NZXT PODCAST - #175 - Ask Us Anything

Episode Date: January 13, 2024

On this week's episode of the NZXT Podcast... We answer the questions YOU submitted to us on our Discord (discord.gg/nzxt)! We talk about New Years Resolutions to what superpower you'd have! Catch the replay at twitch.tv/NZXT!

Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 175 at the NZC podcast, the official podcast of the NXT community. This podcast is quite alive every Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on the official N60 Twitch and is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. My name is Mike. It was me as always is Ivan. How are you doing? How it do, baby boo? Happy New Year. First podcast of the year. Super stoked to start it off with an AMA because we do get a lot of questions on social media and it's always a fun time to get to answer questions. I think we have a pretty good list of them. Yep, yep. And I guess we'll just say happy 2024 everyone.

Hope everyone had a good holiday, safe holiday. And I guess we're going to go straight into the... Before we get into the questions, got a quick... announcement. So if you are tuned in live right now on twitch.tv slash nzxte, you are eligible to enter a giveaway for a NZXT hoochie plush mascot doll up here next to Fernando Valenzuela like back there. And the way you enter that giveaway is by typing exclamation mark giveaway in the chat. You'll get a link and it'll tell you how to enter. And all the questions that we're going to be answering today were actually taken from our Discord server. So everyone that submitted a question on the Discord server is also eligible to win a NZXT Poochie Plush. And if you're not in the Discord server, you're missing out. We have big plans for it this year, believe it or not. Last year, Mike and I actually retook control of the server.

And little by little, we've been trying to do more and more. with it and this year we plan to kick it up a notch so join at Discord.g.g.g slash NZXT ping at everyone and ping at

moderators to say hello once you get there. They love it. They love it when you do that. Without further ado, Mike, let's start with these questions, man. All righty. So these are the questions

submitted to us again at Discord.com. Discord.com. Discord. slash nzxt. And stay tuned. Take a look into the giveaways chat whenever you have a chance of coming next week. And you guys participate in the poochie giveaway, which I have.

Pucci right here. We're going to give away our little puck plushy. So join us next week. We'll be doing a lot more soon. All right. So for some of the general questions, I guess we'll start off from Crack 8-5 to 2. Ivan, how are you doing? I am doing great, man.

So I love coming into the office because I love the vibe, you know, and like I love seeing people in real life that I usually just talk to on Slack. So it's been a good morning so far. I got to talk to the homie Laurent and wish him a happy birthday. He's finally, finally 21 years old today. He already has gray hair too, which is kind of weird. But yeah, talk to him, talk to Dakota. said a good morning to Maria and yeah it was cool just walking around the office seeing the homies I haven't seen the homies this year so far so it was uh it was good um also Fridays are like my

Friday I love Fridays because I always do the same thing on Friday and it's my Friday is uh my daughter Olivia's special day I was I call it only Friday so every Friday I pick her up from school, we get a slurpy, then we get a pizza, and we watch a movie, and I don't know, it's just a fun, fun little thing I do with her every Friday, so looking forward to that. Today we're going to watch, watch the new trolls movie. Nice. Yeah, how about you, how are you doing? I'm good, I'm good. Yeah, here in Seattle, it's going to be very cold.

Like, I think it's going to hit like tens right now. Let me see. Yeah, it's going to be hit. It's going to hit lows of 11 this weekend. So it's going to be very cold, possibly some ice. So we're going to be a little scared, a little worried, but love it. And, yeah, just super easy three-day weekend. I'm excited for that.

And we're going to have a good time. I heard it's really cold over there. It's freezing. The snowboarding, so I go snowboarding at Stevens Pass. It is, this weekend is going to be negative 13. Yeah, that's freezing, man. Negative 13, negative 1, negative 10. Like, that's too cold.

Yeah, and here in LA, I mean, it was like 40-something this morning when I drove to the office, which is why I'm wearing this beanie. It's unusually cold for this time of the year. But we'll get through it, I'm sure. Pretty soon it will be like really, really hot. Warm time. All right. Next question, Mike. from First

underscore Carlos. What's your favorite hobby besides gaming, obviously? Rock climber. So I love rock climbing. So it's one of my I used to rock climb back then.

My sister basically got me into it because she worked at a rock climbing place. And then I started a rock climbing club in college and then I just kind of fell in love with it. I actually, I kind of stopped rock climbing for, a couple months because I try to I can see Zelda right there.

I try to focus on strength, building up strength. But now my New Year's resolution is also to get back into Rockcom again. So I got a couple I got to get my forums back into it. What were you? My hobbies

are, I really like working out. I like reading. I like listening to music, collecting records and that's pretty much it for hobbies to be honest like most of my free time is just spent with my my kids but I think right late I go through phases like I guess um you know for example like right now I really like reading a lot I always read before bed and my big phase right now is Batman so like I'm reading like tons of Batman comic books right now for some reason I don't know what

The heck inspired me to start reading Batman comics all of a sudden, but I've been enjoying it. That's a good one, though. Yeah. Batman's awesome. Yeah. Right now I'm reading this Joker graphic novel. Oh. I read the name of it.

It's what's it called? The name escapes me right now. But yeah, reading's a big one. I like it. From Dupreo? what are your favorite colors? This might come across as random or otherwise not well thought of.

But I ask a lot of people because I think it can say a lot about someone, especially if they can give a reason. Does it remind you of something? Believe it or not, I'm not just saying this because I work at NXT. My favorite color is purple. And the reason I like purple

is because I think it's like a very neutral color that everyone can enjoy because most of the time everyone thinks like you know when you like when you do these gender reveals it's like if it's a boy it's blue and if it's a girl that's pink but if you combine blue and pink you get purple so I think that's pretty cool it kind of uh yeah I didn't realize that yeah so that's and also it's like a very um I don't like it's like a loud color that stands out but at the same time it's not like obnoxious like a hot pink or like a you know like a lime green type of thing

it's a very nice color but besides that I also like I do like the color black a lot black and white believe it or not boring colors but yeah how about you what's your favorite color I mean I like purple because of you know

royalty so that's always a that was a fun one I'm a big proponent of yellow I love the color yellow it's just for someone I just love the sun and light and going outside and stuff, so I always love the sun.

