NZXT PODCAST - #222 - He Sold His House To Open A PC Shop?! (Ft. Alexandria Customs)

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

On this week's episode of the #NZXT Podcast... We're joined by Cody, the founder of Alexandria Customs! We go over his origin story, what it really takes to run a small PC shop in 2026, the wildest builds he's ever shipped, and a ton of PC repair and maintenance tips you'll actually use. Order or Repair a PC from Alexandria Customs here: https://alexandriacustoms.ca

Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 222. Wow, I can't believe we're all the way here at 222 of the N60 podcast, the official podcast of the N60 community. This podcast recorded live on Fridays on Fridays at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on the official N60 Twitch is available to stream on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. My name is Mike Kim, and before I introduce our very special guest. I want to say thank you to Intel for helping us sponsor this club. We are giving away some stuff right now. We're giving away some hoodie, shirt, and a mouse pad.

But you guys can also join the NZXT Intel Club. You guys can earn poochie points to basically enter into our giveaway. Start now because the more entries you get into the giveaway, or the more points you have, the more entries you get into the giveaway. So start now. you can get some plushies shirts and a monthly free PC. Yes, a free PC, isn't that insane? So please go to nzcc.co slash club or assume major point club in the chat.

And you guys can join the ncxc intel club. Okay, that is it for my thing. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce our very, very special guests. Introducing the man who turned a garage full of GPUs into Canada's sickest custom PC shop. He went from flipping rigs as a thing. team to winning business of the year and pulling out some of the most unhinged theme builds in the game he made a legit working pit boy inside a pc guys like that's insane uh the dragon energy founder of alexander customs please welcome cody cody please introduce yourself to the

audience and what's what you're about hey wow that was super hype i'm super flattered by that thank you i just want to say this is so cool being on this so i wanted to show you real quick, I want to give you a little bit of hype, that little surprise that I have because I'm honored to be on the podcast, this is now a permanent feature of the shop. I don't know if you can see this. But I printed this and framed this. I'm going to have it here at the front desk. I hope people just go, what? What the heck is that? I really hope people get some questionings into that. If they know, they know. If not, I'll be like, oh, yeah, that's my hamster. But I just want to say what I love about the PC space is like that humor.

You have to kind of mask that like in other workplaces or whatnot. I know. Run in the shop here, it's like you get rewarded for that. And you and your job too, right? Like you get rewarded for that. That gamer culture and that gamer humor. I love it. So I'm all about this.

Those NZXT. Chila videos, the edits, the templates, but not those are hilarious so anyways i'm going to have this up in the shop uh as a thank you for this moment oh of course but no thank you for joining us on the podcast like we're super super super excited to have you on this um this is our first time ever having like more of a PC tech person uh we've had like tech influencers but you physically run a PC shop which we're getting too soon so i know there's gonna be a lot of people in the in the chat or asking you know like what's what's the ins and outs of this stuff. But we're going to kind of throw it all the way back to, you know,

early Cody, child Cody, you know. So you grew up in the Alexandria, Ottawa area, correct, in Canada? Yeah, yeah, Ottawa, the capital in Canada. I grew up in a small town outside. So we grew up in Cornwall, which is close to Ottawa. And then Alexandria is an even smaller town near that where I moved about eight years ago. So yeah, hence the name, Andrea Customs. But yeah, living in kind of like a rural area of Canada. Oh, man. Are you a big hockey person?

You know what? Not really. Really? Wow. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess I'm the kind of guy who's into like NGST Chinchilla humor, not so much sports, you know. Understandable.

Understandable. And I'm just honest about it. But being Canadian, yeah, It makes life hard, which again, I'll put emphasis on like, I'm glad that I've made a life for myself here where like I can lean into that side of myself, you know, because yeah, I'm definitely in the minority here in Canada. But I mean, you talked about how you're not into sports, but I assume you're into gaming. So I would love to go back to early stages. Like what got you into gaming in general? Like, well, did you have a console growing up?

Did you make a PC? Yeah, well, as a kid, like, the PlayStation 2 is what got me into gaming. Like, I love my PS2. All I wanted to do all day is just, like, play PlayStation 2. And then there's a game that I really wanted to play. Bioshock, actually. Bioshock came up. But obviously, you didn't come up for the PlayStation 2.

And I grew up, like, pretty poor, so we couldn't afford the Xbox 360. At the time, it's like, oh, man, got to get my hands on the Xbox. But then at EV Games, which is like the Canadian GameStop, I saw Bioshop for Windows Vista. It's like, oh, what? I have a Windows Vista computer, but I just had like a crappy old Dell, you know. But I didn't know. I'm like 11 or 12 years old or whatever.

I buy it. I'm like, I got Windows Vista. I guess I can just play on my Vista PC. Obviously, though, after installing it, putting the disk in, whatnot, I didn't have a dedicated GPU, so it didn't work. So that's what really got me into PC is calling like the tech support for the like 2K games or whatever for Bioshock.

Why is this not loading in my Windows Vista computer? And that's when I learned, oh, I have to put more RAM and a video card in my computer. And it all clicked. I'm like, I can do that. Wow. I remember having a disk drive in our PCs. Like I Like I can't believe that's a thing of the past now

Like like people like you show people like a CD and they're like Where do you put that in the PC? Like I don't understand what this is And you're like oh my gosh I completely forgot like I remember my first PC game was War to Warcraft And then actually having to disc drive Oh man

That's crazy So you talk about Bioshock What other games did you like playing When you were growing up? Well, when I got into it, Bioshock, that's what made me want to actually pursue making my PC gaming capable. And I liked that.

I didn't have too much money, right? So you do it one piece at a time. Two gig stick of DDR2. So attack 9500 GT, you know. So I'm piecing it together, which is awesome, right? When at the time it was like a couple hundred bucks for an Xbox. So it was actually cheaper. But then I'm like, oh, well, what are these other games I can play?

What I love about PC is there's so many free games. And I saw an ad for League of Legends, back when it was like brand new, literally like beta League of Legends. And that really got me into it. I remember seeing 60 FPS for the first time in my life, and that really validated my position to go with PC. Because at the time, now consoles are 60 FPS.

But Xbox 360, it was like standard to play. at 30 fps. When I first loaded up League of Legends that's the first time I saw 60 FPS I'm like, what? Like how is it so smooth?

Oh my God. And then that led me into Oh, Dota 2 came out. That's my big game. I'm obsessed with Dota 2. It's like, no offense to any league players, but like I see it's like league

as like checkers and then Dota 2 is like graduating to chess. Oh my gosh, it's like the perfect piece of game. All the mechanics and whatnot. So that's my big game. But I could list them out.

There's dozens and dozens of games I played on my gaming journey. Oh, man. So in a, someone to chat, Dreamweaver was like, ah, fellow OG league player. I'm like,

you know what? I remember Cases 1 to 3 of league. And I played a little bit Dota and Starcraft and everything like that. Oh. Yeah, I dabble in StarCraft. But no, I had tons of great memories with League of Legends.

It's a great game. I said that in jest. I would. would love to hear so i i heard you know ddrth two and everything like that like oh my god that's a throwback do you remember the the first couple upgrades in that pc of like what what like new graphics card and new CPU threw in yes so uh it was two gigs of dDR2 for a total of four i added the zotak gt 9500 um and then the the final upgrade I did to that system was it had like a core 2 duo like one of the base base

models like 1.8 gigahertz something like that I upgraded it finally to say I upgraded it to a superior dual core I got a core 2 Duo E 7500 it was like a 2.8 gigahertz core 2 Duo and that was me like maxing it out I couldn't afford the core 2 quad but The 2.8 gigahertz core 2 duo that that at the time could run league pretty well. Man, I can't believe that 60 FPS back then was like life changing. And then now if I see 60 FPS on a monitor, I'm like, I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like this.

Where's my 145? Yeah. Oh, I need minimum 120, 144. It's crazy how fast technology expands. So you're you're starting to game. You're starting to get into it. What made you decide to start flipping PCs? I think it was in high school, correct?

Yeah, well, like I said, right? And it all snowballed to this. It's been a crazy journey. Even just, again, being here in the podcast, NXT is like very surreal for me. Because one thing leads to another. But yeah, it started just out of me wanting to upgrade my rig. So, like 13, 14 years old. I had my paper route, so I'd get my paper route money.

I'd literally earn like 20 bucks a week, 30 bucks a week. So I'd like buy office PCs. I'd get like, I'd literally on recycling day, I'd go around and see if people were like throwing out monitors, throwing out like old computers. And then I'd go on, well, I don't even think Kijiji was around at this time. It was like Craigslist. And this was way before Facebook Marketplace. I'd buy like a used gaming GPU or whatever, pop in a gaming GPU.

Now that Junker PC is like a gaming PC, you know, like budget gaming PC. I'd sell it and then use the proceeds to upgrade my own rig. So it was just a hobby like to start. But I'd never stopped once I started. Like any time a good deal would pop up or whatever, you know, I'd snag it and yeah, just keep building. like the appeal of that was it like because you're going to be able to make some money off of it or you're like oh this is like perfectly good like parts like what was the reasoning for you design go you know what i'm going to start dumpster diving it like going to get these parts and stuff yeah well it's a perfect mix of like passion for like just building the PCs themselves like I loved it like being able to take something that's terrible at running games and then upgrading it piece by piece it's just a lot of fun I don't know. It just always appeals to me, being able to mix and match parts.

But also, yeah, just as a means to get money to upgrade my own PC. Like, I'm sure a lot of people can attest, but if they're watching this podcast, it can be a bit of an expensive hobby. Your standards always go up. You know, once your standard is 60 FPS, once you go to your friend's house who has a 120 hertz monitor, 144, a new standard has been set. You got to figure out a way to get that GPU or that CPU. So it was like a 50-50 mix of just loving, mixing and matching the parts, and then wanting to fund my own hobby.

