News Happy SFF Month! Learn about SFFN's new Patreon page, new shirts, and a giveaway!

TL;DR: If you appreciate the work SFF Network does, consider supporting us on our new Patreon account! Also, we have cool limited edition 'Caliper & Ruler' shirts, you should check those out too.


A LETTER FROM THE SFF NETWORK TEAM:


Computex 2018 will be here sooner than you think, and we're incredibly excited to once again have a crew on the ground, asking the questions that are relevant to the SFF community. Last year was the first time we were able to attend the conference, and because of it we were able to create a bunch of news posts, a number of exclusives, and literally hundreds of caliper shots. This is not to mention the long string of in-depth reviews we were able to do as a result of reporting and relationships that originated on the show floor.

This is especially impressive given the fact that SFF Network is a fairly small (pun intended) team of hardworking folks, who commit many hours outside of their lives and day jobs to create and publish their work. These are enthusiasts who are passionate about small form factor systems, preaching the virtues of the SFF philosophy to the world through their craft. They’re you and me, in other words. But it takes resources alongside that passion to do what we do; equipment, event attendance, and much more goes into creating the content we make. And all of that gets expensive, fast.

We are eternally grateful for the support we've received to date, and I'd specifically like to call out those in the SFF Forum community who are already ongoing supporters. The monthly or annual subscriptions we provide on the forum are what pay the bills to keep the forum alive, and are also what allow us to avoid saturating the forum experience with advertising. It's clear, however, that we need to do for SFF Network what we've done for SFF Forum: find a way to provide just enough sustainable revenue to enable us to focus on making more content, and better content. It's also crucial for a good chunk of this revenue to come directly from readers, since it better obligates us to provide relevant content, and provides the team with a tangible barometer of community sentiment and support for our work.

To do that, we've created a Patreon page! I won't elaborate much on the tiers available beyond saying that, at certain levels of funding, we are able to commit to more content - from the return of the Low Volume podcast, to the introduction of build guides. We're even providing some swanky certifications and forum banners to all who pledge support, even at the $1 level, since contributions as low as a dollar a month really add up. If you've found value in the reporting and reviews we've done, consider kicking in to help us keep that work going.

Giveaway closed!


We're also launching a great giveaway, as thanks to our readership and community! To start, we've put aside a Geeek A30 chassis to send to a lucky community member, as reviewed here. Furthermore, we are also giving away a DREVO Tyrfing V2 mechanical keyboard, an ASRock AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac AM4 motherboard, and a Streacom FC8 Passively cooled ITX case as we hit the $100, $250 and $500 funding goals for our Patreon, which you can learn more about on our Patreon page. See the bottom paragraph on this post for a disclaimer regarding the giveaway. Just post in this thread to enter!

But wait, there's more! We've also released a limited edition run of 'Caliper & Ruler' t-shirts that you can check out here. We're only selling these during May (which we've dubbed 'SFF Month'), so be sure to grab one if you're interested. [Update: Note that the timer on the order page for all of our TeeSpring swag reflects when batches are commencing, rather than when availability for the product ends! The 'Caliper & Ruler' tees will be available for order throughout the month of May across many batches.]

Finally, if you'd like to learn more about supporting the forum specifically, you can do so here. In a sentence, we provide supporter tiers that bill monthly or annually, which provide some additional forum functionality and access to chat and other resources.

We don’t take asking for your support lightly, but we do it with an eye towards producing the right content for our community, in a sustainable and transparent way. Thanks to everyone - past, present and future - for your support!

– The SFFN Team

---

Giveaway is open worldwide, except where prohibited. No purchase is necessary to enter. Only the initial postage costs are covered by SFF Network, a brand of Minutiae LLC. Any customs and import charges are the responsibility of the winner. Entries close Midnight 30th May 2018 NZST and will be drawn using Random.org to select winners at random. No warranty of the chassis or included components is provided in any manner, expressed or implied. SFFn standard terms and conditions also apply.

UPDATE!!!

