NZXT PODCAST - #124 - CRFT H510i All Might (Ft. Wesley Ruscher)

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

This week on the podcast, we have our Sr. Partnerships and Licensing Manager Wesley Ruscher chatting all about the limited-edition My Hero Academia CRFT H510i All Might case! We also debate about well-done steaks and what quirk we would have in real life! (Keep an eye on Wesley though...) Follow Wes at https://twitter.com/GameRusch Tune in live every Thursday at 10AM PT on twitch.tv/NZXT and send your questions to: [e-mail]

Welcome to episode 124 of the NZT podcast, the official podcast of the NZXT community. This podcast is recorded live every Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific Center time on the official NXT Twitch and is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. My name is Mike, and with me, as always, is Ivan. How are you doing, Ivan? I am doing fantastic, Mike. Looking forward to another podcast with you, especially, since we have a really big, big, important thing to talk about today,

which is our new craft case. And here to talk about it with us is our resident Weeb, Wesley, Wesley Crusher, as I'd like to call him. How are you doing, Wes? Doing good, Ivan. Thanks for having me today. Yeah, very important announcement. You know, I guess we announced it yesterday, the new H510, I all might.

And you've been on the podcast before. for West, but for those who don't know who you are, what you do, can you quickly just to talk a little bit about yourself and what you do at NZXT? Talk about myself. Yeah, well, I mean, I've been at NCXT for over six years now. I worked on PR, which is, you know, everybody knows Andy, that's his joint now. Help with our influencer management for a long time. So like the ninjas, the Tim's, Lupos, Poki, Valcray, all those, you know, worked with all them. But nowadays, I work on our licensing, which is mainly craft, our craft product line. So H510 Almight is actually the first product I've got to work on from start to finish.

I've always been a part of the process, and I've definitely helped bring some of them to the end, but this is one I've been working on a better part for the last year. So along with the licensing, I work on our developer relationship. So anything that deals with a game company, any kind of co-marketing efforts we do together, I usually try to spearhead those conversations. Cool. And for those that don't know, can you also explain a little bit about what Kraft is all about? Yeah. So Craft is NST's official line of license. We used to say gaming products, but obviously now with the H510 Allmite, this is our first product that is not gaming focus that's licensed. This is anime-focus based off the popular anime My Hero Academia. So with Kraft, we like to take popular pop culture brands and create custom gaming cases.

We've made Pucks. You know, maybe one day we'll do keyboards and other accessories and mice, you know, and just kind of, you know, celebrate the gaming communities and the communities that these IPs are about by creating products that either feel like ripped straight from the world. Like if you ever saw like our cyberpunk case or our Nukukukkah, the case where they feel like they're straight from the game world or just really do something custom and special that you know champions you know in this case all my you know the former her current number one hero depending what season you're at in alma in my hero academia and uh before we go a little bit into the actual um schematics of it i want to show a little bit of the clip of the actual case so let's go ahead and roll that clip real quick was the the clip of the My Hero Academia, all my case that we just released.

Can you tell us a little bit about what's so special about this case, Wesley? You know, there's a ton of anime fans at NZXT. I accidentally muted you on accident. Can you go ahead and say that one more time? Sorry, man. Oh, man. Sorry about that.

It's not right. He was talking about weeb, so. Yeah. So, what I was bringing back up is, you know, why this case was important is, you know, what I mentioned before. it's the first time we've done a case that isn't a gaming focus case, it's anime focus, which to NZXT, I don't know if you guys ever showed off any pictures of the build office.

We have wall scrolls on the back wall. We're a bunch of anime fans here. And anime is, you know, as part of gaming as, you know, a lot of things. Obviously, there's tons of anime-inspired video games. But, you know, I think with video games really having, at least for the longest time, a deep Japanese roots, obviously anime, you know,

the most popular anime is all from Japan as well. There's that connection between gaming and anime. You know, a lot of us are fans of it. So this has been super awesome to work on because, you know, it's something a little bit different than gaming,

but it's something a lot of us here are very passionate about. Awesome. Awesome. Do you watch anime, Wesley? Like, do you specifically have watched all of my hero academia right now?

Yeah, I am caught up. You know, As you can see, I'm prepping my My Hero Academia T-shirt today. Yeah, I watch, I don't watch a ton of anime. I got two kids these days, so, you know, right now I'm, like, every night is Elgin Ring still. Like, I'm just, that's all I live and breathe. But I tend to watch at least one, maybe two shows at a time.

You know, every, let's say I get through at least four anime a year, you know, four seasons at least. Awesome. So you actually have some experience. and helping out with this case and actually watching the show and everything. Oh, yeah, I was a huge fan before, you know, we secured the IP. Like I mentioned before this was one of the first products I worked on from start to finish. So, you know, we had a coworker here, had, you know, used to work at Funimation,

so they kind of helped us open the door. And then, you know, surveying the company and talking about, like, what IPs, you know, anime IPs would make sense to work with. You know, my hero being one of the hottest shows at the time, you know, because this is a project we've been working on for over a year. Yeah, I was definitely well-versed in this show. So as someone who is a fan of My Hero Academia, what was it like, you know, working with that team

and the people at Funimation slash Crunchy Rule? That was great. I mean, it's a lot more challenging because, you know, Funimation, they didn't create My Hero Academia. you know, so you have to work through them and work through Japan as well. So there's a couple more hoops to jump through, but it was definitely a really cool, like, learning experience. You know, in fact, Funimation doesn't even have the rights to my hero worldwide. So, I mean, obviously they just merge with Crunchyroll and now they're all one company, but, you know, we had to work directly with Crunchyroll in Europe, like, as well, because in EMA, Crunchyroll has the rights to publish a show and all the English-speaking regions, Funimation has the rights. So, you know, it was definitely a little bit more complicated process just because, you know, we're talking to multiple license holders as opposed to just like, you know, with cyberpunk, we just talked to CDPR. It's complicated for me just to keep tabs on what to say, whether to say Crunchy Roll or Funimation. So I can only imagine how complicated it is good for you.

