Getting back into the game!

It’s sad to admit that I haven’t played games in a very long time! With all the traveling I do for events and multiple odd jobs I work here and there, I’ve found that I haven’t had much time to sit down for a good gaming session. However, I definitely want to change that! Especially since Guild Wars 2 launches in just a few hours :)

Before my schedule got really hectic, I used to do more streaming on Twitch.tv and scrimming. I’ve been itching to get back into live-streaming so I can game with everyone again! I’m going to be much more proactive with my gaming channels and I’d love to game with some of you guys once I re-launch them! I find it very enjoyable when you can play a game with others even though it’s not multiplayer, which is why I think people who stream or make YouTube videos are awesome. I’d love to hear your opinions about what you think about live-streaming and YouTube. What do you guys prefer and who are your favorite internet personalities?

Join me for some gaming at Twitch.tv or Youtube

Kitty Mach

Marketing Department

Olympics. Fat Rant. Giveaway.

The summer Olympics are here and I am amazed at how skilled and talented these athletes are! I dislike them for reminding me how out of shape I am. Every day I sit behind a desk staring at a computer screen for hours on end and only to go home to watch other people show off their physical attributes on television. Maybe some of you will understand where I’m coming from. I admire the Olympian athletes though, for their endurance and dedication – I mean, these people are the BEST of the BEST in the WORLD. How amazing is that? Then there are the Olympic commercials that encourage us to run, go for the dream, or simply JUST DO SOMETHING. Your television shows, games, internet will still be there when you come back. So take a break from all of them and take care of your body. As Nike puts it, “Game on, World.”

For those of you who are regulars at working out, I salute you. The team here at NZXT has heard many of you saying how much you like our “You MOD Bro?” shirt, so now is your chance to win one. Please share with us what you do to stay in shape, I’d like to know. It can be anything from chasing kids around the house to P90X or Insanity Workout. You have until Monday 12pm PST 8/13/2012 to enter, entries must be on Facebook comments to this blog. The winner will be announced at 5PM PST on Facebook.

Signing off,
Tina H.

My Unnecessary Upgrade

To /r/buildapc readers, this may be slightly repetitive, for that I apologize.

My personal computer recently underwent a massive upgrade. After over 3 years of trust service I gave my Nehalem build the boot. It has served me well and to be honest, it really did not need upgrading, it ran everything well and I expected to see little to no gains in performance. I had gotten the chip as a gift and decided to splurge a bit on the motherboard and picked up the Sabertooth X79, living near Fry’s is awesome. Thanks to the relatively stagnant developments expansion standards everything else carried over, in over the last few months I had already made major upgrades in the GPU, RAM, case, CPU cooler, SSD, and all the peripherals (full specs below). The carryover was a breeze, I expected to only be using 4 sticks of memory, but the motherboard explicitly stated 6 were fine and I even got to keep all 24 GB of RAM. The only close call was the Havik140, the RAM slots were significantly closer to the CPU socket and the Havik was not going to fit horizontally, which wasn’t an issue for me as I previously had it mounted vertically.

Took a day to get everything completely reinstalled, first thing I did was set the one touch overclock to 4.3ghz (awesome feature), did a burn-in with LinX and temps all were under 65, I was very impressed. I then ran BF3 on a 64 player full server, FPS floated between 50-80 with ultra-settings and maxed AA; this was not any noticeable improvement over my i7 920. Despite proving my assumptions correct, I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed in my new hardware, this was essentially a $900 upgrade on old hardware and my gaming experience was exactly the same. In my disappointment I turned to work for comfort (like most of us do) and fired up Solidworks. Generally the files I work with are rather large with a lot of parts and rendering can take a while. I decided to give rendering a spin on a case and to my surprise it was at least 4 times faster! It may not have justified the upgrade but my tech addiction had been appeased and I was reinvigorated, not to mention it runs Minecraft like nobody’s business.

To recap, anyone with a quad core Nehalem, using it for anything short of raw calculation or rendering should feel no reason to upgrade to anything right now, you got a great deal on a CPU with a fantastic lifecycle, enjoy it and don’t be envious of 3770’s.

PS: OCZ Power supply is the next thing to get the boot.

