Overpriced pieces of hardware

yasen78

yasen78

yasen78

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Joined
20 Mar 2012
Posts
101
Hello all

I was looking at that offer
EK Water Blocks EK-FC Titan Full Cover Waterblock @ £79.99 inc VAT
and I was thinking that this is a very expensive piece of metal. This is what it is - a piece of metal.
If does not require a hole lot of know how to make it, it does not require a an expensicve factory to make it or very quilified engineers. All you need is a piece of metal drilled in a way to allow a good water flow to go through it and to mach on a GPU really.
80 pounds for that!!! That is the annual budget of some families in Africa probabaly. Is not it too much? And if you look at the price of some other water blocks or whatever hardware it is, it is not justified in any way.

Actually this particular water block is well priced considering the GPU that you are supposed to put it on :)

Am I the only one to think like that?
 
You're paying for the name & warranty. Also they need to recoup research costs, mould/machine costs. Everything adds up. At the end of this, there is the OcUK tax.

If you don't like it, as above, don't buy it.
 
Things cost what people are willing to pay for them, not what they're worth. This is one of the core pillars of capitalism. If people stop paying £80 for those water blocks then the price will drop (or the product disappear if it becomes unprofitable).
 
Presumably there was some form of research and development put into the product followed by (hopefully) rigorous testing, maybe new machinery had to be bought in to produce the final product and staff to run the machinery, the cost of which need to be amortised over most likely a very limited run as only a small percentage of the card buyers, a small market itself, will want to get one.

After that you then need to add in the profit for the production company and the profit for OcUK. All adds up very quickly.

In the end only you can decide if it's worth it to you, if the answer is yes, buy it, if not then don't.
 
yasen78 said:
Hello all

I was looking at that offer
EK Water Blocks EK-FC Titan Full Cover Waterblock @ £79.99 inc VAT
and I was thinking that this is a very expensive piece of metal. This is what it is - a piece of metal.
If does not require a hole lot of know how to make it, it does not require a an expensicve factory to make it or very quilified engineers. All you need is a piece of metal drilled in a way to allow a good water flow to go through it and to mach on a GPU really.
80 pounds for that!!! That is the annual budget of some families in Africa probabaly. Is not it too much? And if you look at the price of some other water blocks or whatever hardware it is, it is not justified in any way.

Actually this particular water block is well priced considering the GPU that you are supposed to put it on :)

Am I the only one to think like that?
Click to expand...

cool story.
 
welcome to the world of consumerism where prices are merely dictated by how well they are tolerated by the customer.

If you don't like it go to the scrap yard, liberate a block of metal from an old banger and go to town with your dremmel and create your own water block ?
 
If it's that easy, make it yourself.

Oh, you'll need to buy the metal. And the tools. And you'll have to design it as well. How long will it take you to make? a day? longer?
 
Mr^B said:
If it's that easy, make it yourself.

Oh, you'll need to buy the metal. And the tools. And you'll have to design it as well. How long will it take you to make? a day? longer?
Click to expand...

I see your point, but for EK it was not that difficult to make it really. Probably a few days of research, making the program for the machine to shape the block, test it, fix thinkgs that were not ok and here they are ready to go for sale. I would have to start from the start, but they did not. The materials and cost for each one of them is how much? If they say 20 pounds (for example) it is normal to ask, why do I pay 80 at the end then?
 
yasen78 said:
I see your point, but for EK it was not that difficult to make it really. Probably a few days of research, making the program for the machine to shape the block, test it, fix thinkgs that were not ok and here they are ready to go for sale. I would have to start from the start, but they did not. The materials and cost for each one of them is how much? If they say 20 pounds (for example) it is normal to ask, why do I pay 80 at the end then?
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A few days of research?
 
Hilarious ! @yasen78 It's called supply and demand

What about those lumps of metal you place on your CPU... I agree it's a rip off but so are a lot of things in life.

If you don't like it there are plenty of options where you can ghetto it and get pretty good results. I run a Xigmatek thor hacked to run on an 1155 socket - Couldn't be more pleased with the results ;)
 
Spunkey said:
A few days... Are you serious?
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Come on guys, this is EK. They know what they are doing. They have the TPD of the chip, they have done water blocks before. How much time do they need to make a water block for a new GPU? Months?

Even I reallise that based on the size of the chip and the TPD you can calculate how much heat is going to be generate, how much surface you will need to take away that heat and how much water you will need to go through that surface, based on the ability of the water to cool down, release that heat in the air. It is not like building a rocket from a scratch. They have experiance, formulas, test bench, etc.

Anyway, maybe this product was not the best example.
 
yasen78 said:
... They have experiance, formulas, test bench, etc. ...
Click to expand...

So why are new Intel processors so expensive? After all, they have experience, formulas, test benches, right? So why aren't new processors just sold to us at cost?

I think you need to take a basic business course of some kind.
 
These things will be tested for months and months, not 'a couple of days'.

You have to remember that this hardware is going in your computer, and it involves liquid. Any fault could cost EK millions in compensation. They also have to test many different hardware configurations and all other variables. It's not your high school research where you're testing starch in a potato.
 
If I had a milling machine then I'd probably knock them out for £80 too, there is a fair amount of work involved and I'd have to cover the time spent making a prototype as during that period I would have no other income.

In fact unless I could make money by purely using that milling machine for 8 hours a day, then it wouldn't be worth buying one in the first place, so technically I'd have to hire someone else to all the other stuff (engineering design, performance testing, advertising, buying, distribution, support).

MooMoo444 said:
These things will be tested for months and months, not 'a couple of days'.
Click to expand...
You are being a bit silly here, it's a waterblock, not a manned mission to mars.
If the first prototype fits and the seals line up as per the CAD, then beyond soak testing it for a few days that is all that is required. You have to look at the likelyhood of failure, a seal requires a certain compression as do the fittings, if you can follow their specs then the product will work. I don't need to do any special testing to confirm a nut and bolt are working correctly.
 
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If it costs you 2k to design a waterblock and you expect to sell 2000, then its only 1 quid per unit extra to recover your costs.

If it costs you 2k and you only expect to sell 100, then its 20 quid extra per unit to recover your costs.
 
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