Do you have any funny stories or the funniest deal you ever made when you're flipping on Craigslist and stuff like that? Like, do you remember a funny story? Well, I remember that, like, it was just, kind of funny looking back because I think now if I were to like sell parts or whatever in Kajiji just to like have like a 12 year old or 13 year old like they're waiting with the cash or whatever like I now see that's probably a bit of a rarity you know and my mom would get mad at me she's like don't trust people online like you can't give them your address it was a little more taboo

like when I started so I just find that funny but the one sale that sticks out to me it's not really funny per se but I remember the first time I sold a PC for like serious cash like well at the time to me it was like serious where it wasn't just an office PC with like a

graphics card thrown in or whatever but like I got a brand new case you know like a true flip my first true flip it had a knock to a cooler I got like a used motherboard bundle with a knock to a cooler I got like a brand new case made it all nice like a

true custom gaming computer. And I think it was only like 800 bucks, but like that's a decent amount of money. And to me, I must have been like 16, you know? And I met some of a lot of gas station to sell it. Yeah. And I sold it for 800. And I think my total cost to build it,

piecing it out, you know, might have been around like 400 bucks, 500 bucks. So like to make that money as a 16 year old, to have the cash in hand. And at the time, $800 was a lot to me. To have that in the hand and have the person, like, be happy.

Like, oh, like, this is a great deal. Thank you. Just blew my mind, like, whoa. Like, it said in that moment where I was like, oh, like, I'm on to something. Like, I'm actually, like, really creating value and making, like, the nice case, putting it all together,

getting the windows on there and all the drivers. And it was in that moment where I kind of like got hooked. It was less about just trying to fund my own, you know, gaming PC and more so like, oh, like I'm on to something. So that actually kind of leads into the next section, which is making Alexander Customs. So from the research, and correct me if I'm wrong, you were working as a personal trainer and working at a little tech store during this time. Yes. So what made you decide to go, you know what? I want to go ahead and go all in on making a tech store.

Can you go through the process for that? Yeah, so my hand was kind of forced. Like from that moment where I, first I made like serious money selling that PC. I had kept doing it on the side, right? Like a side hustle. I was working in the gym, personal trainer. and I was working at a tech store, like kind of like a geek squad type store here in Canada.

And then COVID happened. So when COVID happened, both those jobs were like non-essential. But it was very essential to me because, well, on a completely unrelated note, but very related, just nothing to do with tech. I got my girlfriend pregnant, so I had a baby on the way. And I had just bought a house in Alexandria. So all my savings gone and now all my income gone. And I have a mortgage now in the pressure of, oh, babies come.

So what do I do? And at the same time when that happened, I'm now unemployed because both my jobs are gone. I can't find a new job if I want one because it's all locked down. And at that time, I didn't know when it was going to open back up. And everyone in Canada got like $2,000 like Serb payments. like you just like a stimulus basically everyone was getting these two thousand dollar checks all while there's like supply shortages for PCs and demand skyrockets because everyone's home now working from home so it's like the perfect storm to where it's like I'm just going to go all in on building the PCs because that's the only way I know how to make money right now I can't get a job for want one so at that time it's just going nuts building the PC is just treating it like a full-time job and I would have to have cues. Like I would have all my PCs like completely sold and I'd have people messaging, oh, I really wanted it. Like when are you going to have more? So I literally had like a wait list

just as a guy in Kijiji, not under the name Alexandria Customs or whatnot, just selling it and selling it. And at that point, I'm like, okay, I'm loving this. It's working good. I don't want to stop even when the lockdowns went away and I could go back to work. I kept going. I'm like, hey, this is, like, this is awesome. I'm building PCs and I'm making money equivalent to an actual job, right? And then in Canada, once you sell $30,000 or more, it's no longer a side hustle. You're legally required to register as a business, start charging tax and whatnot.

So it's at that point, I'm like, hey, I need a name, I need a logo. I got to make it legit and official. It's beyond a side hustle now. And I chose Alexandria Customs, because I chose, I'm living in Alexandria. PCs are full custom. And it's inspired by Pimp My Ride, like West Coast Customs, where they do like crazy mods on cars or whatever.

And I just wanted to basically be like the Pimp My Ride of PCs, like make crazy PC builds, you know, full custom. Oh, we'll talk about some of those soon. So I'm excited to, for those that are here, you guys do not know what's going to come. Like these, I was looking at like the, the YouTube and Instagram and I'm like these are crazy good like I'm excited to show off soon but I did want to talk about there may be people here that are interested in starting their

business but like you said there's that kind of like all right let's just let's just go for you know so can you can you explain the process like conversation one with your partner to be like you know what let's go all in on this and also can you explain like the day one or week one of making Alexandria customs? Yeah, well, I guess I'm blessed in a way that I was put in that sticky situation because it forced my hand, right? Who knows that there's an alternate universe where I'm like, oh, I'm comfortable. So it remains a side hustle, right?

But it felt really good. It was very validating once I was doing it. and it was working because it's a whole different mentality whenever you're in control the whole process where there's no hourly wage, there's no security, but you're doing a good enough job that it's equivalent. But to have that self-motivation do it is just so fulfilling. And I felt like I always had it in me. I actually wanted to drop out a high school.

I wanted to drop out of high school but I was convinced to keep going like duh you know like at least finish high school you got to and then I signed up to go to college actually to be a paramedic like ambulance driver and then in the summer before I was supposed to start school I'm like oh no you know what I don't want to do it

and the same argument I had when I was talked to my family about dropping out of high school same with when I was going to go to college was the only way it can be happy is if I have my own business. Like, I just, it's just what I want to do. I think I can do it. I don't have the proof, but I think I can do it, but I want to do it. But everyone's like, no, that's not safe.

That's not safe. Oh, and like, you're so smart. Like, don't waste the opportunity. Like, just do it. It's the secure path. And then I realized, like, oh, wait, but, like, the job could just go away like this. Like, it's actually not super secure. So once I started doing it, I had the hunch

and the itch my whole life, I just never committed. But once I was forced to commit and it actually started working, it all just clicked. Like, oh, now I'm swimming downstream, not swimming upstream. I'm aligned with what I'm meant to do. But you don't know until you actually do it. And that's what's scary. If you don't have that external support,

like you do feel kind of crazy. You don't know it's going to work until you try. but I definitely say it's worth trying. But I will say that when the lockdowns ended, I did go back to work for a year straight. So I did it full time for about two years at home as a home business. And then my mortgage renewal was coming up. In Canada, I don't know if it's the same elsewhere.

The banks really don't like self-employment income. They don't like that. Even if you can make the payments, you have good credit. They want to see that you have an employer. like again right the secure path so i'm like oh i got to go back to work or else i might like lose the house i'm like god uh so i went to work at a local factory here so i was busting my ass i was working like 40 hours a week just hauling lifting pallets and whatnot and then going home and all night building the PCs and doing that so you can navigate both now of course it's a lot of work

to juggle both the oh i'm an employee here and the business owner's here on the side, but you don't have to go all in like I was forced to. You can try it out and see, hmm, if I spend 15, 20 hours a week doing this, treating it like a part-time job, and if you start producing results, then you can kind of have your feet wet, you can have an idea of what it might look like before you do the full commitment. So you can dabble. You don't have to, you know, go all in and have like a dramatic moment where, you know, there's no going back. And I always had it in my head.

If anyone's thinking of doing this, something similar, I always had it in my head. Worst case scenario, it doesn't work out. I'm just back exactly where I am if I had never tried. I just go back to work. You know, like I don't get sentenced to death. You know, it's like, I'm out of money. I got to get a job. The same position I'm in when I started.

I mean, that's the same idea of like, well, now if, If it failed or anything like that, at least you knew like, hey, I gave it a try because it would suck being like, you know what? I wish I started that shop. But now you're like, yeah, I worked out and I'm glad it did. You know, I love that mindset. Yeah. And my mentality was if it does fail, well, now I know. I scratched the itch, right?

I had the hunch. Oh, I like effed around and I found out. Well, what are you going to do? I think it's better to have that and just, you know, sacks. satisfy that itch versus living the rest of your life thinking, oh, what if, right? What if? But I think a lot of people are scared, you know, a lot of people, again, the mentality is still like, oh, you got to do the straight and narrow path, go to school. It's like the safe route. You might not get the full support of those around you, right? Especially if you have like a spouse or like parents or who have a certain idea of what you ought to do. And like their concerns may be valid, but like also no one knows what you're capable of until you give it a try so I would say at the very least if you have that it's where you want to try doing something for yourself and if you have tech knowledge if you're the kind of person to watch a podcast like this you probably have very

valuable knowledge that you could offer to people I would say it's worth at least given a shot you know even treating it like a part-time job give it a shot 100% I love that uh as someone in the chat Texas Hawes said like I totally get that mindset I'm like you know I agree you know you got it if there's an itch you got to got to try it out at least yeah and it eventually worked out um you for for what I read you converted an old lawyer's office into your into your current PC shop so first of all tell me the process like you're like this is the one like what was the process of that like So, well, I can tell you, I was sitting in the living room. So I'm thinking, like, hey, it's time.

Like, it's grown to the point where my house, it's full of pallets. Like, I got monitors stacked to the ceiling. I literally, I installed a support beam in my basement because the floor in the living room started sagging because I had like dozens of monitors and cases just stacked in the living room, like all the way to the ceiling. I'm like, okay, it's time. And at this point, too, I have a little kid in the house. I'm like, I need like the work.

home separation. It was time and I could do it. So I was looking at what are the commercial spaces available in the area, you know, like looking on Google or the realtor sites. And then there were a few modest shops, you know, a few like smaller places. But then there's that one big, the old lawyer's office in the corner. It had two vaults in it because before it was a lawyer's office as a bank. So it literally had two vaults in it, like huge, right on

Main Street in our town. So I don't live in a big town, but like it's like the most visible spot you could possibly get in my town. That was like pretty expensive. So I was like, nah, you know, nah. But then I was sitting there on the lazy boy looking and like my partner was in the room. And I was like, could you imagine? One of the vaults.

I'm like, but what if? But what if? You know? And then eventually, you know what? I'm like, okay, if I'm going to believe in it, if I'm going to do it at all, I might as well just go all in. Like no more holding back. I'm already this far. Like, let me just get an awesome spot.

Like, I'd rather it too big than too small. And I really wanted to make a splash. Like right on the main street and everyone's going to be driving by, it's like, boom, here I am. So I did it. I knew I'd have the money for it. It was a two-year lease because I was. I was using the money that I had working at the factory to renovate my house, which I then sold to get all the money to get the lease,

as well as whatever equipment and fixtures I need to actually open up the store to transition from a home-based business to the store. Yeah. Wow. That's, I like the, I'm going to better my self mentality. Yeah, like go big or go home. I like that. Right.

