Motive:
In an effort to give you a better idea who the individual retailers/vendors in our Overclocking Equipment Pricelist are, we've decided to do interviews with all of them. There will be about one interview a week, so it'll take a little time to get through all of the (currently) 70 retailers. But we'll be sure to include both the well known and the not so well known in our coming interviews. Most of the questions will be the same in all the interviews, but if the retailers have anything specific, we will ask about that as well.
This week the interview is with Don that runs PelTEC and recently started OCPals.
Here's the interview:
How did you get into the overclocking/case modding market ? And when ? About 2 years ago when peltier based coolers were in the "experimental" stage. Me and Tom Leufkens had some of the same ideas. I did a lot of research for materials and suppliers and started PelTEC. Why do we need PelTEC ? What is it that you can that others can't (specialty) ?Well, the peltier market is pretty much dead for AMD CPUs. You will need to consider watercooling and serious power supplies to cool a 1.4gig+ CPU. ! We do plan on supplying waterjackets with peltiers and clamps professionally preassembled within a few days. We have perhaps some of the best methods for attaching peltiers and coldplates to a heatsink. Proper bonding makes all the difference in performance and durability. We also give customers personalized attention. I almost always recognize a repeat customer's name. Where are you located and do you have a retail outlet? Where do your customers mainly come from ?We are in Los Angeles, CA. And we are a completely internet based company Our
customers come from everywhere on the planet... Brazil, Slovenia, Australia, Canada, U.K., Iceland, South Africa, Phillipines... you name it. And, of course, a lot of customers in the US. What is your philosophy on products, i.e. stock everything people need, or only things you would use yourself ?We try to stock what sells. Otherwise it becomes a loss real fast. Do you price match against prices on OcPrices or Pricewatch for instance? What's your policy ?We are fair with our warranty and return policies...but, yes, we try to match current prices. What is your business idea ?Well, we try to do the "dirty work" for our customers. First time peltier assembly is a risky thing because it requires proper handling of the peltier modules. Also, the idea of PelTEC is to provide novel accessories for peltiers too. We plan soon on carrying pure silver coldplate ( not sterling! ) within short time. We have had a remarkably few amount of returns over the past 1-1/2 years ...less than a dozen coolers in total. How many staff do you have ?2-3 people. How do people find PelTEC in the first place ? Are you letting hardware sites review your products, do you advertise/sponsor, or do you mostly rely on word of mouth ?Submitting parts for review to websites brings in a lot of customers. Advertising doesn't work as well. If people see that your product works, they will be interested. We were also very well regarded on Usenet a while back. In fact, I made a lot of friends on Usenet when PelTEC was in it's full bloom about 1 year ago. How does a regular work day look at PelTEC ? How many days a week ?It's 7 days a week, but very mild nowadays. We used to get 5-20 orders a day, and now we would be lucky with 5 orders. Like I said before, the CPUs are getting tooo hot these days. Maybe the Tualatin will bring some customers back to peltier/heatsink cooling. I can't wait to get my hands on one for testing. How do you handle support? ICQ, AIM, phone, email? Office hours or all hours?We avoid phones... and do it all with email. We will call customers if they request it...but mostly email. There are a lot of overclocking related shops in the US. Are there too many (is the market too crowded) or is there room for you all?Overclockers like trying new inventions regardless of what shop they come from. They are an anxious bunch :). You recently started OCPals.com... What is that about ?Over our history, a lot of international customers have asked us to buy CPUs and Memory for them in the US (to save money) and forward the parts to them along with the peltiers. They usually have specific customs requirements also. We decided that there was a need for this service in general. So we made a webpage at OCPals.com. Our experience shipping peltiers around the globe demonstrated to us that it's completely viable to ship parts around the world with little risk. So far OCPals.com is NOT working. It's a good idea with much needed publicity. We also have a free oveclocking parts auction set up now...but in order for it to be effective OCPals.com need much more traffic. What do(es) your current setup(s) consist of ?We have 2 - Dual 1133 PIII overclocked VP6 systems with SCSI drives, cooled with Sledgehogs copper 68watt coolers running at about 23°C. They are regulated by VPC-160s to run a little warmer since the idea is make the machines stable and into super cooled. Also a HP Celeron 500 machine on the network.
My own personal system is 1.1Gig T-Bird watercooled to approximately 1.6Gig using a water jacket and lexan clamp with a 156w peltier module. The radiator used is cooled by two quiet 120mm fans ( on top of the case ) and the water reservior is a huge 40 gallon water storage drum. It's big and obvious...but I can shut off the radiator and let it run without any worry. The vid card is a Geforce 2 Ultra slightly overclocked. Maybe a 15K RPM drive would top it off. What has been (or is) your most extreme overclocking project ?Cooling a 700Mhz Athlon with 4 watercooled peltiers and 60 gallon fish tank filled with about 10 dollars worth of ICE. I got it to about 1050Mhz @ -5°F. It was a shortlived processor though. Anything else you'd like the readers to know ?Actually, if there is anything your readers could suggest we carry on our
website. I'm amazed at how passive customers are in terms of suggesting
products. Visit PelTEC or OCPals.
If you have any comments regarding this interview or have any suggestions on questions you think should be asked, email us here at interviews@ocprices.com
Also don't forget to check out prices out on cables, guaranteed CPUs, peltiers, water coolers, case modding equipment and much more in our Overclocking Equipment Pricelist featuring 70 overclocking retailers/vendors from 9 countries.
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