 On the surface, I understand the appeal. System building looks like a pretty easy gig. At a thousand bucks a pop, all you gotta do is sell three of these a day and... you're a million dollar company. Easy, right? Except for a few small problems. The margins are piss poor. The chances of shipping damage are extremely high, and no offense, but the customers are a nightmare! They'll blame you for everything! From game crashes to slow Windows updates. There's nothing I can do about any of that. All of which is why I am extremely skeptical about the survival of Starforge systems. Everything about it screams doomed to fail. Like the ownership group being a bunch of Twitch streamers with no obvious business acumen. The executive team being composed primarily of ex-employees of Artesian builds, a system builder that only recently imploded in spectacular fashion, and the absolute cherry on top is that the reveal went so poorly that aforementioned Twitch streamers started perma-banning their critics. Of course, I am fully prepared to put my money where my mouth is and find out if I'm wrong. So, we purchased their Horizon Creator Edition PC, a system that costs $3,500 US dollars. Is it a good deal? Is it well built? Does it work at all by the time it arrives? Oh, and who sponsored this mess? Ridge. Ridge Wallet has redefined the traditional wallet with its compact frame and RFID blocking plates. The balls in your pants shouldn't be from your wallet. Use offer code LINUS to save 10% off and get worldwide shipping. Right now. I have built literally hundreds of PCs in front of literally tens of millions of people, leading many of them to sensibly ask me why I don't sell the PCs I build. Seems obvious, right? Well, it's because it's a deceptively challenging business. Newegg screwed it up on their first attempt. ABS was gone for years before it came back. Walmart royally screwed it up and doesn't seem to have recovered. And on that subject, NCIX screwed it up too, along with everything else too. So the road Starforge is walking is littered with the corpses of everyone else who has attempted to survive in this business long term. Just maybe they've got what it takes though. While we unbox the system, let's talk a little bit more about the Starforge systems team. It was created by a collection of Twitch streamers, notably Moistcritical and One True King Network, which includes Asmongold, MsKef, and a number of other notable streamers. It's going to be run by the ex-COO of Arteesian builds. For those of you who aren't familiar with the different C-suite positions, the COO is the one that basically runs the show, but doesn't necessarily get to make all the decisions. So they certainly brought in someone with experience. However, that experience didn't help them with the launch, because there was immediate backlash to their high prices and supposedly terrible... Were they terrible? Oh, and terrible configs. And then fanning the fire, the Twitch streamers perma-banned users that were critical of the PCs on their streams. Starforge systems then responded by dropping all prices by $100, and they adjusted their configs based on community feedback. I mean, that's pretty smart, just crowdsourcing the actual work of configuring your computers. By the way, we took a lot of care to order this PC anonymously so that we wouldn't get any special treatment. I actually have no idea what I just got for $3,500 US dollars. That's a lot. Oh, wait, due to the controversy, we actually were refunded $200. And four weeks and two days later, this is what arrived. Right out of the gate, I will tell you that they are not using completely proper packing materials. Our logistics department informs me there actually was a second outer box, but unfortunately, it's already been picked up. Either way, double boxing is effective for both improving the resiliency of your package and making it less likely to be stolen, since apparently it was a completely nondescript box. So good job, Starforge. Not quite as good as custom packaging, but a lot better than just counting on the case package. In fairness to them, absolutely nothing seems to have been damaged in shipping, though. Not even any bashed in screws, which can be a common one. This PC has apparently passed 3DMark. Last I checked, 3DMark is not actually a pass-fail test. It does issue a score, but I'm actually just being a butt-head about that. That's a very valid way to burn in a system and make sure that it is functioning correctly and that its performance is within what's expected for that config. Props to Starforge systems, by the way, for using these. These chemical expanding foam bags are not quite the best way to protect the inside of a system. That would be maybe the acrylic braces or metal braces that builders like Puget Systems or Tier 1s include with their case designs. But given that they're using off-the-shelf enthusiast tier cases, this is about the best way to make sure