So it makes me happy. Orange as well, because I am an Anaheim Ducks fan, and I went to Syracuse, which is their orange. So very huge on orange and yellow. Whack, whack, whack. All right, next question from Falcon Vladi.

What is the one project that you started but never finished? what are the reasons behind that? And if you had the opportunity right now, would you continue from where you stopped or just make a new project out of it and start from the beginning? Oh, man. What's the one project that you started and finished?

I guess for me, one of the things that I loved was bartending. I loved bartending and making mixed drinks. And I was going to do this whole series of me making drinks out of this book. that I got. And I was really excited to do it. However,

I kind of stopped drinking in general. Not like all together, but, you know, before I would like go home and I'd make myself a mixed drink because I loved making myself one of them. But now I'm like, kind of got over it.

I'm like, I kind of don't want to drink. If I have to, you know, like if I'm out at a social gathering, yeah, I'll get a beer or something like that. But like pretty much now I'm like,

I don't really like drinking at all anymore. So I think that's one of the projects that, like, completely just, like, I just stopped because, like, I never do it anymore. So no more bartending, no? No, like, never. I still have that ability to. But it's just, it's just rough. Like, yesterday I got a beer or two with my friend. And I, like, I woke up this morning.

I feel so sick. I'm like, dang. I like how your project is drinking. Well, I mean, I wanted to make, like, bartending videos, you know? I thought it was so dope and I love those videos but then I'm like I don't really want to do anymore Yes it is up on your body

I think for me one project That I started so I'm a I'm a big baseball fan And I guess one of the hobbies I didn't mention here I guess is baseball like I love Watching baseball playing baseball Playing baseball cards and things like that And um You know I'm a Dodger fan

So like I've I made myself a promise When I was like I think it was 15 I used to collect Mike Piazza Baseball cards right He was like my favorite Dodger And the Dodgers traded him

And I got really mad And I just I told myself I'm gonna quit collecting Baseball cards Until the Dodgers win the World Series And that took a really long time Like they didn't win the World Series

Until 2020 Yeah So in 2020 I was all of a sudden I remember that promise to myself I was like, all right, time I start collecting baseball cards. And my big plan was I'm just going to start building out the sets starting in 2020. So I started buying a bunch of baseball card packs in 2020, 2021, 2021, 2022, 2023,

trying to complete the complete sets. And then I just decided to give up on that dream because I was spending way too much money, way too much time. And I'm like, I'm like nowhere even close to completing those sets. So I'm still going to collect baseball cards, but this time, you know, starting over with this baseball card project, I think I'm just going to start buying singles and give away all these, like, junk cards I have to my, my nephews who collect baseball cards. Yeah. I like that. Yeah.

Honestly, I was a big, what, I mean, I loved cards in general. I had a couple hockey cards back then. but then the other was really training card games you know like ugeo magic stuff like that yeah and i love that stuff but i mean i have a little two right here i got i got a king and then a flying picatoo i actually play play a dice game with baseball cards it's called deadball which is pretty cool you i'm sure you can do it with hockey too you basically just make up like a fictional league with teams out of your, out of your cards, and then you roll dice, and then the numbers dictate different things that happen in a game and whatnot. It's a good time-waster.

I like it. What was the color question? We just answered it. I did it purple, and then mine is yellow and orange. From my L, would you rather go bald or never cut your hair again? A very good question. Actually, this morning when I saw Laurent, he was making fun of me because I have a lot of gray hair and he's bald but I told him I'd rather have a lot of gray hair than have no hair

Yeah I definitely don't want to be bald man Like I don't know nothing against being bald I don't you know Not a big deal if you're bald or not Whatever but I think I would rather Just have long hair Than be bald to just never cut my hair again Although if I never cut my hair again

I mean that's going to be kind of hard but I don't know I guess I could braid it or you know do something cool with it some dreadlocks or something how about you? Yeah I think I'd just go the issue is that my hair grows really quickly

which is a great, great issue you know like that's a great problem to have but my hair grows like if I shave my head it grows back in like two weeks so if I never cut my hair again it's going to be a lot but I think I would go that route because like I yeah

I can be rock up bald. I used to do a bus cut for a little bit, but I like having a ton of hair. It's kind of fun. What's the action figure in the background? So this is actually a gift from a community

member, Mr. Bantastic. He 3D printed Puccina for me. It's like a little cool little poochie with like ears, cat ears and a bun. Well, I call it a

Puccina, I don't know what he called there. But I like the name Puccina. Puccina is cute. Puccini. Puccina. I like that. Yeah, but yeah, he printed this for me for Christmas. All right, what's the next question here?

It's from MP055. What are your most favorite video game soundtracks and why? Mike? I mean, Halo's got to. be number one. I mean, that Halo soundtrack is so good. It's classic for sure. You hear that opening chord, and you already know what game it is.

Skyrim is also a great one. And then I think Fallout would be my third. Especially fallout, not just like the, but the Fallout radio. GTA radio as well. Any of the, like those radios that you just pull on the background and you go do your thing, 10 out 10. It's so fun. I remember spending hours

really just driving around and then just listening to the soundtrack. Yeah. I think for me, my favorite video game soundtracks would be number one, I think,

is going to be Tetris Effect. Which, if you haven't played Tetris Effect, it's a really cool soundtrack and the game actually syncs to the music. So as you're clearing lines, you're playing notes, for different songs which is really really cool so probably number one Tetris

effect I think number two oh there you go I got the soundtrack play yeah so let's play a little bit of it I've never heard of this is this it is this it yeah oh yeah it's awesome and as the levels get harder the the blocks you getting faster and whatnot The music keeps speeding up. I like that, actually. Yeah. And then my number two soundtrack would probably be hotline Miami. Oh, that's a good one.