I think we can start saying just Crunchy Roll now. I think I got an email saying like the transition is happening like across the board. What do you think the most difficult thing was about working on this project? I think probably just the time necessary it would take to get something approved because we were sending in our partners at Funimation and Crunchy Rule. They would review it and they would kind of give us the advice on what they know and then it would go to Toho in Japan and they'd have to prove it. So it was just like the extra step, you know, would add like an extra week or two.

So we had to be very, you know, diligent that, you know, planned everything out on time. So it would normally like something if we allowed, you know, okay, this usually takes two to three weeks for approvals. You know, we'd have to time for, plan for at least a month. But it just meant all the teams had to be working on this stuff earlier. Oh, wow. But on the contrary, what was like the most fun part of like working with them?

just having access to all the insight to the show you know sometimes not in this case but you know sometimes we're privy to seeing things early especially if we're working on something that's not out so like that's always really cool is you know kind of getting like a sneak peek at upcoming things oh that's awesome and then to kind of continue to roll on like actually working with

Crunchy roll slash animation. I think we're going to say Crunchyroll, I guess now. What was like wanted to, what went easier than you actually thought since we talked about the difficulties? What went actually easier than you thought? Probably getting that video approved. We heard that, you know, they're very, you know, doing a video, you have to be very careful with using like animation and certain things like that. And our video guy, Haas, like literally we sent in the storyboard. They approved it.

we sent in the video and there was like no problems. Like it was just like, bam, like, okay, that was easy. Like I thought this was, I was scared like it was going to get denied and we weren't, we were going to have to like reshoot it and do anything. And they knocked out of the park right away. So I think that was probably like the most surprising thing. Because, you know, we just started doing videos. We hadn't done videos for a lot of releases in the past.

I think we did Assassin's Creed Valhalla the first time. And then we did a cyberpunk video, which is pretty sweet. And so, yeah, this one was, you know, a little bit more tricky because, you know, obviously with all the licensing hoops that you had to go through. What would you say your favorite part was about working with Crunchy Mation on this project? I don't know. I mean, probably just working with new teams, you know, getting to meet more people in this, like, whole licensing world, you know, fans of the show. and fans of, you know, just, yeah, it's just cool, like, you know, putting together something that everyone's passionate about. And it's been, you're right about the passion because, like, yesterday on social,

we had tons of people telling us, like, oh, you guys should make more anime cases, or if you guys made a Naruto case, I'd snag it right up. And even right now in the Twitch chat, people are, you know, talking about the, you know, if we're going to make a motherboard for this case and whatnot. So my next question to you, Wesley, is what is in store for the future of craft products? More craft products? I mean, I like that. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is, you know, we can't disclose.

Like, it might be something that's not out yet. It might be something that is out. But, you know, we like to, you know, stealth drop craft. You know, it's here. Here's the new stuff. But if anybody notice in that video, there is a little tease at the end. So I think if you watch the trailer again, just keep watching it and watching it, get the views up. And maybe you can figure out what's next based off that little to be continued.

Do you have a, I know, I don't know if you can disclose, but do you have any companies that you want to work with or any, like, certain products or shows, games that you want to work with in general? I mean, I can give you, like, you know, like the bucket list of companies I would like to work with. In terms of gaming, you know, Capcom, Square,

I think those would be some really cool companies to work with. We haven't done a lot of stuff with Japanese developed games. And, you know, I'm a big fan of, like, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter,

Monster Hunter. You know, I think those would be really cool stuff. I'm trying to think what else. I mean, yeah, I would say like, gaming-wide.

that would be really cool. Unlike the anime side of things, I would love to tackle Demon Slayer, you know, for current stuff. It's one of my favorite shows right now. If we're talking like legacy IPs, you know, Neon Genesis is would be awesome. Personal favorite of mine is an old anime called Outlaw Star. It's like a very like space pirate thing. It's kind of like around the cowboy bebop time. I think it's a little bit more fun, not as serious as cowboy beabop, but they have these cool ships called grapplers that have like arms that like fight and like all space pirates. I think that could make a really cool case. And then, you know, obviously like the Marvel's, you know, the Star Wars licenses, you know, Simpsons. There'd be a lot of cool stuff out there.

Yeah, I'd love to do, I'd love to do sports themed stuff potentially one day if that made sense. I don't think we're going to release. How many baseball teams are there? 26 right now? Yeah. So it's like 26 cases at launch. I don't think that's going to fly. but Andy Andy would pre-order each one of those he's a fan of the game yeah kind of kind of going along with that like what what would be like the top one if you can do any craft case not even just like

games or N-A but anything in general what would what would that one be hmm like is any craft get anything anything in general probably Star Wars I think I think you know If we're talking cases, I would love. I think Star Wars is just...

I grew up watching, you know, the original, original, obviously, and the new stuff ain't bad. Or not the... So when I say new stuff, I mean, like, the original prequel. The new stuff is bad. Yeah, the new stuff, yeah. We all have the reps about it. Yeah, I think I saw this video, which in a sentiment that I agree,

is like, the 2000s prequel trilogy are bad movies, but good Star Wars. but I think the new movies are just bad Star Wars and kind of bad movies. Like I've rewatched every movie multiple times. I haven't even bothered to watch the last movie a second time after I saw it in the theater. And anyways, but yeah, I think Star Wars would be a really cool IP. I don't know. Like, I think there's so many, it's hard. Like, I'm rocking the cyberpunk case right now.