that no matter what case they're using, all the little gaps are going to be filled in. With that out of the way, I guess we can take a little bit of a closer look at the system. We're using three Deepcool 120mm fans at the bottom. They've got a bottom-to-top airflow configuration. That's valid. Top-mounted radiator, meaning that our pump is at the lowest point. So from a longevity standpoint, it's a nice little... nice to have. I would have liked to see little peels like this probably pulled off, since there's no need for the customer to remove that, but that's a nitpick. Oh, that's fun, though. I like them. Mm, I don't know. This four-pin is not quite seated. That clip's not fully engaged. It's probable that the system will work, but if I pull on this, you can see it's not actually secured in any way. Oh, my God. This other one has half of it not engaged either. Okay, that's not good. You got to make sure the clips are engaged, guys, especially if you're going to ship the system. I want to make it clear that I'm not approaching this skeptically because it's Twitch streamers doing it. I'm approaching it skeptically because I know how easy this business appears to be, and yet how many little things are very difficult to get right. 24-pin is seated correctly. USB 3, other more different USB 3. Cable management, actually, I would say is a strong A-. Oh, actually, this is tucked in. I'd give it an A on the front. I haven't looked at the back yet. Not bad. This case hides cable mess well, though. Well, though, any points that you assign for the case, you know, points for the SI, they picked the case, didn't they? Okay. Courtesy connector for a future GPU upgrade. Actually do like to see that even though it's a modular power supply. Extra cables, stuff into the hard drive cages. I'm fine with that. EVGA 850 G6. Yeah, perfectly good power supply. I would expect to find it on more like $1,700 computer. What am I going to find when I dig deeper? Let's take a look at the included accessories at any rate. Wait. Did they just attach? Hold on a second. I thought they specifically left a courtesy PCIe GPU connector. Did they just attach all of the cables to a modular power supply? These are courtesy cables. So you can plug in a hard drive without actually running any cables. What were the rest of my cables then? And I didn't get a single Molex connector. Modular power supplies are not an excuse to not give me the capability to plug in the other cables. The dumb part is that you guys already have an accessory box that you could have put them in. There's no benefit whatsoever to holding on to them. What are you going to do with your mountain of modular SATA cables? No, David, don't cut the camera. I'm demoing one of the best features of the LTT store screwdriver. You can pick up big thumb screws and they don't fall off when you're trying to get them into position. See that? Love it. LTTstore.com. Wi-Fi antennas, power cable. Yes. Is this just some trendy thing that I'm not trendy enough to understand? Okay. 3080 Ti. That seems pretty reasonable at this price point, assuming pandemic pricing. If you buy the Creator Edition PC now, you get a 3090. You get a 3090 in this same machine if you buy it now. Yeah, so we had the option of a $100 refund. So our $3,500 purchase was knocked down to $3,400 because of the scandal and then was knocked down another $100 because this tier has a 3090 now. And we kept the 3080. Okay. All right. All right. Does it have 32 gigs of RAM at least? Yes. 3600 megatrans or CL18. Wait, hold on a second. This is an Intel platform board. Why are we using DDR4? Uh, guys, this is interesting. Oh, wait, it's just loose in there? I had assumed that that was some kind of print that they had done on the case itself, which I guess means their deception was effective. Oh, it's got lighting on it. So that's kind of cool. So it's an acrylic light panel, doodadmagizmo. Okay. That might end up looking kind of neat. I'd say that level of modding has got to be worth at least like a, you know, a $50 upcharge, $100 upcharge even. Definitely a couple of mistakes. And I have some big lingering questions about the value proposition, but nothing too egregious so far. Go ahead and peel the front panel and moment of truth. You guys ready? Oh, that is a very uninspiring light up feature. Surely it lights up a little more than that. Okay. Oh, there we go. Hey, see, see, wait till, wait for windows. Okay. