Would the Watercooling community prefer a sponsor?

A sponsor would be awesome! If you need help with any of the legwork or whatnot, just let me know.

Sounds good- already working on a few things. I mainly wanted this to serve somewhat as a forum petition/support page to gauge interest.

I'll keep you up to date when I have info I can share.

Thanks.  

While I am in no way a computer or water cooling wiz, by any stretch of the imagination, I do have some concerns in regards to sponsorship of any of the forum sections. While the idea is sound and could be mutually beneficial to both the forum member base as well as the sponsor, there are also a few points to be taken into consideration.

Firstly Toms forums have created a name for itself as a place that is noob friendly as well as a place where you will receive answers and guidance towards the best possible solution, in regards to not only what is the most popular solution, but instead the most worthy possible solution for you. That recommendation is most often based on the budget, intended purpose, and the amount of knowledge on the subject, at the users end. The members here at Toms forums take great care in their recommendations to other users based on a lot of factors, none of these factors involve personal gain. My number one concern about sponsorship is the addition of the personal gain factor. While sponsorship can carry with it enticing opportunity for savings, in the best case scenario, the worst case scenario must also be taken into consideration... Sponsorship can also carry with it the introduction of bias in the information and suggestions given in favor of the products the sponsor wishes to sell.

I am in no way trying to imply that the sponsor chosen here at Toms forums will act in this manor. I am simply voicing my concern that if not implemented and controlled properly there is potential to do damage with the addition of sponsorship. I have seen it happen before.

Once upon a time I had a hand in building a Jeep club. Our membership decided to allow sponsorship of our modifications section of our forums. What happened was exactly what I mentioned above. The sponsor also made deals with some forum members that offered additional benefits for steering other members toward purchasing from them. What happened is we had newer members that were interested in more hardcore rockcrawling, being offered solutions that would in no way benefit them in their goals. Then when the more experienced 'crawlers, like myself and others, tried to point out that these "solutions" were not what they needed, a division was created within the member base of the forums. While real world testing did prove our points to these newer 'crawlers, it was not until after their hard earned money was spent on lesser products.

Ultimately we had to end the sponsorship. At the time it was already to far gone to implement controls. Again, I am not saying this WILL happen, just that the possibility is there and needs to be taken into consideration. If the sponsorship is watchdogged to prevent bias I'm all in.

Thank you for your time.
~Brothermist.

Voting yes as anything that contributes to Toms growing is a good thing in my eyes,
I do share Mists concerns as to the possible bias that could emerge and would also add that we would need several sponsors, I really wouldn't benefit from Xoxide or FrozenQ sponsoring the forum being a UK memeber, but I would have to experience the effects of thier presence, good or bad,
I like that you are pushing for the Wetside community here on Toms to grow though man, full points to you /bow
Moto

I mainly was interested to see if we could get a retailer to act as a partner by offering discounts from time to time for forum members as well as working with a few of us to review and test hardware sold on their sites. There are a lot of things that we are just unsure of, and without really deep pockets of our own, it's impossible to test and review hardware for the benefit of the community. There are a lot of radiators that are listed on several sites that are usually discussed, but no one really has any information on...the larger rads and most of the newer form factors come to mind. How well do 140 rads do over their 120 counterparts? Does anyone really know how many watts the Nova 1080 can dissipate?

However, brothermist does make some excellent points in his post...I had thought of some of those as well, but not exactly sure how it would really go considering we aren't sure how this would even begin to play out.

What would the community like to see some reviews or tests on? I'm curious to know what kinds of questions are on the minds of everyone out there in the forums...maybe I can figure out how to work some of those questions into testing and results.

 

Are those aquacomputer airplex rads really worth the money?  

Yeah, that's one of my biggest questions right now...even more than the Nova 1080's. I think some preliminary tests have been done on the Nova's (I even think Skinnee has one in his lab...read that somewhere).

I want to see some real test results on Airplex's and the new Monsta rads that are out.

Having some advertising partners who are representative of the major watercooling companies would be a good idea.

We are always looking for advertising partners.

They often post specials of interest to the community, and can participate in discussions and pass on information.

Dennis at TigerDirect is one, plus we have a guy from Palet in graphics, and a few Intel and AMD employees in the forums who usually maintain a pretty low profile ... with the exception of John Fruehe (JF-AMD) who is the server division marketing VP for AMD.

I enjoy popping in here to see what you guys are up to in watercooling but I don't post here much.

A Good topic for discussion rubix.

Reps of course push their own products ... that's why the regulars here will know when something is being "spun" ... and have something constructive to add ... I am sure.


 

Right- I'd be open to conversation with anyone you might suggest. Feel free to contact me via PM if you want to discuss further.

Good to see some additional support and thoughts of a moderator posting up here. I like the direction the community has been moving in and the quality of work people are posting up in here.

I support for the free coupons.

It'd be nice to have an expert around. Support.

One thing I'm worried about though, is product bias.  

(Get an expert from Skineelabs.    )

There's no way the aqua rads can be worth that much money, there are reviews on the nova 1080, I think its worth the money, I just wonder why its half the weight of its big brother the 1260.

Because the 1280 is the size of the radiator found in a semi truck, that's why.

Actually no, the 1260 and the 1080 have identical thickness (46 mm) The 1260 has a surface area of approximately 300 square inches, the 1080, approximately 220 square inches, an increase of less than 40 percent but the 1260 weighs 11 pounds, while the 1080 weighs only 6 pounds, more than 80 percent heavier. Whats up with that?

It was a mild attempt at sarcasm, that's all I was going for. As for the huge differences in mass, I have absolutely no idea.

Different materials?

Yeh, it suggests to me that the 1080 is cheaply made.

Like...being made from meteorites?

Maybe the Nova 1080 is made from recycled soda cans.

Definitely an eco-friendly solution.

Except that soda and beer cans are made from aluminum...come on guys...

An attempt at mild sarcasm   but it would account for the lighter weight!   seriously maybe the fins are aluminum on the Nova.

This is entirely possible.



And here, I am usually good at picking up on it...and great at dealing it out in metric ton installments.

Was that sarcasm on your sarcasm? *Sarcasm*