Yeah, like it's, it's, I could just listen to that soundtrack all day, to be honest. It's really, really good. It's like 80s vibe to it, which is cool. And then my third. one I would say hmm I think I'm going to have to go with

probably is that even a soundtrack but just like the music to the game like Mario Brothers 3 like that music is just so iconic to me like I can I can whistle that all day

or even like hum it all day I could just be like boop boop boop boob bo do do do do do do do do do do do do do it do Turn it up to. Like that music is so so catchy and I love it. So yeah, now I'm not to go through my video game library

listening to soundtracks. I also want to throw a shout out to Risk Rain 2. That game, by the way, if no one has ever played like a roguelike play Richerade 2, understand the items. And once you get in, you'll literally play.

I have so many hours in that game. But the soundtrack is, emaculate. Like, I've never, like, just playing the game. You know, I got to, I'm going to see if I could play a little bit of it for everyone. Because it's so good. Let me see if I can pull up. Oh, yeah, the rain, formerly known as purple.

Let me see her. Oh, I can vibe. So as you're playing it, but let me see how I get through that. Oh, dude, Chris. Fantastic. My guitar is awesome, man. It's so good. Yeah, I forgot how much I have.

Yeah, the music gets progressively hardcore. Yeah, exactly. It continues as it goes. It's like a Tetris effect. It like goes with the thing. So good. Before we get to the next question, I do want to answer a few from the chat. Oh, yes.

So we got Pier Mountain and Alucard, Markov, asking, where are we asking the question? So these questions were taken from our Discord server. So if you're not in the Discord server, join at Discord.g.g. slash NZXT. And then the next time we do these AMAs, you guys will be able to submit your questions there. And then when you submit questions there, you're also answered into a giveaway. So sign up if you're not there. But we're also answers some from the chat here. N9 Myth asks, what's your favorite movie franchise, Marvel, DC, etc.

And what is your favorite movie from it? Go ahead, Mike. Mine would be... That's hard. Because, like, I used to love the Marvel Cinemite Universe, but I don't think it's that good anymore. I mean, Dark Night Rises or a Dark Night series by Nolan is fantastic. That's, like, hard to be...

Yeah, I think I'll go to Dark Night Trilogy. All right. I'm glad you said that because, like I said earlier, I'm like on this Batman kick right now. So the way this whole started was because randomly one night, I was just scrolling through Amazon Prime. And I saw the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton. I was like, oh, I haven't seen that since I was a kid.

Let me rewatch that. And I rewatch it and I loved it. And I was like, man, I forgot how good these Batman movies were. So I started watching all the Batman movies. And I watched all of them like in the last two or three months. and I started watching all the DC movies and to be honest a lot of the newer DC movies

are not that great but all the Batman movies are good even like the one with like Ben Affleck which he's not my favorite Batman he's still he's still good as Batman but I think my favorite Batman

movie is actually this is going to be controversial Mike it's not the Dark Night series Batman with Patrick Bateman it's actually going to be with the Twilight dude Oh the newest one

Yeah the Batman That was good That was really good I love that one I think honestly he's probably my favorite Batman He's a I don't know I never in a million years would have even thought

That guy would be Batman But he did a really good job And, yeah, I guess my favorite franchise at the moment would probably be all these Batman movies. Yeah, honestly, yeah, and I know, like, yeah, I agree. Like, it's, I wasn't expecting it to be that good, but when I watched it, it's a long movie, too. But, like, when I was watching it, it didn't feel like, what, the three and a half hours? It was good. It was really well-paced.

I love the mystery behind, you know, what's the rad and the Riddler crew. Like, yeah, it was good. I really enjoyed it. Um, oh, and then from jurted, what is the most sad game you played slash finish? Sad game. Oh. To be honest, I don't, I don't think I really felt sad playing a video game. Oh, I know, I know a few.

They weren't sad games, but they had really sad endings. Red Dead Redemption 2. When Michael died in GTA GTA time. That's a good one too. Yeah, I don't think I've ever like cried or felt sad at a game. Like, I never played like sad, sad games. But like, I think Red Dead Red Dead Redoubt 2 was probably the one that I was like, dang, man. That, that really hurt me.

Yeah, I think that one. Amori, I played Amori too. It wasn't sad, but it was very like, whoa kind of thing. I think those two. Yeah, when I cried when that ghost got me in the banana. level and miss papman. Save, save. All right, let's go on to the last

question of the general. From Tom Bober, what is your New Year's resolution? Mine, honestly, is to stop snacking. Like, it's I'm like you, man. Like, I like to work out.

So every day, like, I'm exercising, but my weakness is snacking and it's because I have two kids. And, you know, like, they snack all day, basically. So I got in this habit of, like, you know, when I give them, like, a plate of pretzels, I'm getting a little plate of pretzels for myself. Or if I give them some chips, I'm eating chips. If I give them, whatever, like, I'm eating that stuff.

And, like, I don't think it's just, I don't know. I don't think it was really super bad for me these last couple of years, but I know it also hasn't been good. I'm like My whole thing is I just don't want to snack that I don't want to snack anymore It's just

Too much I was eating I was just eating too much How about you My news resolution Which I have been doing actually pretty good on Is if I pick something up I have to put it down Like

You know if I have clothes Laundry A cup Trash You have to put it back where it belongs And I'm a really bad proponent of like I have something I'm just going to throw here I'll get to it later but I've been really forcing myself I've been really forcing myself to uh

work on that and so far it's been going pretty decent I've been actually doing good mainly close for me because like if I have like a shirt or like ants I'll just kind of go like oh I'm just going to throw on the ground and I'll get to it later but I've been getting better at like just going and hanging it um and the social uh isn't stacking good for your metabolism, I guess maybe not chips. You kids, snacking is good for your metabolism, but you have to snack on the right things. The best

snack, as I've learned, apparently, is popcorn. Popcorn is the best snack you can have. It helps fight dementia. It helps with filling your stomach up. Yeah. They did like a study of like, a lot of like these certain

elderlies and those that the least amount that had, that didn't have a dementia, regularly ate popcorn like multiple times a week. Not butter. Don't do like the butter stuff, but like, you know, standard popcorn,

no butter is super healthy for you. Interesting. I will have to eat more popcorn. Oh, also to go along. I bought this game called, what's it called? Before Your Eyes, because I heard how amazing.