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool looking. They did a cool thing in there too. Starforged systems. Is that customizable or is that just an insert? It could be a deep cool product based on that they're using deep cool fans, which to my knowledge, basically nobody is. Is this just paper? Are you guys serious? Oh, hey, that's what that thing is. Alex. Oh, it's a this thing. Well, wait, why wouldn't they give me a blank one? Where's the R? I got the G and the B. And it has RGB lighting anyway. Why didn't they just do it? This is such an ass backwards way to change the color. Definitely going to be a polarizing feature, but I for one appreciate that they chose a penis rocket for their logo. This is clearly supposed to be a cock and balls. Do you deny that this is a cock rocket? No, it's clearly a penis rocket. Okay. Very quiet. Good fan curve tuning. Well, good fan curve tuning for quiet. We'll have to see that it ramps up appropriately under load. We've apparently already loaded up some games. Really what I want is to play my favorite game called Hardware Info. Does he have Hardware Info on here? No. You have OBS? No. Wait, this is from a streaming company. Why don't they have OBS installed? That's a good question. And the reason actually has to do with end user license agreements. That's a big part of why you are not able to not only install software on a prebuilt computer without a special agreement, but in many cases even set up Windows. So you have to go through that out of box experience, OOB. And that's because the end user has to set that up themselves or they technically have not agreed to the terms of using that software. Oh, wait, I think that it came with Windows already set up. It had a creator account? Yeah. You should double check that because they're not really supposed to do that. I mean, they're not the only ones who do it, but it's not the right way. I mean, it has a Windows license. Hey, where the hell's my Windows license? It's got to be on the bottom. Okay, this is getting kind of not funny. Where the f**k is my Windows license? There wasn't anything in the accessory box and I don't see the Koa anywhere on the chassis. Technically, because the license is digitally bound to the motherboard now, I should be able to continue to use this license as I normally would even without the little sticker. But you are super not supposed to do that. Also confirmed set up by Starforge when it arrived. And it was set up by Starforge when it arrived. Okay, yeah, that's extra not how Microsoft wants you to do it. Random streamers who have never run an SI, yeah, I get how you could overlook that. But XCOO of Artesian should know better. Enough faffing about. What is this thing? Okay, it's a 12900KF. Really at this price you need to save 10 bucks on the onboard graphics? Actually, that's one of the things that they changed. Now when you buy this PC, it comes with just the K. Because people got really mad that the creator PC didn't have quick sync. Yeah, it does not have quick sync. Yeah, okay. 3880 Ti, 32 gigs of RAM. Okay, do they have XMP enabled? This is a good thing to check. Yes, we're running at 3600 mega transfers per second. I just noticed something. Okay, oh no. This light is supposed, wait, is it possible that on this case, they intend for this light to be a drive activity indicator? Let's check. It is possible that that was miswired or was intentional, thanks to Lee and Lee. It's also possible that Starforge hooked up the front panel indicator LEDs incorrectly. Power LED, oh my God. The power LED is plugged in backwards. It won't affect the performance of the system, but there's just no excuse for it. When the legend for what plugs into where is silkscreened right onto the motherboard, less than an inch away from these headers. It's also a royal pain in the butt for the end user to try to fix this. And then hard drive LED, yes, is plugged into hard drive LED. So that is intended to be the hard drive LED. It's a constant blue illumination and then it blinks red with drive activity. So it was only blinking red. Man, you can't be a professional PC building company and be bunging stuff up like that. I do still have questions about the thermal configuration of this machine. I would really prefer to see some intake right here. Normally this case would have a spot for fans so that you're drawing some nice fresh air in for the AIOs, instead of relying on preheated GPU air. I can't fault the acoustics, still quite quiet all things considered. No complaints about performance either. I mean, 12900KF is a 12900KF and it's hard to go wrong with a 3080Ti. Okay, Penis Rocket Computer Company. After a couple of little errors out of the gate, although kind of embarrassing ones, I think it's time for us to take a look at what else is in the market and see how you stand up. While their system was in the lab, Starforge also responded to some of our other comments. First explaining why they feel being owned by Twitch streamers is a huge advantage for them. First, it means that their marketing costs are essentially zero. And second, that it adds a level of credibility to their company. That kind of sounds like the same thing to me, that's pretty much marketing. But I will admit that while Starforge has existed for only a couple of months, having streamers behind it means at the very least there are public personas who can suffer damage to their brand reputation if Starforge screws over