think that's Thursday super newbie friendly and that's really what we're going for not that we talk down to newbies but we try to address their concerns and talk to them in a language na very friendly I like cars but I'm not a car guy when I start hearing very technical I get lost and I get scared because you don't know what this other guy is talking about takot ka na baka malo ko ka magtulak sayo nung upgrade na di mo naman kailangan so that's how I feel about cars I start feeling apprehensive when people I don't trust or strangers I'm in a strange shop suddenly start talking about like oh you need to do this you need to do that when it comes to the PC space where I'm nowhere knowledgeable when it comes to the videos when it comes to the shop we really try to be user friendly and explain everything sub r3d good evening thanks for watching but just to address just to comment a little bit on Maverick Hornet we've been stuck at 50 to 51k for a while and I am a little I'm a little I wouldn't say over leveraged but compared to the reserve leverage that I usually have I am not at my usual ratio so every time it drops down to like 50,000 for a bitcoin like oh man my intestines my nerves but the problem with me is it starts going up so I add a little bit to my positions but if I think my opinion is based on the telegram groups that I'm a part of that I pay to be a part of if we can get past a little feb without a major correction even a drop to 49 I'm still comfortable with but anything below 48,500 that would be I'd be sweating bullets I would be like should I close my lungs but if we reach feb without any major dump I think we're fine and I think it'll go up the major telegram group predicts like 55 next leg up which is pretty good although I do have lungs in bitcoin but I have a couple of big swings in altcoins as well made some money on ethereum but you know this there's always some learning especially for crypto there's always a lot of stuff for me to learn just a couple of days ago so not to get technical but there are certain futures contracts futures is basically your betting that the market will go up I had a futures contract on ethereum it was doing really well and it went down like negative but I'm like okay lang naman kasi end of feb I thought that the contract was up to end of feb and I figured that yeah it'll go down but by the end of feb akit naman siya yung problema the contract actually expired or auto terminated february 23 hindi end ng feb and ethereum was down at february 23 and you know I was like oh yeah no problem no problem and then when I checked my history like the trading history it wasn't even fine print it was actually there on the trading ticker feb 23 I'm like oh I'm an idiot so I lost money not the first time I've lost money on crypto and it won't be the last but those are the kind of errors na tama naman yung thinking ko on the trend mali lang yung actual execution so I think that that pretty much makes me the dumb eh I mean that was dumb so I did lose money there yeah so lots of things to still learn with the whole crypto thing but getting getting there hopefully hopefully we score big this year since november when I started taking seriously january the spot bitcoin etf approval I think but it's like I'm playing catch up because a lot of the accounts that I follow have been in it for such a long time they have a lot of money to put in spot yung hindi na ka leverage they're like oh I think this coin will go up in 3 months and I'm gonna set aside half a million dollars I mean parang wala lang that's not even their entire bag I mean that's just like oh ya parang ok magtatabimuna ako parang ganyan I do not have 500,000 dollars to just toss in on one coin, on one position so I'm being a little aggressive with my leverage so that I can earn some money and that's worked out for me like I do have some nice spot positions now but I'm still a long way to go hopefully it gets better at the end of 2024 hopefully medyo maluwag ng positions ko di ko pala ginagahabol so it's been going well so far but it's very stressful for me I like tech but I'm not the kind of guy that I'm glued to my phone but now because I'm watching the market so closely before I sleep, when I wake up in between, I curse globe kasi ang pangit ng mobile data nila so I can't keep up with the prices and things like that so speaking of crypto we do have like a trilogy and in this one I think underperformed I think there was a lot of good value in this video there's always like people always talk about what you need to know before trading cryptocurrency but this video is five things you don't need to know and more knowledge is always better but if you just want to start trading the best advice really is just to start trading kasi sa worrying about certain things and that's where this video comes in but not a lot of my viewers really care about crypto and we can see that in the number so this one didn't even crack 500 this one beginners guide to trading crypto 500 or so views that's not a lot for the channel so a lot of the viewers and in fairness naman you didn't come to the channel