I've never before had GN's lab so fully equipped. It's an exciting period of growth for us. For the first time in the site's seven-year history, it feels appropriate to slap the “lab” label on our multi-room testing setup. Following weeks of intensive cleaning and organization efforts, we've now got shelving units installed (all connected to ground and ESD compliant) that house motherboards, video cards, CPUs, and more – much bought out of pocket – and a complex network of systems.

The brain of the network is our rendering rig, which sits opposite my main production system. The rendering rig is used exclusively to render and edit videos for GamersNexus, with the primary user being GN's Keegan Gallick. The system hosts RAID HDDs that are utilized for all of our test data, video media, and photo media.

We put together a quick video showcasing the rig:

Our publication schedule is constantly littered with research-intensive articles. The workload is split – Michael Kerns heads-up feature posts like keyboard round-ups, Keegan Gallick assists with sustaining news posts and videos, and Patrick Lathan handles social media and some posts. This is done intentionally, as I'm normally pulling my (abundant) hair out trying to devise new testing methodology for upcoming products. It's fun, though, and we do our best to split resources well enough that the site is sustained during times of intense research.

This week's slow-down on major content posts has allowed for some behind-the-scenes work on a new benchmarking platform – an X99 rig using an i7-5930K and DDR4 memory for SLI and CrossFire benchmarking. System integrator iBUYPOWER had some spare X-rev lab samples left over, so with their support and our own investment in other hardware, the site will soon be able to produce SLI tests without concern of throttling due to lane and processing limitations of the 4790K CPU.

We've been hard at work with some behind-the-scenes efforts lately. As the site has continued to grow, we've found more room in the budget to make upgrades in necessary areas to allow continued growth; we've also allocated some funding to review hardware, camera / convention equipment, and staffing power.

If we were “on the map” before our GTA V and Witcher coverage, we've become a much more noticeable – but still medium-sized – dot on that map. GTA V's launch saw our day-1 publication of a GPU benchmark, followed rapidly by texture comparisons, a heavily-trafficked graphics optimization guide, and a CPU benchmark. All totaled, these items helped contribute to the site's first time exceeding 1,000,000 pageviews in a one-month period. Huge news for us, as we've traditionally rested in the 300-500k pageviews per month range. Much of that persisted through The Witcher 3, offering the same types of content (GPU benchmark, graphics optimization guide, more) with a slightly smaller inbound traffic metric.

As we ramp into GDC and PAX East, we're using the gap in review time to overhaul our testing methodology and test platforms. Yesterday's post revealed our open air GPU testing station, a direction that'll drastically improve our efficiency when testing multiple graphics configurations. Today, we're looking at the new case review test bench. The site has grown substantially in the past two years; we'll no longer be using the same bench for testing all components, and will now use individual systems for testing each component. This will eliminate chance of test error, improve efficiency, and allow each of our writers to specialize in an area.

GN's Staff Writer & Social Media Manager, Patrick Lathan, will be handling most ATX and micro-ATX case reviews going forward. As such, I dropped off a load of parts for Patrick's new test bench, which will be put to immediate use with NZXT's S340. Following his review of the S340, we'll look at Be Quiet's Silent Base 800.