So guys, you are probably wondering why there are no updates, and I have some good and some bad news..
I'm sorry for the long read, but I ask you to please read it and you will understand why is this project taking so long.
I will start with a bad, and it involves my experience with EKWB.. And firstly I will say that I don't think they act this way to everyone (I really hope they dont), but here is a summary of what they did to me and this project:
I started thinking about this project, planing it and contacting potential sponsors well before August when I started posting on forums.. And EK was the first sponsor that "approved" the sponsorship for this project, for a fixed amount of money in their merchandise, and one of their requests was that I start working on my project before they send me the goods. That is understandable, but no other sponsor requested such a thing, especially due to nature of this project, being big and demanding precise hardware measurements before I can start building it, cause I need to drill trough walls, avoid cables in them etc..
So, other sponsors were confirmed, I started the project, redid my design based on the parts, made a desk, made all the boards, frames etc that I need; and I contacted sponsors to send me the parts, so I can start drilling holes for vents, tubes, cables etc. CoolerMaster sent me their staff 1 day after I contacted them, I had some listing revisions with Bitspower so that took about a week to get sent (cause they are from Taiwan and timezones are a drag..), but my contact from EKWB didn't respond to me for A MONTH.
I then tried to contact someone else from EKWB, and some other guy (I won't mention any names here) told me that my contact was on vacation and that all the sponsorships were on hold until next year. So they approved me, asked me to start building, delayed sending me parts for a month, and than told me that they can't send me anything before the start of next year, and that was 4 more months after (cause that message was back in September). I asked them if they can send me at least some of the things that are most important for me to start the project, and after some struggle with that new guy, he agreed to send me a couple of things (which were about a 1/3 of the "approved" sponsorship), and send the rest in January 2015 and we even agreed on the rest of the stuff they should send me then. And to sum things up, that's already about a 5 month delay to my project, but I agreed cause there was much work to be done and I needed those parts and wanted to take it easy and do things right with this project.
So I started doing building as much as I can, did all those videos etc, waited for the holidays to end, and in the meantime I even got an extend for my sponsorship from Bitspower, to take the load of EKWB cause they were in so called "financial crisis". So I contacted them again at the end of January cause I saw that they started sponsoring other projects and nobody contacted me to finish my sponsorship, and the reply was that I didn't do enough work and that they can't send me the parts yet.. So I started working harder, drilled what I can, bent tubes etc and contacted them again to see if they liked the progress, and to tell them that I can't go on without the rest of the parts (which were only 2 radiators more, due to that help from Bitspower).
And the reply stunned me: "We have decided that we will not sponsor your project any more."
So I asked for a reason and the reason was:
"We have given you several products and usually if we as a sponsor cannot give you all the products,
we assume that modder will find other solution or maybe even purchase the radiator by him self.
We will not be sponsoring your project any more and this is our final decision."
I had 2 sponsors for watercooling components, and the Bitspower was the bigger one, and I didn't asked for "all the products" from EKWB. Bitspower even took the load from their back by getting me more parts than we firstly agreed on, so I can start building without waiting for EKWB. And I bought the blocks for GPU's myself which are more expensive than those radiators that were requested and "approved".
In short once again, I didn't ask them to give me all the products, I have purchased their products, I even found other solutions in their favor, I started assembling like they requested, and they are financially able to finish my sponsorship cause they even sponsored other projects in the meantime. So everything they said to me was A LIE. They delayed my project for 7 MONTHS. And now they even WON'T FINISH UP MY "APPROVED" SPONSORSHIP. I requested to know the real reason for denying my sponsorship, so I told them all of this and now they won't even reply to me.
I'm now left hanging without parts and trying to get some used parts cause all of my funding for this project was allocated to other things and I don't have enough for those radiators.
I will post some progress in the next couple of days, but I just wanted to show you how EKWB treats normal guys like me, and that it hugely differs from how they treat some high profile modders.
Good news will come in the next post, comment on their behavior if you wish until then.. See ya all