You know, I think it's a sweet looking case. So some of it, too, is just, you know, what's going to design well. but yeah I mean being being in nzxia I like building PCs every you know six months to a year so I might be swambed my case depending on you know what new craft product we're coming out but I would love to I guess outside of cases I would love to start getting into like peripherals and doing more things and you know creating like yeah I love to keep making cool pucks you know we have like the vahala puck we have the mass effect puck you know I've seen the pucks that come with the cases, so there's, you know, the plus

Ultra. I'd love to start doing more, you know, fun designs with these. Hey, can you give us a closer look at that plus Ultra puck behind you? Or the puck ultra, as I like to call it. This one's cool, too, because it still has the channel, like, for your

cable management. You know, some of them, like, you know, we did the Valhalla puck, the shield that came with the case. You can still wrap your cables around it, but it doesn't have that groove. But I will say this Bala Puck is fantastic for putting your headset on. It, like, fits it perfectly. Oh, yeah.

How well does the Plus Ultra Puck fit with, like, headsets? Is it a little weird or get to kind turn sideways? No, I should fit. I mean, it's as big as my forehead, right? Oh, then you should be fine. I do have a big forehead, though. Just stretch out your headphones a little bit. And then we got the charm that came with the case, too.

These are kind of cool little add-ons. You can clean these to the glass. Those ones still all my charm. I do love how his actual like hair is like part of the thing. Like that's probably one of my fair things. Yeah, it's fun too. Like, you know, one thing we learned just, you know, with the assets, like there's sort of rules that every company has with like their brand guidelines. And one of them is I think when we first did this, we had a little less of his neck.

And it was just something we oversaw. But, you know, basically there's clear as day in the brand guidelines. Like, do not make them look like decapitated heads. Interesting. really make sure, you know, we had more of his, like, neck in the picture. Where are things like that a lot? Like, when you're doing the design process, where are some ones or you're just like, what? I don't understand. Um, no, I think, like, you know, most of this stuff is, you know, big sense. Like, don't, don't change the logos, colors.

Don't, like, even, like, lower, like, the gradient on it, you know, like, make it, like, lighter and more opaque. For my hero, I think one of the ones we learned that was interesting at first is like, don't do anything black and white, because that's, we had the rights to the animation and not the manga, and so black and white

you know, is manga design. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense because you don't want to physically change too much of it, so it's unrecognizable. I guess that makes sense. Wesley, what do you think your favorite craft

product has been? Probably the second one we did, the Hanukakola case. I love that case. I wish it'd be awesome that maybe even revisit some of these cases and do like upgraded versions and our upgraded models. That one was on the H700, which isn't

too much different than the current H710, but if you remember, the 700, the glass panel was attached with four thumbs trees on the glass. So it's a real pain in the butt to take the glass off I'm always afraid I'm going to drop it or it's going to shatter when I'm putting it back on. But that one was cool because it has some extra tooling done. The cable bar has like a vent and the IOP port on the top has like a vent. So it makes it look, you know, just like more part of that world.

And then, you know, the paint was very like tattered. And like it looked like something you might have found like in a house as you came out of a vault into the wasteland. The Nica-Cola case was interesting because that was our second craft. product like you said and I feel like we were still kind of figuring out how wild we wanted to get with these things and that Nika Cola case till this day I think is the wildest design we've ever made on a craft product because it's it's almost like we modded the case instead of you know really just coming up with like a design I guess for it like we even had like a whole new like different types of buttons on this

there. It actually looks a lot different than other craft products. Everything. It even had the light up NZXC logo on the Power Supply Shroud, which we know we've done before in our cases, but we kind of put a lot of little things into that case. I think the cyberpunk case is a close second, though. That one's a pretty well design, especially with the glass, like the whole graffiti look. I know there's a bunch of people out there that would love to see like a clean Arasaka case, but this one's kind of cool. because it just, it tells a story. It's like, yeah, this was Eurasaka,

but like, you know, the citizens, you know, got a hold of it. Yeah. Going off the case right now on the product page. I do. I actually really, like, I know everyone really likes the clean glass look, but I feel like there's just so much more personality and so much more story behind something where you can actually, like, see, like, the graffiti

and the story behind the actual thing. I think it's probably one of cool. Yeah. Yeah, we started hiding little like Easter eggs with that one too. Like not many people posted about that, but you know, with the all my case, you can see like his true form, which is behind like the motherboard panel. You can see it on the box. We should make a, we should make a craft Dakota case.

Look at that. That's that's that's that right there on the product page. Yeah, so the the cyberpunk case has a similar Easter egg. There's like a samurai. samurai sticker, like slapped on the inside behind the motherboard cover. And it's just, you know, obviously it's not something you're going to see and show off. But like anytime you need to do some cable management or get in there, or the first time you're building in it, you know, it's just like an extra little, little thing.

Like a little thing that it's not like the main component, but like as you go on, you go, oh, I'm glad they add that little design. They didn't have to, but it's really fun. All right, Wes. Well, thank you for covering craft. It's time to move on to our next segment. It's a new segment, Wesley. I don't know if you were expecting this one,

but we have a rapid fire segment where Mike here is going to be asking you a bunch of random questions and you have to answer as fast as possible without thinking, which should be easy for you, right? Make sure I stop coughing right now. I'm getting over this cold. All right, you ready, Wes?

I think so, yeah. All right, so first question. What is your favorite anime? I think you already answered it, but... Favorite anime would be the vision of Escaflone. What is that? Actually, I don't think I've heard of that before. Story about a girl who gets pulled into a fantasy world. It's basically like a planet that can see Earth and it's very medieval.