-Rob Teller
NZXT. Product Development

Full Image Album: http://imgur.com/a/ekqTz

Type Item Price
CPU Intel Core i7-3930K 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor
Free
CPU Cooler NZXT HAVIK-140 90.3 CFM CPU Cooler
Preproduction Sample
Motherboard Asus Sabertooth X79 ATX LGA2011 Motherboard
$314.99 @ Fry’s
Memory Patriot Viper II Sector 7 Edition 24GB (6 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
$94.99 @ Fry’s
Hard Drive Kingston HyperX 120GB 2.5″ Solid State Disk
$109.99 @ Amazon
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB 3.5″ 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
$49.99 @ BestBuy
Hard Drive Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB 3.5″ 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
$69.99 @ Newegg
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
$49.99 @ Newegg
Video Card EVGA GeForce GTX 680 2GB Video Card
$499.99 @ Undisclosed
Case NZXT Switch 810 Full Tower Case
Preproduction Sample
Power Supply OCZ 700W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
$59.99 @ Microcenter
Fan Controller NZXT Sentry Mix
Preproduction Sample
Monitor Asus VS247H-P 23.6″ Monitor
$174.99 @ Undisclosed
Monitor TCL LE40FHDP21TA 40in LED TV
$399.99 @ Walmart
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-bit)
Free @ Intel Retail Edge
Keyboard Corsair Vengeance K90 Wired Gaming Keyboard
$99.99 @ Fry’s
Mouse Logitech Performance Wireless Laser Mouse
$64.99 @ Logitech
Fan NZXT FN-140 x 7
Samples
Fan Noctua NF-P14
Sample
Card Reader NZXT Aperture M
Preproduction Sample
LEDs NZXT Hue
Preproduction Sample
Sleeved Cables NZXT Premium Cable Starter Kit
Preproduction Sample

Happy Wheels is Violently Addicting

There’s just something about the blood and gore  from insane decapitations in Jim Bonacchi’s Happy Wheels that makes this game super addicting. I just can’t get enough  of Irresponsible Dad, which is my favorite character to choose from in every level. It’s also amazing how much time and effort some players put into creating their own custom levels. Each time I’m blown away by a great map, I make sure to return the favor by rating 5 stars and leaving a comment. My all time favorite game mode is the Sword/Ball Throw, rope swing, and impossible level courses. You guys should definitely try those map types out when you get a chance! Happy Wheels is certainly the go-to game when you only have a few minutes to play. There were a few levels I highly recommend: Toilet Adventures, Pokemon Gym, and Wipeout map. Check those levels out if you’re interested!

Wishing I was at #SDCC,

-Irene P.
Marketing Department

Thanks to all the Modders

Today, me and couple good friends are going to LAN and try out one of the most popular mods for Minecraft – Survival Games 2. Basically it takes the concept from the book Hunger games and applies it to the Minecraft world, survival + massive killing. It always amazes me how much time the community of PC gaming is able to take a game and take it way beyond what the developers originally envisioned it. This is the same as the community of amazing modders who take NZXT’s products and take it to a completely different level. So I salute you, modders of hardware and software, for keeping the innovation going beyond what anyone has ever imagined.

Shoutout to MBO for his Mass Effect 3 Switch 810 Mod :)

- Johnny Hou, Founder

Birth of a Nephalem

As a follow up to my previous blog, I’ve decided to play Diablo 3. It’s exactly what I expected of the game. There wasn’t anything that lowered or raised the expectations to a point of being a Frisbee or an addiction that messes with my current lifestyle. This makes it a well worth purchase.

This is by far the most popular game at the workplace. There has been constant chattering about Diablo 3. It ranges from what level, items, progress, etc. These guys are very enthusiastic about the game. They would even talk to coworkers who don’t play pc games. I didn’t play until maybe a month after the release, but I’ve had multiple people from work and off work trying to persuade me to play.

Enough about my thoughts of the game and lets go into my current status in D3.

Level 60 Witch Doctor
59k Health
400+ to All Resistance
15k DPS (40k damage per Zombie Bear)
Act 2 Inferno

Level 38 Barbarian
8k Health
Resistance not important at the moment
800 DPS
Act 2 Nightmare

300k Gold

From my experience, I can solo all the way past Act 1 Inferno. Act 2 Inferno is no joke; it’s ridiculously hard. Don’t laugh at the amount of gold I have. I like buying gear from the Auction House.

Va T.
-Product Team

Surface by Microsoft

Microsoft’s new Surface tablet reminded me of how the company approached its competition unlike any other. Back when Microsoft saw the unlimited potential of the World Wide Web from Netscape, it was a gamble for a lawsuit as they bundled Internet Explorer to the operating system for free. Microsoft’s huge risk yielded tremendous results in encompassing domination for the entire market. This is the kind of company I think of when it comes to beating its competition through observation. But will the Surface RT and Pro do the same to iPad as IE did to Netscape?

