When I asked HF about their chips and boards and also the issue about power spikes that may kill the entire board as it just has 2 pcie connectors directly plugged in and brought up KnC and how their controller was very sensitive to power spikes the answer I received was "well, I don't know anything about the KnC miners but I promise you [said in emphasis] WE OVERBUILT THIS PRODUCT [at the same time pointing and even enthusiastically tapping on the plexiglass as if it somehow it made the chip better...!?] THERE IS 15 POUNDS OF COPPER ON THIS BOARD and there is PLENTY OF ROOM TO OVERCLOCK AND IT WOULD NOT FAIL" because they used Seasonic power supplies, which is the OEM builder of the Corsair PSUs that I had connected to the KnC that died and it was the Platinum rated PSUs as well. When I said that he was saying that it was most likely that I may have used a PSU that was not superior to theirs but when I said that Seasonic BUILDS the Corsair PSUs he did not even know that was the case.... and the water leak was still not even wiped off, the worse part was that the case had thumb screws so they didn't even need a screwdriver to open the case, why didn't they just wipe the water off in the first place?
I just hope that their real engineers really did make a good product.
Sounds like you were in Vegas.
My take is that HF has very good engineering (Simon, Amy and others), but somewhat sleazy sales as marketing (john and others). My guess is, anyone with any technical skill was all hands on deck with the chip/board bring up back at the main office... Sales and marketing went to Vegas. Not cleaning up the spill is very unprofessional when everyone knows that water can kill electronics... Forms a very bad association with the customer.
They were probably like... "Well, it's not plugged in. And it doesn't even have a chip in there under the heat sink... Why bother cleaning it up."
I guess a funny response to the case salesman they had there would have been, "Did you over engineer the cooling system with the feature that it leaks at trade shows?"