because of crypto you came because of computing hardware and things like that but I do have an interest in crypto so I do a live stream once a month about it and that's the thing about hardware sugar a lot of the videos are not like oh we need to do this for the algorithm and hardware sugar just needs to pump out videos about computer I mean a lot of there are a lot of videos on the channel not because I think they'll be popular but because I'm just interested in the topic and sorry na lang I mean for sure they're gonna be videos about computer stuff right but I do like to mix up the content because I'm interested in that another example of that would be this episode of the podcast this one was actually heavy hitting we had like we had the PR this is Lucille from tiktok she is the PR head for the Southeast Asian region for Bumble it's a well known company it's a high position so I think our producer really scored well here to get Bumble's view on like online dating and things like that this is our latest episode of the podcast it underperformed like the last one the last episode of the podcast did really well the one about internet cafes so that was like 3000 plus views na ngayon how many? I am a child of this dead 3000 views the internet cafe is dead so of course, there is a bias of the audience to favor more PC related stuff even for the podcast so I was a little disappointed that this one underperformed but I thought it was a good episode just kind of like mixing it up especially for the podcast where I feel that we can do topics that are related to deck but ni naman kailang super in your face hardwary about it this one from Rocky the Programmer review 4070 super from ASOS he really liked the card also I do remember saying one comment on it na this is the 4070 we should have had at launch nvidia is swimming in money swimming ridiculously swimming in money at this point because of the AI craze so that's not going to help gamers in our position that nvidia cards are overpriced the 4080 super you didn't see a lot of performance gain there maybe 3% mas malaki pa yung performance gain on 4070 super and I think a positive review was in order I mean, obviously I agree with it I publish it on the channel so but just value for money the 4070 super has more there compared to the 4080 super um but really right now and I mention this in the price watch episode which is the video that comes after this one the channels the shops now here in the Philippines di pa sila maka move on sa pricing nila so yung 4070 and 4080 mas mahal pa compared to the 4070 super and the 4080 super and both of those cards are faster than the non super equivalents so the supers here in the Philippines at least are cheaper and they're faster, no brainer there's no reason anymore to get the 4080 um from a local shop because a lot of them mas mahal pa yung 4080 kaya sa 4080 super so it's very good Anton the 4070 super like good good value for money and yung nga mas mahal yung for a lot of the shops mas mahal yung 4070 compared to the 4070 super yung nangyari do na I suspect they had stock of the 4070 they bought it at a certain price and ayon nila maluge so they can't drop the price lower than the 4070 super or the 4080 super as the case may be and then video really came out with like a 4070 ti super pa or something like that I mean some ridiculous naming scheme like that um but yeah right now at least for the Philippine market and I do mention this in price watch it's a no brainer if you're in the market for a new GPU um the supers are cheaper and they're faster than the current older line me personally like I have a 3080 I was toying like before it came out the 4080 super came out as the toying of thinking of getting it when it came out as my upgrade but the price different the performance gain is miniscule compared to the 4080 and okay paraman yung performance coin game so I'm thinking maybe I'll just skip the 40 generation and yunga a lot of my money is tied up in crypto um and I don't really feel the need yunga a lot of my time is divided between the shop and the channel and my family and crypto so I don't get to play a lot naman talaga like I play CS I'm still playing Cyberpunk so ha I don't want to temp you but the 4070 super is pretty good but again I'm biased um it's kind of like ya parang meekot lang but the 4070 is pretty good 4070 super I should say so I don't really feel the need to upgrade for my 3080 at this point because here we are like price watch talaga um ha sub j j's video actually j will come out soon tomorrow check out the video tomorrow um it is a very nice case I won't spoil it the members here youtube member you already know what I'm talking about kasi it's already up for members but I won't spoil it for the general audience but it's you can check out the video tomorrow it's a very nice build sub Ernie from youtube I haven't caught up with jay recently when we have the next um actually I haven't caught up with the guys at the shop for a while you get super busy but ya when the next time we have thing at the shop I will let you know jay we have never had any sorry let me just skip