Vadim Chobanu

I was an advocate of watercooling and always believed in it. I believed in it so much that I even invented and developed my own waterblock for the VGAs. If I was to have that product 3-4 years earlier, probably it would have been successful, now I struggle to see a long term demand and wont bother investing any more time or efforts or even think about it.

Probably many will say that I am gone mad, yet I have valid reasons for that and below I will give the technical explanations behind it.

1) The CPU manufacturing process is shrinking and the current generation of Intel CPUs is at 45nm, due to move to 32nm later on this year. I hear many say ’so what has the manufacturing process to do with the actual watercooling being obsolete?’ It’s simple - more components packed together in the same size will need quicker heat exchange by the exactly same area of contact and the copper commonly utilised in the industry is starting to bottleneck and no matter how quickly the liquid will be pumped, through the CPU block and how cold will that be, the actual CPU temperature will be quite different from the overall ambient liquid temperature.

Example: back in 2006 when Core 2 Duo (65nm launched, the watercooling made a big difference to how much you could push your system to. To stably overclock the first batches of E6600 CPUs to 3.6Ghz on a commercially available air cooler was almost impossible, yet possible with watercooling. It actually made a big difference to the overall CPU temperatures. Now, with the launch of the Core i7 the watercooling struggles to give you as much quantitative benefit when compared to aircooling and I believe that will shrink even more when the manufacturing will move to 32nm. Unless of course diamond or diamond based heat exchangers and compounds will be widely accepted as a cooling standard. One of the latest attempts in this domain was reported by Custom PC not long ago - http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605550/researchers-create-new-thermal-material.html

If it will be cost efficient, then there is still hope for watercooling to be effective for a few more years to cover the 22nm CPU manufacturing, but probably not as much for the 16nm later on.

Fact: If you look below at the E6600 world records you will see all attempts were made using one sort or another of extreme cooling, such as liquid nitrogen or cooling cascades.

Now if we do the same search for the newer core i7 CPUs, we would notice that in the top searches we get even aircooling and watercooling alongside the liquid nitrogen. That makes a watercooled Intel Core i7 CPU 27Mhz faster than watercooling, leaving even some phase change cooling results behind.

A ‘better’ alternative to watercooling is considered Peltiers/TEC (Thermo Electric Cooling) which is being adapted for use in PC systems by the Canadian Cool IT and in the UK an interesting attempt at using the concept was done by Kobalt Computers, where a Core i7 CPU was overclocked to 4.4Ghz with fairly interesting temperatures as reported by media. I was never a believer in TEC due to the efficiency limitations (the best peltier will only achieve 67% conversion efficiency and that is behind other technologies (PSUs are currently at 80-90%), yet the concept works. Maybe its not the quetest cooling, but it works.

Achieving 4.4Ghz from a Core i7 with good temperatures is pretty impressive, yet the price or availability for the full system was not released and I would imagine they are quite prohibitive in the today’s climate when no-one wants to spend money. A smartly built aircooled system with the same components wont be that far of from those results and that is fact.

My second argument today against the need for extreme speeds is also simple - what for?

A few years back it was understandable - to play the latest games on the highest settings you needed to overclock heavily and always have tomorrow’s technology. Today there are not that many games that wont play very well on a aircooled and overclocked to 3.6Ghz Core i7 with a few high end VGAs from AMD or Nvidia in it.  So the only purpose of watercooling would remain  - noise removal, which will win against the TEC concept.

I understand that not everyone will agree with me, please feel free to comment

Following our presence at the Wine+ Trade Show, we had been approached to sponsor the Country Living Magazine Gala Evening and exhibit/organise wine tasting at the fair. It didn’t take us much hesitation to accept the offer and there we were - last week busy at the fair.

The show took place at the London Business Design Centre in Islington lasting 5 days between 11th and 15th of March with some 20-30k visitors attended. On the day one, there was this Gala Evening where £4 from each ticket sold was donated to charity as well as each visitor could serve a glass of Cricova wine. The wines have been received very well by the general public and I managed to take a few pictures from the evening.

To read the full story with many more pictures please visit the Exquisite Wine blog

I had the opportunity this year to visit ExpoVin Moldova 2009 held at the National Exhibition Centre between 18-21 Feb. ExpoVin Moldova is an annual event for the wine industry that is attended by everyone who has or wants to have anything to do with Moldavian wine industry - winemakers, cork producers, packaging and labeling companies etc.

