Tech News
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Lessons Learned From 7 Years of China Factory Visits
My morning ritual usually consists of sorting through my morning email and extracting what is useful and deleting the HAM. One message that caught my attention this morning was from a manufacturer in China asking if I would be interested in their products. Curious I decided to check out their website and noticed that all of the floors in the photos were green.
Having been to a few factories it dawned on me that many of the large factories (the ones with windows) often have green floors but I never bothered to ask why. So, I went to Google.
My search returned an interesting article titled "Lessons Learned From 7 Years of China Factory Visits".
It’s been almost two hours now. There is a hot-ass cup of green tea sitting on the conference table in front of me. A large free-standing air conditioner unit is blowing warm air. Everybody (except me) is barking at each other in Chinese. We’ve been looking at the same mechanical sketches for an hour. The English translations offered by our sourcing agent are remarkably succinct. 5 minutes of aggressive back and forth in Chinese is time and time again reduced to statements like: “This product very difficult to assemble.
”Ya don’t say?
After reading over the lessons you begin to see a clear picture of China and why products are built the way they are. In one of the latest Hardware Asylum Podcast episodes Darren and I talk about Computex and the colorful people I encounter along the way. One discussion centered on the CaseLabs vs Thermaltake and the question on if TT stole their design. I fully believe that TT stole the design however, they won't admit it because to steal a design requires the blueprint. What they did was "reverse engineer" the design based on photos and the actual product to create their own version.
The lessons in this article talk about that and why it is important to basically block China from your e-comm stores. There is no copyright in China and they will do whatever they can to ensure the product is built as quickly as possible even if that means borrowing designs from the last thing they built.
Now, if I could only find my green floor answer
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TUF Tested - Enthusiast Ready - ASUS X99 Sabertooth @ HiTech Legion
Now here is a quote that makes you want to hear the back story.
In the last 3 years performance wise the difference is so minor unless you run statistical benchmarks that break things down to the Nano-second you will never notice a difference.
I have a Sabertooth from the P67 days and aside from the additional fan you could install I didn't find the heat shielding to be all that beneficial, in fact it was a little annoying since the PCI Express tabs were often under the plastic shroud and just beyond finger reach. The added sensors were great if you were into that sort of thing but, I suspect a good majority of users wouldn't even know they were there.
The review at Hi Tech Legion, if you can call it that, is looking at the X99 Sabertooth and is trying to tell us something. Based on the clickbait quote you'd assume the worse but it seems they would have liked Wifi.
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Razer Firefly RGB Backlit Hard Gaming Mousepad @ Custom PC Review
There comes a time in every gamers life when cloth and plastic mousepads are just not enough. Maybe you need more slickness so you add teflon skates for your mouse or maybe you need more resistance so you add weights. Of course if your mouse is perfect then its time to upgrade the pad and while you are at it, why not add some lights??
One day, a Razer engineer took his hand off his mouse and reached for his Chroma’ed out coffee mug. As he slowly sipped his delicious brew that may or may not contain alcohol, the dazzling lights of his mug converged with the blank blueprint on his desk in perfect harmony. The engineer’s eyes glowed (with excitement)...
Plastic with microtextures can make for a very slick surface much like the RatPadz from days gone by. Personally I think lights is a little too much but, I'm sure there is a good number of folks thinking, YES!
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Asylum Review Block: Keeping Cool in the Heat of Whatever
With the onset of summer heatwaves here on the west coast it seemed only fitting to have a review block dedicated to cooling.
Web Reviews
- Corsair Hydro Series H80i GT @ techPowerUp
- Noctua NH-L9x65 CPU Cooler Review @ ???
- Noctua NH-C14S cpu cooler @ HardwareOverclock
- SilverStone Tundra TD03-E Closed Loop Water Cooler @ APH NetworksStay cool everyone!
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Throw Back Thursday: DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR
#TBT Time to throw back 10 years to the year 2005 when DFI launched the LanParty nF4 SLI-DR motherboard. This is arguably one the first SLI ready motherboards on the market and was so popular with the overclocking and enthusiast crowd that it spawned several refreshes including one with high-quality components. The board allowed you to split the PCI Express lanes using a series of jumpers that were removed with a special tool. Other companies used a card and eventually digital switches controlled by the BIOS.
The DFI LanParty also featured an electrically separated audio module that was designed to reduce audio interference. The chip wasn't that good but the effort is something we see on modern motherboards.
