Calyos NSG S0 2-Phase Cooling Solutions is Dead?

[shark7760]

Hello, I'm sorry for bringing up this old thread, but I have some somehow good news: 

 

I finally got a full refund yesterday ... without any answer to my request-mail. So no communication as always (Update: Their anwer went directly into the spam folder. They asked whether I really want to get a refund) - but with some hope for the regular buyers. There is a poll in the already shared facebook group and it looks like, that they only refund the regular buyers and not the backers. Maybe because the normal customers do have more rights than the backers. 

Edited October 11, 2019 by shark7760
Typo...

[Kubik]

@LinusTech will you make another video to let everyone know that they miss another dead line set last year https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1489140137/nsg-s0-worlds-first-fanless-chassis-for-high-perfo/posts/2364147 again with any exuse and they did not answer to single kickstarter message, or email askin for explanation, or refund.

Maybe if you make video they will notice.

[shark7760]

I still think that a techquickie about the risks of backing a kickstarter project would be a better idea. You can use the NSG-S0 as negative example how a kickstarter campaign could possibly end.

[tridy]

5 hours ago, shark7760 said:

I still think that a techquickie about the risks of backing a kickstarter project would be a better idea. You can use the NSG-S0 as negative example how a kickstarter campaign could possibly end.

LTT mentioned multiple times, "never pre-order"

 

NSG-N0 was my first project I ever backed. It looked so promising and serious but s***t happens. It happens quite often Kickstarter. The only project i almost backed was Skarp Laser Razor but decided not to because my friend was so sure it was BS that he told me he will buy 2 for me if it ever gets released. First, it created quite a lot of hype and then the same story followed as with NSG-N0.

[Kubik]

I backed two projects, but in first I got what was promissed, it only was not what I think was promissed, and they was onest about it, and said it that they think they can do better, but they delivered both the goods, and their sorry.

But Calyos delivered only false promisses, and fake deadlines. If they would come at first missed deadline and said sorry we can not make it, situation would be completely different, but they just promissed another fake deadline.

[tridy]

I think Calyos themselves were either positive it will work out or sort of stupid to host it as Calyos project. someone should have created another small company and "get the permission" to use Calyos technology so that in case it did not work, it would not affect Calyos at all. That is a tiny hope that exists, that they might want resolving it in order to free the Calyos name from this mess they ended up in.

 

I wonder about the communication from Calyos going without a single "sorry" word, is it a cultural thing or just being jerks?  

[Derptacious]

I think it would be worth it for Linus to look into why all of these passive cool cases fail and/or are killed. The most famous Zalman has been discontinued too... These got so much interest too - and aren't insanely expensive. So I figure there might be another reason! Perhaps chipsets without dedicated heatsinks / head pipes die early? No only don't these have the potential of failing fans or pumps, but they aren't moving dust into your system. (Although, Calyos's design is idiotic - having all your components exposed / not in a case.)

[ManyCoresGuy]

Moral of the story for everyone here is to never back anything on Kickstarter.

[Derptacious]

6 hours ago, ManyCoresGuy said:

Moral of the story for everyone here is to never back anything on Kickstarter.

That was many morals of many stories... I think we need an organization like Linus's to dig deeper. I gave reasoning above: successful cases / cooling systems in this category that were available and not overpriced were also killed / dicontinued.

[Kubik]

Linus recently presented another "preorders" of big passive heatsink, so I doubt hw will want to say it was mistake. Just look at this thread, do you see him responding?

[tridy]

13 hours ago, Kubik said:

Linus recently presented another "preorders" of big passive heatsink.

I think I missed that. Could you give a link?

[matt-fr]

On 12/28/2019 at 7:16 PM, tridy said:

I think I missed that. Could you give a link?

I think @Kubik is talking about this cooler (link).

But it's a little different; it's a preorder, directly for the manufacturer, with a 19.99$ deposit.

Also Linus says clearly in his video that they are working with a pre-production model (link).

 

 

On something similar, Linus recently had a look at a Ripoff Mac Pro Case (link).

It's on sale on a Indiegogo campaign, and we can hear him say, in the Youtube video (link), the following :

Quote

I'm not in any way endorsing their company or their Indiegogo campaign, something that we fell we need to be really careful with when it comes to crowdfunding stuff

We see he learned from the Calyos mess-up.

[tridy]

@matt-fr thanks!

The cooler thingy is for the CPU only, so it is not in the same category as Calyloss could have been.

[tridy]

A new CEO, a new update, not so much hope:

 

Quote

Dear Backers,

 

My name is Antoine de Ryckel and I am the new CEO of CALYOS since January 20, 2020. Over the last 3 weeks I have spent time with the team to understand and gather facts around the Kickstarter NSG S0 project.

