Last week, EVGA announced it would be leaving the graphics card business — which came as a huge surprise and left everyone with a lot of questions about the brand's future. There's especially been a lot of discussion, on social media and in online forums, about what EVGA's decision means for the future of the premium Kingpin sub-brand, which was aimed at hardcore enthusiasts and overclockers.
Vince "Kingpin" Lucido has made a statement about the EVGA bombshell, and has tacitly indicated he is open to offers.
In a Facebook post to friends and fans, Lucido first thanked friends and colleagues in the industry before moving on to share some love for fans of EVGA Kingpin products. Lucido also made a statement regarding the future of Kingpin products:
“If the KP hardware is meant to continue on in one way or another, I'm sure that it will [smiley face],” wrote Lucido.
Reading between the lines, this suggests Lucido is interested in new hardware partnerships. If Kingpin hardware does continue, especially in the GPU sphere, there are some obvious contenders for collaboration. The big three — Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI — are all heavily involved in overclocking competitions and produce hardware tuned for overclocking feats. It's easy to imagine any of these brands partnering with Kingpin Cooling to create GPUs, motherboards, and maybe more. Of course, we might also see one of the lighter-weight contenders looking to use Kingpin's brand to raise its profile.
Digesting Friday’s Announcement
You may have been waiting for an official statement from EVGA about its decision to leave the GPU market, but the company didn't put out a press release. However, EVGA's Global Product Management Director Jacob Freeman posted on the official forums on Friday. Freeman provided the following concise summary:
- EVGA will not carry the next generation graphics cards.
- EVGA will continue to support the existing current generation products.
- EVGA will continue to provide the current generation products.
The above bullet points are direct quotes — Freeman also emphasized that EVGA was very thankful to the “great community” that supported its graphics card products over the years.
If you're wondering why EVGA made its big decision so close to the GeForce RTX 40 series launch, we think it was probably thanks to an explosive mix of manufacturing economics combined with the weight of EVGA’s customer service commitments (extended warranty, step-up program, etc.) eating too deep into meager profit margins.
