The Verge’s Infamous PC Building Video Gets Fixed In 2024

Back in 2018, The Verge released a guide to building a new PC that was, well, from where I was sitting it was not ideal. From where some angry PC nerds were sitting, though, it was an outrage.

How bad was the video? It has its own knowyourmeme page, that’s how bad. The guide was full of glaring omissions and bizarre tips, from a strange obsession with power usage to the most liberal use of thermal paste you’ve ever seen.

The original video guide was eventually removed by The Verge (though you can see it here, and the written portion remains online), with the site claiming that it didn’t meet their “editorial standards”, and things took a turn for the worse when folk’s initial bemusement with the guide quickly morphed into outright harassment from others, with author Stefan Etienne receiving a ton of racial abuse and The Verge issuing takedown notices on a couple of videos critical of the situation.

Anyway, that was 2018. We’re not here to drag up bad old content and the ramblings of internet shitheads, we’re here for the redemptive arc in this tale, and that comes in the form of this new Linus Tech Tips video, where the host gets Etienne on to“fix” his old build, going through the same basic overall process as the original, making some changes (or just adding some extra information) at stops along the way.

Etienne is a great sport throughout (and interestingly claims that The Verge’s editorial basically threw him under the bus with the video section of the guide), as the pair go through the original guide point by point, not just explaining how they’d improve things in 2024, but also allowing Etienne to break down just what was going on during the creation of the video as well.

This video had quite the tightrope to walk. While the original guide had its problems, the scale and tone of the reaction to it quickly got out of control, and so revisiting the whole thing could easily have been a disaster. Getting the original creator on there, and Linus being such a nice guy throughout, thankfully means this is actually just a really cool (and occasionally revealing) way to spend half an hour.