Thomas Glen, Uberclok PC

Uberclok Pc are a relatively new company based at 429 W. Ohio #123, Chicago, IL 60610 - they over "pre overclocked" systems with a 3 year warranty and 30 day full refund. We recently chatted with Thomas Glen from the company and asked him a few questions regarding the companies goal and directions.

Uberclok have also sent Driver Heaven a system for review which we aim to publish in the not too distant future (once we give it a good thrashing!).

DH.  How many people are working in the company at the present time?  
How many combined years of experience in overclocking does this represent?

Thomas: We have five employees at the moment, with ten years of overclocking experience. We have considerable talent in customer service, legal, purchasing, communications, technical support, and exhibiting. (We're getting ready to attend E For All next week, which is probably over by the time your readers see this.) We also know how to start a fire with a flint and steel, and have the phonetic alphabet memorized :)

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DH:  Do you only plan to use Intel processors, or will AMD be considered at some point?

Thomas: AMD processors don’t overclock nearly as well as the Intel Core 2 Duo line right now. Since we focus so heavily on overclocking, AMD processors don’t fit into our designs at this time. We're not zealots, however, and will always be open to whatever components make the most gaming sense. Hopefully AMD’s next major update to its product line will make them more of an option for us.

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DH:  As your current focus is on gaming systems, do you foresee delving into other markets later?  e.g. Media Centers/Pro Applications, etc.?

Thomas: Such market expansion is definitely down the road, as are laptops. We're probably going to focus on PC gaming exclusively for at least the next twelve months. It all depends on how well we do at the gaming desktops. It's easy to carry a gaming PC into other CPU/ GPU intensive markets from a technical perspective (since games are some of the most demanding applications on the planet), and businesses would be just as interested in stretching their technology budget as consumers (if not more so). That said, we don't have the same level of personal experience with, say, CAD or scientific applications as we do with gaming, so it's going to be easier for us to market to the gamers first.

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DH: Would you consider accepting a client's currently built system and overclocking it for them perhaps even making approved changes?

Thomas: Not at this time. There would be a lot of non-standardized concerns with supporting such scenarios, additional legal issues, and so on. The biggest problem with that concept I see would be making it cost-effective for the customer while still having a sustainable business model. We only ship PCs via FedEx, for one thing. UPS isn't quite reliable enough, and the US Postal Service is more like a giant shredding machine. The transaction would have to cover shipping in both directions, with the only profit being a technician's service time, plus whatever we can scrape off any new parts we sell. Unless you're NewEgg or Tiger Direct, you're not making anything off parts in this industry, so it would all be labor. I doubt we'd find many customers willing to ship us their PC and pay us enough to make it worthwhile.

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DH:  Can a customer purchase specific revision level memory and processors?

Thomas: I assume you're talking about stepping, etc? The purpose of Überclok is to bring overclocking to the masses, to those who don't already know how to overclock for themselves. As such, we don't predict many of our target customers will want that level of control over the components we use. If we get enough queries, however, we would certainly be open to adding such options to the build page on uberclok.com.

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DH: What manufacturer/model Blu-Ray drive do you use?

Thomas: We use the LiteOn LH-2B1S Blu-ray writer, and the LG GGW-H10NI Blu-ray writer/HD-DVD reader.

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DH:  How do you determine the components to be used in your current systems?

Thomas: We pay attention to print and web news and reviews about what's hot, what's reliable, what's over-hyped, and most importantly, what gives you the biggest gaming bang for your buck. When we see something that's earning a good reputation and might fit our needs, we buy it, plug it in, and see for ourselves. We rely very heavily on benchmark numbers to fill in the details.

For the most part, if we wouldn't want it in our own personal gaming PCs, we won't sell it. Sometimes we have to offer features or options partially because of the prevailing public opinion, even if we're skeptical ourselves. RAID 0 is like that. The real-world gaming performance gain from RAID 0 isn't nearly worth the increased risk of data loss, in our opinion, but many people want it, so we oblige. But more so than any competitor we've seen, we make an effort to steer our customers toward the components that offer the greatest gaming performance for the money they spend. That's why we only offer 8800- series video cards, Core 2 Duos, and 650i/680i motherboards. Until things change, of course, which will happen soon. It always happens soon!

Keep your eyes peeled on Driver Heaven for a full UBERCLOK system review!