BFG Technologies was a privately held

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

-based supplier of

power supplies A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a r ...

and

video card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...

s based on

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

graphics technology and a manufacturer of high-end gaming/home theater computer systems. BFG Technologies branded products were available in

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and

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

at retailers and e-tailers. The company's main headquarters were located in Lake County,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

, near Lake Forest.

Graphics cards

BFG manufactured graphics cards for mainstream to enthusiast level computers. They were known for their Asylum brand; however, the Nvidia 5 series of graphics accelerators were the last to use that name. They were best known by computer enthusiasts for the overclocked (OC) versions of their graphics cards, lifetime warranty and 24/7/365 U.S.-based technical support. BFG was among the first graphics card companies to offer cards that were already overclocked from manufacturer recommended speeds. Since then, many other manufacturers have copied BFG's model. Their most recent flagship graphics cards were the BFG Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 OCX as an air-cooled solution and the BFG Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 H2OC as a water-cooled solution. While they also manufactured an air-cooled version of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 295, it was not overclocked. On May 18, 2010, John Slevin the chairman of BFG Technologies, announced that they would no longer be developing graphics cards, as it was not profitable for them. In August 2010, BFG began the process of

liquidation Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a Company (law), company is brought to an end. The assets and property of the business are redistributed. When a firm has been liquidated, it is sometimes referred to as :wikt:wind up#Noun, w ...

, initially only for the GPU business but eventually expanding to include the entire company. As a result of this, BFG ceased to honor RMA (

Return Merchandise Authorization A return merchandise authorization (RMA), return authorization (RA) or return goods authorization (RGA) is a part of the process of returning a product to receive a refund, replacement, or repair to which buyer and seller agree during the product' ...

) requests for warranty service, repair, or replacement, instead returning the product to the customer with a short letter explaining the situation. However,

PNY Technologies PNY Technologies, Inc., doing business as PNY, is an American manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, solid state drives, memory upgrade modules, portable battery chargers, computer locks, cables, chargers, adapters, and consumer an ...

announced that "PNY has stepped up and will be working to give BFG customers the ability to exchange their video cards for a coupon to purchase a PNY Video card at a discounted price". This exchange program ended on December 31, 2010, and PNY is no longer accepting requests for BFG cards. The BFG brand name of the company was subsequently acquired by Best Data, who also owns the

Diamond Multimedia Diamond Multimedia is an American company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players; however, the company began with the production of the TrackS ...

brand.

Desktop computers

January 5, 2009, BFG Technologies launched its desktop computer line called Phobos that features a touch panel LCD with performance control, BFG Tech graphic cards, liquid cooling solutions from CoolIT and Intel processors.

Power supplies

BFG Technologies manufactured a full range of power supply units for

ATX ATX (Advanced Technology Extended) is a motherboard and power supply configuration specification, patented by David Dent in 1995 at Intel, to improve on previous de facto standard, ''de facto'' standards like the AT (form factor), AT design. ...

compatible PCs. BFG's power supply line up had consisted of 530 W, 550 W, 600 W, 650 W, 800 W and 1000 W in the past, but since was refined to separate categories for separate markets. The GS Series consisted of the GS-450, GS-550 and GS-650, 450 W, 550 W and 650 W power supplies respectively, and were sold as mainstream units, rated at peak power and at room temperature and were sold almost exclusively at retail stores like

Best Buy Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was r ...

. The LS Series was BFG Technologies mainstream series, consisting of the LS-450 450 W power supply, LS-550 550 W power supply and LS-680 680 W power supply. These were rated at continuous power and at a more realistic 40 °C. The flagship of BFG Technologies' power supply offerings was the ES Series, which only consisted of one model: The ES-800. This unit was not only rated at continuous and 40 °C, but featured a technology marketed as "Frequency Conversion" which is a term used to define a method of changing the switching frequency of the power supply to coincide with load. This allowed the unit to be as efficient as possible even at very low loads while conventional designs might have been significantly less efficient at loads below 10%. The ES Series was later replaced by the EX-Series; essentially an ES Series with a modular interface for removal of unused cables.

PhysX cards

BFG Technologies offered a 128MB PPU that uses Ageia's

PhysX PhysX is an Open-source software, open-source Real-time computer graphics, realtime physics engine middleware Software development kit, SDK developed by Nvidia as part of the Nvidia GameWorks software suite. Initially, video games supporting Ph ...

processing chip and libraries. The card was only available in a

PCI PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Prov ...

version in retail packages.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bfg Technologies 2002 establishments in Illinois 2010 disestablishments in Illinois American companies established in 2002 American companies disestablished in 2010 Companies based in Lake Forest, Illinois Companies that have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Companies that filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2010 Computer companies established in 2002 Computer companies disestablished in 2010 Computer power supply unit manufacturers Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct computer companies of the United States Graphics hardware companies Motherboard companies Nvidia