 I wasn't actually gonna go through your stuff that thoroughly because I was like, truly Nicole wouldn't take that many things from the office. You haven't even been with us that long. How have you managed to abscond with a fridge? Welcome! It's Intel Extreme Tech Upgrade Nicole Edition. That's right, Nicole is one of our quirkiest editors and... How do I describe the theme of this upgrade without being rude? Should we just say it? Well, yeah. She wants to hide from her family. Yeah... I will... We're creating Nicole's safe space today. It's gonna have gaming, it's gonna have movie watching capabilities, and you basically won't have to leave your room. Yes, that's the plan. Okay, let's get going. It's weird because normally I have no problem invading the privacy of my staff, but... I haven't gone into a girl's bedroom other than the one I share with my wife in probably... 16, 17 years. So this is... yeah, it's very... you got a definitely very girl's bedroom vibe here. I'm like... I see Workout Penguin has made his way back home from the office. Do you stream? No, I'm not much of an in-front-of-camera person. Oh, why do you have a stream deck and like a sick microphone and all this then? Hotkeys. Right, that makes sense. Yeah. You haven't even been with us that long. How have you managed to abscond with a fridge? Well, nobody said anything after I took it, so... I don't think I've ever actually seen you wear glasses. Do you have a prescription? A little bit. Oh, wow, not much. No, that's mostly just for computer stuff, but I can see things are far... That's a really good Santa look, I feel like. This is like a Santa in the making. You've got a future. Let's talk through what you're actually going to change in here. I'm going to get an update, upgrade, change up this stuff. Okay, yes, that is what we do, but more specifically... Oh, well, when I built this, I thought, okay, maybe in a year or two, I'll update the graphics card. Yeah. Oh. And then a year or two came. And yeah. Now, do you use your GPU for games or just video editing? Do you do a ton of video editing at home? Not anymore. I try not to at all, just so that it's like I can come home and chill. Right. So then the new setup will be completely geared towards entertainment and gaming. Cool, okay. Oh my God. Am I doing it right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, ready? I'm one of those people who actually finds massage very unpleasant. Really? I get like tingles, but in a bad way. Oh, then they just gotta go harder. No, I really don't think that's the solution here. By the way, I love your pillow here, LTT store. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, I don't know what it is. Andy, I had no problem sort of leaping onto your bed, but I just feel like I need to... Oh yeah, it would be great if it didn't break. Yeah, I learned my lesson. Let's go have a look at some of the hardware. Okay. Oh, we found some already. Yeah, this is gonna be a huge upgrade. So this is going like in your bedroom? Yes. Your bedroom is gonna be like entertainment city. Yeah, that's the plan. Now I have to confess, Nicole, I've never taken you for much of a gamer, and it's not like a stereotype thing, I don't think. You've never shown up for the PC gaming, like Lounge Nights or anything like that. Is this a relatively new thing for you or...? I used to game a lot before I started playing a lot more badminton. And now you're injured. Yes. How is your... how are you doing? Oh, I have like a nice little party trick where it like pops out. Wait, you're not doing... you're not just like doing that? No, no, no. Oh. It just falls out and then I push it back in, then it comes out, I push it back in. Yeah, that's really creepy actually. But it's... Okay. But the knee's like real good now. Okay. Yeah. So there, you heard it here first, folks. The best way to recover from a knee injury is to hurt your shoulder so you can't play. Yeah. It balances out, yeah. All right. I couldn't help noticing there is one key component missing. Oh, I'll be reusing my old case. Okay, cool. Did you build that machine? Yes. So then I actually don't have to do pretty much anything today. Oh, okay. Because you're gonna build the computer, right? Yeah, we'll see about that. Well, you built one. I watched your videos. All right, let's go get it. Oh, I couldn't help noticing that your monitor has an asset tag on it. You know, I wasn't actually gonna go through your stuff that thoroughly because I was like, innocent Nicole, she's always so smiley and nice to everyone. Surely Nicole wouldn't take that many things from the office. I don't think we ever had purple clouds, so I think you're probably off the hook on these. I think it's time to dig a little bit deeper here though. Okay. Wait a second. Yeah. This