Again, it goes back to the what if, you know? I found out what happened. And actually, I'm in a new store now. So it's actually a bit smaller, but it's got a garage. So this place used to be an actual, like, workshop. Things were going good, but, like, for various reasons, I didn't want to renew the lease. A big reason being this place, I actually have the opportunity to buy instead of just rent. So I actually went through the process of moving down the street.

It's like two minutes from where the other place was. But it actually works a lot better. The other place is like it had carpets. It was like an old 1970s like, you know, office type space. This is an actual garage, which if you want to ask questions about the equipment and whatnot, like I can go into that, but it's better. Like I can dust in there and not have to vacuum 24-7. I got monitors just all around screwed right into the wall.

It's the perfect workshop. Oh, actually, you know, let's let's go into the next section, which is physically running the shop. So, you know, you have the base. Now, how are you running this thing? Like, is it strictly, oh, I'm just going to make PCs and sell it? Like, and I saw that you started doing more like repairs and home calls. So like what originally was like the first thing you're like, I need to do this first? Yeah.

So it started. just PC, right? Because that's the passion. That's what I'm all about. That's what it's all about. And I knew I'd have a base for doing repairs because just selling them online out of my house, a lot of people would ask, oh, can you fix my PC? Oh, I'm having a Windows crashing issue. Can you upgrade my PC? But my rule was, if I didn't build it, I'm not going to service it because limited capacity, right? I'm running it out of a bedroom. I can't have people walking in like a store. But I knew I'd have that. So I'm like, hey, there's business to be had with just PC. But then naturally, people are like, oh, well, my laptop's having issues. Can you have a look at that? Well, I guess that's a PC, sure. So I'll do a laptop too. And then people would be like, oh, and also like my phone's giving me a problem. Like, oh, can you just take a quick look?

I'm like, oh, don't normally work on phones, you know, but, you know, sure. I had the prior experience, right, from working as like a, you know, retail tech store employee. So I'm like, well, sure, I'll do it. You know, hourly rate, let's do it. which just kept cascading into, oh, well, you do phones. Like, my kid smashed their iPad. Like, could you fix the screen? I'm like, uh, maybe, you know?

So I YouTube did how to repair iPad screen. And when I started, I would literally just get the part on Amazon and watch a YouTube tutorial. Now I've like, hey, there's suppliers and whatnot where you can get like a more like steady, consistent, you know, source for parts. and whatnot, but just one thing led to another. And it snowballed into now the best things to work on are PCs, laptops, phones, especially screen repair and battery replace. Laptops, like half the jobs are literally just reinstalling windows or repasting them if they're overheating, maybe upgrading RAM or storage, and then tablets swapping out.

like tablet screens. And then just general tech support, you know, if people just need help. Literally, it could be just someone is getting a weird glitch where their Facebook logins messed up. You ought to clear the cash or whatever. But all of this is actually really important to people coming in. And yeah, there's infinite work amongst those things I mentioned, infinite work in my area because no one else was fulfilling the need.

A quick question, actually, do you repair more than like cell PCs or is it like a 50-50 split, 60-40? It's like a nice mix. So the repairs are steady. It's non-stop. Like I don't know if you notice the phone was ringing right when the podcast started. I turned the ringer off. The phone's ringing all day. People just keep coming in because anything, I don't know if like a lot of people might be able to

relate that like if you're the technological person in the family, you're just constantly bombarded with people asking questions. Well, at a certain point that that tech person in the family might be gone for school or they might just not want to deal with it on their weekend or whatever. So they come here and they want help with that. So even not just like the repairs and the PCs, there's a lot of valuable work you there. So that's steady. And then there's just a Windows update might come out that's glitchy. And now everyone's coming in. They need help. They need help. So the repairs are super steady. They're like the bread and butter. But then the PCs, it's like quality versus quantity comes to like a transaction. So it's a big deal. It's probably like an

auto repair shop, I'm sure, where it's like all day they're doing oil changes and they're swapping and tires and looking at engines and picking and prodding at cars where they might sell a couple cars in a week or in a month. But when they do, it's a big deal. Like they celebrate. Like, okay, we got a sale. So the mix of the two is really good. It's probably about.

Wow. You know, now that I'm thinking about it, yeah. Like, when you equated to a car, like a car shop, I completely thought, like that actually actually makes a lot of sense that like, oh yeah, like they're not just selling cars. Like they, a lot of times they're repairing cars that they already sold or they're part of the same manufacturer. So they're like, oh, yeah, I can fix up that engine. And that honestly makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And I know you talked about like repairing and stuff like that and doing you eventually started to like branch out like on your website. I see half price Tuesday, free doorstep delivery, a house call. So like what made you start to expand on? that repair idea? Well, the house calls is just there's a lot of issues where you have to be on site. Like if you want to set up someone's printer with their Wi-Fi, you've got to be on site.

Some people, too, like they just want help getting it all set up because if you just buy a computer at Walmart or something and you bring it home, but you've never had PC before, you're like, now what? So people really like the doorstep delivery. That way it's like, okay, let's get it all set up. Let me show you. Like, let me discuss refresh rate, show you how to make sure you're getting most out of your monitor. Let me show you how all the RGB software works.

Like, people online don't boast about, oh, I don't know how to change the lights in my range or whatnot. But like, you could be a bit overwhelmed if you're your first time with PC, right? Because with constantly, it's plug and play. So a lot of people, especially if they're spending a lot of money, they're like, hey, my console was like a couple hundred bucks. I'm investing in a $4,000 PC. They really like having someone facilitate that experience. So it's like, look, let me get it all set up. Any questions you have, anything that arises, will handle it.

So that is a huge add-on to where you can compete as a small shop where a large shop just literally can't. Like they can't send an employee to have that one-on-one. Because as a small shop, you can't compete on price because you can't buy in quantities, you know, like six figure orders or seven figure orders. Like, I don't have the money for that or the connections. But, you know what, I can take really good care of you as a customer. So to be able to offer that is a big value ad. And anyone who has a car, you don't need to have a shop to do that.

That's how it started out of the bedroom. It's like, yeah, it's a bedroom business, you know. kind of sketch, but, oh, it's not a parking lot deal, like if you bought it off Kijiji or, I keep saying Kijiji, I think that might be a Canadian thing, but it's like Craigslist or like Facebook Marketplace. You might be a bit skeptical purchasing something like that off of, you know, a parking lot deal, because what if it doesn't work when you get home, right? So it's just a huge value ad.

And if you want to also, like some people, oh, it's Timmy's 13th birthday. He really wants a PC, but I know nothing. Can you help? Well, I'll literally build the desk even. If you want to bundle it with a desk, a chair, it's full setup. So that's a huge, huge service that there's just no way to scale that. But if you're willing to pack it all in your car and go do it, people would be very thankful for you to offer that as a service.

Let me just make the PC appear. And it'll work. That's how you add the value. Yeah. And anyone who's in the PC, most of the people watching this podcast, that's something that they have the knowledge and the power to do if they wanted to offer that in their local area. Honestly, I think that that's such a true thing. Like having someone come by, be like, hey, like, face to face.

Like, you know, buying from like a big gromer or a big company. Like, it's hard. like okay i have the knowledge they send out a lot of stuff but having that like hey i will come over i'll help set it up for you let's get this done like that is such an easy my especially for um someone in a chat talked about like some people just want the ease of mind and they may not have the knowledge like for us it's really easy to set a pc you know you got the PC the monitor but i mean in in my thing like i don't know much about cars versus the someone else that may know a lot about cars. So like if they're like, oh yeah, just check the head gasket and see if that works.

I've been like, I don't know what that is. What are you talking about? Safety with PC is like, oh, yeah, you just got to plug it in. They're like, what, there's like eight plugs when you, where do I plug it in? And it can be convinced. Yeah, 50% of the time, if you don't make note, you will get a call about a black screen because it's plugged into the motherboard. Not the GPU, right? But naturally, right? It's at the top. So you try that one first, right? Yeah. If you don't know, you don't know. Exactly. And it makes. And it makes. sense right like you're playing the USBs in there there there's an hdeme like yeah throw it in there plug it in there right that makes sense yeah

yeah that's how you can compete it's just to add that value you know what can you do the other people can't if you're just looking for the best priced system that has like a 5080 the 9800 x3d or whatever your best bet is to probably just buy a pre-built online and if you have that knowledge where you know what you're buying and you know how to set it up that might be the best option for you. And I'll tell people that straight up. But if you're the type of person who wants that service, that's where you can offer value.

Exactly. Especially for the high end. Like hardline liquid cooled, that's a whole other beast. You don't only want the PC, but you want to know, okay, if this thing leaks or if it needs maintenance, I need someone who can do that. So if you can do that and specialize, that's a big plus too. Do you have a funny

story about your first time or not your first time, but do you have a funny story that you remember doing like a repair or setting someone's like setup or anything like that? Well, there was one PC that I built years ago that had like it had like a bunch of crystals all over it and whatnot. It had like a really cool custom loop.

It's all like EK fittings and whatnot. And it was like a teenage girl. Her mom was buying it for her for her birthday. And then when we got it all set up, it was like a surprise. So like she like Kay called it in like, Kay, I just want you get it all set up, have it ready. She like made her like a little gaming room with like the desk and everything. And then when it was time for her to like show her daughter like,

happy birthday, here you go. She walked in. The girl saw the PC like all the little crystals in it and whatnot. And like she literally started crying. So it's not really funny, but I was like, wow, like, this is cool. Yeah, to be a part of that moment. Like, she's literally crying. The PC was so sick.

That's dull. So that was awesome. And that was like an early experience. I've had similar experiences every now and again after as well. But that was the first one where it's like, whoa, like, that was a profound PC delivery. Honestly, that makes sense though, right? Like for us, like we know how PCs work. And if you got one, you're like, okay, cool.

But like, first ever, I'm finally able to give my parents, you know, help make this. Like, that's so special. That's so awesome. And I think the funny thing is, I'm sure most people watch this will have seen the meme where it's like, spent five grand on my gaming PC. Now I can play Minecraft. I think that was her main game. So she had like custom loop. like a crazy gaming PC to play Minecraft.

Hey, now you play with a little bit of mods. Am I right? With mods, yes, and full chunks. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I've worked customer service here for a little bit during COVID. And my favorite call I ever had, the, it was, I think it was like a grandma or grandpa. It was like it was an older, like elderly, you know.