And she meets like a prince whose kingdom has been taken over and she's got to help him. But he gets in this cool Dragon Mac and, you know. Oh, it's a Mac anime. Oh, okay. All right. I like that stuff. Let's see. Second question. How has work been for you? No complaints. I mean,

working on crafts a lot of fun. I get to talk to game companies all the time. And, you know, especially when you see like new announcements, like ping them and say, hey, you know, you guys want to do something with them ZXT. So it's always fun, you know, hunting for new IPs to work on or even just doing like cool cross-promotional things. Are you excited for some of the new stuff?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I saw that new Sonic game got announced. I'd love to see if we can't mess around with some Sonic stuff. Obviously, like, you know, I was knocking on the door for Eldon Ring, but, you know, we'll see what happens. Wesley has no complaints about work, Mike, so please clip that answer and DM it to Jeff Royal. There you go. He is happy. He does not need anything. Doesn't need to be paid. I said no complaints about work, not about my boss. You hear that, Jeff?

What do you hate most about your boss? His beard's too glorious. That's true. It is a very glorious beer. We do have to... It's probably one of the best beards in the office. All right. Let's see.

Oh, third question. Hot or cold weather? Cold. Is that cold? Why is that? It's easier to get hot than it gets cold. I'd rather layer up and stuff. Truth.

And everyone that says anything else different, you're just wrong. Like, I don't understand why people will say, like, I'd rather sweat Dan bundle up. Can never understand it. Can understand it. Let's see. Favorite movie of all time? That was a good question. Don't know.

Maybe let's go with Empire Strikes Back. Oh, okay. Interesting. Oh, you chose Empire. Okay. I respect that. I respect that. I like when bad guys win.

understandable I have a friend that likes the first like Star Wars like the first of the prequels and I go why would you want that one as your most favorites

like I like pottery like that's it literally it no other reason just because of that yeah jar jar jar is in that one I can't do

I can't like I understand if you have you to love for it and you respect the prequels but like when you say the first movie's the best one can't nah mm-mm being thrown off the ship let's see what are your hobbies uh collecting playing video games i have a very large video game collection

so i like the thrill of the hunt like going out and finding games out in the public you know going to like events and swaps and things like that um sports i love baseball so i love you know keeping up on baseball and something you used to you know do with my father and you know played it growing up watching anime from time to time. And, you know, probably just, you know, a lot of family stuff these days. That's probably the number one hobby is playing with the kids. What was some of the fun stuff in your collection already? Fun stuff?

Nothing, like, super crazy. You know, I grew up a Sega kid, so, like, I have a lot of, like, the Sega Saturn games that are pretty hard to find, and some of them gotten pricey, but they're just games I had as a kid. to like Panzer Dragon Saga, the game called Magic Night Ray Earth, which is a popular anime as well. But those are like some harder to find games. And then I have a pretty big GameCube collection.

So, you know. I remember your previous office? It literally looked like a GameStop. It still does, but I mean, you know, a lot of it now. I got at a closet, like, you know, I custom build a closet and put shelves in there to really like, put more of the game collection, like, out of view, like, instead of, like, all over the place. So definitely cleaned it up.

Right. And, oh, and what, what's your, well, I'm speaking of, like, baseball, what's your favorite, who's your favorite baseball team right now? Favorite baseball team? Uh, Los Angeles Dodgers. There you go. That's, that's, that's the main thing. We've had now three Dodgers fans in this podcast, and we're probably to get way more, more people

we have on it. Oh, there he is. Yeah, like I grew up a Dodgers fan. And then in the 90s, you know, when I was collecting baseball cards, everybody had their favorite player. Like my two best friends, like Frank Thomas and Kangrophy Jr. were their favorite players. So I jumped on the David Justice bandwagon. You know, he was hot that year.

So I became a big Atlanta Braves fan. So I still have a lot of love for the Braves. And actually, I guess just had it. I was out game shopping this weekend. And apparently, there's a baseball game on PlayStation and I bought it for a dollar. It was like MLB Pennant Race. I forget what year it was, but it has David Justice on the cover.

I like never knew he got a cover to a baseball game. So I thought that was pretty funny. Yeah, I'm like a dollar. I'll buy it. Just put it in the collection. But yeah, so I still have like a soft spot for the Braves, but you know, if they're playing the Dodgers, I'm rooting for the Dodgers.

And, you know, my favorite brave of the last like, you know, five plus years once Chipper Jones retired is a, Freddie Freeman, who's now a brave killer for the Dodgers. Hit two dingers. His first two dingers is a season against the forward team. He's batting like 350. I love it. I hope I see someone as someone's a Giants fan over here.

That's like almost an insuban, right? Yeah, I think that one, we can't, uh, Moss can we get a band? Let's see. What is your hidden talent? Do you have a hidden talent? I don't know. I don't think I have any like hidden talents. Probably cook okay. I think that's probably surprising because like I don't cook often, but when I do cook, it's, you know, pretty good.

What do you like to cook? A lot of meat, you know, steaks, chicken, fish, things like that. Barbecue, you know, get out the cast iron, things like, you know, either way. In my years before gaming, I worked in a meat department at a grocery store for a couple of years. So, you know, I got the like tips of the trade on, you know, finding that proper cut of meat and, you know, how to like get a whole roast and cut your own meat, all that kind of fun stuff. So I always have a hard time when I go to these like steakhouses and I'm like, that steak doesn't cost $100. Why is it so expensive? Yeah, you're thinking like, I could do this better.

Yeah. Someone posted a funny meme on our random Slack channel overnight. It was a picture of a really well-done steak, but it said, this steak is not well-done, it's congratulations. I was like, dumb as a meme, but I laughed a little too hard at that. Here, I'll show the thing real quick. Oh, two, one. It's just well-done.