I mean, look at the overwhelming positive. reviews but i just want to read some of the reviews down here screaming crying throwing up banging my head against the wall driving my car through a brick wall uh it's just too hard to not blink when you're crying beautiful germic through life's moments just started crying before it makes you you know got me very emotional so i'm i'm excited to try this game out so i'm very excited but before your eyes um it was on sale for like five bucks i was like you know what i'll test it out I'll see if it's good. And it's $10 right now.

I got on itself for five. But, you know, keep an eye on. So I'm going to try it. All right. Let's get through some more questions here. NZXC related questions. First question is from YW Cool. What is a day-to-day life looking like as an NZX team member?

Go for it. Mine is I tried to go to the gym in the morning. Then 8 o'clock, I usually like, go and post a TikTok video because I mainly handle TikTok. All your TikTok complaints to make, please. Yes. If anything happens, send it to me, anything. If you have any complaints or ideas, send it.

But yeah, and then I, you know, standard stuff. I go through the day, I go through the DMs, any leftover things I have to do. And then really it's looking through TikTok, looking through Instagram, looking to do Twitter, trying to get ideas. And then I spend a majority of day video editing or compiling or making like ideas or I have like a big whiteboard here

of all the ideas I want to make for the thing. And that's basically it. Very simple day. Video editing. If I have to make like a big video, like we have a video coming out tomorrow, I spent like three hours on. That was a lot.

That was a lot to do. But it's really cool. So keep an eye up for tomorrow. Yeah. And I guess for me, it's kind of similar to Mike, except I'm not doing video stuff. And I come into the office every so often. But yeah, we have,

both Mike and I have like this Trello board. And one of the cards that we have on there is like this daily social media checklist. But that literally takes up like the entire morning for me personally. It's just the basic social. media stuff that we got to do every day, which is obviously posting, scheduling post and whatnot, but the other part is, you know, helping people, responding to people, pointing people in the right directions. If someone needs help with something, you know, we try to help him and things like that. And then when all that's done, that's when I start working more on, like,

I guess, strategy stuff. So, like, if we're launching any product or doing a campaign, things like that, you know, work on planning what that stuff looks like. And that's basically it. I do a lot of, obviously, research, got to know what's going on in the gaming and PC world. So a lot of reading and watching videos around that stuff. And then when I come into the office, I, you know, I try to mingle a little bit, try to talk to my coworkers and just, you know, check in on them, make sure everyone's having a good time around here. And if I can help them with anything, I do that too. From Outer, what's your favorite memory of the podcast of 2023?

I think last year, my favorite memory was, you know, we had a couple of people on from the, from the NCGST partner program, which was really fun. But I think my favorite memory was having Johnny on the podcast. That was our, you know, He's our founder and CEO, never been on the podcast. And I wanted to have him on episode 100, but his schedule didn't allow for that. And then when we launched the H6 case, you know, just asked him like, hey man, like,

would you come on here to talk about the H6 and like any other stuff? And he was super excited to do that. And it's a great, great, great podcast. We actually saved it on our Twitch channel. So if you go to whatever. whatever tab that is on Twitch that's like uploaded videos, you guys can go back there and watch it. And if you just want to listen,

it's a couple episodes back from this one. I think we did it in October. But that was a good one because he actually answered a lot of questions from the community and he said he had a lot of fun. So it was cool. How about you, Mike? Yeah, I think I'm looking back at like all the past stuff. And I think honestly having Johnny on was really,

dope. I mean, I'm looking at our things. The only other one that I would think would be a top one was our April Fools Day one. That was a really fun podcast. Just trying to keep up a

just keeping up like a facade, you know, that was really fun. Yeah, you know, I think it was real. Oh yeah, it was totally real. I think, yeah, I think those two would probably be the funniest, which is, or not the best, which is the NCC GPU and then having Johnny on. Johnny was so cool to, you know, have him on. And he also

talks like a regular person. You know, there's like people that like have that like, you know, he's just like a normal dude that loves games and stuff. And it was really fun to like talk with him about that. Yeah, it was great. Next question from It's Infinity. What is the best selling PC you guys make? I actually know the answer to this, Mike. Do you have? I, I do not, I assume it's going to be one of the starter PCs, like the player ones? No. Oh. Player 2's?

Yeah, it's a player 2, I believe. I could be wrong, but I think I saw something on some dashboard recently where that was like our best selling one. Which I feel like it makes a lot of sense, to be honest, because the player 3 and the creator has, they're very beefy PCs and the player one is, you know, like a very basic entry level type of PC

and the player twos, I think, are just kind of like the sweet spot, you know, where you have you know, a good combo of CPUs, GPUs, RAM, power supply, etc. So I think, I think it makes sense, you know, it's just right in the middle it's like not too low, not too beefy, it's just good Laurent says

Player 2 primes apparently and looking at the specs on it yeah I see it it could be maybe because the case yeah 5800X with our with our H6 and then the 47TI 32 gigabytes of RAM yeah honestly I can see that as being a

really good one and like you said middle ground tends to be really good oh we're gonna we have a denounce it for that Lauren just wait I'm so excited from Athene Prendi how did Pucci get named? I probably should know, but I don't.

So we answered this before, but we had a lot of questions about Pucci during this time. So I just grabbed like two questions about it. All right. So the story of Pucci goes like this, right? So we launched this product called the Puck, which is this, which is a cable management solution. And the puck, if you don't know, it's this magnet that you stick on your case. and you use it to wrap cables around it, you know?

