Diary of a Wolfeman

A special note to all you young, aspiring, perspiring avid gamers out there who want to build that killer gaming rig that will allow you to spin circles of Doom and Destruction around your enemies: Read The Warranty Very Carefully.

Some 16-yr-old kid managed to squeeze a buttload of cash out of his gramma to build himself a rockin’ system. AMD Athlon64 FX-55, Gigs of RAM, SLI video, the works – including a Koolance water cooling kit. Give the kid points for his hardware selection, he did the research there – which probably amounted to reading the “Best of the Best” column of MaximumPC Magazine.

Unfortunately, that’s where the reading stopped. There were problems with his assembly that led to him smoking the processor and motherboard. We assissted them with an RMA and got his kit working again, after we re-assembled everything correctly and did all the little things…Like bleeding the water system of air bubbles. (This is probably what smoked it.)

Even more unfortunately, he somehow managed to smoke the processor again, we’re not sure how. This time, his mom handled the RMA herself and accidentally told the AMD rep that the rig was water-cooled. Well, if you read the Bold print on the warranty page, it tells you right out that using anything other than the cooling solution that came with the unit voids the warranty. This includes thermal paste!

So now this poor kid has about $2500 worth of hardware that is going to sit around for the next 7-10 months while he takes out alot of garbage and mows square miles worth of lawns, because Mommy sure as hell isn’t going to shell out $800 for another processor.

Of course, that one little tidbit of information isn’t posted anywhere I can find it on retail sites or the Koolance website, so it’s only AMD that tells you. Seems to me it would be a good idea to warn folks, but I guess they are afraid of scaring away sales.

Caveat emptor indeed.