As every other exhibition, ExpoVin Moldova this year didn’t enjoy the usual demand even though the Moldavian politicians strongly argue (elections soon will change that) that Moldova hasn’t been affected by the credit crunch. The real life situation is that the winemakers struggle - a few key players weren’t present, so the show was not what it used to be. Still, the companies that could make it, had beautiful stands as well as a few nice looking …girls… Well, a picture does a thousand words, so enjoy them below:

To read the full entry and see all the pictures please visit the Exquisite Wine Blog

For the past month or so, I have wasted a lot of my time on dealing with hackers! That’s right. Macedonian and Romanian kids. Firstly they found a way to exploit my tmp folder on the server and placed an IRC bot called emech. Thanks to Coreix - they noticed some unusual traffic and helped to stop it.

Then they managed to exploit one of my user’s site which had a weak password. I noticed that quickly as whatever they tried to do caused the apache to die.

The last part that got me furious is somehow they managed to write to my htaccess files a few lines of code that was telling google to go and index their site instead:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Googlebot|Slurp|msnbot)
RewriteRule ^ http://dfsg.us/ [R=301,L]

Now that’s cheeky. I have no idea how they did it as the file is accessible for writing only by the owner. There is no way they know my password as if they did, they would have probably done more damage. I guess there is a new php/apache vulnerability which is yet to be reported and a patch made available for it.

For now, I disabled ftp access, installed a few programs to block IP addresses of users who attempt anything suspicious, changed all my passwords, installed a php patch for improved security and I am looking forward to wasting more of my time in due course!

Oh, the same issue has been reported by a guy over here - http://44px.net/blog/2009/02/28/napominayu-prosteyshee-pravilo-teper-i-iz-svoego-opyita

He thinks its the ftp details that got hacked - I looked through my ftp logs - nothing there on my end.

Update 05/03/2009 - Coreix was kind enough to do a audit on the server and suggested a few extra security measures that I gladly accepted to make the server extra secure. Now I can sleep at night

And once again I will comment on how good the Coreix support is - professional, knowledgeable, polite and not trying to rip anyone off! They worked to apply all the security measures and disable the services that were not necesary etc for a good part of the day and I got charged a very reasonable ammount of money for that!

After Vadim Computers ceased trading I have moved on into wine import, however I didn’t stop being a PC enthusiast as my blog probably shows. Maybe I didn’t game as much, nonetheless, I watched the industry quite closely and not long ago I started consulting Scan Computers on a few aspects of their 3XS Systems side of business.

As I had displayed a few banners above my blog, over the past few weeks I had been questioned– what is my involvement with SCAN and I should stop recommending them as they pay me for adverts on my website.

Now I felt it is the right time to reveal what actually is going on.

Vadim Computers is gone and will not come back unfortunately, yet many of you knew that the whole Vadim approach was built from the love for what we did. The reality is simple - our business model couldn’t have survived this economic slowdown as it requires economies of scales to be applied which unfortunately we lacked due to being such a niche system integrator.

As mentioned a few times in my blogs previously, I felt that Scan 3XS has the right ingredients to make it a brand which will be loved as much as Vadim PCs, to deliver a product and customer service equal or superior to what we have done before. So, I did approach Scan and offered my services to help them enhance their brand image and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) positioning. Over the past 5 years, I have learnt a lot by heading Vadim PCs and Scan has been smart enough to recognise that and not let it go to waste, by accepting my proposition.

The first fruits of our work together so far are the Hexus 3XS forum launched not long ago. The forum is part of Hexus community which means that any active member gets free delivery on their Scan orders, so do not delay – register and start posting today! I am taking occasionally part in the discussions and I looking forward to chat to everyone in due course.

I would also like to present below a few facts that I thought I will share with everyone to reveal what is behind Scan 3XS.

Last month, I went to Bolton and met the system builds guys and I honestly speaking I even envied Scan for having such a talented and hard working team! I certainly couldn’t have done that. During my visit, I noticed one of the guys fiddling with a system built in an Antec case and I noticed the TLC he is treating it with, so I said – let’s see what’s inside…. I will be frank - I put all my pride away and congratulated him on one of the best cable jobs I have ever seen!

So, I am happy to report that, yes – Scan 3XS does PCs which you won’t be ashamed of showing to your mates. I cannot comment on the low end systems with solid side panels, but the one I seen was truly a masterpiece.