This is my grandson. kind of thing and uh he was like oh i did my son wants to play fortnight uh and valeran or whatever i'm like oh yeah totally you know like do you guys have a budget or anything like that and the kid gets all the phone and just goes i would like a 4090 i 9 13900 k oh oh oh i see what you're trying to do buddy and i i was like this kid this kid knows and what you tell the grandmas oh so look For school, he's really going to need the 49. So he gets better grades on his homework. The sad part is, I'm, again, I'm kind of like, one of the truth of like,

your grandson doesn't need a PC like this for things. Um, and no, but I, I think I audibly heard the kid go, no, but luckily it worked out for both of us. I was being true. I'm like, I got, I can't, I can't let you just buy a four. 494 fortnight just to let you know like it you don't need to do it but yeah the grant the grandpa grandma was like it's okay i got the money for it so i was like all right all right the kid worked out in did so the kid oh my god yes kid oh those games are quite easy to run oh yeah you can find out those laptops yeah but oh my gosh that kid was probably like the most ecstatic like he was probably like

oh okay we're good now we're chilling grandpa grandma that's awesome um um oh oh oh I would love to talk a little bit about repairing and maintenance. Yeah. A lot of people, like, even for me, like, I know, you know, to clean the PC every couple months. If you have a, if you have a dog or a cat, probably even a couple weeks at most. Yeah. What is, like, the number one reason, like a PC walks into your shop? And, you know, what could the owner or owners have done to prevent it from?

going to the repair shop in the first place? So most of the time, it's like through no fault of their own. Like really, it's just a lot of the time it's just a software issue. Windows gets corrupt. Windows reinstall. That's the most common thing, really, like if they're not able to boot. Sometimes in Windows update, like they have a sudden loss of power, or it literally just, you know, glitches out,

and they just need maybe a data recovery and a reinstall. and there's not much they could have done to prevent that. Also, like, ramstick failing, that's super common. Like a ramstick just going bad. Like literally, 50% of the PC repairs that come in will be solved by one of two things. Replacing a ramstick or reinstalling Windows. That's literally it.

Beyond that, it's a whole slew of things. There's like a thousand other things could be beyond that. But that's all super common. And there's not much they can do to prevent that. It's very rare that someone comes in and, like, they actually broke it. Usually it's just sitting on the desk and then it's broken. The only thing, really, I guess, would be, like, neglect. Like, if it's been four or five years and they never dusted it out, they have the dog or the cat,

it might be time for a repaste and a deep clean, and then that fixes their issue, you know. But you'll know that the temperatures will read high. What's some like we talked about a little bit about that is like is there something that owners, especially PC owners should do to maintain like just cleaning, you know, X or to do this like testing or anything like that? Yeah. Like if you visibly see dust buildup and hair buildup, it's going to start to, you know, affect your performance. Even if it's not crashing or whatnot. And that's why people let it go for so long. even if it's not crashing your GPU and your CPU,

they're just going to throttle themselves down. They'll thermal throttle. So you're not going to have a crashing computer, your CPU is not going to burn itself out and kill itself. But it's just going to get a little more sluggish if it starts building up a lot of hair and a lot of dust. So just unplug it, clean it up, get those little air duster cans or whatever, and just spray it out.

You don't have to actually wipe it with the glass clean or whatnot unless you care about the aesthetic, which is nice to do, but for functionality's sake, literally just remove the dust and whatnot. And that's it. As long as the PCs power down and you don't go crazy, like, you know, spinning the fans up, it's all good. And I think people are actually kind of scared to touch the computer. I get a lot of flak online because I share videos of deep cleaning or refurbishing a computer. And I have a compressor and I blow it. And they're like, oh my God, the moisture in the compressor is going to, like, destroy the components.

The moisture is really bad for the components. Or, oh, like, you let the fan spin. Like, I'm not holding it, so it's like, 7,000 RPM, you know, spins a little bit. They're like, oh, you're going to fry the motherboard. It produces voltage. It's like, listen, you don't have to be afraid. You can touch, like, components, unless you're trying to break it, you know, you can touch. They're actually quite durable.

As long as it's unplugged. you know when you use common sense don't be afraid to dabble i think it's great even if you bought a pre-built pc or whatnot like you can still swap parts and upgrade and whatnot watch a youtube tutorial watch it twice if you want to be certain you know but like it can be a bit nerve-wracking let's say you want to upgrade your ram or whatever like clean them up pull them out oh you got to apply a little bit of force it might be a little scary to get it to click you know you might cringe a little but If you're not trying to break it, you probably won't. So that's all I would say is don't be afraid to open it up.

Get your feet a bit wet. Honestly, the RAM and putting into CPU to the stay still haunts me, still scary. I know you're supposed to do it. Still terrifies me to this day. Yeah. I would have to say probably on a point of that, that's contrary to what I just said, probably the two most delicate things that you should watch out for is one very, very careful inserting the CPU that you don't bend the pins on the socket. So be very gentle.

That's all. Don't drop it and be very gentle. And taking a cooler off, let's say you do have overheating and you're going to try replacing your own thermal paste. I see a lot of people on the AM4 CPUs. Not really a problem with the Intel CPUs and the AM5, but on the AM4 CPUs where the pins are on the actual processor, I see a lot of people who have crusty thermal paste ripping the CPU right out with their cooler.

So be careful with that. If it feels like it's a lot of excessive force to get your cooler off, heat it up first, like run the PC if you can, so it gets a bit hot and then kind of wiggle it like a loose tooth like when you're a kid you know it wiggles more and more

wiggle it versus like yanking it right up because it's rare but those are the most common like boo-boos I see when people are working on their own PCs ripping the CPU right out the socket when they're removing the cooler

or bending the pins on the socket if it's an AM5 or Intel board so be very careful for that Marisha Marishter in the chat says pins on the socket Do you mean pins on the CPU?

No. Well, technically both, right? Like you don't want to do the gold pins on the CPU But that is something I do notice Is the socket itself. Yes. So if it's AM4, like an older AMD, the pins will be on the CPU itself.

Those are the ones that are prone to sticking to the cooler If you have dry CPU paste. Luckily, if it's not too badly bent, you could actually just take like a credit card or, you know, like a metal object and bend the pins back. But if you have an AM5 motherboard or an Intel motherboard, the CPU socket pins, they're very, very fragile. And if you bend them, it's very, very hard to bend them back in the place.

You can with tweezers if it's minor, but if you have a significant bend in those, you have to pray they were important pins, which they probably were. Or it's just cooked and you have to get a new motherboard. And no one will RMA that if you're building a PC and you touch those, it's an instant disqualification from RMA usually if they see damage to that. So that would be my word of caution. Other than that, though, don't be scared. That's literally the two that I see.

Otherwise, it's like you almost can't mess it up. Like, you can't plug the wrong connector into the wrong socket usually because it just won't fit. I think that's one of the things that a lot of people kind of overlook. Yes, it is better. And I will always recommend, if you have the ability to build a PC, one, it will be cheaper, but two, having that knowledge of, like, where each part goes is fantastic. But like you said, there is a risk of you physically damaging a part, you know? and if you break that part, that's on you.

Obviously, don't be scared and you should do your research or maybe have someone that's build a PC so they can help you out. But that is something that we're like, you know what? Maybe you should buy from a PC shop to be like, you know, just in case. Yeah. Well, I think it's a great middle ground to like say you never had a PC to like either get like a used one where the stakes are a bit lower and it's a bit cheaper or like start with a pre-built but then start with an easier upgrade.

Like, hey, I'm going to start by just cleaning it, you know, dusting it, being careful, you know. And then, oh, maybe I'll try adding RAM, pushing it in, watch a YouTube tutorial, then add the RAM. Maybe I'll try adding a drive, expand storage. Because that's just great about PC. Even if you get a pre-built, it's not like a console where it's completely closed off. I know you can add storage to consoles now, but that's about it. Even a pre-built PC, you could still swap parts. Even CPU and GPU, that's what's awesome about pre-built PCs.

You can get it pre-built as like your starter. Start with the cleanouts and then swap RAM, add drives. And then, you know, four or five years later, you could actually get a new CPU and a new GPU and install it yourself. At that point, you've almost built the whole thing yourself. So, you know, you can do it one step at a time. I agree. Actually, that is something that I would love to talk a little bit about. is um so first question is yeah PC comes into your thing into your shop saying it's not working

what are like the top like couple things you check first just to be like all right let's just go through the checklist or it's like these are the top things that people should do just in general just to check yeah so like if your PC's giving you issues it's like order of operations basically people ask all the time like what caused the problem and a lot of the time I can't say I don't know what caused it, but I can tell you what fixed it. I say basically fixing a PC is like throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks. And you start with the most likely. The most likely fixes, if something comes in, try clearing CMOS and see if that gets it to boot. That's the two little jumper pins on your motherboard. When your computer's turned off, you put a metal object between the

two CMOS pins, or you take the little button battery out, then you drain the power for 10 seconds, put it back in. That sometimes fixes it if you just had a little you know, loss of power or something, the system gets discombobular. Reinstall Windows, that's a super common fix if you think it may be software-related. Usually you know it needs a Windows reinstall. If it boots and it's giving you like a Windows error, if you're getting an actual fail-to-start message like in Windows, well, you know it could be software because if it was hardware, you might not even get to that screen. If it's hardware, the most common is one, maybe clearing CMOS. We'll just get you back in.

and that's it. Or RAM. That's super common. Check for bad RAM stick. You can pull one stick out, see if the other one boots with just the one stick. If it doesn't, take that one out. The other stick in, see if it boots. Now you might have identified a bad RAM stick. And then probably the next most common, like failure, if it's hardware, if it's not bad RAM, if it's not a software issue where Windows reinstall fixes it, would be a failure. I find drives fail a lot. Hard drives obviously prone to mechanical failure because they have the spinning disk inside.

And if you're running a hard drive as your boot drive, it's probably pretty old at this point. Yeah. Oh, gosh. SSDs, especially if you're a gamer, you're constantly installing large files, deleting them, overwriting them. The more you use an SSD, the more you diminish it. It's like a wear item, basically. And after a number of years, they just get unreliable or just die. So drives fail often enough after a number of years.

those would be the most common. But then the list continues down to like maybe 80% are in like the first five, six, seven things you try. And then there's that one PC that you got where you're on like item number 67 on the list of like what to try. And that's the one that fixes it. That's the,

that's fun. But those are the most common ones. Yeah. So we talked about things that people should try, you know, like just be like, Hey, just see, you know, clearing C-MOS, like some, you know, things are usually get cleared up with that. Some, some motherboards even have like a button now, which is awesome. Yeah, on the back.