 

Before going into the details, please first accept our sincere apologies for the lack of results and communication. After 3 years since the campaign launch (March 2017), you must feel extremely frustrated. Hopefully this communication will help explain the situation and the challenges we have faced along with potential steps to move the project forward.

 

The simple facts

After multiple rounds of engineering, CALYOS has not been able to transform the laboratory concept into a consumer product.

 

A team of 8 people worked on the project over 18 months and after multiple iterations and significant expenditure exceeding $450,000 USD (*), CALYOS has not been able to develop a gaming product that can be marketable. The core cooling technology works but, as you will read in more detail below, large engineering and organizational gaps need to be solved in order to make it a successful consumer facing  (Do-It-Yourself) product.

 

The Gaps:

1. Ability to design and produce an aesthetically pleasing PC gaming enclosure at an acceptable cost.

2. Allocation of engineering teams to continuously update the product to latest CPU’s and GPU’s – our latest versions are already outdated with the new release of the recent cards.

3. Expertise in FCC/CE certifications for such product category

4. Ability to create professional product collaterals (packaging, user-manual, accessories) and deliver after-sales support (support for warranty and technical support).

5. Further tuning of the technology for the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) approach

6. Sales channels to the gaming community either through web or distributors

7. Supply chain and manufacturing for a cost-effective manufacturing of a gaming product

8. Solid logistic resources to organize and ship product to the consumers

 

Further sizeable investments are needed to close these gaps and transform the concept to a mature and shippable product.

 

CALYOS is a very small company (15 people) and our limited financial resources inhibit us from realizing these investments.

 

Moving forward

 

We believe that the gaps detailed above could be made possible by larger companies already active and successful in the gaming markets – by leveraging their existing development, manufacturing, sales, logistics and after-sales capabilities.

 

We are open to transferring all knowledge gathered during the last three years for free to a serious partner that could (i) finalize the project and launch it to the market and (ii) make a shipment to the Kickstarter community that is still interested in this product.

 

On our side, we are in the process of contacting 6 companies to discuss possibilities and explore interest. We will update you on the feedback and progress. If in the community, you have relevant contacts, please do contact us as it could accelerate the process.

 

C - Conclusion

If this last option does not work out, we will have no option but to officially close the project – with a lot of frustration for both our team and yourselves as backers of this project.

 

Again please accept our apology for the last 2 years of miss-communication. I hope this message clarifies the current situation and gives insights on challenges and hopefully possibilities.

 

Please do not hesitate to contact me through my e-mail antoine.de.ryckel@calyos-tm.com for questions, comments or any useful input regarding the partnership approach laid out above.

 

Kind Regards,

Antoine

 

(*) 461.000 USD cost break-down of KS expenses

- 360.000 USD Team of 8 people working 18 months on the project

• Project events are illustrated in the chart below
• Multiple prototypes designed, developed & tested on multiple graphical cards
• 4 version of evaporator designed and tested
• 2 versions of casing designed
• Manufacturability reviews

-  79.000 USD Expenses to supply material and produce multiple prototypes in small quantities – this incl. purchase of CPU/GPU cards for testing etc.

- 8.000 USD Cost to set-up supply-chains and visit suppliers incl. travel

- 14.000 USD Other expenses for packaging design, certification review, logistics.. etc

Still, they are sorry for the lack of the communication but list their "gaps" like it was a small thing. 8 of those gaps saying that they did not know what they were doing and they probably still do not know what they are doing.

 

Will there be a company that will continue with the project for the price of using Calyos technology for free? Will there be a marked for such cases?

[matt-fr]

4 hours ago, tridy said:

 

Will there be a company that will continue with the project for the price of using Calyos technology for free? Will there be a marked for such cases

 

It is not really free. As he says in the update, the partner must "make a shipment to the Kickstarter community that is still interested in this product".

The potential partner will have to send a final product for free, to the Kickstarter community.

[tridy]

16 hours ago, matt-fr said:

It is not really free. As he says in the update, the partner must "make a shipment to the Kickstarter community that is still interested in this product".

The potential partner will have to send a final product for free, to the Kickstarter community.

Correct. The potential partner will get the technology licensing (patent or something) for free but as you say they will need to cover the debt for the existing Kickstarter backers (I guess they will have an option to just reimburse, if the new product would be too expensive in comparison). How much it this technology worth and if it is worth enough for someone to be interested, we might still see, but I do not have my hopes up.

 

I also wonder about their gap with passing FCC/CE. There was a discussion somewhere about the liquid they used for the cooling and if it leaked/broke whether it was harmful to humans. I do not remember what the conclusion was there.

[tridy]

Another update came today:

Quote

Dear Backers,

 

Following last week’s communication, here is a short update on the progress alongside some more information in response to many questions and comments.

