Frank Azor, Alienware Co-Founder, Joins AMD as Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions

ManofGod said:
I build my own because I enjoy doing g so for the last 28 years or so. I am 52 now and I have some mistakes in the past that cost me, it is not as easy as some think it is.
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Really? The only thing I ever killed was a 1Ghz AMD T-bird, and I was due to an error with the Alpha HSF. It was defective from the factory..one corner of the fan screw slots was tapped all the way down so when you screwed the fan on, it lifted that corner up. You could not tell it by looking at it but it was just enough to fry the chip.

The good news is it was 2 days old and the vendor that sold me both exchanged it...My replacement became the first T-bird to break 1.33Ghz and was a world record holder for a good while!
 
ccityinstaller said:
Really? The only thing I ever killed was a 1Ghz AMD T-bird, and I was due to an error with the Alpha HSF. It was defective from the factory..one corner of the fan screw slots was tapped all the way down so when you screwed the fan on, it lifted that corner up. You could not tell it by looking at it but it was just enough to fry the chip.

The good news is it was 2 days old and the vendor that sold me both exchanged it...My replacement became the first T-bird to break 1.33Ghz and was a world record holder for a good while!
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I think I broke at least 2 of those athlon cpu's, one because of overheating and one because I crushed the core with a heatsink. I also burned out a motherboard because I had put in a stick of DDR Ram backwards and killed it, I was tired when I did it. I did also drive a screwdriver through an AM2 board well trying to do something with a heatsink and killed that as well. I have not done anything else in a long, long time but, building a computer is not as easy as people seem to think.

Since I have been doing it so long, I am really good at it and have a lot of practical knowledge that I still use to this day. A couple of years ago, my R7 1700 pulled itself out of the socket because it got stuck to the heatsink but, I did not know since I was only trying to install the ram and put the heatsink back down. Thankfully, the cpu survived because my friend was able to straighten out the pins. :) Otherwise, that woudl have been a $329 loss since I bought it in March of 2017.
 
ManofGod said:
I build my own because I enjoy doing g so for the last 28 years or so. I am 52 now and I have some mistakes in the past that cost me, it is not as easy as some think it is.
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Or wasn't! It was more fun when it was more difficult 20 yrs ago. I let the magic smoke out of a couple mobos back then doing stupid shit...

I've built probably 30 machines for myself and others over the years, and purchased two Alienwares. Both laptops. My favorite was a 2011ish 11.6" C2D M11 with the hinge issue, which they fixed. Paid $700 for it and got probably 4 good years out of it. It was a great, super solid machine.

If Frank still has his mojo of knowing who his target customers are and what they currently want, he'll do a great job at AMD. Don't know too much about him but have seen a couple interviews with him and he seems like a really down to earth guy with an analytic mind.
 
LZ_Xray said:
Or wasn't! It was more fun when it was more difficult 20 yrs ago. I let the magic smoke out of a couple mobos back then doing stupid shit...

I've built probably 30 machines for myself and others over the years, and purchased two Alienwares. Both laptops. My favorite was a 2011ish 11.6" C2D M11 with the hinge issue, which they fixed. Paid $700 for it and got probably 4 good years out of it. It was a great, super solid machine.

If Frank still has his mojo of knowing who his target customers are and what they currently want, he'll do a great job at AMD. Don't know too much about him but have seen a couple interviews with him and he seems like a really down to earth guy with an analytic mind.
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Honestly, the only thing difficult about machines back then were the IRQ settings. Thankfully, Windows 95 introduced plug and play and for the most part, it worked. I also enjoyed using OS/2 Warp. I enjoy everything there is now but, for some reason, I miss some of the stuff back then because it was new stuff that never existed before. I never bought an Alienware computer but, I also could not afford them at that time. Now that I could, I prefer building my own anyways, just because of the fun factor.
 
ManofGod said:
I broke at least 2 of those athlon cpu's...
I put in a stick of DDR Ram backwards...
I did also drive a screwdriver through an AM2 board...
my R7 1700 pulled itself out of the socket because it got stuck to the heatsink but, I did not know and put the heatsink back down...


Building a computer is not as easy as people seem to think. Since I have been doing it so long, I am really good at it
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Facepalm.gif


You don't happen to write for The Verge, do you?
 
DeathFromBelow said:
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You don't happen to write for The Verge, do you?
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I have been doing this stuff for over 28 years and as Derangel said, If you don’t have a collection of “stupid mistake” stories you haven’t built enough computers. Oh, and you shortened my last thing I see, since I never said I fully removed the heatsink but made it clear I only partially lifted it up to install some ram in the furthest slot near the socket. Got to say, I would use that meme on yourself instead, since, do you even build computers anymore all that much?

Should I list the 3 computers I have here now, that I use daily? I have moved the video cards, motherboards and cpu's around without issue as well as the ram and overclock the systems. They all run great and fast.

Built another computer 2 weeks ago for a friend after a Microcenter run. (He paid for it but it was worth the trip.) The only thing I have learned quite well is, never work on your computers in an extremely exhausted state of mind. :D
 
Derangel said:
If you don’t have a collection of “stupid mistake” stories you haven’t built enough computers.
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I'm surprised I don't have more stories since I've put together may be 25 over the past 11 years, but the only critical one that comes to mind is letting a friend help; she forced a 6-pin pci into an 8-pin cpu ext... Didn't notice it and went to boot up, next thing I notice is the puff of blue smoke coming out of the case, hahaha. She was kind of embarrassed since the first thing I said was, "Don't force anything to plug in; if it's resisting, it isn't supposed to go there.", her GF made a joke about never seeing blue smoke even w/o using lube before, so we had a good laugh :ROFLMAO:
 
I’ve only built a couple. Don’t recall killing anything, but I know I have plenty of other stupid mistakes in other things to make up for it.

And hey, let’s not get all elitist about killing PC builds. I remember a certain proprietor of a well known enthusiast [H]ardware site brushing the pins of a Threadripper and not being able to straighten them. Shit happens.
 
FrgMstr said:
I would suggest you know very little about the engineering that went into many of the Alienware systems, and for you to think those were simply put together with off the shelf parts would show your tremendous ignorance about the Alienware products.
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Yeah I'm no laptop guy but I watch videos of the innovative one's and Alienware is on that list of videos often. They tend to push the envelope. Think what anyone may about the branding or not.
 
I'll give the guy props. While there were some products that were real doozies in their history, there have also been some interesting, creative and innovative products too.

None were cheap, but that was never their market anyway.

Before I got serious about building my own desktops, I owned quite a few of their laptops (11", 2x14", 2x17", 18") in addition to laptops from Asus / Gigabyte / Dell and I wouldn't hesitate to go back and buy again or recommend to friends or family if they wanted to get into gaming and had the money <- always the prerequisite.
 
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