this and talk about like price watch talaga we never had any incident I mean it is possible of course you've seen the reports from the internet but we've never had one from like our own customer because well you know we're super paranoid when we install the 1490 we really stick the wires way in there just to make sure because basically at the end of the day it's just like ya parang it's not properly plugged in I mean that's in video stance to be fair there have been others that have tried other cables like the cable but which the cable mod guys had to issue a recall actually for those for those for those for the 90 degree connector that they made sub-odgy ya so we've never had any problems knock on wood with the 1490s that we've sold and that we've installed in in customer rigs so price watch is the episode we do once a month where we've been tracking prices it's like October 2022 and all of that historical data is there and we try to give like a cross-section of the market so we can't cover all the products but we get the four largest PC retailers para may general idea kayo and I think it's a yung na, siyempre bias ako because I'm the one who has to pour in the time I'm still the one who follows the prices and who does the everything for price watch from the editing to the actual shoot and the data and the analysis of the data I think it's a great resource for local PC buyers because everybody complains na overpriced but anong basis what's the any historical data for prices here we have it here we have it on price watch and I think yung nakakaasar for me is like you know you have a lot of consumers saying saying overpriced overpriced but like compared to what previous historical prices overpriced compared to a different GPU which has lower performance but it's at a much lower price I mean it's easy to complain but to find to give valuable criticism because hindi lang overpriced but you can say it's overpriced because yes it's faster but yung price to performance di ko nung kaganda yung value comes in and I think that's where a lot of internet commenters they don't care they just want to vent they just want to rant and then wala na and I think that's why regular shows like this like price watch we have the data we do the analysis it comes out on a regular basis and it is accessible to the public 24-7 this google sheet that I'm talking about in the video yung yung just go to the episode the link is in the video description below and yeah there you go and a very valuable resource I feel for the buying public in general you don't even need to buy from hardware sugar you can still benefit from the price watch episode sub Alex D5 so yeah so I feel I feel that we do a lot for the local PC market for both the channel and the shop like we have policies and we have content that I think is yeah provides value that again not to like comparing ourselves but just like in general looking at other tech channels I feel we do a lot of odd things, weird things but those are the ones that provide value like price watch which for a price watch episode this one was four days ago 2,500 views not bad although the previous one did better like almost 5,000 because of the coke can like saving money on pc parts thanks to coke and it's not really click bait per se but it's kind of click baity not that the audience minded all of the comments are positive um yeah so price watch I think is one of those good examples of how we do things that other people don't do but it's very useful to the consumer so we're also been pushing pushing our shorts um this one did very well from rockin the programmer like pc buildings mistakes to avoid um this one actually like we have a tiktok um and yeah we do have a tiktok the link is in the description below if you want to follow us I'm just super surprised lo it ah let me just pull up the tiktok like our tiktok and then oh I can just open a new tab no I don't know you know what I'm pretending to be like a expert pero I forgot like you can just pull up the tab so this this tiktok from not too long ago has 35,000 views this ssd tiktok and it's like a video it's like a review of a team group ssd from from December so this is far and away our best performing tiktok um 35,000 views this one balapan ng view nito this one I just uploaded oh sorry this one wala pa these will be uploaded pa tomorrow and then two days from now um this one wala pa no views I uploaded this like couple of um well maybe it's just loading or something yes we're not super big on tiktok but yeah 35,000 views for this one is pretty darn good for the team group one I can't remember if I although this one like I really did try to oh yeah so this is so the same short this is the same this is the same short did only like 2,400 on youtube I did 35,000 on tiktok so pretty good yeah we do try to publish uh I think he I think he's in chat now so let's I will wait for his reply that will break the internet uh this one I thought should have done better but we do try to have a short now at least once a week uh although these latest shorts have been from Rocky the programmer I should really get back into doing