As if the Newegg data breach reported yesterday was not enough, NCIX decided to haunt everyone from the grave when news of a much larger data breach came out today. Readers of our website may have been aware that NCIX declared bankruptcy last December, and all their assets were put up for sale as part of a multi-day auction by the Able Auctions firm earlier this year. Most of the items on sale were innocuous, including remaining PC DIY components and office supplies, but an investigation coming out of Privacy Fly, a cyber security firm from Canada, is showing that something much more sinister ended up in the hands of people who also knew what they were doing. In particular, an unidentified male who called himself "Jeff", acting either independently or on behalf of another company, had procured the entire NCIX server farm at the auction and then sorted through the data to determine what was "useful" and what was not.

By this, he was referring to unencrypted and/or easily-cracked user data stored on the servers that NCIX had not bothered to remove or put behind a stronger password as the contents were laid bare for Privacy Fly to examine after the server was unlocked. These servers were put up for sale for $1500 (CAD) on Craigslist of all places, in a bold move effectively selling user data by the tens of thousands. "Jeff" confirmed he was in possession of hundreds of desktops, hard drives and more servers which, along with the StarWind iSCSI Software that was included in the auction and used by NCIX for all their years of existence meant every single customer and former employee was exposed by the breach. To be more specific, we are talking about financial records including payroll information, residence and email addresses, payment information and even Canadian SIN numbers all available to be seen and purchased by the lot. Be it the fault of NCIX or Able Auction, knowing that unencrypted data servers were sold without being wiped is terrifying, and we recommend taking appropriate actions as deemed for your country of residence.

Netlink Computer Inc., commonly known as NCIX in the hardware enthusiast circle, was a popular Canadian hardware and software retailer founded by Steve Wu in 1996. NCIX established its first base of operations in British Columbia, and with time, the company eventually owned numerous retail stores in Canada and as much as three shipping facilities, including one in the US. Despite having to compete against the likes of Amazon and Newegg, the Canadian retailer always appeared financially healthy, or so we thought. The company entered a financial crisis back in the month of July, and it had no choice but to close a few of their retail stores. Financial problems are like leaky pipes. If you don't fix the leak in time, it'll eventually flood your whole house. And apparently, NCIX wasn't capable of fixing theirs. With no other options available to them, the ex-retailer closed their last store on November 30 and filed for bankruptcy shortly afterwards on December 1.

NCIX haven't officially disclosed the reasons that lead to their bankruptcy or how long they've been lingering in red numbers. Being a private organization, they're not obligated by law to reveal their financial reports to the general public either. However, the internet is filled with speculations. Some blame the higher-ups in the company for bad management. Others believe it was NCIX's own stubbornness to invest in physical stores that lead them to their demise. So, is this the end for NCIX? Not quite. Companies go into bankruptcy all the time, and some do bounce back. TigerDirect and RadioShack are perfect examples. We can only hope NCIX do the same.

AMD did it again: building-up such a tremendous speed on its new products' hype train that the Ryzen 7 1700X, Ryzen 7 1800X, and Ryzen 7 1700 managed to jump straight to first, second, and fourth spots of Amazon's list of best-selling CPUs, respectively, dethroning even Intel's mighty i7 7700K. Granted, it isn't hard for the processors from one or the other manufacturer to quickly jump and wrangle about the spots on retailer's best seller lists - there Are only two manufacturers of consumer-grade, high-performance x86 CPUs. But keep in mind: this is a pre-order we're talking about, with nothing but leaks and marketing maneuvering for consumers to base their purchase on.

Here's the first picture of the PCB under the hood of MSI's Radeon R9 290X Gaming OC graphics card, which was unveiled in Japan, over the weekend, and which was detailed in a slightly older article. It turns out that MSI will use the same board design (including the back-plate) on both the R9 290X Gaming OC and the R9 290 Gaming OC, both of which have been put up for pre-order by Canadian e-tailer NCIX. The R9 290X Gaming OC is priced at $699 CAD including taxes (US $660); while the R9 290 Gaming OC is priced at $529.99 CAD including taxes (US $500).

The PCB itself is a slight variation of MSI on AMD's reference design. The layout is identical, but there are subtle differences in component choices MSI made. For example, it ditches Coiltronics-made chokes for MagicTech. Appears to use SK Hynix made memory chips (instead of Elpida on a vast majority of retail R9 290 series boards), etc. It also appears to retain dual-BIOS. According to NCIX, both cards will feature untouched memory clock speeds of 5.00 GHz, yielding memory bandwidth of 320 GB/s, but feature 5-7 percent overclocks on the GPU. The R9 290 Gaming OC features GPU clock speeds (possibly PowerTune boost) of up to 1000 MHz (vs. 948 MHz reference), while the R9 290X Gaming OC features 1040 MHz.

Plextor, a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media and storage equipment, and NCIX, Canada's biggest technology e-retailer, have built a strategic partnership in which Plextor will supply solid-state drives for NCIX custom PC division, NCIXPC. Known previously for the stellar quality of its optical-disk drives, Plextor has emerged as a top player in solid-state storage, making Plextor SSDs a top choice for gamers looking for speed, consistent performance, durability, and reliability. Consequently, Plextor is now a go-to resource for NCIX, which builds customized, high-performance gaming systems.

Plextor and NCIX co-featured an exhibit at the E3 Expo video-game industry conference earlier this year. That collaboration was so successful that NCIX has decided to use Plextor SSDs in two of its gaming systems, the 901-M and IR-57M models, respectively. NCIX's 901-M "MilSpec 3.0" includes Plextor's M5Pro 256GB SSD, while Plextor's M5S 128GB solid-state drive is a key component of NCIX's IR-57M, a MinMax build that emphasizes graphics performance and scores high on longevity, quality and power.