With the review of Noctua's Chromax updates, we are adding 5, yes five more prizes! Each prize is a single colour pack of Chromax cables - a combined pack of the Y splitters and extensions!

As an update to the draw, we will draw 6 winners in succession. First prize will remain the Geeek A30 chassis, with second thru sixth being Chromax cables. Each successive winner gets choice of colour - 2nd place gets first pick, 3rd place gets second pick, all the way to 6th place getting the last pack that is left!

Colours to choose:
Black
White
Yellow
Blue
Green
 
Last edited by a moderator:

VegetableStu

Shrink Ray Wielder
Aug 18, 2016
1,949
2,619
it's on a loop i guess. I remember cofusis saying they have the campaign looping just to sell shirts all year round on teespring.

so maybe they'll loop untill the end of the month? (it definitely looped at least once. the batch i'm on already ended and the campign's still going on)
 

Kwirek

Cable-Tie Ninja
Nov 19, 2016
186
198
Deceptive, like running a constant mark-down of your products to make it look more enticing. But I assume it is the company they’re hiring who does it, otherwise they shouldn’t be able to “loop” it - it would just be “available”.
 

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
SFF Network
SFF Workshop
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,129
7,057
sff.network
Deceptive, like running a constant mark-down of your products to make it look more enticing. But I assume it is the company they’re hiring who does it, otherwise they shouldn’t be able to “loop” it - it would just be “available”.

It's a limitation of the site. We could do one of two things -

-Set it to end on May 31st, and every one has to wait until mid June to get their shirts
-Run a smaller cycle so folks get their shirts earlier, and leave it up to our community to read "Available for all of May" as that.

We chose the latter. It's not deceptive in any way - just a limitation of the platform.
 
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Kwirek

Cable-Tie Ninja
Nov 19, 2016
186
198
Or you could have said that you’ll loop it (or something) through May for greater clarity. The limited time mechanism is there to create a sense of urgency - even if you don’t intend to use it to that effect.
A suggestion for next time.

Edit:
I just realized that I’m part of a raffle by posting - please don’t include me. I have enough problems with the stuff I’ve collected over the years to also risk getting more through raffles. :-)
 
Last edited:

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
First off, a big THANK YOU to those who have purchased shirts or elected to support SFF Network through Patreon! We'll be sending out messages soon to coordinate getting banners, certificates, newsletter subscriptions and swag discounts to all of you, so stay tuned for that :)

Per some of the confusion around the limited edition shirt, my apologies if that was a bit confusing and not well-explained; per @confusis 's comments, we implemented rolling 'campaigns' to fulfill orders faster in batches, but the shirt remains available for the duration of May. TeeSpring uses these countdown timers as a means to create urgency and push folks to order, and we don't have a way to disable it unfortunately. I've added some clarifications to the post and the product page to make sure this is clear.

The team continues to gear up for Computex, and we couldn't be more excited! Thanks again for the support.
 

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
SFF Network
SFF Workshop
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,129
7,057
sff.network
With the review of Noctua's Chromax updates, we are adding 5, yes five more prizes! Each prize is a single colour pack of Chromax cables - a combined pack of the Y splitters and extensions!

As an update to the draw, we will draw 6 winners in succession. First prize will remain the Geeek A30 chassis, with second thru sixth being Chromax cables. Each successive winner gets choice of colour - 2nd place gets first pick, 3rd place gets second pick, all the way to 6th place getting the last pack that is left!

Colours to choose:
Black
White
Yellow
Blue
Green
 

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
SFF Network
SFF Workshop
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,129
7,057
sff.network
For those wondering, yes, the new shirt is f'n awesome.

 

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
I've picked up shirts and hoodies in the past. Looking forward to seeing new gear!
Man That shirt is sweet! Keep up the great work!
Just became a Patreon supporter!
Joined the Patreon, this should be exciting!

You guys are awesome. Thanks so much for the kind words and the support!

Patreon rewards (banners, certificates, discount codes, hero mentions) will go out this weekend, so be on the lookout for communications from us regarding that!