Vince Lucido (Kingpin) has announced that it’s possible that Kingpin products might find a new home if it’s meant to be. He posted on his Facebook page thanking fans for their support but also adding hope that the OC top-tier branding could survive the EVGA-NVIDIA breakup.
I’m thankful for all the industry friends, old colleagues, etc. that reached out. It means a lot and I appreciate it. The news isn’t received well ofc, and I’m mostly sorry for the fans and people that are passionate for our brand and everything that we have done here over the years at EVGA. If the KP hardware is meant to continue on in one way or another, I’m sure that it will
:). The EVGA and PC hardware enthusiast community have been great to me and my teams here over the years, THANK YOU.
It is not known exactly what form a new partnership could take as up to now EVGA has used the Kingpin branding in both graphics cards and motherboards. While EVGA did announce it was leaving the graphics card market that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t still be interested in the continued use of the branding for gaming motherboards. However, Kingpin products might continue elsewhere if the right deals are struck as the branding does have an established level of performance in the PC gaming community.
Source: PC Gamer
Discussion (16 replies)
Join Discussion →Crossing fingers that it's MSI that convinces Vince to join up!
I wouldn't be surprised if it was Galax that he goes to. They're the other big Nvidia AIB that pushes their cards hard, though mostly in the Asian market.
Folks with the top-end EVGA FTW3 cards were using a 1000W Galax BIOS for overclocking - not so much as to actually pull 1000W, but to take the limits off that even these EVGA cards had, typically with sub-ambient water or LN2 cooling to race benchmarks. Granted I believe that this was before the RTX 3090 Ti K|ngp|in was available IIRC.
Still, it'd be nice to see him get picked up by a more global brand.
Yup, and that's why I see Galax as the top choice. MSI, Asus, Gigabyte and a few others churn out nice cards, but they've never been the choice for those seeking extreme overclocks.
In recent years I mostly favored Strix cards, since the 1080 Ti, but with RTX 3090 I tried out Strix, MSI Suprim X, and EVGA FTW3 Ultra. All performed admirably but the Suprim X seemed a notch above the rest. I'd be happy if he partnered with Galax though and even happier if it led to them returning to the U.S. I've been wanting to try them for a number of years now but I could see him partnering with MSI because they do seem to have a slight lead over the rest that are available in the U.S.
So long as you don't care about the warranty. And I have heard they have no outside-of-warranty support/repair program.
Yea you want a company without a history of modifying warranties post sale. Msi is one I could see denieing warranty because of overclocking.
Wow! Was not aware. On the plus side, and I'll count myself lucky, I've had a bunch of MSI products and didn't need to cross that path but still good to know.
My last two cards were MSI (both now outside of warranty). From the article, the reduced warranties appear restricted to a subset of cards — mostly mining-specific models or cards intended for sale in Russia — but it's still good to know. It could be taken as an indication of how much confidence MSI has in the longevity of their cards (select models, anyway).
I recall MSI doing something similar in the past, though I believe in that instance it applied to laptops.
Asus cards are effectively without warranty, as anyone who has attempted to use their service is aware.
I'd just buy a Founder's Edition these days if I were buying an Nvidia card.
I have RMA’d at least 100 Asus items, and likely many more, as the computer sales shop I worked at in high school and college had Asus as one of the brands that regularly made it though the computer builds. Never once had an issue with RMAs. Maybe things have changed since 2005, but I can’t speak to that
You may have had enough volume from the same shop to make a difference. I’ve tried Asus RMA twice, and both times I severely regretted it.
I actually have never had to RMA anything hardware related in my over twenty years of building. If I had an issue with anything it usually showed up right away within the return window. I hope my trend continues.
I couldn't care less if the kingpin brand dissapears.
I didn’t even know it was a dude tbh
If I was into LN2 overclocking and suich Kingpin would be someone's products I would want to use.... but I'm not. So... there ya go.