fridge isn't even on. You're not even using it as a fridge, Nicole. Yeah, when you guys said it was loud, I didn't think it'd be that loud. No, no, it's really loud. Oh my goodness. That's like, keeps you awake at night loud. Why did you keep it? Well, as you can see, there's not a ton of storage in here. So then you thought you should bring in a fridge that doesn't work? Yeah. This is the fanciest nail clipper I've ever seen in my life. Oh my God, there's a great story behind that. Uh-huh. So I got one from Amazon and then they sent me three. That's the whole story? Isn't that great? Those are, that's the graveyard. Oh my God. Well, you sure didn't steal this from work. No. This has existed since well before our company was a thing. If you want gamer chops proof, right? All you have to do is look at someone's keyboard. Confirmed. However, I couldn't help noticing you're an ESDF kind of lady. What's up with that? Oh, I don't know. I think maybe I just hit real hard on that. When I type, I've been told that I kind of like... Oh wait, so for games, you're WASD? Yes, for sure. Oh, but for some reason, your W key just doesn't get the same kind of way. Where? Yeah, I'm not like the most aggressive player. Like I hang back as you can see. She's a retreater, ladies and gentlemen. I run. That is the funniest thing I have ever seen ever. My W key doesn't get a lot of use. Oh right, we actually need to get the computer. Sorry, I got totally distracted. Oh, okay. That's just exciting, grounding things. It's speaking to me. Now, how long ago did you build this thing? I mean, it looks a little wild. That's a VGA connection. Oh yeah, well, when I got this... Nicole! You've got a tab sticking in your ethernet jack. Naruto running won't get you away from this. In Nicole's defense, that was a really, really poor design back in the day of a lot of motherboard IO shields where they intentionally... Actually, it's on purpose. They had the tabs in such a position that they would... Oh, that didn't take long. That's my fault. Like, should I be prepared to catch? Nope. Okay. Rude. So they intentionally had them bent too much because the idea is that they serve a purpose, right? They're for grounding, but they overdo it. So a lot of the time it's really easy for people to accidentally have the tabs sticking into their port, which can actually short out that port, which can obviously cause problems. Now you have got some dust build up. You know how they say that dust is like, you know, whatever percentage dead skin cells? Oh, I Googled that. It's not... Apparently it's a total myth. Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you almost for certain that a lot of this is dead skin cells, though. Oh no. You managed to get some hair in here too. Oh my God. Why is there so much hair in here? What happened? That's basically what I said word for word when I unclogged my wife's sink. Here's another one. Oh my... Where did they come from? Can I propose a theory? Okay. Wait, why am I doing this? Okay. Yeah. Okay. You said you wanted to show me through that. Yeah. My special tool. I'll be right back. That is... Oh, I think I see where you're going with this. I was going to be like, that's an adorable little hammer, but... There's a screwdriver in the handle. There is a screwdriver. Okay, that's actually pretty cool. There's another one. Oh, that's not what I actually expected to happen. I thought this was going to screw into the bottom of this one. Oh, you wish. It was going to be like a longer shaft and then it would be interchangeable bits. Yeah. Are you sure it doesn't have interchangeable bits? What's in there? I don't know. Look at this. You got two knurled things here. It's got a... Oh, it's like one of those... Oh my God. Is there one more screw? It's a baby... Wait. How deep does this go? No. It's so cute. Is that a tattoo? Yes. Oh, do you want to see? How have I never noticed your tattoo before? It's a paw print of my pup and her name. That is so cool. Thank you. That's your little right paw. She's real cute, like real fluffy, gorgeous little pup. Hates living things. Got it. So we're not going to meet her? She might bark for the next like eight hours until you leave. Maybe we'll meet her before I go. Oh, more skin. It's snowing. You know what? Let's change our story. It's not all skin. It doesn't look like skin. It's snow. It's festive. Festive dust. Your timing is so good for Extreme Tech Upgrade because 12th Gen just launched. So what'd you go with? So I went with the i7-12700K. I had the 7700K. Yep. This is actually a really great choice for you because it's got the same number of performance cores as the like top spec Core i9, and you're just giving up four of the e-cores. Now, if you were doing a ton of video editing or like After Effects work