And you can use it with different things too. Like, you can split it apart and you can stick this on your cable management bar and use it like as a GPU support or you can stick it on your fridge or whatever. It does a lot of different things, right? And I always like the puck because I always thought it was like a really weird,

weird product because, like, I've never seen anything like this. Like, you know, a rubber magnet's kind of weird. And when we launched this, thing. I made a bunch of memes about it. I printed out this big old poster that said, I want to believe, and it's like a puck flying through the sky and whatnot. And I don't know,

I always left the puck. And then when we launched the Discord server, you know, I just thought it would be cool if we had a mascot as a little gift that we gave community members. So when it came time to come up with the mascot and we were like talking with the

creative team and Johnny and different people, you know, we all kind of agreed. Yeah, the puck would be perfect. Why don't we just add like feet and legs on this thing and make that the mascot, which became this, right? It became, uh, it became, uh, this plush. But then when it came to the name, the name kind of happened by accident. So the original name of, of the mascot was going to be pucky. It was like P-U-C-K. K-Y, you know, Pucky. But what ended up happening was one day I went in the

Discord server, and back then we had this saying in the server, like people would ask me how I'm doing, I would say, oh, I'm Gucci, I'm Gucci. You know, like I always say I'm Gucci. And then one day, I don't know. I just said, oh, I'm Poochie with a P. And then I thought, well, that's funny.

Like, why don't we just call it? Instead of Puckie, we just call him Poochie, because it kind of felt the same way and it's a weird word and I like weird so we just stuck it was like an accident to be honest

what we named in Pucci but that's literally the whole story I always love that story it's just like you just kind of stumbled upon it yeah and then I guess this is also a follow-up question yeah there you go

I'll ask you because this you probably know but why was Pucci invented. It was just we wanted to come up with something to give away to the community, basically, that we thought would be cool. You know, at the time,

we were already given away stickers and lanyards and t-shirts and hoodies and products, you know, cases and coolers. And we just wanted something that was different than all that. And at the time, believe it or not,

there wasn't a lot of mascots in the PC world. I think we probably might have been the first PC company. Or no, maybe MSI. I think MSI had a mascot, the dragon. But I don't know if they had a plush. But we were definitely, I guess, ahead of our time with coming up with a little plush mascot. Because now there's a lot of them.

I think every company pretty much has the mascot, no. Yeah, Razor has one. Obviously, MSI has one. Intel has one. Discord obviously has Wumpus. I think everyone pretty much not has a plush Yeah

What does Corsair have one? I know they're a pirate Yeah they have a little pirate Yeah there it is But we're the only We're the only plush with a hole Right A hole or

There's a question saying Is it a hole or a mouth And I'm like oh no It'd be both Oh yeah You want to ask this one What does Cucci eat from Rapsos Thermal paste.

Yes. What he eats. He actually had a video of him eating thermal paste. Whatever you do, though, do not feed Pucci thermal paste after midnight. You do not want to see him after that. Trust me. All right. Next question from Deni said.

When is the level of reward system coming back? I used to be on the server a while ago on my old account, and I was searching for like five minutes until, I realized it doesn't exist anymore. So I can answer this one. So like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, Mike and I took over the server again recently, and one of the first things that we did was pause this rewards program.

And if you scroll up in the announcements channel, you can see a whole essay that I wrote about the reasons why. But the biggest reason why is because it was just very hard. to maintain. For those that don't know what I'm talking about, this rewards program, it was a automated system where the more you interacted on the server, the more XP you got, and then you would get rewards shipped to you, like stickers and t-shirts and eventually a poochie flush and whatnot. It was very fun, it's very cool, but it's very difficult to maintain because we had to maintain a lot of inventory of inventory you know like hundreds and hundreds of different shirts because

everyone has different sizes and the on the back end you know like the data team the web team the shipping team like the operations team like all this stuff just to ship like a t-shirt kind of got to be a little too tedious especially when um the program was shipping things all over the world you know so like if something someone in India, for example, won a prize, we would go out of our way to ship them a free t-shirt. And not that we didn't want to do that, but it's like we wanted to do that, but it was just not like an easy thing to do. So the goal for this year is not to bring back the level reward system for a couple reasons, but the goal is to start doing more things on the server.

to give you free stuff that is not just tied to chatting, which is what like the previous reward system was, which was just literally just chat and you get prizes, right? So now what we're trying to do this year is we're gonna start doing more fun stuff on the server. So I can actually tease two of them that we're gonna be bringing in soon and I haven't even told the mods this, so surprise mods, But we're going to bring back a couple of things we used to do back in the day. We're going to bring back the weekly setups contest, where every week you can submit pictures of your setup, whether it's NZXT or not.

Doesn't matter. We're all on the same team here. And the community is going to vote with reactions maybe, or maybe it'll be random. I don't know yet. But we'll give out prizes to people that submit their setup weekly feature it on social featured on the blog features in our email and things like that and then we're gonna bring back our weekly wallpaper contest so every

week you can submit artwork with NZXT on there and every week we'll pick a winner and then that winner will also you know be featured on social on the blog on our email probably our website soon and they'll get prizes and maybe we can even use that artwork for the podcast, Mike. That'd be kind of fun. Yeah. So those are the two big ones that we're going to bring back soon, probably within the next couple of weeks, to be honest.

So if you're not in the server, join Discord.org.g.g. We are planning to do more fun stuff on there and give away more stuff. So tune in. Let me see. There's a couple questions in chat. do you guys from the social do you guys have any games you're looking forward to this year?

I am looking forward to out of the park baseball 25 yeah the 25th year of this baseball simulator I started playing it maybe like five years ago

but I really got into it this year and I know it's that game is definitely not for everyone. It's literally glorified spreadsheets. That's all it is. It's just you're looking at numbers and you know, you're managing a fake baseball team. But I find it super fun and I'm looking forward to that. And then not next year, but I think the next year after, or not this year, but the next year, probably GTA 6 for sure. I'm going to be playing that game. Oh yeah.

