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By Chris Angelini |
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But enthusiasts also lust after the highest-end hardware—the stuff with great margin. They influence the buying decisions of those same friends and family members, so when it's time to upgrade, a contented power user often translates into more business. If you're still in doubt, ask your next few customers where they learn about the latest technology.
As a result of their collective savvy and outspoken voice, enthusiasts have a way of getting large vendors to deliver. When a motherboard manufacturer doesn't include the right BIOS options, it gets written off in favor of one that will. When a graphics vendor falls even a few frames per second behind in the latest games, it gets a dunce cap, smack on the rear, and time out in the corner. Midrange- and value-oriented cards from the same company resultantly receive less attention, too. Even the two mighty CPU manufacturers sway to the will of enthusiasts, evident in that they both offer specialty gaming chips priced ridiculously yet maintained at a very high profile. As you might imagine, struggling against such a determined group is generally pretty futile. You can seal your white box systems and explicitly prohibit tampering, but when the mod bug hits, upgrades are made and settings are optimized beyond what you'd otherwise deem safe. Rather than push back, consider selling more enthusiast-friendly hardware, which should be capable of standing up to the prodding of curious power users. AMD and Intel Approve...Kinda of On the record, both AMD and Intel condemn overclocking as the quickest way to void a warranty. They don't support the practice and officially won't issue you a refund if a customer fries their CPU trying to break performance records. Yet both vendors caved to enthusiasts' demands long ago by introducing limited-edition performance juggernauts. AMD, catering to a market it has faithfully cultivated for years, sells the Athlon 64 FX. Though no different architecturally than more mainstream Athlon 64 chips, consistent refreshes of the FX have maintained top-bin clock speeds, the largest L2 caches, and an unlocked clock multiplier. All other Athlons sport fixed multipliers, which keep dubious system builders from remarking inexpensive chips and selling them as premium products. But because the FX lineup already sells at an elevated price point, it's given the extra little power-user nod. Clock multipliers operate on a bus frequency—in AMD's case, the 200 MHz HyperTransport pipeline—to yield a final clock speed. Having enthusiast customers modify that one field is perhaps the safest way to overclock. They won't knock the memory or PCI Express buses out of whack, and there's a very minimal chance of causing any permanent damage. At worst, a simple BIOS reset should be enough to get everything back to default. Intel's Extreme Edition family takes a slightly different approach to adding enthusiast value. The newest models actually address a shortcoming of the current platform design. Mainly, when a dual-core processor sits on a shared 800 MHz front side bus, the pathway tends to bottleneck. The newest 965 and 955 Extreme Edition chips leverage a 1,066 MHz bus instead. A faster clock speed and inclusion of Hyper-Threading further differentiate Extreme Edition CPUs from Intel's other chips. And though it took Intel much longer than AMD, enthusiasts finally convinced the firm to throw in an unlocked multiplier, too. Given Intel's well-tuned 65 nm process and relatively conservative stock clock speeds, customers who tinker around should realize more than 4 GHz from the newest Extreme Edition chips without any stability issues. Motherboard Vendors Do, Too
There's a lot more competition amongst third-party motherboard vendors, and the models most celebrated for unwavering stability often come from the companies heavily vested in the enthusiast community. Thus you'll have a harder time finding boards without copious options than the other way around. Flexibility is part of what makes one BIOS implementation better than another. Having realized that almost any motherboard you choose to use in your white box systems will open the door to a number of bus speed adjustments and potentially dangerous voltage tweaks, it's particularly important to determine a best fit for your application. As far as Pentium 4- and Pentium D-based platforms are concerned, Intel's own branded motherboards usually strike an agreeable balance between reseller-friendly setup and ample room for an enthusiast to tinker. At one point, the Intel boards were stripped completely bare of adjustable settings—akin to what you'd see from a top-tier machine. But as power users have come down on those uninspired products, Intel has slowly started adding extra functionality. Now customers are exposed to fairly comprehensive speed settings, including a multitude of memory knobs and selectable timings. You'll even find some conservative power adjustments, which enthusiasts can use to conjure up a higher overclock without flying outside of the board's tolerances. The AMD side is built on an enthusiast foundation, making it harder to hug the VAR-friendly fence. However, a well-rounded Athlon 64 system should be plenty capable of standing up to the more aggressive settings you'll find on an ASUS, Gigabyte, or MSI board, for example. A board with ambitious memory voltage options goes well with modules designed to withstand the extra juice. Additional case cooling helps dissipate the extra heat given off by overclocked chipsets and processors, too. Memory Really Matters It's tempting to save money on memory, especially when you look at the specifications and see two memory kits with the same speeds and feeds but ten dollars separating them. But don't be so quick to choose the cheapest option when it comes to RAM. Few configuration problems pop up more often than improperly set up memory modules. The conundrum is certainly understandable. You're choosing between DDR, DDR2, and FB-DIMM technologies in speeds from 266 MHz to over 1,000. Memory timings, which play an equally important role in defining performance, are grossly underemphasized in marketing. When a customer goes to add 30 MHz here and cut half a cycle from their CAS setting, a fully stable configuration might inexplicably fall on its face, prompting a call to you and a 15-minute explanation of how to get things running again.
