PrimoChill Marketing Strategy

MasterZoen

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Feb 3, 2009
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This is a gripe about how PrimoChill has discontinued the best D5 pump reservoir they ever built, the Typhoon III, and nearly crippled my system in the process. Please, feel free to let me know how you feel about this obvious insult to their loyal customers. I've recommended the T3 to all my friends, and even gifted them with D5 pumps as holiday gifts to some of my closest friends. In March, they stated the Typhoon IV would be released by the end of June. This is the end of July, and still no T4.
Ref.: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/rumor-mill/33610-primochill-typhoon-iv.html

First, let me explain what happened to result in the disappointment I feel. I have two computers, an air cooled family system with a mild 3.9 GHz overclocked Phenom II X4 965 BE, and my personal system which is water cooled to sustain a heavy 4.5 GHz overclocked Phenom II X6 1090T BE. At the beginning of June, I found a small crack in my Typhoon III reservoir that was leaking the non-conductive coolant fluid onto my hard drives. I found only 4 T3 units for sale online, through Google, at prices I couldn't afford. So, I drained the loops, removed the reservoir and went on down to my favorite PC shop to pick up a new one. Unfortunately, they didn't have one, and weren't aware of when they would be getting more of them in stock. I picked up a Typhoon Split Window single bay reservoir, coolant, and some more tubing to tide me over until I saved up the money to order a new T3 online. This, of course, is when everything started to fall apart.

After setting up the dual loop system I had with the T3 into a single loop so that the GPU loop was on my CPU/HDISK loop, with the radiators from both loops running in sequence and my single D5 was pumping from the new reservoir, I almost immediately started having problems. My system would shutdown due to overheating after about 1 hour of runtime. My first thought was that I had a kink or bubble somewhere in the loops, since I had rearranged them. There was a little air in the loops, but no kinks or blockages, so I topped off the coolant, cycled and compressed the loops to fill them to capacity, and plugged the reservoir again. 1 hour later, my system overheated and shut down again. I was baffled. I decided I must have somehow loosened one of the waterblocks from it's mount. So I checked all my water blocks, from the GPU to the CPU and hard disk. Every single one was solid and rock steady. Next, I checked the fans on the radiators, which were all functional. Finally, I tested the flow force on my loops in case the pump was failing. This actually yielded results, just not the ones I was expecting. After draining the loops into a bottle so I could reuse the coolant, and setting up the flow meter, refilling the loops and running the system, it showed I was only getting a third of the pressure in my loop system compared to what I had before. I drained the loops again, pulled the pump, and used the left over tubing I had to set up a 1 foot loop without a radiator or water block and ran it again. The pump performed fine, giving very similar results to what I had tested back when I first installed the T3. I ran the test loop for 3 hours and the flow force barely changed the entire time. Clearly the problem was with my loops, but what and where was the problem? As it turned out, the Typhoon 3 reservoir was an innovative design that ramped pressure into the D5 pump so that you didn't lose flow force running dual loops, or extended line loops. I'm fanatical about my personal system running cool. I had originally set up my T3 with two loops, one going through a radiator, to the CPU, through a radiator, to the HDISK, and through another radiator, then back to the reservoir, with a second line running through a radiator, to the GPU, through another radiator, back to the reservoir. With the new reservoir I had simply looped them all in sequence of radiator, GPU, radiator, radiator, CPU, radiator, HDISK, radiator. This line is apparently to long for a single D5 pump. I went back the store, bought a second pump, a second reservoir, more coolant and tubing, and set up a second loop for the GPU that was running independent of the CPU/HDISK. I filled both loops, cycled them, topped them off, and started my PC. This time my temperatures stayed cool. I figured the spare pump would be handy when my main one died after I replaced my T3.

Last week I had finally saved up for one of the T3's I had found online last month only to have Google return no search results. I've spent 5 days going to archaic websites following leads of the T3, like some jungle safari hunter tracking a white rhino. I finally found a reference to PrimoChill's website, which I'd never been to, and after about 40 minutes of clicking around, I finally found a notice that they stopped production of the T3 back in march and put out a NEW reservoir that they expected to succeed it in market expectations. The only reservoirs under new products on their site is the Typhoon Split Window single bay unit which I had already bought last month.

They can't seriously expect this reservoir to be better than the T3. The T3 was designed to increase the flow pressure through a single D5 pump using a spiraling compression ramp so that you could run dual loops without a reduction in cooling efficiency. As far as I can tell, they've just given the liquid cooled community the finger, and blatantly insulted the customer. The only way this reservoir would exceed market expectations of the T3 is for all the T3's in use to break at once, and everyone to replace them with 2 of these single bay reservoirs. Where is the T4 they promised?
 

DanCreed

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Aug 20, 2010
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Have to do your homework.. the arcylic used in the T3's was flawed and couldn't handle all that pressure.. I've personally been through three T-3's (by the way your T3 had a 5 year warranty so you shouldn't have to buy a new one... they are replacing the T3's with T4's for free when they are finally complete (which is supposed to be in the next couple of week)...

The whole T3 design using arcylic was flawed as it couldn't handle the pressure and vibrations and thus caused leaks and or cracks in a whole lot of the units sold.... Thats why the new T4 is delrin and not acrylic... I've got pictures but primotech doesn't want them released to the public until the finished product is on the market.. You should e-mail support though... like I said.. your T3 should have been under warranty and should be replaced with a T4 for free..


Thanks,
Dan
Any questions shoot me an e-mail at Dan.Creed@thecreeds.net
 

MasterZoen

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Feb 3, 2009
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Dan,

I'm not sure if you read the title of my thread, but this was a gripe about the Marketing strategy at PrimoChill. I did rant a little and I suppose that may have obscured my point. However, I will clarify here.

***They stopped production on a current model before the new model was heading to shelves.***

This is an incredible blunder, especially as they don't have any product available now that compares to the T3. Yes, I'm aware that the acrylic was flawed, and yes, I'm aware of the replacement policy. I'm eager to get my hands on a T4, however I was told that I'd have to wait until they are in stores to have one shipped to me as, apparently, they only made a certain number of the pre-production T4 samples, as well as the special production run of T3's.

I like PrimoChill as a company, and want to buy their products, which is why I replaced my T3 with a Typhoon bay reservoir. What really irked me into my rant, was the fact that my loop setup relied on the T3 far more than I had ever realized and required an additional $100 expenditure to restructure.

I should also mention that it is now the end of august and there is still not any T4's available.

Thanks for your comments, Dan, and I apologize if the point of aggrevation was unclear.

P.S.: Two things: One, my friends' T3's still work fine, and two, the crack did not develop in a joint location.