Okay, Wes, can you give me a what is the best, like, is it medium rare? Is it rare? Like, what is the best one? I mean, it comes out of preference, but I would say, like, a medium rare is my personal favorite. I mean, I've had, you know, rare can be good. I've gone to Vegas and had the steak bleu,

where it's like literally cold in the center. And, you know, that can be good, too. But I think, you know, medium rare is my go-to. like I think we always made the joke, but you know, you want, I'm not going to make that joke in cases. I don't want to be insensitive to people about the meat. But yeah, like I think that's a good cut. You want it to be like tender, you know, so like juicy, not overcooked, you know. But you know, some people like it, well done.

They like beef jerky and, you know, whatever makes you happy. I see a couple people or, uh, best steak I ever had American Wagyu Rib Eye. Ooh, that sounds really good Yeah, ribby is by far my favorite Yeah, I usually I was gonna ask I usually skewer more towards rare But like that rare medium rare

Like you know somewhere in between there I was gonna ask like what is what is the best Like part of the meat like should you go for ribby Like what what is like I know there's New York strip steak Like what is the best more strip flaminion Um you know topster loin ribai T-bone, Porterhouse. To me, it's a rabbi.

I think it's, I think that's, you know, it has more fat in it, so it's got more flavor. My thing, whenever I'm at a restaurant and I order a steak, I always order a filet mignon. Because I think it's funny to order it that one. Well, you should call it a fillet mignon. A fillet mignon. We would get that at the meat department. I'd have people come up and ask for the fillet mignon or a fillet of salmon. I might salmon.

Salmon. So I'm on Hey hooked on phonics Right Sorry I just got to show this picture that I see of this When you order your steak well done That's hilarious

That's a shoe No it's just a well done steak No bad after showing this picture And then I loved like the top part of the ribai Which is like that extra fatty part. Yeah. Oh.

Yeah. Okay. I have, yeah, a lot of my friends are like, ew, I hate the fat. The fat is like the best part. The fat is the best part in my opinion, too. But being, you know, like, you can get the tomahawk,

which is just like a giant rabbi. Porterhouse is cool, too. If you want to mix it up, because it's two stakes in one. It's a sirloin and a flaminion because they're just on the opposite side of the bone. I got to be hungry. I'm hungry.

Yeah. I'm going to have to grill this at this weekend. now. I don't think I've ever actually grilled in my life. I only do everything on the stove top or oven. You get on that. Let's go to... Oh, next question.

What's the funniest memory you have? It's a memory I have. It's so random. Yeah. That's the point. Yeah. God, I'll just think of probably a funny work memory that popped in my head since it's, you know, we're thinking about work.

But it's probably... I haven't coming to his old desk and an old employee. of our is fond just sitting in his chair with his feet up on Ivan's desk. And Ivan just like, he's upset. Just like I just walked right into the back room. I was just like, I'm not even going to bother asking. I'll just go away and come back and hopefully his feet are off my desk. Second funniest up there speaking of sitting in desk might just be the

probably the first time we see. I think Ivan moved his desk like two feet. away from Andy after the way Andy would like stand and sit in his chairs. Yeah, he's gave me anxiety, man. He'll sit like cross, like he was doing like a yoga pose

on his chair like inches from me and like just looks super uncomfortable. I'm like I can't sit next to this guy. I'll try to pull up the photos after but for the next question, what superpower would you choose? Oh, I actually had this

conversation slightly yesterday with your guys' boss Talley because I asked her what her quirk would be which is equivalent in my hero. So my response was a superpower that would let me commit victimless crimes easily. Basically something that lets me live a life of luxury

with no problem. So if it's, you know, let me teleport so I can, you know, just take a little money from this bank or, you know, something like that. I just want to I mean, as it sounds selfish, I don't want to be a superhero. I got my family to worry about it. I'd want to be a superhero to my family.

I should be a super dad. Yeah, I mean, if I can like, let me predict the future like five hours in advance so I can like, you know, gamble on sporting games and, you know, back to the future, two style. You know, a massive fortune that way. That's pretty smart though. It's also like not something that you don't really have to tell people either.

Yeah. So you kind of keep it a secret. Like, I don't want to see all the future because then it's like anxiety. It's like, oh, well, this is the day the war starts, you know. Yeah. This is the day a loved one is gone. But, you know, a few hours, I'm just going to be like, you know, for five hours, you can be freaking out. True.

And kind of going along with that, would you, so this is a would you rather question, would you rather live in a historic war movie or a dystopian future movie? I mean, so with the historic war, like, how far back are we going? You can go any, choose, it has to be some sort of kind of well-known war, you know, it could be like the Romans. I know, but we call like the Persian Gulf for like historic war. Because like, I mean, I'm pretty sure I could still play a Game Boy back then. Yeah, I guess so, yeah, you could.

Send me the place where there's still video games, done. Smart, smart, smart. For the last and final one, I think Ivan's already. know his answer for this, but would you rather half your height or double your weight? I told Mike this morning. I would choose to be half my height so I could be the same size as Mike.

Oh, God. I'm not that tall, so I'll go double my weight. I think you just lost a bunch of weight. You look, you're looking pretty thin there. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'd be sub-400 pounds, so be too bad

yeah I think at least with the weight you can kind of try to do something with it I've been still tall as heck so it doesn't even matter for me because it's hurtful but it's true dude's giant or I'm just short

yeah I mean because I'm still thinking to double the weight I can still drive a car and you know yeah you don't got to go anywhere either nowadays true yeah just Uber everywhere yeah

All right, that was it for the rapid fire questions. I am going to go into the community questions now. We have a couple lined up, but if anyone wants to ask anything to Wesley, Mike, or myself about the H510i-Aulmite, NZT, or anything else, now is the time. So, first question is from Gaming Banzai. They ask, are there any important differences between the All-My case from the old S-340? I've got the Razor S340 for my current build. Wesley, would you like to take that one or you want me to answer it?