shorts as well uh we have hit the 30 minute mark uh let me just play the ad one more time because uh sponsor so waka na ba sa unactivated windows mo well lucky you pinakabago mo la sa cdkeyoffice.com windows 10 and windows 11 activation pose legit, safe, and pinakamura madalilo mo order hanabi ang windows version na gusto mo piliin ang preferred playpen wala pang 5 minutes sige ka na para sa windows mo marami na kaming na tulungan dati 7 depart ako but now I'm from a love of my life dati ing rese nulang purchase ang life ko but now I'm a world-class Zuba instructor so web developer ako and content creator for a youtube channel and ganun pa rin ako pero activated na yung windows ko kaya ako naghanap ka ng legit mura at original software check out cdkeyoffice.com check out cdkeyoffice.com check out cdkeyoffice.com so onto the live streams I really do try to do hardware sugar act to hardware sugar towards the end of the month so this one was the last this was on january 30 and we really hit the ground running Feb 1 was our cs live stream so I've been since like january December the four live game live streams that I've done are have all been of cs2 two trivia so I do four game live streams because this was the idea of my brother Rafael when he was still helping out to the channel like years ago we've been with the sponsor for quite a long time now he's like well why don't we tell the sponsor that I can do I'll do four game live streams and their logo will be there at the bottom and they'll pay us a little bit of money they'll be good for the channel anyway I need the game anyway so I'm like okay and the sponsor said okay but you know what I've been doing them for the past year or so because my brother Rafael is a broad studying and I feel like a lot of things in my life start out like this like some guys like hey why don't we do this and I'm like okay that's a good idea you do that actually I'm nahuhulog sa akin bumabagsak sa akin so it has fallen to me to continue the four game live streams not my mind but I'm not really I'm not super comfortable like to be honest streaming like even like this like even like this streaming I'm not like my psychological profile is I'm an introvert and especially for me it was more of a single player experience even before compared like yeah multiplayer but like with close friends so it's it's not something that comes naturally to me being live streaming while I'm playing a game although like when I did it before with with Death Stranding so those got a lot of views the CS2 ones do decent like you know a couple maybe 100 views or so I'm not bad in some of them in fact like the running joke I have for these guys is that like for the CS2 live streams if I get MVP in one round then discount magsasail yung shop bukas and that actually happened on this one in the last game stream I got MVP I don't think I time stamped it did I time stamp it I didn't but it's like so ridiculous MVP MVP body I don't know so like it was towards the end like my team was losing already and then it was like a completely useless MVP but anyway I got MVP so I had to yeah I had to I had to put the shop because if I say something on chat I mean you know if I say something online I'm gonna do that so I said that publicly that MVP the shop will go on sale and the shop went on sale but really you're ridiculous MVP I think I would be afraid to see the mix of Jaynalyn and Gerald parang nakakatakot yung halo na yun I don't know if I want to see that I assume this will just get worse as we roll off towards summer I do have solar panels on my roof which is another thing there's a bunch of content on the channel that isn't directly super related to PC hardware but that I find super interesting so I do have solar on my roof it doesn't fully cover my electric cost especially at night since wala naman araw at night there's no sun at night but yeah it does earn me something because I sell it back to Meralco during the day yes I saw the big announcement to be honest I was talking to one of my friends I haven't seen the trailer and to be honest there was a lot of WTF moments for me and parang they're doubling down on the WTF moments for Death Stranding 2 but that said the gameplay of just walking around and rebuilding I found it very soothing in that time of my life I needed something to slow down and relax and the ghosts I forget what they call the ghosts but you can't really see them and they're in the fog but if they spot you they run towards you and especially when you're starting out palang and you don't have a lot of good gear so you can't hold your own against a ghost you can't shoot them with your blood or the grenades that one I found really spooky I used to play it late at night on my big monitor when the ghosts would detect you and things like that that is kind of scary so I do have good memories of Death Stranding 1 even though there were a lot of WTF moments in it so those were the and I was able to do live from the shop what di magtanong was Feb 1 I think do we have the exact date here? no, basta 3 weeks ago I will be doing Pwede Magtanong March 1 so that's this Friday