I love all the GTAs. And, yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. Probably going to have to build a new PC for that one. Well, I mean, it may not even be on PC. Maybe only be on console. So let's cross our fingers. It gets onto the PC sometimes soon. And I'll just play it on my switch.

The two games that I'm looking forward to the most is the Rise of the Rodin. I really want to play that type of game because I love like Securo and stuff like that. the other one is Hades 2 I'm really excited about there's no date yet but I assume it's coming this year because they said it's going to come this year so Hades 2 is also the next one I have

for Buzz King oh yeah can we have a stream day where we do games with the Discord members something like Fall Guys or Fortnite we just talked about that we'll definitely be doing stuff down the road yeah and I didn't mention the game the streaming gaming whatever you want to call it

game nights but yeah so that's another thing we were actually just talking before this podcast I was telling Mike that we were in there oh that's what we talked about more of these streams yeah and the plan is yes so we have I think

the last couple of months I think Mike did like two or three game nights three I think on the server and yeah we definitely want to do more of those and also do some giveaways for those days so like you know if we're playing like lethal company like Mike did recently will give away some lethal company game keys like we did so yeah we're trying to do more on the server and we will play more games on there I also like a

lot of the the built-in discord games so me personally like I would love to play guardic phone or golf with friends or poker and things like that so we'll be doing more of that stuff this year for sure oh from totes mcote skis is there any way that you can control your capsule mic in camp? Well, yes, you can, actually. If you go to audio down here, you can actually change the volume, the microphone, the side tones. Actually, you're incorrect, Michael. Hmm?

You're incorrect, Michael. Well? Because Toots Magotskis is talking about the capsule mic, not the capsule mini. Oh, oh, my bad. The capsule mini, um, the capsule mini, um, the capsule mini. does give you the cam integration, but the capsule, regular capsule does not. And as far as like plans, like I don't think there's any plans where I don't think. I know there's no plan to do that.

But I could, you know, pass along that feedback to the cam team and get that something to consider. So sorry about that Toastmogotsky's. Um, we'll be saw. What will be the best, well, it would be the 2024 best thing from NZT. Can't school too much though. Yeah, we can never, we could never really, you know, tell our secrets here. But I will say this. I know last year was a really big year for NZXT in terms of cases.

We launched two very popular cases, the H6 and the H9. Not in that order. We launched it at 9 first. and we also launched new crack-ins and whatnot. So all I can say is this year we are going to launch new products. And if you look at the products we make that we're known for, which are cases and coolers, you know, if I were a gambling man, I would probably bet they were going to come out with some new cases of coolers this year that people like.

But yeah, I'm really, honestly, I am stoked on the new cases. I'm loving the direction that we're going with our cases. The H6 in particular. I mean, you have one. I don't have one. But to me, like, that is probably the most, you know, perfect case we've ever made, to be honest. It's really cool. Just the way it looks, the way the performance is, the angled fans blowing air into the hardware,

the fans at the bottom just blended into the case and whatnot. It's a really, really nice case. I'm showing off my temps. So usually before, when I had the H5 flow, it was still good temps. You know, the CPU would be around 30 to 33, and then the GPU would be around 31 to 34. Still fine, still great. But ever since I swapped over to the H6 flow,

I mean, my GPU tends to actually be colder than the CPU, which is crazy. Like, I've never seen that before. any case I've had, you know, I've had tons of different cases, not even just NZT, but just in general, but I never actually had the time that GPU is cooler than the CPU. Well, I mean, think about it. You have two fans on the bottom just blowing air into the graphics card. And I have one, two, three, four, five fans blowing into the graphics card.

Got two up, three, and the side. And then I have all the entire back panel and then the farm. far far back of it is all perforated so it was just all the yeah oh actually uh swatcats i actually did a video about that my temps were three to four degrees cooler went on 100% load it wasn't game we did the the stress test which is i think we used like 3DS max or 3dus marks or something like that and it actually was it actually was 3 to 4 degrees cooler which is wild i have a 4090 as well so and an I-9-39-K, so yeah, it's cool. All right, next question from Christina.

Would you ever consider opening up stores around the U.S.? I don't think we can. I would love that, like an Apple store, NCXT store, I would love that. That sounds so cool. I would love to work at the Genius Bar, and just people come and ask me a question. But, I don't have to be able to do.

I don't think we would either, to be honest, but it would be cool. It would be cool if you had a NZXT store where you walk in and you can not only buy a computer and walk out with it, but you can build it yourself. Or maybe like a NZXT Genius bar type of guy or girl can build it with you. I think it would be cool. And also, I think it'd be cool to do. to get hands-on with NZAC products, especially our peripherals, because we're new to the peripheral game.

For those that don't know, we recently started making headsets and microphones and keyboards and mice, mouse pads even. And I feel like with peripherals in particular, you kind of, not you know, kind of. I think it's just, it's always better to just feel it and like hear it and touch it and know what it's like before you buy it versus um you know like you just see a tweet about a keyboard and you click a link and you go to a website and then you're

like oh I'll buy his keyboard which obviously people do that nothing wrong with that but I would love it if people can walk into a store and actually like touch these things and and um you know kind of understand what they're buying before they pull the trigger on it. I like what the social says is that have your own area in a microcenter or like a Best Buy, you know, just our section alone. That'd be kind of cool, too.