The support system that I saw is quite interesting too and not inferior in any aspect to what we did on our end. Same thing – personalised communications, plus shorter building time estimates which is a very important factor in my opinion.
When we operated Vadim PCs, we had to order the components for each order. If someone was changing their mind as to one component or another, it was resulting in a push back of the ETA, if a component failed, then the ETA was pushed even more as we had to source another one. With Scan this is different – if something is not right, they have a huge warehouse full of components at their disposal. This is called efficiency, which we were never proud of.

So to summarise the article – I am still involved with Scan for as long as I have spare time and as long as they require my services and together we will try make the most of our partnership as well as deliver the message across that 3XS systems are a brand you would like to be associated with. More will be revealed in due course as we progress, yet for now, I can tell that there will be more photography of systems proudly built by Scan 3XS team as well as a website design update in the due course! What out the space and feel free to comment on the forums.

There aren’t very many Eastern European Restaurants in the UK and from the lot, just a handful are worth any attention to be honest. Over the past few months I have been visiting quite a few of those restaurants as part of my new job of promoting Cricova Wine, so this particular place based in North London caught my attention due to its traditional pure Romanian interior. The place used to be an English pub before by the looks of it, so I just thought - interesting design and arrangement, but I will check the online reviews what people say about its food etc.

What surprised me the most is the fact the place doesn’t even have a website. And looking for online reviews didn’t bring much success unfortunately either, so we decided to pay a visit to The Britannia and check it out for ourselves.

Read the full story at Exquisite Wine Blog

I will start from the beginning. A few months ago I attended the wine show in London, which I will admit was quite an enjoyable experience. My wife and I even signed up for OZ Clarke’s ’seminar’ on Portuguese wines. I remember it to date - his speech really made me want go to Portugal and drink only vinho verde! It was a fun and ‘different’ type of seminar, following which I managed to take a picture of my wife with Mr Clarke. Anyway, tasting as you can expect may get you influenced by alcohol, so i don’t quite remember in detail but we ended with the Food and Travel magazine subscription in the bag! Oh well I said - we like to travel, so let it be…

Apparently our subscription came with 2 tickets to the great Australian Wine experience 2009 worth £25 each, which I found out only in December about. To take advantage of this offer, all I had to do is send an email and request my 2 tickets! So there I was - end of January with 2 tickets for the tasting at Emirates Stadium (Arsenal). My wife was busy with her coursework(poor student) plus she didn’t feel that well, so gave me the express permission to go without her. My friend Dusan gladly accepted the invitation and at around 7pm we were making the most of our presence at the tasting.

Read the full story at Exquisite Wine Blog

Credit crunch is what you see every day in adverts, on TV, read online, in newspapers, but for the last few weeks it was stressed a lot in the IT channel, so I would post my thoughts on this. Before I do that, below are a few news headlines that caught my attention, all of them reported in January.

• Intel has reported a 90% drop in profits and is considering a global job cut of 6000 employees.
• Microsoft is considering laying off 5000 employees.
• Empire Direct going into administration.
• Foxconn, the biggest OEM motherboard manufacturer joined the ‘profits warning’ club.
• AMD cuts another 900 of their workforce and reports remuneration pay cuts.
• Nvidia reports dramatic revenue slowdown.
• Denis Publishing closed Computer Buyer.
• Dell to close its Ireland facility making 1900 redundancies.
• Lenovo announced 2500 job cuts.
• IBM is to cut 2,868 jobs, but it may be up to 16000.
• Logitech - 2500 redundancies and profit drops.
• Circuit city in the States to close all its stores.
• Samsung reports loses.

I am sure there are/will be more of the above, but it is worrying to see all that in just a month - it certainly doesn’t smell good and shows just how tough was the last quarter for the IT, which even with the new tech released such as Core i7, x58 chipsets etc, it didn’t help in achieving the targets. I see the new Intel technology revolutionary enough to want to spend money on it, yet everyone is reserved and you can’t see the enthusiasm that could be seen back in 2006 when the Intel Core was released. The current slowdown is caused mostly by the customer spending, or the lack of it if I am to phrase it better. The cut in that spending originates from the general panic infused by the media and the end result is job losses which in turn will cause even less being spent, as to save for the bad times – a chain reaction of inevitable events… hm, dont i sound like half life here? Nope, that was ‘Unforeseen Consequences’. Joking aside though, the reality is not very sweet.