In order to beat its competition, Microsoft has to create a slightly different market and not dive into the same pond where everyone is at. Surface may have done just that. Here are several key points to consider: the unique OS and clean UI interface; just need an ecosystem. The Pro version can switch between tablet and PC mode. When Surface is in PC mode you’ll definitely need a real physical keyboard, which is also included. On the hardware side, the design of the tablet looked simple and sleek. The use of magnesium housing means the quality will be nothing short of amazing. So my thoughts are what do you think of the new Surface Tablet?

-Shin F.
Lead Product Designer

“My Life for Aiur”

Hey guys, Kitty reporting in. I thought I would take the time this week to blog about events. In case you didn’t know, I work with the marketing team here at NZXT. Part of my job includes attending events for NZXT which is everything from conventions, LANs, esports tournaments and more. I absolutely love going to events. I’ve been attending conventions such as Comic Con, MLG, CES, E3 and PAX for a year now. As tiring as they are, I really love meeting people who are just as passionate and interested in video games, comics and tech as I am. It’s been great working at events for NZXT because I love hearing feedback from the community about what they would like to see.

So my question to you guys is, have you seen NZXT at an event and did you like it? What did you like that we did at the event and what would you like to see that we didn’t do? Would you prefer to see us exhibit more at big events like PAX or be more active at esports tournaments and LANs. I’d love to hear your feedback on what else we could do and I hope to see you at the events! I will be at GESL this weekend so maybe I will catch some of you guys there! :)

-Kitty Mach
Marketing Department

Lovin’ my new Alienware

This week I made a purchase I never expected to ever make. I bought an Alienware…

As a kid I had pined for an Alienware, then it was for Voodoo, and by the time I had enough income to support that kind of purchase, it no longer made any sense. Alienware’s business is completely built on image and marketing and it has worked very well for them, but in the end, the customer is only paying the premium for that and to different people that can have a very polarizing effect. Most notably to the people who would consume our products, I am fairly confident that the majority of you reading this were ready to hear a sob story about how I wasted my money…

I absolutely love my new Alienware. Granted, there are two caveats. The first is that it was a notebook, not a desktop and my other alternatives were generics. The second was that it was heavily discounted.

I was previously using a Compal JHL90 with a Core 2 Duo and 9600M GT video card. It had been a trooper, but my many accidents and time took quite the toll on it. The Bluetooth, webcam, female power connector, power brick, hard drive, optical drive, battery and speakers have all broken at some point with most remaining unfixed. Next Monday I will be traveling to Taiwan for CES for two weeks and was not confident it would be able to sustain my usage any more so I set out for deals. Mother’s Day weekend arrived with just what I was looking for. I picked up the Alienware M14X R2 with a 3610QM, 6gb DDR3, GT 650M 1gb, 500gb 7200RPM drive, and an upgraded screen for $650 out the door. Arguably this was the best deal I have ever gotten on a new computer.

I really wasn’t expecting to be impressed by anything other than the specs of the components, but once it was in my hands, my perception began to change. The exterior was covered an a fairly scratch resistant rubber coating, Windows included no bloatware, the power saving options were immense, the LEDs were really fun and neat especially when I loaded up Battlefield 3 and they synced with my health without any configuration, speakers sounded fantastic, the BIOs allowed plenty of options and overclocking control and was preconfigured for RAID which made adding my MSATA cache drive a breeze, and the CPU and GPU had discreet cooling systems which kept the laptop at comfortable temps while gaming. A lot of what makes the M14X different from its competitors are aesthetic features, but it is no slouch and does a great job of not sacrificing performance for beauty.

Admittedly, I would not have bought this laptop without such a deep discount and many of the features it provides are available on other laptops, however my experience has been fantastic thus far. It may have superfluous features but in no way does that make it a lesser product and after my time with it I can’t even say that I would be unhappy with the laptop had I paid $1,000 for it. Will my next desktop be an Alienware? LOL, no. I still dislike that I can’t compile my own laptop out of individual parts, and there is no getting around the fact that Alienware is charging for things no one needs in a computer which in return just makes it harder to justify the purchase. The end of the day Alienware is still doing things no one else is doing, they aren’t revolutionary, but they are still unique and I like my laptop.

-Rob Teller
Product Development

Wake Up. Campaign Controversy

Taylor Wimberly:

We know Samsung has an unhealthy obsession with Apple, but this is getting a little weird. This week in Australia, Samsung hired a marketing agency called Tongue to conduct some kind of guerrilla marketing campaign where they sent a bus of protesters to an Apple store and taunted people with the message “WAKE UP.”

Here’s an idea: just make products that don’t copy everything Apple does.

[Update]: It turns out that this lame WAKE UP campaign was entirely orchestrated by RIM’s Australian arm. Samsung received accidental coverage, but this goes to show just how far recessed RIM is from understanding what consumers really want.

/ Tuan N.
Marketing Department