 

First of all, thank you for the input and useful feedback I have received by e-mail. There is obviously a lot of frustration within the community and it was good to receive direct feedback on certain aspects which were not known to me.

 

Partnership progress

 

Based on some input from backers, we extended our initial list of potential partners from 6 to 14. We received many company names from backers. Thanks for that!

 

The information pack on NSG-0 has been finalized and sent to the 6 initial companies, we will send it to the other 8 companies this week.

Below is a simple dashboard we will use to report the progress periodically. While it is simple it will give a clear overview as to where we stand. The companies are the usual suspects but I will not disclose their name here for confidentiality reasons.

 

Refund

 

I received a lot of requests for refunds. For the moment, our intention is to target finalizing the project with an industrial partner. The project’s investment money has been consumed and our financial situation is very weak, hence we unfortunately do not have the possibility to refund everyone.

 

Audit

 

Some backers sent e-mails and suggested that we should do an independent audit on the claimed expenditures of 461,000 USD outlined in the last update. I am very open to this suggestion. We have contacted Kickstarter to understand if they perform such an audit and will keep you informed.  Alternatively, you can appoint 1 or few people of the community to make that by themselves (as 1 team) and make the report to the community.

fanlessfan.com community

 

I also received a lot of questions on the fanlessfan.com community. Thank you to the community for bringing these points to my attention, as I was not fully aware of all points. We are preparing a separate action plan for that community.

 

Social media

 

We still see some individuals expressing their discontent on social media. I think it is important to realize that a potential partner will never buy in on our request of partnership if they see this project advertised as a scam everywhere.

 

This is just my 2 cents on this one – of course freedom of speech is yours.

 

We will continue to update on the progress – probably not every week but every 3-4 weeks or so.

 

If you have any specific questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail me.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Antoine

 

[matt-fr]

Update from 11 march 2020 :

Quote

Dear Backers,

 

As promised, here is an update on the progress as well as some responses to several questions and comments I have received.

 

Partnership progress

 

As you will see on the dashboard below, we have sent the information to the 16 companies selected. Please note that I have received additional companies to contact from the backers and we will contact them at a later date if current discussions are unsuccessful.

 

From the 16 companies contacted, 13 have not yet replied to our request so we will reach out again in the coming weeks. However, in many cases we only have a general e-mail address which is limiting our success.

 

On the positive side, we have had three replies and engaged in further, face to face discussions with them. This is very promising in my opinion. We are now entering detailed discussions with 2 companies as 1 party declined to move forward early on.

A number of backers have asked how quick these discussions will progress. In my opinion, it will take 3 to 6 months as we need to review complex technical aspects of the solution, supply chain, business plans…etc. We will go through this process diligently with the parties interested.

 

Audit

 

As a reminder, I told you that I would send an e-mail to Kickstarter to understand if they perform such audits on projects. Some backers suggested that an independent audit should be performed on the claimed expenditures of 461,000 USD outlined previously. For your information, Kickstarter replied to me (which is good) but unfortunately do not perform such audit for their projects. So, if the community is still interested in this kind of audit, as suggested earlier, you can appoint a few people of the community to make that by themselves (as 1 team) and report back to the community.

 

Design NSG S1 - for illustration only 

 

I got the request from some backers that we should share some visuals of the NSG S1 (updated version). Please see below a graphic with both versions (S0, S1) side-by-side. As you can see, the look and feel of NSG S1 changed due to modifications around the heat-exchangers which are positioned differently to increase performance.

 

 

Just keep in mind that this is illustrative and we will no doubt adapt the design with the new partner. If these visuals are not enough and you do want more details on this NSG S1 design, you can contact me by e-mail.

 

In 3-4 weeks, we will communicate further updates on the progress. In the meantime, if you have any specific questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail me.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Antoine

 

[matt-fr]

Update from 14 april 2020 :

Quote

Dear Backers,

 

Here is an update on our progress but also a “be safe” message to the community during these challenging times.

 

Coronavirus

 

As we all know, the majority of us are locked down at home because of Covid-19. Hopefully all of you and your families are doing well during this time. We wish all of you to stay safe and keep good health and spirit during this worldwide pandemic.

 

Partnership progress

 

Below is the, hopefully familiar, “partnership progress” dashboard. If you compare with the last one, not much has changed. Many companies and their employees are not available to discuss such business propositions during these difficult times, so we have decided to focus on the 2 identified partners.

We have continued discussing options with these two companies. One of these is progressing very well, and we are pleased to share this during these turbulent times. We are reviewing the design in terms of mechanics, thermal performance, manufacturing and costings. It is positive to be discussing concrete topics like this. While the world is moving slowly, we are managing to make step-by-step progress with this potential partner.

 

When there are definitive results to be shared, we will do so to the community. We will continue to communicate regular updates on our progress.