or something like that, I might have said, hey, you kind of want the Core i9. You need the other cores, but for like just gaming. Oh, yeah. Now, it's as good as it gets. Yeah. Any particular rationale on this one or? Um. It seemed good. I needed it for it. And then it also has USB-C. Don't you feel bad for motherboard manufacturers sometimes? Like it's so hard to market your product when literally the main selling point is, works with this thing. You need one. That doesn't feel right. You're good. Don't worry. Okay. Quite a lot of force on LGA 1700 to bring the arm down. There you go. Nice. Okay. What's next? RAM. Now, it seems to me that you went 64 gigs of RAM last time around because you were doing more like video editing and stuff at home. So did you go for speed or did you go for capacity this time? I went for speed. 3200. 3200. Yeah. 16. Oh, yeah. Okay. This will be fine. Just fine. Engine no click. Sometimes you can get the memory module all the way in. Let's see that. No matter how much force I put, that last little click isn't going. Don't worry about it. You'll be able to... It is all the way in. If you push it all the way in, it's in all the way in. It's okay to just close it manually. What's next? M.2. Chosen for any particular reason other than bang for the buck? That's it. That's it? Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. I don't think anyone chooses a WD blue for like the sex appeal. Yeah. Man, board's loaded up now. CPU, RAM, M.2 SSD. Yes. What are we doing next? I have an AIO, so... Oh, so what I need is I need one of those fans, and then I'm just going to do a quick kind of like sanity check here. I love the color scheme, by the way. Thank you. It's fantastic. So we could get a fan in there, but we're not getting a fan and a rad in there. Okay. Option two is we put our radiator in the front and hope our graphics card is going to fit. Or we could open up the graphics card and we could do a quick test. Let's do a test fit. Okay. Oh, man, this is going to be such an upgrade going from a 1060. Look at the look on her face. She knows. I'm not even sure if that's going to fit in your case at all. Let alone with the radiator in the front. Nicole, are you sure? It's so big. I don't know if it's going to fit, Nicole. Oh, yikes. Everyone is supposed to get like a compatibility check at some point in this process. Um, who was supposed to look at yours? Nobody. Nobody looked at it. I'm going to have to speak with the coordinators for this project because like the first couple I checked just to make sure. And then I thought it got delegated, but apparently it hasn't been. Okay, cool. Let's go shopping. I feel awkward about this because the whole extreme tech upgrade thing is that you're supposed to like get it in. Like get a free upgrade. But you used all your budget and it really wouldn't be fair to other people if I was just like pulled out the company card and just bought whatever case. So you're buying a case. Okay, cool. I'm just making sure that's all clear. So we're trying to find something that's big enough to fit your darn GPU, Nicole. Dennis. Dennis inspired me. Okay, so it all comes down to Dennis. We want USB-C. Yes. And then we need something that can accommodate a dual fan AIO. Yes. Okay. Well, there's real big boy. Is this too big of a big boy? No, no, that would work really well. That's a really good case. One of my concerns is that it might not actually be in stock. Black, black, black, black, white. But this is the one you have. Okay, so let's let's move along. I mean, hold on a second. This is on sale. How can they not have stock of it? Maybe we could buy the demo unit. Oh, because it's like 90 bucks for a 4000D. Is this bigger than? Yes. Okay. Yeah, here, here, here, here. Considerably bigger. Ah, that. Oh, geez. Okay. You know what? I'm just going to put this here. Yeah, this would be cool. Not a bad haul. We ended up with this TP-Link Powerline Wi-Fi kit because in addition to not having a wired connection in your room, Nicole was saying that like Wi-Fi sucks, right? Yes. And then we got the demo unit of the 4000D. And this worked out really well because they gave us 10% off. So for it was $90 on sale already. So we paid $81. Yeah, something like that. $81. And because it's Corsair, we can take her existing case, rip all those Corsair accessories out, throw them in here. And we've actually wasted very little of our budget, even though you ended up with two cases. Oh, okay. Little case. Goodbye. It's nice knowing you. Nothing can defeat us today. We've got a computer store down the road where conveniently we could get a 6900XT for $2300 Canadian dollars. Wonderful. I couldn't help noticing yet another of my team went with an 850 watt power supply for a 3080. It should be fine. Okay. A quality 