I can take it. I mean, the difference between the S340 and the H510 I, essentially the H510 is, you know, the next evolution of the old S340. Do you say they have the elite case or? The laser edition. So, yeah, other quality of life improvements, like it has the GPU, or not the GPU, sorry. the water cooler bracket that makes mounting like a water cooler in the front of the case easier. With the eye model of our H510s, you have the smart device built in to the back or the RGB lighting device, I guess is what we call it now.

So you can plug in any cam-related accessory, like our ARGB fans easily and control it without having to buy anything extra. Other than that, I think you feel... If you're getting one important thing, too. Vertical GPU bracket? No, the fact that the H510I has tempered glass and the S340 has plastic panel. Yeah, the acrylic window, right?

Yeah, for the little bit to know, the S340 was actually discontinued when we came out with the H510. And the H510 is the replacement for the S340. But the razor case does have that cool razor logo that lights up in the front. The S340 is still, in my opinion, one of the first. of our best cases ever. It's for the price, especially $69. The elite. That's one of my favorite cases, too.

I mean, without the elite, we wouldn't have this guy. Yeah. Oh, really? I don't know that. That's so cool. Yeah. Next question is from Opinning Finn.

Is there any financial advice you can give the chat? So my advice would be to buy as much Dogecoin as possible I do not You hire a financial advisor Honestly my

serious financial advice serious financial advice is to not think about money And what I mean by that is don't try to buy stuff

just for the sake of buying it So like, the example I can think of is like, don't think that, you know, you have to buy a house or buy a car or buy fancy clothes or the latest sneakers. Even a fancy computer just because you think it's something that's going to like make you happy or something that you think is going to make you cool or whatever. Just don't do that and you'll always have money. It's like spend money on the things you need. What do you guys give? What's your financial advice? or U.S.?

Yeah, no advice. I mean, the advice would maybe seek advice from a professional. You can understand. I would say plan for retirement early. The sooner you can start saving for retirement, the better.

I made that mistake, and I've done the math and realized how much more money I could have saved up if I had started, you know, just five years earlier. You're going to be making craft craft projects, so you're 95 Yeah, I think that's same exact thing is start saving for retirement early

If you're young like I am you're probably going to start with a Roth IRA Ask some friends look up YouTube videos but save early literally just anything you can just throw it in there And then once you get like a more stable job try to max that Roth IRA off as soon as you can The ironic thing though is that I feel like the younger you are the harder it is to to say to say money and to think about money that way like you don't realize it until you're like 40 years old we're like crap I probably should have lose money my 20s or 30s or whatever yeah I'm not good advice um Carl the Barl asks what is it like to work at mzxte we'll go down the line here but for me personally working at NST is a lot of

fun because I get to interact with people a lot of on social media and I like to have fun with people on social so it is fun it's also a lot of work i feel like whatever job you have at nzxte like there's always something to do so it's it's good though because you're always busy you always has something to do and it's also fun how about you guys what's it like for you um yeah fun exciting you know it's a very like still a very startup mentality here you know i haven't i've been here a long time Like there was like 30 people like at most of this company when we started. And just to watch it grow and, you know, see us enter all these new categories, you know, going from cases to motherboards, you know, to a mic to keyboards and mouse, you know, and continue to do more and more stuff to start doing these licensed products, working with influencers, you know.

So it's a lot of it. It's pretty exciting. It's pretty cool. And, you know, we work in computer gaming. gaming and that's a very fun industry so it was always fun to be had agreed literally like i i don't know what other industry i would work in other than gaming because like gaming's my been part of my life since i was young um and yeah no it's fun being part of a community that people like being part of um and then like iven said you know it's busy it's always busy you're always

doing something but it's not like bad busy you know how there's like, you know, like in school, you would get, like, busy work. It's just work to get busy. That's it. Here, it's like, there's actual meeting behind it for us, like, checking DMs, responding to people, responding to the community. Like, that's never looked as, like, busy work. It's like, oh, no, I just, I need to make sure to respond to these guys. Or someone sends a meme out or says, ask for a free PC, got to respond, you know? That's what always been fun. I mean, I mean, end of the day, we're still a business. So, like, as much as like, we're not just running on, like, having fun, you know, there's goals and, you know, there's, you know, there's

expectations, but, you know, it's never been like very stressful, you know, because I don't know, at least for now, like, you know, we've had a really great run at this company. So it's, you hear that Jeff Royal, Wesley needs some stress. Give some more work, trust them out. Cursed is asking, how long does it normally take to get my PC back after shipping it back for repair. The answer to that question is it depends on what we're repairing. So I have no idea what your issue is cursed, but it just depends on what the RMA team has to work on. If it's something small, like, you know, maybe they got to replace a graphics card or a fan or something. It shouldn't take too long, but in some instances, they might have to rebuild the computer or swap out

apart like the motherboard which would require basically taking the entire thing apart that might take a little bit longer um it's fain is asking do you guys have to help mike get stuff off the top shelf and yeah all the time it's really annoying get taller mike uh i'll get right on it don't worry i'll yeah i'll grow a few inches soon don't worry how tall are you mike five seven that's i think average high i don't think you're average here is like 5-9 sadly yeah that's me I mean I'm average yeah I'm I'm like David X- I'll too they over here how are you Ivan I'm six two which like people always tell me like oh you're tall like but I don't know I don't know why I've never really I've never really felt tall I guess or consider myself tall like it's just

like I for whatever reason just been used to this height and my wife She's like six feet tall. So it's like, I'm always just, you know, I see her eye to eye. So I don't really see like myself as a, as a tall human. But people tell me I'm tall, so maybe I am. Have you seen those videos of like POV, your 5-5, your 5-2, 5-8? And it's basically this person at a party and he literally has like a tape measure. And it's like from your eye level of where you are.