um then just like heads up on a schedule March 1 Pwede Magtanong 2 and 3 probably gaming lives March 4 to 8 I will be okay because Deepcool has kindly invited me to visit their factory in China but definitely will do at least one live stream from China I'm kinda curious I think I did a little boy hee hee I wanna try so I'm gonna make a list of maybe controversial websites not controversial for us but controversial for the Chinese and I'm curious if I can access them in China and also be using the deeper connect air so this is a VPN which is a hardware VPN so no subscription needed I reviewed this and another of their products in the past they work as advertised but this is the first time I'll be using it for actual VPN purposes so so I'll be doing a bunch of content while I'm in China since I'm done na rin ako just based on the location and also because for like the factory tour I assume will be super interesting um it's not I'm just curious um like ano yung ma-access ko in China is it that big a deal although I assume their censorship the great firewall is more geared towards the local market so like actual weibo or whatever sites that you can access na in Chinese I don't think they care too much about the English language stuff but yung nga again it's just um being I'm just curious and yeah I am bringing the hardware VPN which I have some experience with um yeah but the deep cool factory should be pretty interesting also um and so March 4th to 8th I will be out of country but you'll see me do at least one live stream um from there yung nga kasi we tried to front load a lot of the things that we need we tried to front load a lot of the deliverables we need for the sponsor at the start of the month yes we can do that actually it doesn't matter like if you get it from Amazon another shop as long as 50% of the components are bought from our shop we will still assemble for free and if you don't reach the 50% um cut off no problem we just have a build fee of 2000 so yeah I mean we've been doing that for a long we've been doing that for a long time na doesn't matter what shop whether it's from Amazon new egg whether it's from another local shop um we do have options in place for that yes yeah so pwede magtanong I'll do be doing that March 1 um live from the shop I got to do because there was a holiday last Jan this Feb forget which the holiday was and then yeah we had a crypto watch episode uh parabolic teleportation has not happened yet and the market has been kind of in the doldrums since uh like there's a good spike Feb 7th to 14th I think it was I do keep a trading log now um which I have here actually yeah yung medyo last na sustained jump was Feb 7th to 14th usually in a month there's at least one period of a couple of days the the price goes up quite a lot um yeah and you're looking at the current target is 55,000 per bitcoin it's roughly around 51 now so imagine you had one bitcoin you buy one about bitcoin worth 51 you sell it at 55 that's a $4,000 profit that's like over a quarter of a million pesos from just hanging out and buying a bitcoin and you don't need to have $51,000 dollars on hand to buy one bitcoin because you can use futures you can use leverage um yeah so kind of wild yeah they're do take note just because you get it from amazon doesn't necessarily mean that it'll be cheaper the deep cool ones are pretty well priced um compared to what you would get in the states for example we're much closer to the manufacturer here Christian are 7,300X still okay for a 4060? yeah I mean if you have the money why not get a 5700X but if money budget is a little right? 3,700X for the 4060? no problem my PC was running a 3,700X with a 3080 so um and I felt that was completely fine although I did upgrade over the Christmas break the 5,900X um not so much for gaming but for the editing and the editing is much smoother now a lot smoother now with the 5,900X so good upgrade I think sulit na yung upgrade is for my use case um it's I mean it's a carry over of when you answer that question why are GPUs more expensive here compared to in the states that can apply to a lot of things why are motherboards why are CPUs more expensive one primary answer is because of the smaller market I mean you think about the US it is such a big market and basic economics if you buy a lot of the same thing you can get a cheaper price supply and demand lang yan economics of scale whereas you have a much smaller market in the Philippines you don't have those economics of scale so our local distributors ang layo by a by a factor by a large factor ang layo na mabibilin ng mga local distributors of course the price is much lower and you know a little bit behind the scenes like distributors may have 100 units of one GPU is even 100 units for the entire Philippines isang best buy lang yan sa states I mean the volume that you can expect in the states is astronomically larger than what you can expect here in the Philippines so of course we don't have those economics of scale so we can't get them our distributors can't get them at a cheaper price and so they also can't sell them at a cheaper price