Yeah. What is a, what's something that you would tell people not to do, like to be like, okay, I would recommend going into a PC shop and getting that repaired. Yeah. Well, I would say, well, what? One, if it's anything that you just, if you feel you're in completely over your head, like you've watched the YouTube video and then you're just like, oh. If you can't afford to lose the value of whatever part you're working on, then like maybe leave it to the professional.

But those things I described, like pulling the RAM stick, reinstalling Windows, it's kind of low stakes. Like you almost like, you can't mess it up really. Like it's not the end of the world. But like let's say your GPU is overheating. You bought a pre-built PC that has a 50-90 in it. Oh, and now it's getting real hot. Maybe replacing the thermal paste in the GPU will solve that, right?

If you don't feel comfortable with that, well, it's kind of delicate. And then if you break the 50-90, you're out, like 5 grand now, 6 grand. So maybe not. So kind of weigh the risks with your comfort level, but literally anything that you could do to a PC, there's infinite content online for free if you just punch it in a YouTube, how to do it. So I would say that if you feel you could probably do it and then in the worst case scenario, you'd be at total peace with the consequence, you know, try it. But if you feel you're kind of in over your head and you can't accept the worst case scenario, let's say like destroying your fitness. 50, 90, then don't do it. So you got to weigh the cost and the best.

And it depends on the situation and the person, their comfort level. I actually really like that because you're not telling people, oh, just don't do this. Like, you're like, it's up to how far you want to go and then you go to the expert after that. I really like that advice. And everything that I learned is literally just on YouTube and like reading forums and everything. I didn't take a course. And even if you take a course for PC, it's going to be outdated in two years.

You have to kind of just stay on top of it, right? Like your feed, your algorithm, and the people watching is probably constantly popping up those updates, right? It's always changing. So you just have to kind of absorb the information and navigate your comfort level. But those would be the harder ones, I'd say. If you want an actual list of the hard ones,

like working on hardline liquid cooling, definitely, you know, proceed with caution. if you're not comfortable. Repasting a GPU, proceed with caution. Pretty delicate. Beyond that, though, it's kind of hard to mess up. Like watch YouTube and yeah, PCs are awesome. This is great about them.

Like if you want to install a RAM stick or a motherboard or whatnot, it's hard to mess up. And the consequences are low. Like if you mess up your motherboard headers, it might be hard. Oh, they're so tiny. Like, oh, did I connect my front panel connect? Well, if you mess it up, you're not going to fry the computer. You know, it's just not going to turn on.

Or your hard drive is going to light up as your power light or whatever. You know, it's not going to be the end of the world. But that's what I would say. When you're working on expensive components and you feel you're in over your head, be careful. And then, of course, anything custom liquid cooling, don't let it leak when it's, powered on. That would be my two biggest watch out.

Oh, that's like the, I've seen so many videos of like their custom and it just starts sport out water on my own. And it happens. Sometimes through no fault of your own, you just got like a defect in the radiator and it's got a bit of a leak or whatever.

But if you ever do that, then you just have to test it without the PC powered on. There's adapters you get for your power supply or you can power the custom loop. and do a leak test before actually booting up the system. We talked a little bit about custom water cooling. So I do want to go into the awesome stuff you've made in the past.

Like I was looking at your thing. I'm like, this is incredible. So first of all, I want to show off to the people like this is a working pit boy inside of this case. like this is so cool like it's so cool so cool so i would love to know like what like what was like the direction of like you know what let's do this well this was a custom request so somebody had reached out to me uh they saw the website they're like hey uh the new fallouts coming out this was i believe before um yeah i think it's old news now i built the a while back but um is it fallout four it was like the big fallout release is coming out anyways

and this guy wanted to max it out and he's like i just want to go all in i've been a fallout fan my whole life and i want a pip boy inside the computer i want it all out fallout theme so i'm like okay let's do it uh from there i just had to figure it out you know It's got a 3D printed pit boy in it I hired a local guy because I have a 3D printer now but at the time I didn't this was back when I was still doing it in the bedroom

and to talk about comfort level too I was actually pooping my pants a little bit doing this because it was a 30-90 build it was at the time the most expensive piece I've ever worked on so I'm like doing all this custom stuff like with the 3090 right there so it's like I was in my comfort

zone you know it's no different from installing a cheaper GPU but literally at that time just the value of it I'm like oh it's so precious that would be very full but putting the pit boy in the PC was awesome it was just a little hdm i display that i bought online i think i got it on an alley express and it's just powered with USB i just routed them out the back of the case for power used the HTML and the GPU as the port. And then the actual Fallout theme is just wallpaper engine on Steam to get the background. It was a little

Fallout Pit Boy background. Fallout has a huge following. So luckily there's tons of resources online you can get for these things. So wallpaper engine powered the Pitboy walking animation. And then I wanted it to actually be functional. So the Pipboy screen, I got a software called FPS monitor where you can just view all your system specs and stats and whatnot. And I got it in like a Pit Boy appropriate font all green.

So with the little walk and fallout guy animation from the wallpaper engine, you had like your CPU usage, temperatures all listed out the green LCD. And man, that was a fun project. Literally a PC that you can't get anywhere else. and this guy was so passionate about follow. I'm like, I can't let him down. Like, I can't have it be lackluster, you know? Like, I gotta make it sick.

So there's a lot of pressure. It was one of the more elaborate builds that I had done. And that was when I'm still transitioning. Like, that was literally right dead in between where I am now at the shop, where I've got all this behind me and I feel pretty established. And like when I was just getting started in the bedroom. It's like right in the middle. So that fallout PC is almost like a trial.

It was like a milestone. I love that build. And you, you went. And usually when you do like these things, I just like, who, you know, that was like one and done. But you do so many of these awesome ones. There's this horror one, which was really cool from Resident Evil, like the body parts. And there's a head. And then you had this really cool, like, custom built.

Like, it looks like a racing car kind of thing. Like, it looks, it looks like a futuristic engine. Like, I love those wild builds. Like, honestly, I live for those. I do it all day long if I could just because it's just so sick. They might be, though, like, one in 50, you know, one in 50 or one in 100. Like, there's that person who's really passionate for. fallout or like they really want that PC and if they're willing to go there i'm willing to go there

and i love it but most people just want like a practice computer you know might want some nice lights or whatever and i'm all about that too but it's always a special treat whenever i get a project like that i always go all in and i'll be honest about this from a business perspective maybe from a promotional standpoint portfolio standpoint it makes sense but like my return on time is like garbage on all of those like i'm making less than minimum wage probably on most of those because i'll spend like 80 hours on it or 100 hours on it but i'm like worth it like hey man you're coming to me with this vision i'll do my very best i love that i love those yeah did you i'll do a few a year did you what was like the most difficult build did you ever have to do was it the

fallout one or was there another one that you're like this was like the toughest one took the most hours on the most difficult one for sure was uh it was called the overdrive it was um i don't know if you ever saw a zaw made it it's a case shaped like an engine it looks like a v6 engine um and i bought a few of those cases and i'm like wow this is wild it's outrageous it's exotic i got a build in it And I'm like, I can't just build a standard PC in this. Like, I got to go custom loop water cooling. So all of the motherboard and everything, though, is, like, deep inside the case. So it's like to do anything, you have to, like, do weird angles, you know?

Like, I had to pull out in the I Fixit kit that I got. It's like a bendy screwdriver. It's rare actually need to use that thing. It's a screwdriver that you can, like, bend. Like, it's like a wet spaghetti noodle. I had to use that basically get all the motherboard screws in and everything. and then to route the custom loop in with hardline in a way that's aesthetically pleasing,

it was so hard to work on that. And then the cherry on top of that is when you finally get it all working, it's all set up, leak tested, put the coolant in, it's all working. The person who got that one commissioned a second.

He wanted two. So I had to do it all over again, which I was happy to do But it was a real challenge, it's the thing. Because one, the functionality of the hardline cooling and two, wanting it to still look good, you know, and be clean. Because you could always try to rats nest it. Like, okay, let me just plug it all in where it has to. But then it ruins the appeal, you know, because it's like a showpiece.

You want to check it out and have the cables routed, you know, in a way. And to do it in that case, I would never recommend building in that case from like a practical standpoint. The least practical case I've ever seen in my life, but also the coolest. That and the fallout one get mentioned all the time still when people come in the store. Like, oh, you built that engine one. Oh, you built that fallout one. The engine one is definitely one of them. And that was the hardest one I've ever built, for sure.

Oh, there's a couple community questions will go in real quick, and we're going to go into some fun rapid fire questions. maybe our little pick three cut three game that I have so from Marischatter was dealing with warranty issues a problem when he first started up I'm not sure if you mean like warranty like from me having RMA with manufacturers or the customer having to like claim warranty through me so I guess I can answer both real quick when it comes to me having RMA parts like when I order them. It's usually like a pain paperwork,

having to ship it and whatnot, but I found most major manufacturers to be pretty honorable. And it's maybe a one in a hundred. It's a one in a hundred when you get a dud if you're buying brand new parts. So that's that. A bit of a pain, but no big deal.

When it comes to honoring warranties of customers, it's not so much a pain for me because my policy is always just honor in full. It's fully covered for as long as it's in the coverage period. Whatever it is, I just get to the bottom of it. So it's just like any other repair, except I don't get paid, but it's kind of like priced in with the PC. Like, it's fine. And if you have a particular PC, like, let's say you sell a really high-end PC and then you have to replace a really expensive component and like you take an L on that PC.

Well, it's just, it's like insurance. Like, it's just absorbed. by all the other PCs that don't have that major failure. So it's totally cool. Just get it fixed and that's fine. The only problems that I have and I always feel bad when it happens is the one thing I don't cover in the warranty is like the transportation. Like that's the one thing that I say with the guarantee. If you have problems, whatever it is. Like I'll take care of it, but you have to bring it here.

And people sometimes get real upset about that. Like, oh, well, I don't have the car and there's a lot of work. It's hard to get it all unplugged. So, like, I kind of feel bad whenever, like, people get upset at that. But other than that, it's not a problem at all because as long as you honor it in full, then it's not a problem. You're just upholding your end of the bargain, and it's priced in. There you go. The last thing you want to do is, like, skimp out on the word.

