Vantec

Vantec Thermal Technologies is a privately held multinational corporation with headquarters and an R&D team in the US, sales/purchasing office in Taiwan and factories in Taiwan, Korea and China. Vantec designs and manufactures thermal products and computer peripherals. Consumers can buy Vantec products from brick-and-mortar electronics stores or online retailers. The company does not sell to end-users directly.

History

Vantec was founded in 1994 in Fremont, CA.^[1] The company started as a manufacturer of CPU cooling fans for system integrators and end-users. In the late 1990s, Vantec gained recognition notably in overclocking AMD processors.

The company launched TMD Tip-Magnetic Driving CPU cooling fans in 2002. The popularity of quiet home entertainment computers made this product line advantageous to Vantec. In the same year, Vantec also introduced the NXP-101 multi-function front panel. This product is the first on the market with front USB and Firewire ports. It became a standard on many current computer cases.

In 2002, the company introduced its first computer power supply unit (PSU), which was first on the consumer market with three cooling fans and a black brushed aluminum casing.^[2] This design became popular for high-end power supplies as the heat and power consumption from high-performance video cards increased. Vantec has carried external hard disk enclosures since 2004. The NexStar 3 series enclosures were the first external hard drive enclosures on the market to adopt mirror-finished double-coated aluminum casings with a variety of colors (black, blue, red and silver).

The company moved to a new facility in 2004 within the Pacific Commons Shopping Center where it is adjacent to a Costco and the future Cisco Field ballpark of the Oakland Athletics.

Markets

Vantec products are distributed worldwide. The US headquarters manages the North American markets. The Taiwan branch manages European, South American and Asian countries including Australia and New Zealand.

Products

Storage products

• External hard disk enclosures: NEXSTAR, NEXSTAR 2, NEXSTAR 3, NEXSTAR GX, NEXSTAR DX, NEXSTAR LX, NEXSTAR SX, NEXSTAR MX, NEXSTAR CX, NEXSTAR Hard Drive Dock, IDE to USB Adapter, SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter and IDE to SATA converter.
• Removable hard drive racks: EZ Swap, EZ Swap2 and EZ Swap EX.
• Portable media player: AVOX AVX-100TX.
• SATA controllers: SATA PCI host cards, eSATA cardbus and serial ATA PCI-E host cards.

Peripherals

• USB devices: USB hubs, USB card readers and USB PCI cards.
• Power supplies: Stealth and ION series.
• Cables: IDE, Floppy and SCSI rounded cables.

Cooling products

• Case fans: Stealth, Tornado, Thermoflow and Spectrum series.
• System cooling: Vortex hard drive cooling systems, chipset coolers, fan cards, video card and memory coolers.
• CPU coolers.

Notebook accessories

• Notebook coolers and water coolers.
• Notebook docking stations, keypads, and security locks.

PC Mods

• Quiet solutions: case fan and power supply vibration damper kits.
• UV fans, cold cathode lights, UV LED fans, UV slot protectors.
• UV reactive cable sleeving kits.

References