Hardware website HardOCP stops after owner leaves Intel vertrek
Kyle Bennett, owner of HardOCP, joins Intel’s marketing department as Director of Enthusiastic Engagement. He has decided to shut down his website. The associated forum will continue to run, but will be given a new owner.
The HardOCP website will remain online, but as of April 1, when Bennett joins Intel, no new content will appear on the hardware website. All old articles will remain available, the owner says in the announcement of his departure. Bennett doesn’t want to sell the website because he’s afraid of any changes he doesn’t support.
To avoid conflicts of interest, Bennett is selling HardForum.com to another company. According to him, that company will keep the forum running without commercial intentions. No more advertisements will be shown and no more referral links will be placed. However, members can support the forum through Patreon, which is already possible. Bennett himself remains active as a member and admin on the forum.
Bennett says that the choice for a job at Intel is not made for financial reasons, but is ready for something new after twenty years of doing the same job. Intel itself has not yet announced anything about the appointment of Bennett, but the processor manufacturer did have a vacancy online for the position in question.
As Director of Enthusiastic Engagement, Bennett at Intel will be responsible for connecting the company with PC enthusiasts. According to Bennett, Intel wants to be more open to the community and reconnect with hardware enthusiasts.
The American website HardOCP has been around since the end of the last millennium. The website published news and reviews on components, and focused on topics such as overclocking. Last year, Bennett released information on his site about the GeForce Partner Program, a controversial Nvidia plan to exclusively bind brands. After much ado, Nvidia withdrew the GPP.
It is not the first time that a hardware journalist has left a large manufacturer. At the end of last year, Ryan Shrout from PC Perspective also joined Intel. Anand Lal Shimpi, the founder of AnandTech, left his own website in 2014 for a position at Apple.