 

In the meantime, if you have any specific questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail me - but the most important thing for now, is for all of us to be and stay safe.

 

Take Care,

Antoine

 

[matt-fr]

On 12/29/2019 at 8:11 PM, matt-fr said:

On something similar, Linus recently had a look at a Ripoff Mac Pro Case (link).

It's on sale on a Indiegogo campaign, and we can hear him say, in the Youtube video (link), the following :

Quote

I'm not in any way endorsing their company or their Indiegogo campaign, something that we fell we need to be really careful with when it comes to crowdfunding stuff

We see he learned from the Calyos mess-up.

To add more on that, Linus recently acknowledged that they messed up with the Calyos campaign, and that they learned from it.

Youtube video - time stamp 24:35 (link)

 

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by matt-fr
link edit

[Dolt]

On 4/24/2020 at 6:19 PM, matt-fr said:

To add more on that, Linus recently acknowledged that they messed up with the Calyos campaign, and that they learned from it.

Youtube video (link)

 

 

Is that link time correct they may have edited the live stream I didn't see what you were talking about

[matt-fr]

13 hours ago, Dolt said:

Is that link time correct they may have edited the live stream I didn't see what you were talking about

Correct, they must have (or youtube) edit the video.
Link was edited and time stamp added in original post.

[matt-fr]

Update from 19 may 2020 :

Quote

Dear Backers, Here is a small update on our progress. Hopefully every one of you is safe and well during the Covid-19 pandemic. In several countries the lockdowns are being eased which is hopefully a good sign. Partnership progress Below is the “partnership progress” dashboard showing several updates. We received feedback from several companies who informed us that they are not interested in a partnership. We will resend communications for the final time in June and if no reply is received, we will assume they are not interested in further discussions. We have a few more companies, which we received from the backers, to reach out to. However, right now, our focus is on working with the 2 most promising ones so far. A full redesign Discussion with one of these partners is progressing well. As explained in the previous update, we are reviewing the design in detail. It is worth mentioning that, in effect, this project is almost starting from zero again. Whilst it is based on proven technologies and concepts, because of the redesign, working with a new partner and exploring new production methods, it is like starting from scratch. Hence, we need to be realistic and clear to you in terms of time frame! Here the plan agreed (with the current target partners): In June-July: first version of new design elements In August: Finalization of the product design In September: Decision on who the best partner is & communicate to the community In Sept-Oct-Nov: Prototype manufacturing and testing In December: Product Release We will obviously share all info during this process, so stay tuned. Cost of independent Audit As a reminder, there was request that we should do an independent audit on the claimed project expenditures. Few backers requested that I investigate what would be the cost of an audit by an independent auditor. I made some inquiry and cost for such audit would be around 3-4.000 USD. This includes the audit + a report. If the ones that contacted me believe this is of interest and want to fund such audit, please do re-contact me by e-mail. This was the last info to share. As usual, we will update you on a regular basis. In the meantime, if you have any specific questions (or ideas!), please do not hesitate to e-mail me. Take Care, Antoine

 

[Qwerty-space]

Thanks @matt-fr!  Please keep sending us updates

[matt-fr]

Update from 26 june 2020

Quote

Dear Backers,

 

Here is a small update on our progress, hopefully you are all safe and well.

 

Partnership progress

 

Below is the, now hopefully, well-known “partnership progress” dashboard showing several updates. Firstly, we have received updates from several companies informing us that they are no longer interested. Secondly, we added a new potential partner (Company 15), which was a contact provided by a backer and is interested to discuss the project further – thanks for this.  Right now, however, our focus is on progressing the new product development with the most promising partner.

 

Heat-Exchanger (Condenser) Redesign

 

As explained in the previous update, this project is almost starting from scratch. Our first focus is obviously on the thermal performance of the product with a heat-exchanger (condenser) optimized for natural convection (fanless) through the right architecture, fin gap/length and material selection, etc.  The other key challenge is that this exchanger should be cost effective and sourced with a professional but cost-competitive manufacturing partner. All that said, we have performed multiple iterations and we can share the design evolutions of this heat-exchanger in the images below. The final design should be completed in few weeks and be something between version 3 and 4 below.

 

In the next update we will either focus on one other design element (e.g. progress on evaporator) or, if available, release a draft design of the full platform (probably it will be too early, but we never know!).

 

Planning Review

 

So far so good and we are still on track with our planning below.

• June-July: first version of new design elements
• August: Finalization of the product design
• September: Decision on who the best partner is & communicate to the community
• Sept-Oct-Nov: Prototype manufacturing and testing
• December: Product Release

Next 2 months are critical to ensure timely release.

 

This was the latest info to share. As usual, we will update you on a regular basis. In the meantime, if you have any specific questions/ideas/comments, please do not hesitate to e-mail me.

 

Kind Regards,

Antoine