When it comes to soliciting enthusiast business, know which vendors guarantee their modules at the most extended settings and build some headroom into your platforms. Take a product such as OCZ Technology's EB DDR PC-4000, for example. JEDEC only defines DDR memory standards up to DDR400. But the OCZ kit is guaranteed to run at speeds as high as 500 MHz. On an office workstation, buying 100 MHz of excess slack is most certainly a waste. Enthusiasts will put it to good use, though. And VARs can breathe easy because OCZ promises that the kit will take voltages up to 2.9V without suffering damage. A lifetime warranty, a PCB optimized for stability, and an attractive mirrored heat spreader help add appeal. Pay special attention to memory timings. Motherboard instruction manuals rarely explain the meaning of each setting, yet just one overzealous option can keep a machine from booting. Modules with lower timings are less likely to cause problems as enthusiasts begin optimizing. A perfect example, the OCZ kit is rated at CAS 3, which is impressively low for a 500 MHz component. By combining high speed and aggressive latencies, OCZ's offering helps make the reseller's job easier. Avoiding Graphics Gaffes The gaming crowd is always looking for more frames per second, whether through expensive dual-card rendering technologies capable of yielding high double-digit percentage gains or do-it-yourself overclocking more likely to garner an extra point or two. You might think that upgrading to an SLI or CrossFire setup might keep most customers happy. Believe it or not, though, it's still possible to bottleneck even the fastest duo of flagship cards. And that's why graphics overclocking is so popular. In the past, both ATI and NVIDIA shunned calls related to overclocking. Then NVIDIA let slip about an applet built-in to its ForceWare driver package that independently modifies core and memory frequencies. Suddenly, anyone with a GeForce card could dabble in graphics tweaking straight from NVIDIA's own driver. Granted, the NVIDIA CoolBits utility is riddled with disclaimers relieving the company from any liability from overclocking-related damage.
Keeping pace, ATI addressed overclocking in a more direct fashion. Rather than slip an undocumented utility into its Catalyst package, ATI decided to make overclocking a standard feature called OverDrive, available on any of its cards with built-in thermal sensors. OverDrive makes for a reseller-friendly value because it gives enthusiasts an outlet for overclocking within the thermal “safety zone” established by ATI. Though third-party apps might yield greater speed increases, OverDrive is included as part of the standard driver package and is actually supported. Power users get the same performance benefits without risking their hardware to excessive heat. Odds and Ends Power supplies are perhaps the most underrated components in a true enthusiast machine—so much so, that even your power user customers might not know what they're looking for other than wattage. Take the opportunity to add value and prevent stability issues by recommending a solid unit with plenty of amperage on the 12V rail. The right warranty, connectors, and price should help seal the deal.
Heatsinks are more heavily emphasized, since most enthusiasts already know that their tweaking efforts are usually limited by heat. Zalman, of course, is one of the favorites for CPUs since it tends to feature efficient copper designs and large, quiet fans. More serious enthusiasts might even want to replace their stock graphics cooler altogether, swapping it out for something less noisy. That's where Arctic Cooling steps in, offering one model for high-end NVIDIA boards and another for ATI's Radeon. The modder determined to remove a stock heatsink will do it whether you sell the replacement or not. At least Arctic Cooling's product is priced reasonably and is universal enough to support a handful of cards between a couple of models. Peace at Last Enthusiasts are perhaps your most particular customers. They know the technology, they know what it costs, and if something isn't working the way it should, they know where you work. But power users also want the best hardware and are willing to spend top dollar in order to get it. The margin on parts such as Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition or a pair of ATI graphics cards in a CrossFire configuration is plenty attractive to VARs. That's why you want to keep the enthusiasts on your side by selling the fastest kit while keeping service, stability, and warranty support in mind, as well. The top hardware manufacturers—AMD, Intel, ATI, NVIDIA, and a host of others—have all answered the call for no-compromise products aimed at power users. Follow suit. By making peace with your enthusiast customers, you'll enjoy higher margins and, ideally, more business from friends and families. |
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