and again it's a little like the consumers always say batang mahal batang mahal because our market is not there yet like we don't have the volume that the U.S. can and this is proven by looking at the market at a much larger market compared to what we can do here so again it's a little like you know the consumers always say batang mahal batang mahal proven by looking at the market like Singapore Singapore first world the customers there can afford but the prices there are not that great I mean sometimes we even have better prices here in the Philippines because Singapore is a much smaller country again you don't have the economics of scale that you can rely on in large markets like North America and on the consumer side it's here like everybody's greedy and VGS greedy the distributors are greedy the shops are greedy pineperahan lang et cetera but that's just really not the case the fact of the matter is the fact of the matter is that the volume is not there and so those are the prices that we have and speaking as someone who owns a PC shop mahal rin when we buy distributors but we have no choice and we need to put a mark up so mahal talaga when it reaches the end user and if you think it's expensive when you buy one graphics card think about like even just a small shop like hardware sugar we'll try to get three pieces of that graphics card and then we need to stock also other lines of graphics cards especially if you're a small shop like hardware sugar actually to be honest I've been toying around with the idea di na kami magsas talk on shelf ng GPUs like per order custom basis na lang because yeah the GPUs really wipe you out and if you don't sell them right away maipit ka when the new models come along yung CPUs not so bad pe when the new model CPUs come along you can kind of like lower the price pot to get back what you paid for at least di ka malugay but GPUs when the new models come out grave the market for the old models is price wise and you can't sell them anymore loogie ka na so I've been toying with the idea na we won't have on shelf GPUs anymore lahat custom order na lang so yeah again just behind the scenes like real talk man it's not because we're squeezing money out of the consumer it's like it's we can't get them at the prices that the North American market can I mean it's just it's just yeah that's a good match 7900XTX roughly comparable to a 4080 roughly very roughly and then a 7800X3D beautiful CPU for gaming so yeah that's good sub marvin almundo yes and what you don't get from the online shops the foreign online shops is that the warranty is very difficult we cannot it has to be the consumer who buys it the customer who buys it from any store regardless local store or amazon because we don't want to be saddled with the parang di na nga galing sa amin kami pa mamamang problema sa rma which it's very difficult if you buy apart from amazon I don't know how you would rma that so I mean that's one step too far I think it's very difficult for the shop to make money or kami pa di na nga galing sa amin kami pa ma on the hook for the rma regardless where it's bought, whether it's from amazon or something else, the customer has to buy it and then they just have to bring it to us and then we'll include it like we'll install it in the build the volume man parang how many GPUs does new egg sell I mean crazy we do that also at hardware sugar but at hardware sugar we try to keep most of the basic GPUs on stock so 1660 super, 1650 4060 we don't even have the high end on stock like the highest end we go is maybe 4070 4070 super but I've been thinking purely eliminating the GPU shelf kong baga because that would really help out with our cash flow having GPUs on hand is hella expensive just putting it out there some of the shop guys are watching now but I haven't shared this with them I haven't paid myself a salary from hardware sugar since November last year that's how difficult it is to maintain cash flow in the business that I'm in not to say the shop makes money but then you have to buy parts you need to pay people, you need to pay rent the easiest person to go hungry is me because you can't expect the guys in the shop to go hungry they have to eat also they have families to feed and things like that so I haven't drawn a salary from the shop since November last year how can I do that? because I make money off crypto it's like my side like my primary hustle should be the shop but it needs, yeah it burns money like a furnace man it's like tatapon lang ng pera sa hardware sugar and the easiest person not to pay is myself so we do make money also from the channel from the ad revenue but even all of that so I haven't been paying myself because the way we do accounting is whatever we earn from the channel we consider that as income for the shop so we channel it into the shop it doesn't go to me and yeah I haven't drawn a salary I haven't earned anything from hardware sugar since November last year so it's like parang ironic na my side hustle yung crypto has become the primary means of supporting myself as the shop burns through money but gano naman talaga like I've