You'd be like, oh, sorry, like, goes to the customer or something. Like, that's a great way to make sure that you fail and you don't. succeed. Like the whole point in someone getting a computer from somebody local is that they have that like white glove service. Like that you're their guy. You're not even just selling the PC to make the sale. Like you're selling a PC to get the customer. Like they might get their next four PCs from you. Like there's PC is probably going to be a thing. I hope for both our sake and everyone watching. PC is probably something to be a thing in 20 years. So you want them to stick around. So if you take care of them, even if you take the L on, you know, their 30, 90 breaks or 40, 90 breaks and you got to

take it out of pocket, they'll be back because they'll be like, oh, thank God you fixed my 4090. Well, thank God he fixed my 3090. And they're going to tell all their friends. And if you refuse, if you're like, oh, well, you know, basically if your scumbag, they're going to, for sure, tell everybody. Oh, 100%. We're all going to know about it. 100%.

I mean, word of mouth is honestly the best way. Like, I've done like a couple like surveys and stuff like that. We do these things called virtual feedback events where we have people come on and just like they give us like super honest feedback about N6T and everything like that. And one question I always asked like, well, how did you like buy something from us like 90% of the time? I was like, oh, you know, maybe we form an ad, right? Notes. My friend bought an NXCPC from you guys. or hey my friend has an n60 PC or has an 66 case and I decided to get one.

Like word of mouth is huge. Oh yeah, absolutely. So yeah, basically it's not a problem as long as you don't make it a problem. And you have to offer the guarantee because like it's a big purchase. You don't want to sell people lemons. And I guess the guarantee is only a problem. if there's so many consistent problems with your product that you're just overwhelmed with warranty claims, well, then that's definitely a problem, but it's not the warranty.

It's the product. So basically just do the right thing. That's the policy. And I actually have a super long YouTube video where it's like I can make like a silly humor. You know, I can make a wacky reel or TikTok or whatever. and like it takes off. But then I make these super deep dive videos where I go all in like the warranty process,

like tips for like pleasing the customers and whatnot. And like only a few hundred people will see it. But if you're interested in that, I have a YouTube video. It's like an hour long. It's like like 20 some rules for like selling gaming PCs where I go into a deep dive about like warranty, like how to keep the customers happy and keep them coming back.

And I just let it all out. I'm a complete open book. And you can even DM me on one of my pages if you have more specific questions, if you'd like me to elaborate. I'd be very happy to do that. That is awesome. I honestly love that open book thing because a lot of people will be like, oh, you know, they're like, let me tell you how it is. Fantastic. Yep.

Oh, from Texas Haas. How often do you recommend dusting a PC? So it depends on your environment, right? Like if you have a really dusty house, like tons of cats and dogs and, you know, if you have really bad dandruff, it's all over the place. It's more frequent. But you can see it, right? Take a look. It will literally collect. You'll see it. If you just can't see, like, you don't have a glass side panel or whatever, you can also keep an eye on your temperatures and not. But it generally works out to about like once or twice a year. That's it. Once or twice a year. But yeah, feel free to eyeball it. Like if you can put your finger on it and it starts turning gray, it's about time. Awesome. Oh, yeah. So that's it for the custom questions because we had a lot of answered during the actual thing.

Let's go ahead and do a little fun thing. We'll do a couple pick three cut threes or keep three cut threes of these things. And then we'll do a little bit of rapifier. and then we'll go to announcements. All right. So we're going to do Keep 3 Cut 3. Let's do FPS games. So you can, this is going to be blind ranking.

You're going to choose. We're just going to go 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. And you're going to keep 3, cut 3 FPS games. Are you ready? I'm ready. All right. Number one, Call of Duty. Also, I don't know the others.

I have to keep work. You have no idea what the other ones are. Yeah, that's the fun part because you're like, oh, I shouldn't have cut that. You know, there's like that fun aspect of it. You know what? Back in the day, I'd say cut. But I'm going to say keep because actually like war zone's a lot of fun. Oh, wow, you're keeping that.

I like that. Yeah. Honestly, I know some people would say the other way, like back then I would keep. Now I don't. I do agree that war zone is kind of set that standard of a lot of. Not a Call of Duty guy, but Warzone was huge when it came out. And that was like the number one game. They were like, can you test in Warzone?

So I'd like pre-install it and test it. And every time I'd be like, oh man, I kind of want to keep playing this. I don't know. Warzone's kind of sweet. Keep. Oh, the next one. So you have kept Call of Duty. Fortnite.

Cut. I'm sorry. Cut. You're done with it. that's all next it's just too much and that's kind of why I want to cut cod too

I think it's a bit too much for me where you can play as Nicky Minaj or like I like more like immersive experience you know like it's a bit overage with the skins and whatnot but I see the appeal but cut for me cut

so you have kept call of duty you have cut fortnight so you have two each right now Okay. Counter strike. Keep. Keep. That's my go-to.

I'll even still play Counter-Strike 2 from time to time. Were you 1.6% or go? But I started playing a CSGO. Me and my friends, like in high school, that was a big game with my friends, play Counter-Strike Go. Tons of fun. Never super competitive, but I play for fun. And I still play every now and again. All right.

So you have kept two. So do you have one keep left? You have two cuts available. Next one, Apex Legends. I want to say keep, but I'm also scared that now I'm going to disqualify the next ones. That's a hard part. That's a fun game.

Yeah. I'm going to have to say keep. Wow, you're a keep in Apex Legends. It's a pretty sweet game, yeah. Who's your favorite character in Apex? I don't even know the characters because another one, like, I didn't really play it myself, but I've one just demoed it when, oh, someone's complaining, Apex Legends is crashing, so I'm kind of dabbling. But the fact that it's like a mix of like skill-based shooter, but also you get like the dynamic movement and stuff is just like super cool.

So it's not like a definitive key, but like I can't knock it. Like the game seems pretty sweet. So keep. All righty. So you have kept Call Duty Counterstrike and Apex Legends. So you cut Fortnite, which means the next two you cut. You have cut. Overwatch.

Okay, I take Apex Legends over Overwatch for sure. And then the final cut is Valerent. Okay, I would have kept Valerent over Pex Legend. But unfortunately, can't make the cut. Sorry. That's a great list in my opinion. I honestly, I would pretty much be around the same area. Apex Legends, I could flip with any of them, but I'm not disappointed in that list at all.

Okay. Valerie, I like a lot just because it's kind of like Counterstrike. Like, I love point and click shooter. Like, it's the ultimate PC experience, you know, like pixel precision, fast pace. I love it. Ooh, I actually really want to do just keep three cut three and it will go to Rapid Fire. So we're going to keep three cut three classic games. Okay.

Yeah. So OG or like, known as like the best games I'm gonna really try to hang on to my keeps for this. Yeah. So for this one, keep three cut three classic games. First one is Halo 2.

Oh, keep. Keep. I used to put not Halo 2, but Halo Combat Evolved. The one before that, I put it on a USB key and me and my friends in high school would play it on the school computers. What? Graphics could handle it. Yeah, we'd literally land party.

Halo Combat Evolved in the computer. lab at school. That's so big. Yeah. Oh, I wish I did that computer. Halo is goaded. Yeah, Halo's goaded. We're going to go to the next one,

World of War to Warcraft. That's like, it's like PC Hall of Fame. Like, ah, but I got to hang on on my keeps.

I feel like I'm going to be all about every single one of the classics. It's tough. These are tough. I got to keep, but I'm going to really hang on to my next one, but keep.

Okay, so you have kept Halo and Word of Warcraft. All right, so you have one keep left. We have all your cuts available. The next one is Diablo. I want to keep, but I'm going to really cling to that keep because I don't know what's coming next. I'm going to have to cut it. But, I mean, it's reluctant.

It's tough. This is honestly a very tough list. Like I was looking at this and I was like, oh, because I just looked up like, best. classic oh man I like oh man I like all these games like it's hard yeah yeah yeah this one stinks yeah so you have kept halo and warcraft and you have cut diablo the next one room scape this one actually and i'll probably get a lot of flack for this uh in chat but uh cut oh i was never into it i feel like it's only popular because when it took off it was the only game people could

run on their average computer but if you're in the PC, why would you not play World of Warcraft over Roancape? Like, come on. If you had a gaming PC, World of Warcraft is objectively a better game. Oh, I'm sorry. I can't wait. I know I just killed a lot of people over all the nostalgia and everything, but I never got into it.

I cannot wait to see the comments on that. That's going to be it. And actually, too, I will say, if anyone knows, if you know, you know, I was an adventure quest guy, way over Roomscape, Adventure Quest. If you want to talk browser games and whatnot. Adventure quest the goat all righty now you have kept halo and War to Warcraft you have cut Diablo and Rune scape so you have keep oh you have a keep and a cut left over okay now the next one you have two left one of each okay starcraft

that's like the gold standard of like real-time strategy like keep starcraft's like a piece like it's got to be PC like what you're going to play StarCraft on Xbox 360 and like drag your units of the analog stick like you can't be a PC guy and not keep StarCraft

that's that's that is it's hard to because I never got into StarCraft as much but I know StarCraft what I mean gosh the what do you call it APMs of them during your KPM or KPM and it's

or 8 or 8 or APMs. Yeah, actions per minute. Oh my gosh. Do you see like the fingers going on the keyboard? I'm like, oh. Yeah. I dabbled. I never really got into it. But my like one of my best gamer friends growing up, his brother was like super competitive of StarCraft. It's like we'd play for fun with him or whatever and like get creamed. But him when he'd play, I just remember hearing the sound of his mechanical keyboard with this mic when he's playing StarCraft.

Oh my God. His APM must have been through the roof. I respect the craft. You have kept Halo, War to Warcraft, and Starcraft. Oh, you got two craft games. Very funny. You have cut Diablo and Ruske, which means you must cut the next one, and the final one you are cutting is Counter-Strike. Ah, no.

No. I'd, for sure, like, I'd keep Counter-Strike over all the rest. like that's the gold standard for FPS like call of duty like I can respect it but that's like a console shooter but like counter strike is the gold standard for e-sports competitive shooter the fact that you have that

reaction time pixel perfect precision like just love it's that game so that one stings it's never gone old either like yes you can not want to play it but like it's that game will always be around And it also has an economy too with it, which is insane.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. That's a toughness. I've had friends personally hurt by the countertrike gambling epidemic. Who hasn't been a little bit of a little. But I mean, free market. I'm all about it.

