Overhauls & Upgrades! Fan Tester, GPU Benches, CPU Benches

Hey everyone!

I've been compiling a big list of overhauls and upgrades we're making lately behind the scenes. We're filming some of them, but lots of it is just never going to be shown (besides getting used in video), so I thought I'd share it here since it won't be anywhere else.

List below as we set up for next year!

Fan Tester

First-up, the long-awaited fan tester: We fell behind on this project as the acoustic chamber, laser scanner, and full overhaul of CPU and cooler testing over the last 2 years took priority, but also because we lacked a peer to do peer review with. Fortunately, my good friend Aris from Hardware Busters now provides fan testing as a consulting service for companies. We have no plans to do this (our view is that it creates conflict, but it's his core business and we have no problems with him doing it); however, the fact that he does this means we can work with him for peer review.

Patrick and I were working on the fan tester a couple weeks ago after months of it sitting and waiting for me to find time to get back to it. Part of GN's approach is quality over quantity, but that also means we stall out sometimes because I just focus my efforts on getting other stuff to 100%. If I am not yet knowledgeable on something new, that means our barrier to get to publishable is very high these days, as the expectation for quality is high. We want to hit those targets, which means we stay silent and publish nothing if we're just not happy with where our knowledgebase is and our understanding of the testing is.

But we're finally getting them. I am on-target to publish a couple fan pieces before the end of the year. We're moving pretty quickly on it now and I've been moonlighting after the team leaves each day to work on some fan tester projects. The debut is a feature test relating to PC cases, actually, but I can't say much more than that yet. We won't be able to do a full round-up of fans until we slowly establish the footing for individual reviews.

To solve for the expectations "problem" as we've gotten bigger: We'll basically publish all of the first charts with large "EXPERIMENTAL CHART" branding. This is something we've been using lately. The "good problem" to have is that we're pretty trusted these days; the bad part of that is that it's difficult to explore and experiment with new charts that we're not fully confident in, but obviously publishing those experiments will expose them to useful feedback that allows us to advance them. Lately, we've been clearly branding certain charts as "experimental" so that they can get out there and we can play around with new ideas for data presentation and testing. We'll do that with the fans, that way it's clear when we feel like it's at a place to be fully trusted for purchasing vs. when it's still new.

Very exciting!

Test Room Upfit

Does anyone want a video of this? We're overhauling the testing room again with some new tables and test benches, including a full build-out of the power testing station for GPUs. This will be both a computer component and physical furniture overhaul.

GPU Testing

Our next round of GPU testing is in development now. We are experimenting with adding these games to the lineup:

• Black Myth: Wukong

• Space Marine 2

• Dragon's Dogma 2

• F1 24

• FFXIV: Dawntrail

We are removing:

• F1 22 (replacing for F1 24)

• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (aged)

• Maybe GTA V for the same reason, though it is nice to have an anchor to data from 10 years ago

Any other games you want to see?

In addition to this, we're adding GPU power efficiency benchmarks similar to our CPU power efficiency benchmarks. This will look at the FPS/W (or W/FPS, depending) and other useful metrics for power consumption versus performance. We might experiment with some Vsync'd/FPS locked tests as well to normalize, but not sure yet.

CPU Benches

No major changes to the CPU benches, but we did just move to a new kit of RAM for the last round of reviews. Our prior Corsair and Gskill kits had some issues on the newer 9000 series parts for stability, so we swapped to a Lexar kit.

That's it for the updates for now! The questions remain for you all:

• Any other games you'd like to see added from this year for GPU testing? (We already have plenty of older games)

• Do you all want a behind-the-scenes walkthrough of the test room?

Thanks, everyone!