OCZ Filing for Bankruptcy, Announces Offer from Toshiba to Purchase Assets

[alwayssts]

I remember the utt ram and the ram overvolter module/dimm thing good ole days those were.

They really, really were. Volt-mods, pin mods, jumpers, psu rail pot tweaking, phase and water coolers...and lots of nail-polish. Old-school AMD and old-school (with the ArtX guys like Demers) ATi. Bios flashes every other day, memtest for hours with different timings...absurd levels of power over-tdp coming out of chips...I really could heat my room in the winter...if I wasn't in-between releasing the magic (silicon) smoke.

OCZ and (Abit/)DFI really helped make the hobby back when the scene was more or less being pioneered...or should I say Oskar Wu and Ryan Petersen. Now a days everything is locked down or boiled down to the lowest common denominator...One-click bioses, ram binned to all hell, laser-fused salvage chips, powertune and the like...while 'exploitation' has damn near hit a stand-still.

Days like this are sad because they truly do make some of us remember the good ol' days these companies helped facilitate...which were absurd amounts of fun (not to mention relatively inexpensive and overclocking actually MEANT something)...even if most are now a shadow of their former selves. Some of that is their fault, some of it is ours, some of it the big 3 in the space (if not the process tech)...and some of it just a by-product of the commoditization of computers (in whatever form) in general...which I guess would be selfish to call a bad thing.

At any rate...

R.I.P OCZ.

 

[The Von Matrices]

Yet to be determined - There are a lot of folks who didnt like OCZ at all. Whether or not Toshiba allows them to continue trading under the OCZ brand name is anyones guess - Toshiba dont do power supplies so who knows if they will keep the name just for that department. Unless they wanted to keep OCZ as the 'enthusiast' division of Toshiba then i dont see how it can work

The OCZ brand name is a liability, not an asset. I highly doubt Toshiba will keep the OCZ brand name.

The reason Toshiba wants OCZ is not just because of its retail presence but because of its other assets. OCZ owns Indilinx (SSD controller manufacturer) and part of PLX (known for its PCIe switches). These are the valuable components of OCZ and will help Toshiba in designing PCIe SSD controllers.

Toshiba will likely kill off all of OCZ's other product lines (PSUs, etc.) due to their marginal profitability and incompatibility with Toshiba's current product portfolio.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

On a side note.... If they'd stop paying Fatal1ty to endorse their products maybe they'd gain back enough money to keep the business running a little longer. that guy must make tonnes of money just in royalties alone and he doesnt even play competitively anymore. he has 'partnerships' with different tech companies who he allows to them to use his name, but I dont think he has much say in what the manufacturer releases with his name on it -AsRock are hardly gonna ask him what he would like to see on his 'dream motherboard' god knows how this guy managed to make millions doing what he does and he practically does nothing.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

WTF? How? I thought they were a leader, if not the leader, in SSDs. Are the profit margins so thin they can't stay above water?

No they've been relegated to the sidelines for awhile now. First Crucial started kicking their ass and then Samsung. Now those two rule the market. Small solid product lines that constantly go on sale (like seriously every other day their prices swing $30) trumps OCZ's fragmented and buggy lineup.

 

[qwerty_lesh]

LOL. I have been saying for months that they were going to go bust after they got caught playing funny buggers with their earning reports.

the ceo's shady past didn't help the cause, nor did spewing forth dozens of terrible ssd line ups.

They should have kept their DRAM production going. at least then they could gouge the enthusiasts whenever a new ram version arose.

Good riddance OCZ.

Terrible company, I hope RyderOCZ finds himself a better company to support. and that's all.

 

[Jeffredo]

I hate that they seem to be taking a good power supply company down with them. I have a bright red PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W that came with a five year warranty (from when PC Power and Cooling was still independent). A couple years ago it began making noise and smelling of burning plastic. Did an RMA on it and sent it to a service center in Los Angeles. Got the same unit back a few weeks later with a detailed, handwritten sheet telling what repairs were made. They even painted the scratches that I'd inflicted on it while sliding it in and out of the bracket in my case! Its still working great two years later. Even under OCZ's control they had great RMA support.

 

[TRWOV]

Their DDR and DDR2 modules were the best. I always stuck with OCZ in therms of RAM. I don't know why they stopped makling it.

I never used them but the PSUs seemed to be fine too, being made by PC Power & Cooling and all that.

 

[xBruce88x]

at least they're selling it to a company that has good experience in the field... and they're also NOT selling to Rambus, which is good. Still, they still have a chance to pull through afterwords. Look at the airline companies in the US.

 

[THE_EGG]

Kinda sucks tbh. A feel a little guilty now that I just sold an unused OCZ drive of mine to a friend just today! D: Here's hoping if anything is wrong with it, the shop I got it from will still honour the warranty.

I only ever purchased OCZ drives in the past (until just recently when I bought a Samsung 840 EVO). Out of the 12 or so I bought (for myself and friends), only one was DOA and all others are still working.

 

[AsRock]

OCZ always seemed like a shady company to me.

To me too, I had 1 SSD of them and thought WTF.. Finding a little notice in the OCZ box basically saying you cannot use this drive as a boot drive(later firmware's fixed this )... Like shit you sell shit like this and not get the sellers to note this kinda crap.

So sad no, but it wont help prices to get lower.