And it's crazy. Like I saw the 6 foot one. and it was like you could see like above everyone you could see like the actual concert and I go god I wish I wish that was me wish that was me yeah get some uh some leg extensions god if you if I could if there's a way to replace your knees and just like gain a couple extra inches I'll 100% wear heels totally would do it but the problem is I'm going to roll my ankle if I do you can wear heels yeah but I'm awful I have terrible ankles like in uh when I played like sports and stuff. Anytime I would do

like a dodge or like try to do a cut, I'm like, my ankle's probably going to shatter if I do something else like that again. Well, then don't do that. Platform shoes for Mike. I've seen those things, those shoe fillers where you put it in and it's basically like it gives you an extra like two inches

because it just fills your shoe. Could do that. Mike is a Mike is the Danny DeVito You know what? I take that as a compliment I take that as a compliment Dragan, you're 6-7? What the heck? That's pretty tall. That's a lot. See that's what I mean? That's why 6-2 is not that tall. If Dragon is 6-7, then

I'm definitely not tall. A theme Prendimi asked, can I just get the parts for the All-Mite case, or is it a package deal? Like, can I get the plus Ultra Headphones holder. The answer is you got to get everything together. We don't sell anything separately. And the reason for that is not because we don't want to take your money or make more money by selling the accessories.

It's because everything is limited addition and we want to make the whole thing special. It's just like one thing. But maybe one day, Wesley, Wesley here is enough. people asking to get the stuff separately. Maybe we will sell the charms of the puck separately, but for now, package deal. Right, Wesley? Yep, unfortunately, that is it. We try to, you know, what we create for the case is kind of like an exclusive package bundle. So, you know, like we did, we did a puck separate of the mass effect case as its own puck, which, you know, goes well with the case, but also, you know, goes on any case. And so we're looking into continuing to hopefully do more

stuff like that so like while the plus ultra puck might be exclusive to the case you know there might you know i would love to one day you know release uh you know extra pucks alongside that are you know different right and because have like um like pucks it's like a whole like anime series i guess like just different characters from different anime would be like um cool or video games too um milk milk assada what about a one piece case

Wesley what about a one piece case I mean maybe I don't know it's you know just got to talk to the right people it's enough demand you know there's definitely a lot of IPs that are huge I mean I like I don't know much about one piece

that's definitely one anime I have not really gone down the rabbit hole and I hear at this point I got a lot catching up to do so no they actually just want in case that's one piece that doesn't open or anything that's called the h1 god i that's the only thing like i want to watch one piece but it's like a thousand episodes in right now and it's still going so it's just like that's a lot andy cortez says hi by the way wesley hello thick dev speaking of the h1 thick dev is asking anything I can do to make the H1 a little more flashy.

We'll go down the line here. My advice would be to either take off the side panels and paint them a cool color. I actually have a purple H1. I've never built to it. I just have the case, but it looks pretty cool. Another piece of the device could be check out. these aftermarket panels from Jakeface. I don't know their URL to their store,

but they're all over our subreddit. They're always posting cool pictures of the H-1s that they're modding with their side panels. That would definitely spice it up, or may I suggest adding a puck to the side panel to add a little flare? What do you guys suggest? Yeah, the...

The custom panels are definitely one way to add some flair to it. One thing I did to the original H1 is I actually ripped out one of the RGB controllers from a different case I had and figured out how to install it into the back and added some lighting strips on the inside of the glass through that way. And even added at the time, the new H1 has an extra fan, but I put in some mini fans on the back to see, you know, get a little more airflow in there.

I have seen. There's actually someone on our subreddit, they posted this like adapter that they made that they 3D printed themselves. So they designed it and they 3D printed it to fit like these tiny Noctua fans. There you. I can literally show you because I took apart the H1. This is the bracket that I had my buddy with 3D printer print. You know, here is the device. I've since upgraded so I can move these over.

But yeah, I just tiny little fans. There you go. What would you do, Mike, to spice it up? Yeah, I think, yeah, the custom panels would be pretty cool. But if you just want to keep it as it is, then probably, yeah, like maybe painting it or maybe adding some accessories to it. So, like, you know, adding your flare to it, like sticker bombing it, you know, maybe putting some sort of figurines or something on. top of it something more accessory-based than like physically changing it that could be it what about putting a putting an xbox on top of it an xbox mini fridge xbox and then a h1

altogether you have the combo you have console pc and a mini fridge all in one this isn't an h1 right here yeah all right we got one last community question here and i don't know who asked it but someone asking how can you make money online to buy a PC as a student? Well, I'm sure there's a lot of ways you can make money online. Some might be, I guess, easier than others. You can always find online jobs. Maybe you can write articles for a blog or something like that. Or maybe you can find a work from home job.

There's tons of those now, thanks to the pandemic. Or you can do a Westerner. Yeah, you can know Wesley does gamble on baseball. Scampbell, yeah. Supplement your income like that. No, I don't know. I mean, I feel like nowadays, honestly, it's probably easier than ever to make money from home.