their customers. And it means that they will have fairly deep pockets to keep the company running in at least the short to medium term. And from what I can tell anyway, they seem to be building towards doing everything properly in the long term. While they did kind of screw up the OOB, from what I've been told, Windows these days is typically a digital key with no physical co-op required anymore. And they're currently in the process of being onboarded to the Windows SI program. So anything that needs to be changed there should be changed soon. As for the Artesian build stuff, well, I can't tell you everything they told me because it's still getting litigated and I quote, we don't want to give that man any more money. But the whole executive team for Starforge was already assembled and signed with OTK before Artesian imploded and Nick, the CEO of Starforge and ex-COO of Artesian got pretty emotional when we brought it up saying that his wife had wanted him to leave for years, but he knew if he did the jobs of everyone he hired would be at risk. And he left and well, he was right. Everyone that worked for him lost their job and some of them didn't get their paychecks. That's a heavy situation. And I wish nothing but the best for Nick and the rest of the refugees from Artesian builds. I'm not going to bring them up anymore, but I'm also not going to be giving you guys any pity points. You do need to figure out the QC errors that resulted in some of our connectors not being fully plugged in and some of them being incorrectly connected. We've provided the serial number and they say they'll be looking into it so they can help to fix their processes. You also need to be delivering a solid price to performance ratio if we're going to be able to recommend your system. And I have some great news for you guys. LTT Labs is finally set up enough to start testing systems for us. And the Starforge system here actually did pretty well. Compared to this system with similar specs, their performance was plus or minus 5%, which I guess shouldn't give them any awards. But when you compare them to the competition where system integrators might forget or forego features like XMP, while the likes of Dell might give you a proprietary motherboard that has no expandability HP might have the power limit of your CPU set so low that it actually does have much worse performance. I think they actually do end up with an award here. Judging the value proposition though is a little bit more difficult. Obviously, when compared to a DIY system, Starforge gets crushed. We were able to build something with identical specs that cost, I kid you not, $900 less. In fairness to Starforge, that did include a recent price drop on the 3080 Ti, but even so, it was way cheaper. In a similar vein, we were actually able to build a system with a 3090 Ti rather than a 3080 Ti, while still spending the exact same amount. So yes, building a DIY system will save you money. I should certainly hope so. But things start to get more interesting once we start comparing to other SIs. Not everybody wants to build their own computer. So while iBuyPower will build you a PC for roughly the same price, that one doesn't come with a light up cock and balls in it. I consider that a big downside. And looking at the Tier 2 Fancy system builders, things get even more interesting. Origin PC costs about $100 more, but with DDR5. And Mane Gear will sell you a system with these same specs for a casual $4,700. So at this point, I think it's fair to say that Starforge's pricing broadly makes sense, especially since their $100 drop and their build adjustments. Starforge also offers a two-year warranty where if something breaks, they will actually pay for shipping both ways, and fix your PC if the fix can't be done over the phone, which is pretty impressive if they can actually manage to pull that off in the real world. I still don't know if I can wholeheartedly recommend them, for the same reason that I don't wholeheartedly recommend buying a car on its very first model year. But while they clearly have a couple of kinks to work out, I'd say if they're still around in six months and you like the streamers and OTK, then Starforge seems like they might be as good an option as any other SI on the market. Of course, the best option is always the option to segue. To our sponsor, NordPass. Repeated delays cause frustration and threaten the timely delivery of work projects. How can you eliminate these disruptions and increase your productivity? By using NordPass Business Password Manager. Why not save time and energy and focus on what matters most to your team? NordPass eases the burden of access to business accounts, making it possible for your team to work across devices and apps uninterrupted. With NordPass, you can forget about account resets because all your credentials are saved in one secure place with just one click. 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