We've all seen die shots of various hardware components over the years but as of late, it's a practice that many companies have been shying away from. Instead, we get PowerPoint slides that, while informative in their own right, don't offer up nearly as many details to the trained eye.
That's why, when The Tech Report spotted a photographer on Flickr that is systematically dismantling hardware and snapping macro shots of what's hidden under the caps and heatspreaders of various chips, it drew our attention.
The photographer, who goes by the handle Fritzchens Fritz, has uploaded more than 450 photos to the "Die Shots" album. It's not all old, junky hardware as you might suspect - the most recent uploads are of AMD's Polaris 10 chip from a Radeon RX 470 graphics card.
Other chips delidded include a GTX 580, an old AMD Duron, a GTX Titan and a Riva 128ZX, just to name a few. That's quite a wide range of hardware for sure and as The Tech Report notes, you could easily spend hours combing through everything.
What's really neat is that the author posts the images in chronological order from removing the chip off the board to getting down inside it. It's also cool that the user is willing to sacrifice new silicon for our enjoyment. Hopefully for the sake of his wallet, he is sourcing dead hardware from eBay or something. I only wish I had thought to do this before getting rid of some old hardware recently.
Fritzchens Fritz also has a couple of other albums dedicated to various hardware. As a photography enthusiast, I can also appreciate his stunning infrared gallery as well as the macro shots of insects. Very impressive.
All images courtesy Fritzchens Fritz, Flickr