noticed January like early start of the year the shop really needs help because not a lot of people are buying because December was a good time to buy everybody had their bonuses so January starts out really slow so yeah it'll pick up as the year goes on but yeah it's a very capital intensive business itong PC retail yeah if you notice pumapayat ba ako hardware sugar has not paid me since November and it's stressful for me to make sure that the suppliers get paid the building where we rent gets paid the staff gets paid it's uh and you know I my wife is a part she's a partner in a very big law firm she makes good money pero nakakaya naman de ba if I let my wife shoulder all of the expenses of the household so I do pitch in also like when I say I haven't gotten anything from hardware sugar it's not just me who doesn't eat kumbaga it's also my children they have to go to school so yeah I am teaching now it earns me a little side money and yeah with the crypto and things like that but yeah it's a very capital intensive it's a very capital intensive time and di naman di naman ouchi like you know para sub story please buy from hardware sugar but yeah just hardware sugar it's kind of like behind the scenes of everything it's a very capital intensive business and you know it is cyclical because I just like the toy stores like back in the day toys are us type in the states when toys are us was still big the entire year they would be operating at a loss like january, february in the red yun negative yun lahat until black friday in the states so that's the friday after thanksgiving and then the christmas season they would make enough in those six weeks mid november up to the end of the year to make up for the entire year so retail is very cyclical like that notice nga that started the year medyo tight talaga yung funds like really tight, give it talaga like so yeah don't pick up naman hopefully we can turn a profit and I hope we can start feeding me I mean you know the hardware sugar can start paying me again you know we're hanging in there we're hanging in there you're right there are a lot of shops that I also follow for my opposition research and they seem like good shops so I mean I can't like I haven't bought naman from them but at least the public facade seems to be more customer friendly than some of the traditional stores so that's great that's great for the consumer that's great for the market sales have been slow for hardware sugar but that's expected for this time of year we're kind of trading water so we're not like underwater but it's not like we're shooting out of the water either and you know I wish I hope business picks up a little bit more so that the shop can start paying me again but in the meantime hanging in there and you know what the promise of retail like the tantalizing thing sana is volume like we need to grow bigger so like sana we can we can start looking for new locations and we're not always tight on cash so that's really to win at retail you really need to have scale it's ridiculous to just be like this kind of mom and pop single store operation but you know it's not a great time to expand right now I'm barely making ends meet as it is we'll take on new staff take on a new location but hopefully we can get there because what we really need at retail is to do it at volume to do it at scale and again that goes back to the question why are PC parts here so expensive because we don't have that scale but if you have the volume of tipong PC hub PC hub has great inventory because they're really big they have that scale yeah good local businesses not just PC places but restaurants car detailing places there are a lot of local businesses I think that deserve our support we actually interviewed the organizer or convener before of ESGS it's in the old livestreams in the industry and who knows I mean conventions but now we have volume we have a large market that are willing to pay to attend conventions whether it's like a mix of gaming slash cosplay and things like that so maybe not a straight up hardware thing like CES but definitely some kind of conventions I mean we've gotten so big that we can invite the biggest names in cosplay from Pokemon I think was here Fusili I don't know exactly how you pronounce I'm not super big into the gamer girl slash cosplay slash scene but yeah I mean even now we're already big enough to support the inviting like the biggest names from abroad to come here so definitely I think some kind of convention along those lines is very doable alright that's it for me because speaking of growing hungry I am hungry do check out the video tomorrow it's a very nice build done by a hardware sugar alumni and then the day after that will be the next episode of the podcast turning all these into techies and then I think we do take a break so Thursday there's a break in our content and then Friday will be puwede magtanong first livestream of March thanks so much for sticking with us the shop and the channel um yeah we just keep grinding away basically until yeah grind grind until yeah until you know until we get somewhere see you Anton bye guys