850 watt power supply should be fine, but we've run into issues before with ones that might be quality actually, but weren't really designed with 30 series in mind, that would just kind of turn off when power would spike like way above what the card is rated for, which does happen. So hopefully it's fine. Okay, well, I guess we'll see how that goes. Yeah. I saw you got speakers. Yes. What made you choose those? Alex has Mackey speakers too. I added in his upgrade. Oh, then I have heard of them. Maybe I've just forgotten that. Yeah. Because I was definitely there. So what's the first game you're going to play with the new upgrade? I really want to give a Final Fantasy 14 a try. Oh, so you figured, you know what? I've got too much of a life right now. I need to take up an MMO. Yes. Relatable. I haven't looked at your side in a bit, but this side looks awesome. Wow. Like it's a stone cold stunner, man. That's amazing. Okay. Well, hold on. You know, it's not that bad. It's all right. I accidentally pinned one of your fan connectors under the CPU backplate. At this point, it's pretty inconvenient to get it out. Unless... Let's call that cable managed. Out of sight, out of mind. That's what we call it. It's time to put our GPU in. RTX 3080, baby. Even in this case, this card looks ridiculously big. Yeah, there you go. Let's go do a quick power on test and see how we did. Well, that's not a good sign, especially because I'm the one who plugged in the front panel connectors. We never plugged in the 24 pin. Oh, no. No, okay. Remember how I was all like, oh, yeah, we'll plug it in at the end because that way it's not in the way. Now everything else is in the way. Now everything else is in the way. And that is why you never close up your side panels before doing a quick post test. Any light? Oh, no light. No light. Really? Oh, now there's light. Wow. Wow. Yeah, that looks pretty cool. I actually didn't notice this before, but you've got a new microphone. You picked up the ever popular AT20. Oh, yes. 20. My favorite feature of my GoXLR, which the Mini also has, the swear button. So you press this expletive button right here and it just cuts your audio and then bleeps it out. People have been so impressed. Every time I use it, the comment section is just like, what? Does he have a producer who's censoring his language? Is this pre-recorded? Nope, nope, just got the swear button. If you got it, you might as well use it, right? You went super ballin' on your monitor. Yes. 170 Hertz, IPS, G-Sync, 1440p, and it's the Gundam edition. What does that even mean? It looks pretty. What's this monitor worth? Like $800. $800. Okay, Final Fantasy XIV, but what else is your genre? We were talking off camera. You said FPS, not so much. Not as much anymore. What else? I'd like to see more graphically intense games just because I never really had the opportunity to before. Nicole. Yeah. You're going to have so much monitor for the size of this desk. I can't believe a desk wasn't in your budget here. Then again, once we put a 55-inch TV on that tiny little TV stand, this entire wall is going to be monitoring TV. Or we can put it on the wall. Where are you going to sit to watch TV then? I'm going to lay in bed. Wait. No, no. I can... Yeah, like... Let's get the desk done, and then I'm going to grab the TV, and I'm going to hold it there. Because the mount also pulls out a little. All right, we'll have a look at it. Okay. Here's your new mouse. Oh, you went super light. Yes. I would have... I was actually considering getting it myself. Yeah, well, why buy it when you can have someone else buy it? Hey, thanks Intel. Yay, thanks Intel. So you got a PowerPlay, which is a mouse pad that continuously charges your brother's mouse. So cool. But you have a desk pad. Were you planning to put the mouse pad on top of the desk? Yes. I like hard mouse surfaces, but I like having a soft cushion for my keyboard. That is a way more logical, perfect explanation than I could have possibly expected. Where's the computer going to end up? Is it going to be on the floor again? It's going to be on this guy. Oh, is this IKEA thing part of the upgrade? Yes, this is the thing that I built with the miniature screwdriver. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alex's are so popular. I know, we have two of them. Right? Yeah, we've got Alex P, we've got Alex C. Yeah, all the Alex's are sold out. That's because we have them on. Backing it up. Oh, yeah. Gorgeous. Okay, I'm going to try and make this a little bit nicer. Do you happen to have any more Velcro ties? We have some extra ones from the PC case. Yeah, that might do the trick. Yeah. Don't mind me, I'll just sit here. I'll be right back. I can't believe you're going straight from 720p to 4K. Yeah. And to OLED at the same time. And one, two, three. Don't worry, it's fine. Okay. The air cushions it. Uh-huh. Show me your plan. Yeah, yes. So how are you going to watch from there? Like demo. And that's comfortable. Yeah, because then it's going to tilt. Are you sure? I'm not trying to be a hater or anything, but are you sure? Because it ends up being really low on the TV stand. It ends up being low. Yeah, real low. Real low. Because I want to be able to watch while I am fully. Fully reclined. Yeah. I see. It's your Intel Extreme Tech upgrade. Yes. So we're going to do it your way. Okay. All right. At least it's not on top of a fireplace. That's true. Oh boy. Okay, there's one that's somewhat promising actually. Oh, that's freaking awesome. Okay, do you have a pencil by any chance? I have an Apple pencil. No, no, that simply won't do. Okay, let me grab a pencil. Whoa, hold on a second. What is that thing in your right hand? I never want to see it again. We're not barking the wall with that. I don't have a pencil. I have pens and something I found called a fill stick. How can I not make the joke? Okay, your fill stick cannot appear in the video. You cannot set me up like that and have me not knock it down. I know what it says. But for hardwood flooring, we do not want to put on the wall. We're going to use a pen. Okay, that's good. And then keep spinning and pull it out. Wow, power of tools. I know, right? You got to apply lots of pressure so that it doesn't slip. Okay, slip is bad. Okay, let me see. Okay, yeah, we're good. Okay. Oh, that's terrifying. I'll just support the weight. You move the TV however you want. Okay, we're in. Both of them are in? Yep. And you're stuck back there. It's fine. How are you doing, Nicole? I'm good. Okay, there you go. Wonderful. She's free. Yay. You want to do the honors? Yeah. Oh. Big peel. Big peel, the biggest peel of my life. I am inspired right now. I know what the title for this video is. What is? This is like the ultimate gamer bedroom. You got your gaming PC. You got your TV. You got your laptop. You got your PC. You got your TV. You got your snack drawer. You basically never have to leave. Yes, that's the plan. Right, that was literally what you said when I walked in the door. Okay, now there's one more thing that remains. Yeah. Nicole's really smart. So she like looked at the box a little bit and figured out exactly what power line networking is. But for the rest of you, I'm going to explain what it is. Essentially what you do is you take these media adapters and you put one of them over by your router and you plug it in with an ethernet cable into that. Then you take the other one and you plug it in up next to your device. So we're going to plug it into this power outlet right here. And then you plug an ethernet cable from that into that. And what you're doing is you're turning your house wiring into a network cable. So that's going to go right there. And then this guy goes, holy crap. Do you guys not have any additional ethernet ports? The one plugged into the TV is not lit. And what is this over here? It's plugged into the karaoke machine. Which obviously needs internet. That's priority number one. Yeah, so the TV can go. It has wifi. And its reception would be great. Yes. And then if anyone gets mad at you about the TV wifi, then you blame me. Okay. Sorry, Linus said it has to be this way. And you just like make this face. Wow, that's really good. In something like a game, which is extremely, see that? 132, 103. That sucks. And anytime someone else is on your wifi doing something, or anytime something in the background goes in updates, it is going to trash your game latency. Now watch this. Screw this. And let's flip on our power line. We got a spike, but it was much smaller. So every time it's loading a chunk, we're still getting a spike in latency. Yeah. But not like on wifi. Yeah. Where we were getting upwards of 100 milliseconds. Wow. Cool, right? That's amazing. The unintuitive part is that you guys probably noticed wifi has lower lows, but it's just when you get those awful spikes, that's when you get headshot without even getting a chance to retaliate. Because 100 plus milliseconds, that's a lot. We are done Nicole's setup. It's freaking awesome. She's got the ultimate gamer bedroom now with the gaming rig in the corner, everything from voice recordings to gaming, to media consumption. It can do it all. And the TV that, while I may not agree with the mounting location, is going to look absolutely flip and amazing from in bed. And there's basically no reason to leave her room. So thanks for watching Intel Extreme Tech Upgrade. Thank you Intel for sponsoring. If you guys are looking for something else to watch, which one's been your favorite so far? Genesis. Okay, we'll watch Genesis. Yeah, pretty good. Yeah.