Spend your cash how you will. But yeah, that's crazy. All right. So we're going to do a little bit of rapid fire and it will go into an announcement. So answer however you'd like. I just have random questions. All right. Let's do it.

Favorite game of all time? Dota 2 for sure. Still playing to this day. That's the one that I've fallen in love with. It's just, again, the perfect PC game where it's like, okay, you've got like the skill shots, the precision, the decision making. But also like, it's got to be keyboard. There's so many key bindings you need.

The macro, when you're controlling multiple units, so many things to think about. It's just like you can. not get, and maybe it's a bad thing as it keeps you hooked, but you cannot get more dopamine out of any other experience I've ever seen on a PC or on a digital device. Like, maybe

in reality, you can still get more stimulation, but if you're looking to entertain, God, my mind is on 100% when playing Dota 2. The goat. I'm at, I think, 2,600 hours, which is kind of sad, but also, like, no regrets. It's fun.

Well, never be mad about spending time playing video games. And to talk about the Counterstrike economy, I literally just spent $400 on a helmet for my favorite character in Dota 2. I was kind of like a treat for myself where it's like, you know what, I'm going to do it. If you divide 400 by 2,600 hours, like I'm paying pennies for like tons of fun. That is the exact thing that I do when I do a game. Like you buy a $50 game, you got to at least spend 50 hours in the game. Like you got it. $2,600.

Oh, that's nothing. That's nothing. I don't know if you heard a girl math, but that's guy math, basically. How many hours am I going to get spent on this game? 100%. Like if I spent like a $10 indie game and I end up playing 300, it's going to be insane. But if I buy like that $70 game. It's only logical.

Yeah. You should have spent that money. What's a game that you wish you could play for the first time again? First time. I would have to say Dead Space 2. Which I actually got my wish. Well, actually, the original Dead Space, I got my wish. Now I hope they do another remake for Dead Space 2.

Because that's a game. It doesn't have much replayability. Like, you've done all the levels. you know what the boss is going to be like at the end of the hallway and whatnot. But that game was just so immersive. I love Dead Space. Huge fan of it.

And you just can't get that experience again. But yeah, Dead Space 2, man. I would just love that single player experience again. And I tried to relieve it too with the Colisto Protocol, but I find it just didn't like scratch the same itch. You know, I feel like Dead Space 2 is just the best single player shooter experience, you know, if you're just sitting on the couch and

want a sick game. If you want to kill a bunch of disgusting aliens, Dead Space 2. If I could play that again for the first time, that'll be like the best eight hours a matter. Again. What is one tool in your workshop you cannot live without? No affiliation, but like the I-fix-it kit literally if you have a computer or a phone with youtube and you have an i fix it kit you can do like 80% of the most common pairs that's literally it and it doesn't have to be i fix

it you can just get like a generic one too like it doesn't actually matter but if you have a screwdriver with all those different bits little suction cup couple little tweezers and those little pry tools and whatnot um you can do so much do you have a funny or horror story when cleaning a PC? It's got to be just bugs. Just the prevalence of bugs. There's bugs in maybe like 20, 30% of the computers that come in here. It's not even a rare thing.

So it's not like it even happened once. And like a lot of bugs too. And I'm not talking like roach infested. Like it's not like dirty people. But it's just I think they're attracted to the heat. Yeah. So if you haven't cleaned your computer, especially if it's on the ground, you're just going to get maybe a half dozen flies, beetles, ladybugs. Yeah, it's just like the amount of bugs that come out of these computers always surprises me.

Yeah, maybe not funny. It's kind of gross, but like it still surprised me every time. You never know. You pull a power supply out, and now there's like eight dead bugs. and you're like, heck. You won business at a year in North Glengarry, I think it is pronounced. Yeah, yeah, my humble about. What did that mean to you after you bet like everything on your place?

So that was actually really awesome because it came as a complete surprise. It's literally just like an email. Like, hey, we'd like to invite you to this award ceremony. get this, you know, business of the year award. I'm like, sure, I'm in. Yeah. But it came as a complete surprise and it felt really good because, well, you know how it all snowballs, right? Where it's like one thing leads to another, like I'm upgrading my computer to play Bioshock and now I'm selling them on Kajiji to upgrade my PC and it kind of all snowballs. There's never just one day where you're like, ah, I did it, you know?

But if I had to pick a day where I could allow myself to give myself like a pat on the back, it would definitely be whenever I got that award where it's like, wow, external recognition. Remember I was saying to other people like you might be pressured in the beginning to like not do it, right? Where it's like, oh, it's like stay on the safe path, secure path or whatnot. It all has to come from inside. So I would have been completely happy because I'm internally motivated. I would have been fine to have never had it. But I'm still super grateful to have had it.

Because although I would have still followed this path anyways, you know, I would have been proud of myself anyways internally, to have that external recognition I am extremely grateful for. And also to be on the NSDXT podcast, too. Like, it's still surreal. Like, this is super cool. So I really thank you for that, too. I have a lot of gratitude for that.

Yeah, of course. We wanted to help bring out, you know, like the real community, the real PC community, you know, the ones that are helping repair of these species and helping build and the all this. Like this is like valuable information for a lot of people, especially like to learn and to, you know, for those that want to make a business themselves, not even PC, but just in general. hopefully they got some good good knowledge out of this yeah well and this is my community like gamer like I said

with the chinchilla man like there's not many like subcultures where like people can appreciate shit like this you know but I don't know I've just always gravitated like I'm all about the PC culture and like I was saying

a you like when we're doing the mic check like I'm not scared of people completely like taking my methods or my knowledge and doing it for themselves. I want people to open up their own shops. Keep the hobby alive, right? Keep it custom. Keep PC what it is. Keep that culture alive. Serve their communities doing the same thing.

So if anybody wants me to elaborate on anything to help them with anything that I could be of help with, whether you want to have a side hustle at home selling PCs or you just had a. questionable upgrading your PC as far as I can keep up because there's a lot of notifications coming in you know throughout the day but as far as I can keep up I'm an open book and I'd love to help people if I could be of service to give back because yeah I've literally I've loved everything the PC has had to offer since I discovered it was even a thing of that oh okay I got a couple questions and I'll go to announcements one yeah is there a dream collab that you hope happens Yes, actually, there is one.

It's kind of raunchy. And I don't know if it will ever happen. But have you ever seen the KFC console? Yes, the chicken bucket. Yeah. I really want to make the KFC PC. If I could somehow get KFC on board to make the KFC PC, I'm talking like chicken warmer, like inside,

like it uses the heat to heat your chicken. Oh my gosh. Like gravy cooled. Like gravy in the custom loop. I don't know, man. I just found it so funny when I saw that KFC console video. I could never get it out of my mind. There's got to be a KFC PC.

And I eat a lot of chicken, man. Oh my gosh. So if I could ever do that, I don't know. I don't know. I'd be down for that. That is hilarious. Yeah, I don't know. And the biggest reason I want to do that is just literally, I just find it so funny.

I'd be laughing my ass off the whole time. I'm designing kids. I think you're making a chicken bucket PC? I mean, I would have a blast. Yeah, I'm not even saying that they'd get like a good return on their investment. I'm just saying like the world needs the KFC PC. Anyways. If you were starting Alexandra Customs over today from scratch, what would you do differently?

Well, like, I don't know I would. Like, if I was given the opportunity to go back, like, I wouldn't. I'm just so glad that things have played out in this way. Like, it's awesome. But, yeah, I guess the only thing I would do differently, Like now knowing that it all worked out is like to not have any reluctancy to like fully commit like from that time I was like 15 or 16 and I said I did that parking lot deal and like well for the first time I felt like oh like there's opportunity to actually make some money doing this and like treat it as something serious. I would have gone all in at that moment had I known it would lead to this. But maybe the beauty of it is I didn't know and it's it all worked out in this way.

So I'm not saying I'd want to go back. But if I did, knowing what I know now, I'd go all in from the start. Heck, yeah. Actually, that was my last question, which kind of correlates with that, is you see a small kid growing up in a small town in Canada. It's cold. It's winter. They're watching this right now thinking they can't make it a piece of the industry. What do you want them to know?

Um, you can. So here's the thing. Uh, we're living in a world where like it might be kind of hard. Like there's a lot of people getting degrees. They can't find jobs, you know, that has to do with their degree and whatnot. Like people are saying it's a rough economy, rough job market and whatnot. And it's very true. It's kind of a paradox. It's never been harder than it is like right now to like make it, I guess. But at the same time, if you are, willing to really work your ass off and get lucky and have a skill set, there's also been no better time to make it because of the internet. If it weren't for the internet, no one would know I exist. It would have taken me 10 times as long to get enough business doing this out of nowhere, just popped up, right? How did people even know to start calling me in COVID? like, oh, I need a computer. Because I was posting online about it. So if you can get over the fear,

which is probably the biggest thing of people judging. The moment you post something online, oh, you're going to get judged. But you know what? The world's your oyster, if you can just get past that. The internet gives you an infinite opportunity. We have a magic machine. You're watching this on a magic machine right now

where you can ask it any question and get the answer instantly. If you're able to apply effort, you have a good chance. And I'm not going to say a little bit of luck is an element. I'm not going to say you don't have to kind of have a knack or have a certain skill set. But if you can do that, there's so much opportunity. So try. It's worth giving it a try.

There's a lot of dumerism, you know? And the problem is it's all valid. There's so many valid points. But there's also never been more opportunity. The internet's crazy. This is surreal. like I have to pinch myself. Like, I'm on the NZXT podcast.

I'm just a dude, you know? I'm a gamer. Like, I wasted my teen years gaming like this. I started working out because I noticed my neck started doing this, like, permanently. I'm like, oh, shit, I got to start doing pull-ups. I guess I did so much gaming. My neck was going like this, you know? But somehow that led to me now being here on the NZXT podcast and, like, having a cool computer shop.

