Claws out
Yesterday, HEXUS was surprised to receive an email from ASRock - the budget motherboard arm of ASUS - alleging that fellow motherboard maker Gigabyte was being wasteful in the use of copper in its motherboards.
"Our copper supply is not endless, it is actually diminishing rapidly," lamented the email. "While the demand for copper keeps increasing and with that the price of this natural resource, why would manufacturers choose to use more copper without any valid reason?"
Why indeed? Surely only some kind of wanton environmental vandal would treat our precious copper with such callous disregard.
The email continued: "I [unidentified] am not talking about unnecessary heatpipes that most people do not need, but about Gigabyte's ‘2 oz Copper PCB'. Gigabyte is adding more copper to the PCB to reduce the heat that is produced by their motherboard, and to spread it across the motherboard so that the heat will dissipate more quickly."
The swine.
Thankfully, apparently, not everyone is so slap-dash in their copper usage... Somewhat coincidentally, ASRock reckons it can achieve better results with fewer demands on the copper market. "The design of our (ASRock) P45 motherboard results in a cooler motherboard than the P45's that Gigabyte is showing, with or without their extra ounce of copper on every board."
In case the evidence was not already compelling enough, the email also had the following slide attached. If the strange decision to write the hyperlinks in purple, on a purple background, makes them too difficult for you to read, you can see the link to the Gigabyte site here and the ASRock YouTube clip is embedded on the next page.