Well, you can buy NZXT products in those stores already. But having like her own specific section, that would be kind of cool. Yeah. Not going to lie, sometimes I'll go into MicroCenter and I'll put the NZXT cases in front. I'll move the other ones in the back. I'm not going to lie. Mark, man. From Dase 999 or Deuce 99

Will you ever consider any brand teamups Like a streamer themed PC or brand themed PC So I interpret this as Like what brand would you like to work with You know if you could just work with them any time Well they say Gucci there as an example It'd be cool to make a Gucci ex-Pucci Pucci PC

This doesn't make something like that then they like wrap their thing in like Gucci? A former former employee here made a Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton. With actual Louis Vuitton leather wrapped their

their H5 in it which yeah I don't know. To answer this question though from Deuce 999 we've actually done this a bunch of times we have teamed up with brands we have team up with streamers to make PCs so

you know we've had this this branch of design called craft where we've done stuff like anime cases with My Hero Academia we've worked with games like Rainbow Six Sege Warcraft

Fallout cyberpunk PubG you know we made like a Pan puck which was pretty cool so we've done all these collazerated we've also done

not cases that we Well I guess we didn't make a one case that we sold with a streamer We teamed up with Ninja to make a ninja I remember that We've also done one-off cases For other streamers we've sponsored in the past

You know we've made custom cases for Dr. Lupo Tim the Tatman Courage Pokeyman Valkyrie So we've done that stuff It's just

You know maybe it's It's been a while Also, we have to probably do it again so you can see them. Next question is from IBBTXO. What are your guys' biggest challenge when making the NZXT company? Or in other words, I... These are my words. Oh, what was the hardest thing about working at NXT when you first started?

Oh, you wrote that one. Yeah, because, like, I wasn't here when it started, but you were basically here when it was beginning, you know? So what was the hardest part about working during that? time. Well, actually, I didn't come in the beginning. I think I came in halfway. Oh, really? I thought you came more closer to the beginning in general. I came at the beginning of when we started growing really fast. Yeah. But the company was already around for 10 years when I joined.

And I've been here another 10 years. So I think, that's what I said. I came in right in the middle. But I guess the hardest part from when I joined was just, you know, the company was definitely a lot smaller and we didn't make as much money as we make now. So the budget was also like a lot smaller. And because there wasn't as many people, you just had to do more. So like, you know, when I first started, I used myself as an example. You know, I was doing like, you know, a lot of different things. I was working on social media.

I was writing blog posts. I was even building computers. You know, I would, like, if I wanted to sponsor an event, you know, like, I remember we sponsored the Rocket League Championship series, and they asked for 14 computers, and I myself had to build 14 computers. At that time, at that time, we didn't have PC builders because we didn't sell computers. We just sold cases and coolers, basically. and I had to build 14 computers.

I had to rent a U-Haul truck and load those computers on there myself and drive them to downtown L.A. and unload them and put them on the stage and set them up and troubleshoot them if they broke down and whatnot. It was just like you had to do a lot more stuff versus now, you know, like if we want to sponsor an event, you know, we have PC builders now so I can just say, hey, like any 14 PCs delivered here on this day.

And like, I don't have to, you know, I don't have to build them myself and I don't have to run a U-Haul truck and load them and drive them there and things like that. And now we have more people too. So like, you know, using myself as an example again, you know, I have you, Mike, my sidekick who, you know, when you joined, I told you, you know, I need help with, basically I need like someone that knows how to do.

video and help with the podcast and help with all these other different X amount of things. Like, you know, like these are your responsibilities. And before, like, you know, if I didn't have a mic, well, what would I do? Like, I had to do all this stuff myself. And I might suck at that stuff. So maybe it wouldn't be as good as it is now, right? So I guess, yeah, the hardest thing was just, or the most challenging thing was just you just had to do a lot more stuff. and didn't have that much help.

But it was fun, you know, I'm not going to lie. Even though it was challenging, it was really fun. Like, sometimes I'll walk through the warehouse and I'll see people building PCs and I'll think, man, I wish I could just like take one day where I'm just going to build PCs all day. I find that really fun, you know, and it would be cool if I can just do that one day.

They probably wouldn't let me near all the expensive parts anymore. Sorry, he's always trying to eat my shoe right now. I'm keeping an eye on her right now. She's like, she's like about to bite my shoelaces right now. Stop that. Sorry. From J776878, will you guys remake the H510 Elite case, but with Airflow? We did.

We did. It's called the H5 Elite. And I pulled it when I was like, we, we have this so that was that i just thought that was a funny one literally did that like three years ago at this point uh and then we're going to go to the last four questions uh this is i'll answer this one from s s g za marron can you stream and play with only one powerful pc 4090 and i 914900k uh so many people have two two pc set up streaming so i want to get your own input i have that I have a 13900K and 4090 and I stream on one PC.

So just want to say yes, you can. You do not need two setups, two PC setups. Honestly, the two PC setup is very complicated. And that's only if you want to have the money for it or two, you have the time for it. And I have the same specs and I can confirm that a 4090 and a 99 can do literally anything that I want. aka playing backyard baseball. I mean, anything. Like literally anything.

It's like Mike said, you don't need a dual PC setup. The only, I guess the only people that I think really would need to have more than one PC are like the people that are doing really heavy production when it comes to their streams. Like I'm thinking like Dr. Disrespect, you know, like if you ever watch one of Dr. Disrespect streams, there's a lot going on, man. It's like you're watching like a Hollywood movie at times. You know, or if you got a lot going on, I can see, you know, why you would need to or not need but want to. It would probably make things easier. But for the most part, you know, if you just have one really powerful PC, like a 4090 and I-9, like you're ready to rock and roll.

Mm-hmm. I agree. From Holy Water Rosie, Holy Water Ozi. What is the best PC on your website that you recommend for beginner PC users who want to sip, dip their toes into a more immersive gameplay on desktop? Well, for beginners, I would recommend the Player 1 series. Primarily, just because they are lower spec. so they're going to be cheaper. And I think if you just want to dip your toes into PC

and not spend a lot of money, that's definitely one way to go. I would also recommend you explore our new PC subscription service. So right now, we just launched this a couple of months ago. The program is currently in beta, so that's why we haven't really talked about it. but you can go rent a player 2 PC from us, and I believe it's $109 a month.

So that's actually another way you can kind of just dip your toes into the PC world without having to worry about building a PC or even buying a PC. You can just say, I'm going to rent one for a month and see if I like it. And if you like it, you can send it back and say, okay, now I'm going to buy one. There's no commitment.