So don't lose faith. trust in yourself and don't be afraid to take risk. And if you end up failing, who cares? Who cares about the judgment of others? It's fine. Your life and what you have to offer the world is worth so much more than someone's judgment of what you're posting online, you know? And you'll get people, even back then, like on Kijiji, I'd have people message

me like, oh, your PC sucks, dude. As much as I love gamer culture, they can be kind of, elitist. The amount of people who would criticize my custom PCs, man, when I was just starting out, like, you know, 15 year old kid flipping the office PCs, like, dude, your PC sucks. Don't listen to that and try hard and you never know what might happen. Honestly, that's also like some of the, like you said, it's tough to listen. But honestly, I do appreciate a little bit of that like, dude, your PC sucks. you're like, well, tell me what's wrong.

Like, you know, I'd rather have people that would do that than people that would just, you know, the yes man's, you know, it's like, you know what, push back a little bit. It's fun. I won't take it 100%, but I'll, hey, I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, maturity is being able to differentiate between like the 90% of just like internet toxicity and then the 10% where it's like, oh, like, dude, you're valid.

Yeah, 100% noted. You got to, yeah, keep that in. check noted. Yeah. But yeah, drown out the noise. The internet's got all, like, there's a lot of crazy folk out there. Don't let that be the reason you don't start something. Because the internet is your lever.

You have no leverage without the. But that's a big thing, too. You see, like, it's my face here. You know, if I don't attach my face to the business, anyone can create, like, an AI business, right? If Mike wasn't here, like, you probably wouldn't want to watch the podcast. if it's literally just like, you know, if there's no personality behind it. So you got to put yourself out there a little bit.

And that might be hard sometimes. As gamers, you might be a bit more introverted by nature. But if you can get past that and use the internet as your lever, there's infinite opportunity. 100%. I love that. Mike knows. Oh, actually, one quick thing before. One quick thing before we go into the announcements.

One, Marrissauder, at least didn't teebag you, hashtag gamer culture. Very true. I mean, yeah. Well, I said keep Halo, right? So I've experienced my fair share of tea bags. And then from Buzz King, do you ever feel overwhelmed with the amount of services requested at one time? Yes. And I actually recently raised rates to,

try to like lower that down and it's still overwhelming. But you know what? It's okay because I always just tell myself it's not brain surgery like if it's delayed a day or two like no one's going to die. Sometimes life happens like you have a backlog and then you get sick. You need to dig a day off or two days off. communication is important. So it's not that you don't want to try your best. As long as you're trying your best, you have no choice but acceptance for whatever happens. So people will come in.

Everyone wants it now. Everyone wants it now, especially with tech. It's like, oh my God, I can't live without my PC. Oh my God, I can't live without my iPad. But actually, like, they can. Like, no one's going to die. So the stakes aren't that high. While also being measured, you have to truly care.

care. So if there's a delay, oh, you're busy. Let the customer know, I'll be honest. I'm kind of backed up right now. Might go into next week. Is that okay? If not, there's a rush fee. 50 bucks. Literally. So sometimes in a day, I'll have four rush jobs. So I'm overwhelmed. I'm like, oh, crap, rush, rush, rush, rush. But I'm getting paid 200 bucks just to rush them. So it's like, okay, I'm either getting paid and I'm stressed or I'm not too backed up that there's not all these rush fees coming in. So I can kind of just go at my own pace. But yeah, if there's going to be a delay, be honest, communicate with the customer, be like, sorry, I got sick, it's going to be done on this day.

What you don't want to do is just let the backlog grow. It's been three weeks and I haven't heard from you. That's you not honoring your side of the bargain. That's you not showing up putting your best foot forward. But, you know, if life happens, I need to take a day off. or they don't want to pay the rush fee, but they want it done today. Well, it kind of is what it is. So that's my thought process.

A verbal diarrhea I answer, you know. Honestly, I love that. It's very real. And honestly, I 100% agree. There's not a single thing. Like, you know, you're going to try your best, but you got it. You're human. Yeah.

And I'll add one cherry on top. I love the work. I can actually do like the stores open maybe like five to seven hours a day, depending on the day of the week. But I probably average about like 11, 12 hours a day, six days a week doing this. And there's no burnout because I actually love working on the tech. I love just working on the tech.

Heck, yes. So it's not all that bad. All righty. We're going to go into some announcements. And then I'll find it back over to you because I've got a couple things that if you want to bring up. First thing for those that are here, I'll get to the secret code out for you guys that are waiting in chat.

I do a secret code word that gives them extra entries in the giveaway. A lot of people like to stick around to the end for it. Guys, be patient, all right. We'll get to it soon. First announcement I have is we, you guys can get a 007 first flight, the new James Bond video game, with select Nvidia G4s-R-TX-50 series systems for a very limited time. The mission starts with the right hardware,

so there's high-stakes, espionage, intense combat, and stealth-driven infiltration. You guys go do nzac.com or exclamation point first light in chat, and you guys can go take a look at the deal for a 007 first light. We also have another deal for Lego Batman, legacy to Dark Night. You guys get Lego Batman with qualifying Intel Core Ultra Products, Escomation Point Lego Batman in chat. experienced a central Batman story

in a bold action-packed adventure with hard-hitting combat, open world Gotham City, and the signature Lego charm fans know and love. Get Lego Batman Legacy of Dark Night with qualifying Intel Core Ultra Products. HMOA support Lego Batman, Oregon, nzixi.com. This podcast is sponsored by the NZXT Intel Club,

so thank you so much to Intel for helping us sponsored a club. It's just our way to give back to the community. So we give back shirts, plushies. I have the poochie and chippy down there. And we give away a monthly Intel PC to one of you guys. I think Buzz King, I think you won recently, if I remember correctly. But go to nzc.co slash club or estimation of my club in chat. You guys can sign up and participate in our community to earn poochie points.

That's our little mascot. You guys can earn points by doing quests of like checking up. socials and stuff like that the more points you earn the more entries you get into the giveaway so please uh start asap and uh get more points now yes buzz king received my nzsac computer yesterday let's go so hey we got a winner in chat so i'm not keeping the PCs for myself as much as i'd like to uh i do give them away so uh keep an eye on that um so now i'm going to hand it back over to you cody um what's next for you any new exciting projects you're working on or if you're there's any events happening anytime soon.

Just got to get it out there. When you mentioned 007, I'm like, oh, surprised that wasn't on the shooters list for the Keep it or you're not. Anyways, yeah, 007N64. Oh, golden on.

Yeah, the goat shooter. But yeah, what's next is probably this exact same thing, you know? So I'm actually just so happy and fulfilled right now and I literally just like put out like a real, a TikTok,

a few days ago just saying like thank you guys like for me all this work because this is awesome i've crafted every day i just wake up and i'm surrounded by you know people who think this is funny you know uh people who need help with their tech which i enjoy doing and i just go to sleep wake up do it again and again so i just want to keep it exactly like this you know until i'm ready to retire I mean, who knows how the industry is going to change in the coming years, right? But I'd be very happy living the same life forever, basically. The one exception to that is, like you said, about like the managing getting overwhelmed with all the work. I'd like to, when I'm further along on my financial path,

to be able to have less obligation to work and have it be a bit more leisure, to where, like I said, maybe a few times a year or someone will come, that fallout guy and want a crazy wicked build or whatnot. Once finances allow, I would like to shift a bit more of my priorities on just doing those specialized builds. So, like, once I'm in a position where I don't need a customer to approach me to do that, where I can just do it at my own leisure, I definitely want to up those crazy specialized builds.

I'd like to do a lot more of those. But other than that, hey, I, uh, Who knows what the future holds, but it's probably going to look a whole lot like this. Heck, yes. Oh, where can our listeners find your online content and your store? Yeah, well, it's Alexandria Customs. If you go to Alexandriacustoms.ca, like all the social media links are on there. They're all the same, though.

It's all just Alexandria Customs. you can find my store if you happen to be in Canada if you're in Ontario if you're in the Ottawa region you can come visit us it's 129 Kenyan Street West Alexandria Ontario to talk about putting yourself out there and like facing judgment of people it's like if you hate my PC's that bad or if you hate the crazy content I put out you could literally come egg my store like address is marketed online And there I am.

I hope that that doesn't happen. But yeah, if you're listening and you have the means, I'd love for you to pop in. Come say hi. I'll show you around the shop. I'll give you a sticker. Shake your hand. And yeah, that'll make for a cool story. Like, oh, dude, I saw you on the podcast.

Come visit. Heck, yes. Oh, two things. One, do you have any final thoughts or messages you'd like to share with the audience? Yeah, basically just what a time to be alive, you know, it's like born too late to explore the seas and new lands, born too early to explore the stars and planets, but born just in time to take part, you know, in podcasts like this and cultures like this, you know, but live far enough in the future. We got crazy things like PCs, you know? Like, wow. I just, I love the gaming community, you know, I love what it is. And, uh, yeah, I, I'm just glad to be here enjoying it with all you guys. I just, I just want to give a hell yet, all the gamers.

Hell yeah, baby, let's go. Specifically the PC gamers. There you go. The only gamers here that we respect. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But we favored them a lot. I mean, look at the. row of cases behind me.

Come on, guys. PC. Come on. Come on. Yeah. Okay. There is a secret code word that gives a thousand extra entries into the giveaway.

I would like to head it over to you, Cody, of what would you like the code word to be? It can be anything. It doesn't have to be. It can be whatever you want. Okay. one word that comes to mind.

Are you sure it can be anything? It can be anything. The gamers will appreciate it. Poop. Poop. Heck yes. All right. Got to go with your gut.

I am updating the gleeve right now with the code word for a thousand entries into the giveaway. Code word poop. Poop. P-O-O-P. Yeah, that's P-O-O-P. There you go. Poop.

That's the code word. You know what? I love that. That dokey. I love that code word. So that's how you guys for the extra entries into the giveaway. I'll pull the winners later today. But thank you, Cody, for joining us today.

And remember guys to tune in live on Fridays at 10 a.m. Pacific San Antonio on the official NCC Twitch. And don't forget the list of the previous episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify, SoundCloud, and on our YouTube channel. You got any questions for us? Send an email to podcast at NCC. or tag at nz-X-t on social media platforms. And if you ever want to check out Cody's shop, you guys can go to alexandraCustoms.ca,

a-L-E-X-A-N-D-R-I-A-C-U-S-T-U-M-S-T-A. And you guys can take a look at his awesome shop. So please take a look at his stuff, follow him on all socials, and we'll see you guys, I think next week. I think I'll come back for another podcast next week. But for those that celebrate Memorial Day,

Happy Memorial Day. And thank you, Cody, for joining us today. Thank you. It's been great. Bye, everyone.