Of all of the area’s I visited their Engineering was by far the smallest. Yet I still spent the most time there. I spoke with one of their engineers for the better part of my visit talking about both how they come up with their different products as well as how they test and burn in every PC that they sell. I touched on this a little in the factory section of our tour, but here they actually went through their entire process of setting up, configuring, and later burning in each pc. I was very impressed with how they go about all of this and at the same time very jealous. Their entire installation process is run off of the various SKU’s that each part has. When doing the initial install it picks up what parts make the build and the full installation is customized to that build.
The process starts out by booting up the PC and updating to a validated version of the motherboards firmware. While in there the engineers can actually tag if any other settings need to be changed in the BIOS to customize for water cooling for example. Once the firmware is updated, the process starts the windows installation while also including all of the driver’s for each part of the PC build that have been validated. What they mean by validated means they may not install the most current driver, rather they install the most current driver that they have tested and confirmed that it doesn't cause additional problems.
I even got let in on a little secret. Every PC that ships actually has the logs and results from all of the tests run it before it is shipped to it new owner. That means that those who buy a SYX gaming PC can actually find its 3DMark results for example. In fact with 3DMark they actually put all three (entry, performance, extreme) on one html page for easy reading. The results aren't on the desktop or anyplace that easy to find. But they are in the logs folder on the backup partition.
Although I spent almost all of my time in the engineering section that focuses on gaming, there are also server, notebook, and normal pc sections as well. All of the same level of testing and retesting applies, just without the same cool hardware that we all know and love.
Nice facilities they have there. It's like the place I've always wanted to work, and they build computers too Odd place to put it though unless your trying to hide from all your enemies.
Ive been heading over there every October for the last 4 years or so. Im actually going to be there to meet our new sales rep and get the great swag that comes with their yearly Symposium. Its a nice facility.
L0rdG1gabyt3: So you probably saw my eyefinity BF3 beta setup/flight sim last year?
This year I'm thinking like four person deathmatch hosted on one of our servers. Maybe TF2 MvM.
I've got some good vendors coming out this year too.
Corsair, NVIDIA, Asus, and AMD should all be there who haven't been there in the past few years. MSI and Intel will be back as always. Probably forgetting a few guys.
Ultra products (accessories) have been majorly revamped too, there's a keen focus on getting it right. I'm fairly hard to impress, but they have some good guys working on that stuff now.
I never knew they were an Ohio company. I will certainly share that with friends and family looking for a retail system who are interested in supporting the local economy.
L0rdG1gabyt3 wrote: Funny you should mention it.... I actually missed last year because I was sick! But I am all registered and ready to go this year.
By chance who is your rep/who was your rep?
We started with Dennis Osbourn.. He had a midlife and left. Then we had Susie Merrill. She was really great. She just retired, and now we have Belinda ?Connors? (I believe thats her last name.) She seems very nice.
L0rdG1gabyt3 wrote: Funny you should mention it.... I actually missed last year because I was sick! But I am all registered and ready to go this year.
By chance who is your rep/who was your rep?
We started with Dennis Osbourn.. He had a midlife and left. Then we had Susie Merrill. She was really great. She just retired, and now we have Belinda ?Connors? (I believe thats her last name.) She seems very nice.