There's no contract of like you're going to have to, rent this PC for X amount of months or whatever. It's literally like you can just rent it for a month and try it out. And if you like it, you can keep renting it if you want. Or you can just say, okay, I'm ready to commit. I know what I like. And if you like that same exact PC, you can just buy it from us too. Yeah, I always say, like SwatCat says in the chat, it depends.

Depends a lot. But it depends on your needs. Depends on what you want to play. Depends on what you're going to do with. PC other gaming, streaming, video editing, production, etc. And then, yeah, I mean, the best way to do is either rent it out and see if it is or play on someone's PC or something like that. See if you like what they have. Yeah.

Okay, last two questions from Samuel. Ivan, what would your dream setup be if you had infinite money? My dream setup would be if I had infinite money. I would have I would I would have like an entire just game room like I would have

and I would have every single console that's ever existed and I would have a dual PC setup so I can like you know play against someone if I had friends yeah I would just have like maybe it would be like in a basement type of environment

where I would just have, you know, I would literally want like every single console that's ever existed, like, you know, Nintendo, Super Nintendo-Nintendo-Niton-Netendo-Six-4, TurboGraphics-X-Exteatari Links, all of that stuff. And I would also want to have my record collection down there because I do have a lot of records, and I love playing records when I'm playing video games. so I would have like a really cool like sound system set up down there as well in my in my gamer basement what about you might mine would be I kind of like the idea it's a game room I would like to have like a four monitor set up at three I would like to have a fourth one like on top have four monitors set up my PC right now is awesome so I'll definitely just keep the I9 39 k the H6 flow and the 49 but then I would like to have like a side, like right to the side,

I can have a TV that I can, like you said, play consoles on, you know? I would love to have that. That would be awesome if I could do that. Like go from this, from playing to be like, you know what? I want to go relax on the couch, watch TV, or I want to go on the couch and play my other thing. I'll do that. I would go over and play video games with you.

For those in the chat asking about the secret word, We have one more question, and then we're going to get to it. Don't worry, money, man. You're not going to be late for work. Don't worry. Last question. For the Bean Lord. He had to design the most overpowered superpower ever, but would it entail.

Being rich, like Batman. Do whatever you want. Well, I guess, I mean, honestly, the most OP superpower ever, it already exists. And that's Superman. I mean, the man of steel. Can't even kill him, right? he came back from the dead. So,

I guess you could kill him with Cryptonite, but as we saw in the comics and movies, he did rise again. So I don't know how you can get more overpowered than Superman, to be honest. Because he can literally do everything.

I saw this thing, and it was really, it was an awesome superpower, which was you control probability. So, like, Any sort of probability you can control. So the lottery, 100% win, death, 0% die, you know, like I feel like that would be such an incredible thing to control probability.

Yeah, you just become, you just become literally you could do anything. Like anything can happen or anything can't happen. What about the, what about like the, if you can have one superpower that, no one would ever know about what would it be hmm that no one can ever know about yeah like you you would be the only person

that knows it what would it be and it couldn't be something like flying because obviously people would see you fly right so what would it be only I can know shoot that's hard I think mine would be reading minds

minds minds would be a pretty good one yeah I would be like What the hell you think about me, Mike? Spidey Senses wouldn't be a bad idea. The social, that's not a bad one either. Visibility. I'm trying to think of, like, stuff that's, like, that'll be easy.

I think telekinesis will be kind of cool. Like, no one else would know that you can, like, move stuff with your mind. I feel like that'd be kind of cool. Why is that book flying out of that show? Yeah, it's like, what the heck is that? And then, you know, it's like, oh, the wind just happened. Don't worry. But, you know, it's just, like, you could do that.

You don't want to read people's minds. That's no good for anyone. I agree. I feel like that would be kind of bad because then you can hear like the bad stuff that think about you. And you can never really trust anyone. I probably don't really want to know what people think about me. You don't know what you don't want to know what I think of you, Ivan.

Good point. And that is the final question. All right. All of them. Thanks to everyone that submitted them. All right. So I'll go through some announcements. And then I'll go ahead.

and give you guys a code for staying with us. So like we talked about with the, with the H6 Flow, the H6 Flow, actually won case of the year by Hardwork Canucks. We actually got the best case of the year. So guys, check out the, yes, thank you. The H6 Flow, you guys, take a look at nzxte.com or type S.mation Point S86 Flow in chat

to take a look at the case, that one, case of the year, which is awesome. Yeah, it was my hardware Canucks as well, which is awesome. Like, I was not expecting that. So let's go, everyone. And the last announcement, we have a bunch of new products coming out. Like we have for award winning 86 flow to, you know, new crackings coming out. You know, we have keyboards, mice.

We have monitors, fans. So if you guys want to take a look at nccc.com or go to N6T on all social media platforms you can take a look at whenever we're releasing new stuff and we have some fun stuff coming this year so keep an eye out all right so everyone this is our way of saying thank you guys for joining us live uh and being awesome and just overall chatting with us so for those that want the code uh we are giving away a poochie a little puck plushy right here uh if anyone wants to uh check a look at the gleam you guys get a secret coder for those that are are live as our way saying thank you for joining us live the code is happy 2024 everyone that is

the code make sure to refresh your page i did change it right before the stream started so please refresh your page uh it is happy 2025 24 everyone that will give you 500 extra entries into the gleam giveaway uh i think that's it i haven do you have anything left i just want to wish Laurent a happy birthday and thank everyone who tuned in live and an extra special thanks to everyone who submitted questions later today Mike will announce the giveaway winners in the giveaways channel on the Discord server and once again if you're not in the Discord server you're missing out join us. 2024 is going to be the year we we make this server pop in so Discord.g.g. slash nzxte and remember to ping at moderators when you join to say hello yeah thank you guys for

joining us remember tuned in live every Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Center time on the official NCC Twitch and don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud and please leave us a positive review if you like what you hear or if you didn't. Got any questions for us. Go to email podcast at nzc.com or tag at n60 on all social media platforms. Happy 2024, everyone. Hope you guys keep up with the new year solutions. Stay safe. Stay healthy. And have a good time. See you guys next time.