 

[Bansaku]

This news makes me very sad. Having purchased numerous OCZ products over the years, I will confidently say that they never made crap nor disappointed me. Never had any of their products fail on me (still use an Agility 3 SSD and a ZT 750 PSU), and their RMA service IMO was fantastic, even above and beyond. I put together a new AMD system and used the RAM from an Intel system that died. I could not get the memory timings nor the rated speed to work so I called up OCZ. The service tech informed me that the RAM was only designed to run at the rated timings and speed in Intel systems, and that all I needed to do was send in the RAM and they would gladly swap it for AMD compatible modules! No questions asked! The conversation was no more than 2 minutes. Week and a half later I received my new upgraded RAM! Wow, I never expected that in a million years, from any company! Perhaps that is why they went under, by being too generous!

 

[DannibusX]

Hmm, this kind of sucks. I read a lot about failure rates of OCZ's SSD's, but I bought a Vertex 2 a few years ago and that thing is still going strong.

At any rate, I hope whomever ends up with OCZ can fix the problems with OCZ's manufacturing and keep the company open. I mean, everyone working at OCZ is essentially laid off with a month to go until Christmas. Kinda shitty IMO.

 

[buggalugs]

I guess It would have been hard for them to compete when most of the other SSD makers manufacture their own nand, then they put all the eggs in one basket by getting rid of other products.

I think their vertex 3/Agility3 problems really caught up with them, when there were other good alternatives like Samsung 840, Crucial M4/M5 etc most people jumped ship....

 

[DayKnight]

Good riddance.

 

[HammerON]

I am still using two 256 Vertex 4 SSDs with no issues (fingers crossed).
I owned one of their PSU several years ago and it died after a year. Never recommended their PSU's to others for that reason.

 

[ensabrenoir]

Its always sad to say any pc component make go under........ Never used their drives cause of the reviews. A day or so ago Almost bought a few on a crazy sale but spider senses would never let me. Aint so hot on Toshibia either.... guess now i can avoid both in one fell swoop.

 

[rangerone766]

I hope we don't loose the pcpower and cooling name. i'm still running a silencer 750 quad from back in the p4 days, never had a bit of trouble out of it.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Aint so hot on Toshibia either.... guess now i can avoid both in one fell swoop.

Toshiba SSDs are actually pretty good compared to all the others. they only real gripe they've had is that their SSDs look boring but hardly a valid complaint when youre going to put it inside your laptop or PC where you cant see it. I think TPU did a review of one.

Hard drive wise - Im using 4 of their 3TB drives. been around 2-3 months so far and no issues yet.

 

[Peter1986C]

Their DDR and DDR2 modules were the best. I always stuck with OCZ in therms of RAM. I don't know why they stopped makling it.

I never used them but the PSUs seemed to be fine too, being made by PC Power & Cooling and all that.

I have two OCZ PSUs, but they are not by PCP&C, but one is by Channel Well, the other by another brand but I forgot which one.

I also do not see why they dropped the RAM product line, except perhaps competition being too strong (but that was the case on the SSD market too).
They should have tried to expand into graphics cards or so a few years ago, that might have given them more ability to stay afloat and have bought them time to fix their alleged SSD woes.

 

[Vario]

They really, really were. Volt-mods, pin mods, jumpers, psu rail pot tweaking, phase and water coolers...and lots of nail-polish. Old-school AMD and old-school (with the ArtX guys like Demers) ATi. Bios flashes every other day, memtest for hours with different timings...absurd levels of power over-tdp coming out of chips...I really could heat my room in the winter...if I wasn't in-between releasing the magic (silicon) smoke.

OCZ and (Abit/)DFI really helped make the hobby back when the scene was more or less being pioneered...or should I say Oskar Wu and Ryan Petersen. Now a days everything is locked down or boiled down to the lowest common denominator...One-click bioses, ram binned to all hell, laser-fused salvage chips, powertune and the like...while 'exploitation' has damn near hit a stand-still.

Days like this are sad because they truly do make some of us remember the good ol' days these companies helped facilitate...which were absurd amounts of fun (not to mention relatively inexpensive and overclocking actually MEANT something)...even if most are now a shadow of their former selves. Some of that is their fault, some of it is ours, some of it the big 3 in the space (if not the process tech)...and some of it just a by-product of the commoditization of computers (in whatever form) in general...which I guess would be selfish to call a bad thing.

At any rate...

R.I.P OCZ.

We got guys delidding ivy and haswell, that has to count for something.

Older article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/13/ocz_hercules/

 

[N3M3515]

I can say their rma service is excellent, i had a vertex 4 for 9 months and when doing the rma it was blazing fast, i had my new drive in less than a week, and i live in other country!

 

[eidairaman1]

Yeah this blows- i think toshiba would be smart to buy em out to keep pcpc- they were solid powersupplies

 

[blibba]

Was it the inability to write a coherent press release that finally pushed them over the edge?

 

[unholythree]

Yeah this blows- i think toshiba would be smart to buy em out to keep pcpc- they were solid powersupplies

I'm afraid PC Power and Cooling was just a name under OCZ. I know the Silencer Mk III was a Seasonic design down to the 120mm fan.

 

[Hood]

The OCZ Vertex 4 that I bought died after 15 days, and my Toshiba 3 TB external is the worst hard drive I've ever owned (randomly disconnects/connects no matter what port or settings). Both of these brands are dead to me... I Don't expect this collaboration to produce any reliable products in the future, but I'm sure plenty of people will buy them if they're cheap enough.