This is an extended version of the article I wrote for print this month while we were at Computex. It's a bit different from the normal topics, but something I've been wanting to write for awhile.
---------------------------
We are here in Taipei during Computex, I’ve been here since Saturday enjoying the torrential rain and sweltering heat. I would have to say this is the most productive Computex ever and I only spent one hour on the show floor.
By now you may have heard that OCZ recently acquired PC Power & Cooling. PC Power & Cooling is known for building high quality power supplies while OCZ produces performance components for PCs. If OCZ can leverage PC Power & Cooling’s expertise in design and scale the manufacturing without changing an iota of the quality it could be good.
So at Computex it was somewhat interesting for me to see a technology that I’m 95% sure that I’ve seen before being showcased at OCZ’s booth. It was some “brain scan” controller that you wear and attempt to play games. It sounds really lame, but it’s somewhat neat actually. Although it’s somewhat embarrassing when you wear it, the concept of using your jaw to “fire” and moving your head seems novel to some I’m sure. Personally I hate “wearable technology” when playing video games; it just doesn’t feel right to me. That said, it sure is far from OCZ’s roots, oddly enough. It seems as if they’re casting a wide net and seeing what they catch, hopefully that works for them.
This makes me reflect on a story I wrote awhile ago about how in business it’s important to stay close to your roots in order to be successful long term. Well, one company in the memory space has remained pretty close to their roots and it seems to have done them well.
I believe there is no better enthusiast memory manufacturer than Corsair. Corsair is known for their quality and consistency, and when we experience a problem with their memory they do everything they can to get us up and running in short order. We have tried all types of performance memory, including Crucial, Kingston, OCZ, and many others – and there have been times when we tried to switch – but we ended up returning to Corsair.
I remember one time we were using Crucial Ballistix memory and almost every single freaking chip we sold ended up being returned, sometimes more than once. It was a total disaster, and there was really no explanation for it – although we believed the memory was unable to handle the high voltage they were designed for. Props to Crucial for honouring the warranty, but the cost incurred by Voodoo was insane and unacceptable; although we probably wouldn’t have switched to another manufacturer so quickly if they had not tried to convince us that we were the only ones experiencing such problems.
Since then we switched back to Corsair and haven’t looked back.
There are also many commodity memory manufacturers who feel that by slapping a fancy heat spreader on their chips they can “fool” the enthusiast community to believe the memory is “designed for gaming”. In fact, I found one manufacturer who copied the “Dominator” series heat spreader from Corsair – almost like they are using the same machine to make them!
Let me be the first to tell you that there is much more substance to enthusiast memory than a fancy heat spreader on a PCB. In fact, very few manufacturers really understand what it takes to commit to creating low latency, consistently high quality chips. Corsair spends the time to batch test their modules, they also employ real enthusiasts who understand the complexities of performance.
Corsair works with people from Nvidia, Intel, AMD, and other companies to ensure they deliver to their promise. Most importantly Corsair does *not* switch chips/components without informing us – and their review parts performance on par with their production parts. This is NOT consistent with some of their competitors - and thus one of the big reasons we use them.
Perhaps Corsair will be a target for acquisition from someone like Micron, Kinston, or Samsung. Although there are only so many quality chips an enthusiast manufacturer can hand pick and produce before they become just another commodity.
Let’s hope that if Corsair does get acquired they don’t screw up what they do well, and equally important they should stay close to their roots.
---------------------------
We are here in Taipei during Computex, I’ve been here since Saturday enjoying the torrential rain and sweltering heat. I would have to say this is the most productive Computex ever and I only spent one hour on the show floor.
By now you may have heard that OCZ recently acquired PC Power & Cooling. PC Power & Cooling is known for building high quality power supplies while OCZ produces performance components for PCs. If OCZ can leverage PC Power & Cooling’s expertise in design and scale the manufacturing without changing an iota of the quality it could be good.
So at Computex it was somewhat interesting for me to see a technology that I’m 95% sure that I’ve seen before being showcased at OCZ’s booth. It was some “brain scan” controller that you wear and attempt to play games. It sounds really lame, but it’s somewhat neat actually. Although it’s somewhat embarrassing when you wear it, the concept of using your jaw to “fire” and moving your head seems novel to some I’m sure. Personally I hate “wearable technology” when playing video games; it just doesn’t feel right to me. That said, it sure is far from OCZ’s roots, oddly enough. It seems as if they’re casting a wide net and seeing what they catch, hopefully that works for them.
This makes me reflect on a story I wrote awhile ago about how in business it’s important to stay close to your roots in order to be successful long term. Well, one company in the memory space has remained pretty close to their roots and it seems to have done them well.
I believe there is no better enthusiast memory manufacturer than Corsair. Corsair is known for their quality and consistency, and when we experience a problem with their memory they do everything they can to get us up and running in short order. We have tried all types of performance memory, including Crucial, Kingston, OCZ, and many others – and there have been times when we tried to switch – but we ended up returning to Corsair.
I remember one time we were using Crucial Ballistix memory and almost every single freaking chip we sold ended up being returned, sometimes more than once. It was a total disaster, and there was really no explanation for it – although we believed the memory was unable to handle the high voltage they were designed for. Props to Crucial for honouring the warranty, but the cost incurred by Voodoo was insane and unacceptable; although we probably wouldn’t have switched to another manufacturer so quickly if they had not tried to convince us that we were the only ones experiencing such problems.
Since then we switched back to Corsair and haven’t looked back.
There are also many commodity memory manufacturers who feel that by slapping a fancy heat spreader on their chips they can “fool” the enthusiast community to believe the memory is “designed for gaming”. In fact, I found one manufacturer who copied the “Dominator” series heat spreader from Corsair – almost like they are using the same machine to make them!
Let me be the first to tell you that there is much more substance to enthusiast memory than a fancy heat spreader on a PCB. In fact, very few manufacturers really understand what it takes to commit to creating low latency, consistently high quality chips. Corsair spends the time to batch test their modules, they also employ real enthusiasts who understand the complexities of performance.
Corsair works with people from Nvidia, Intel, AMD, and other companies to ensure they deliver to their promise. Most importantly Corsair does *not* switch chips/components without informing us – and their review parts performance on par with their production parts. This is NOT consistent with some of their competitors - and thus one of the big reasons we use them.
Perhaps Corsair will be a target for acquisition from someone like Micron, Kinston, or Samsung. Although there are only so many quality chips an enthusiast manufacturer can hand pick and produce before they become just another commodity.
Let’s hope that if Corsair does get acquired they don’t screw up what they do well, and equally important they should stay close to their roots.
2 blogger comments:
Thanks for an insightful lesson. And also the 411 on OCZ.
P.S. By the way, speaking about OCZ, I wonder if the OCZ 8GB SDHC memory that I bought was the reason of my TiBook crashing very badly.
I had a similar experience with Crucial Ballistix memory. The RAM worked fine for about a year. Then I started experiencing system crashes and memtest revealed entire ranges of memory that were bad. I ended up returning two sets of RAM because of this.
Post a Comment