On the other hand, the above news could be actually good news for IT and I will explain why.

I see the PC industry as a relatively honest industry that does innovate a lot and pays adequate remunerations to its executives and everyone involved. To put it in contrast – you don’t see a graduate working in IT to get hundreds of thousands of pounds in bonuses… This is enough in my opinion to argument that the state of the PC industry wasn’t a messy one before this entire global crisis begun, unlike ‘those other industries not to be named’ that created this situation. Yes, quite a lot of companies were and are dependent on credit, but still there are a lot of them that do have history and a strong backing behind them. So what was to be affected, it has been pretty much pruned. I felt the first signs of this downturn in Feb last year and observing it all since then it leaves me but to think the companies caught unprepared or weak are gone, the other players have already understood the new conditions and have begun to readjust as we can see above by cutting down in their production capacity/consolidating its workforce etc. I somehow don’t see the current market turning very much worse – so brace yourselves IT fellas, it can’t be that much longer now before we see it stabilizing and growing again. Maybe we haven’t seen the worst of it, but I still have confidence that soon there will be some light too. It just takes time for everything to readjust to the new state of affairs.

The mother nature’s laws - ‘as one dies, another one is born’ seem to apply to the companies as well. As someone struggles to keep up with the overheads, another one enters the market. This is great though as it is facilitates the innovation.

Just about a week ago BFG Tech inc announced that are releasing a new line of products - Boutique Gaming PCs aimed at the ‘graduated gamer’ alongside their existing motherboards, graphics and PSUs. Today Hexus.TV published a Video presentation of their marketing director who explained the concept.

I expected to see the insides, nevertheless, below I made a few comments on what has been presented.

1) Airflow - top to bottom.
I understand that it was made because the graphics cards are made to push the air out and as this system is made to have the graphics facing bottom of the chassis, it will be absurd to make it bottom to top airflow.
However, just an idea for BFG if they read this. If they are to redesign the coolers of the graphics cards as well, so they suck the air from the bottom of the chassis, and then change the top fans so they push the air out, I guess they will see a good drop in temperatures as the hot air normally goes up easier than down (natural convection), plus there is a slight difference in any room temperature when you compare the floor level to the 40cm level, (unless you have floor heating of course).

2) The comment about picking the best cards from the best batches as opposed to what they give their competitors who buy from them.  I doubt other system integrators who supply BFG cards in their systems will be very happy when they hear this…

3) USBs - ok, you have 2 on the top, 2 on the back. Not enough if you ask me and accessing the rest of USBs via the bottom would be rather inconvenient.

4) VGA/Power etc bottom placement - same as for USBs - I think its inconvenient to have it that way.

Technicalities aside - it is a quite an ambitious project and I am very curious to know why a VGA board partner has decided to make this move? Is it not enough sales of VGAs over the past 6 months due to the AMDs cards selling well or is it more to do with the brand ego or brand promotion. Can it be indeed the first reason looking at how XFX on the other hand have learnt to milk two cows, doing both - Nvidia and AMD cards? Risk spreading is a positive thing in these changing times I hear

Anyway, enough speculations and lets see what can I think about BFG entering this market?

Difficult to comment to be honest as I am not that familiar with the US market as the UK one, however, Rahul Sood of Voodoo PC based in Canada/USA is writing on his blog that the times are changing and they will focus less on crazy high end PCs. Proof to that is their new HP Firebird also presented by Hexus yesterday.

BFG doesn’t see it that way and still decided to go ahead. I guess its a good marketing exercise for the BFG brand as a whole even if they won’t make many sales of such system, providing that other system integrators (who are also their clients) wont see them as their competitors and give preference to other board partners instead. If they can overcome this phenomenon, it doesn’t really matter if they make or not any direct profits on the divisional level of the system integration business  - the benefits will be indirectly enjoyed by the VGA/PSU/motherboards sales increase. However, i see this a major task for them as buying from the competition is not something anyone enjoys really and whenever possible, will try to realign their long term strategy to exclude helping the competitors.

On a totally different note, and also to finalise this article, I had a comment last week from someone who was angry with me, why do I put down the small SI’s and praise so much Scan, saying that SCAN pays me for promoting their brand.  Soon there will be made a more public announcement, which will explain why the banner on the top in more detail. For now, lets just say that I approached SCAN to offer placing a 3XS banner and if I wouldn’t have believed they do a good job, I wouldn’t have done that!