Like, there's tons of jobs out there. You just have to, you just have to find them. What do you guys recommend? How would you recommend someone make money from home if they're a student? Write paper for people? Pence how scrupulous you want to be, but I mean, there's all kinds of ways to make money, all kinds of sites that, you know, you can sell services on, like Fiverr, you know,

if you're a good artist or musician, people are always looking for, like, you know, you can take, like, jobs to, like, help them great content is, you know, one way. I was trying to think what's that one site where like oh cameo here you go you can record birthday greetings if you're famous enough so so it starts streaming on Twitch you know yeah probably just something something just look up remote part-time jobs because you're a student just like remote part-time jobs easy yeah there's probably a lot of like call center jobs you can do like probably do like customer service style jobs yeah you can do a podcast monetize it all right hopefully that advice helps.

I don't know if it will, but keep us posted. Whoever asked that. That does it for the community questions. Thank you, Wesley, for joining us. Before we get into the announcements here, Wesley, do you have any parting words for us or the community before we wrap it up? No.

I mean, I would say, like, continue to let us know what IPs you would love to see on craft products and, like, what kind of products you would like to see, not just cases. Just hit us up on the socials comment away. Yes. Thank you, Wesley.

Yeah. No problem. All right. Let's go ahead and get to the announcements. As we're talking about now, get your little weeby little hands on the new limited edition craft H510I All Might case

before it's gone forever. It is limited edition. So make sure if you guys want the case, say if you guys want to buy it, buy it as soon as possible because once it's sold out, it's sold out. The next little announcement, we launched the function keyboard, including a new bare bones option, the new lift mouse

and also some mouse pads. So if you guys want to take some look at all peripherals, we just posted a link there. Go ahead and take a look. Can I mention something real quick about that? So for the barebone option, if you guys are interested in that, you guys have to go through our configurator. I saw a few people asking questions about that

So that's where you'll find the bare bones And the bare bones model If you guys don't know what that means It just means you can put whatever switches and keycaps You want on there You don't have to use the ones that we sell With our keyboards Milk in the chat says like

This case is more expensive than my motherboard Yeah it is a custom case We do have to do a lot of licensing with it Which is why these things tend to be a lot more expensive but you're also paying for a limited edition case. I mean, if you think about anything limited edition, they're probably going to be more expensive because it's not a continuous sale.

West likes to call it the craft tax. Yeah, well, I mean, I would also, I think the thing we don't do a great job explaining too is, you know, you also, you do get a puck, which is like a standalone puck is $20 by itself. So, you know, these are custom design with a custom shape. And then we also add the charm, which I wouldn't say, like, that's a ton of extra value,

but it's a cool little extra. So it's definitely a case plus a puck, you know. Yeah. A little bit more. You know, you're not just getting the case. Let's see. Next announcement, apply to our partner program. Please be patient.

We're getting a ton of applications. So we'll be getting them as soon as possible. But be luck to anyone that applies. It's awesome. It's an awesome program. You get some cool stuff and you get to be part of an awesome community. Oh, cool. Go ahead and follow Wesley on Twitter.

We're going to go ahead and post a link in the chat. Go ahead and give him a little follow. Check us. Is your Twitter handle, Gamer Usch or GameRush? Game Rush, you know, just like my last name. I guess it's what my name shows up here, dude. I don't know if it shows up. It's part of my last name.

Yeah. I mean, I'll plug my Game Rush Instagram when you're talking about. game collecting. That's all I post on there is like stuff from the collection every day. You can get the Instagram link from the Twitter link. Yep. There you go. I'll drop the Instagram link

on here too while I'm at it. I want to become Instagram famous. Yeah. There it is. All right. Go ahead and follow Wesley on both Twitter and Instagram. And if you want us to take a look at his awesome collection,

take a look at that. And then for the final announcement, which is probably the biggest one. I mean, do you actually want to explain this one? Yeah, I just want to let people know that I will be going AFK for exactly one month because I'm going on paternity leave. My second daughter, Rebecca, is going to get here around April 30th. So while I'm gone, the podcast may or may not continue. We still haven't decided that, but it's tentatively. like quote unquote on pause but Mike might have some surprises for you so I guess stay tuned to

the nz-t socials and michael let you know if he does anything on twitch or whatever yep I'll be writing solo for a little bit guys so if you guys see me on socials and everything like that just know I'm going to be pretty busy but I'll try my best to keep everything going I'll see if we can try to do something uh on the Thursdays or maybe you know maybe maybe we don't do a podcast maybe be able to do something a little small on the X or, you know, maybe if I'm gaming, I'll throw up onto live. We'll see. It just depends on how busy we are and how busy everything is.

I'll try my best, but, you know, give everyone, please give a congratulations to Ivan, for him heading out. Yeah, thank you, chat. I see all the well wishes. Appreciate it. Perfect. And I think that is it. Does anyone have any last minute announcements or anything that he wants to say?

I'm going to miss you guys. We'll miss you so much, Ivan, especially me, because I'm going to have to do your work. I'm kidding. Don't worry, man. You got this. Just use Trello as your guide. Yep. We got everything ready.

Oh, it looks like a SREG 036, also having a second one as well. So, hey, you're not alone. That's all right. Reg. 36. Yeah, I guess that is it. I guess we'll go ahead and go to the outro. Thank you guys for joining us.

I remember to tune in live every Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific send your time on the official NZXT Twitch. And don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Please leave us a positive review if you like what you hear and if you didn't. Any questions for us? Send an email to podcast at nzxc.com or tag at NZXT on social media. We do look through the podcast email and we actually have some online. awesome suggestions. If you guys have any suggestions on what to do during the break while Ivan's alone or Ivan's gone and I'm alone and you just want to see like game streams or you know like

quick quick like 20 minutes streams or anything like that just send an email. I'll take a look at the email. And after that I guess that is it. So I guess we'll go ahead and see you guys later. Hopefully we'll be back but in the meantime Ivan have a lovely paternity leave. Thank you. All right. Bye guys. Thank you.