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GALAX NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti HOF LN2 Edition
This seems like the right way to offer up a limited edition video card. The cost is a little high but to be expected given that it is designed for overclocking and doesn’t appear to come with a heatsink.
As an owner of a GTX 980 Ti HOF LN2 Edition, you receive access to several privileged VIP extras as well. You will be provided a signature name card by GALAX in recognition of your elite status as an LN2 Edition owner, and this status includes exclusive access to consultation services and technical support directly with R&D engineers and overclock experts.
Only one batch of the GALAX GTX 980 Ti HOF LN2 Edition will ever be produced, and this small quantity will be made available via preorder only for a very short time. GALAX advises any OC enthusiasts seeking to claim a card from this extremely limited edition release to place their orders as promptly as possible in order to secure their place on a very short list of VIPs to own the only production LN2 graphics card in existence.What I really like about the whole situation is that GALAX is offering up this card to the general public instead of building a few and sending them out to a select group of people. I guess the "select group" is now anyone with deep pockets but at least nobody can complain that GALAX didn't try.
BTW the VRM on this card is considerably larger than on the EVGA Classified KPE which should help with high end LN2 overclocking but that doesn't say much about the quality (or ASIC) of the GPU.
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ZOTAC ZBOX P1320 Mini-PC Review @ Vortez
Being a hardware enthusiast is more than gaming on the most powerful hardware or rocking the fastest SSD it is enjoying computer hardware with a purpose and then trying to make it better. Of course, sometimes that sounds better in your head than on paper.
Many small devices require a custom built operating system to match the diminutive size but not this one because the P1320 comes with a fully functional, Windows 8.1 operating system. Nothing has been trimmed away from this OS other than 64bit functionality. At its heart there is an Intel Z3735F quad-core processor running at 1.33GHz (upto 1.8GHz) which also provides the shared graphics. 2GB of DDR3L-1333 memory is available along with a 32GB of storage space (expandable via SD card). Not too shabby for a device that is smaller your average smart phone!
I have yet to physically use a ZBOX but have seen the in action. The larger ones are game ready while the smaller ones chug through spreadsheets like an office admin late for a date. On the surface these trade show demos seem legit but I never know exactly why. One of these times I'll have to find out.
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Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming 6 GB @ techPowerUp
Saw this card at Computex and am actually a little suprised to see a review of it posted so quickly.
Gigabyte's GTX 980 G1 Gaming comes with a large overclock out of the box, which lets the card surpass GeForce GTX Titan X in performance, at a much lower price. The cooler is also better than the reference heatsink and avoids the 84°C thermal limit at all times. It also turns off its fans in idle and light gaming.
By the looks of it the card is pretty good and keeps the GPU cool under load and overclocking isn't too bad either.
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Computex 2015 Wrap Up
As many of you know Computex started June 2nd and the hellish week put me behind in getting my coverage posted AND by the looks of it there really wasn't that much Computex news coming out of Taipei anyway which is a huge disappointment.
I'd like to say I'm not surprised, of of the editors I ran into a good number of them were from sites at both extremes of the spectrum, (eg large sites and small sites) leaving the juicy middle virtually empty. This middle is where we normally see the bulk of news stories and with that gone it makes you wonder if there is any journalistic future for Computex.
This will be a major talking point in the next Hardware Asylum Podcast so be sure to subscribe to know when that episode drops.
I'll be posting the last three Computex related articles today and then will be getting back to my normal routine of reviews and news.
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Computex 2015 EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Classified Kingpin Edition
This isn’t so much a daily write up but rather a super excited, “I have to get this posted” sort of thing.
As expected with the launch of the GTX 980 Ti EVGA has been refreshing their video card line to accommodate the new chip. The niche flagship is this the GTX 980 Ti Classified KPE (Kingpin Edition). The card features the same VRM found on the 980 Classified with a special bin for LN2 overclocking and a few “warming” features to ensure the best performance when the card is running on Liquid Nitrogen.
The card features a redesigned ACX based heatsink with copper plating over the entire heatsink and then covered with an ornate plastic shroud. Under the heatsink you’ll find a chrome plated heatspreader which is then further reinforced with an EVGA blackplate.
For those of you planning to run this card on air you will of course get exceptional performance but keep in mind that the “special bin” means the ASIC for the GPU is quite poor and will limit above ambient overclocking which is good since when the chip gets colder it should scale quite well.
