Computex, The conclusion #1

source: hardwarezone.com
Everything from Computex

Enermax's Booth

'Welcome to the Golden Age' was the motto at Enermax's booth but it left us slightly puzzled since the vendor's flagship Revolution 85+ is only rated at 80 PLUS Silver.

It may have received only 80 PLUS Silver but it's still a very good PSU, ranging from 850W to 1250W. Moreover it is ready for future power connector changes as it complies with the latest EPS 12V specs.

This is the reason for Enermax's Golden Age ads, implying that it will be a 80 PLUS Gold contender. Enermax has yet to give a name to this upcoming series though it sports a very similar look as the Revolution 85+ and probably the same internal design, with red fans.

The other high wattage PSU in Enermax's lineup is the Evo Galaxy, with a similar range of wattages as the Revolution 85+ but with lower efficiency and hence only a Bronze rating.

GlacialTech's Booth

Next, we check out GlacialTech, which dabbles in cooling solutions, chassis and PSUs.

The company was showing off its F101 cooler as an example of extreme cooling. GlacialTech states that it has a noise level of around 28 decibels, spinning at a maximum of 1500rpm.

Here's a close look at the F101 cooler and heasink, which makes use of heatpipes to distribute heat to a tightly packed array of cooling fins.

GlacialTech also has a HTPC enclosure on display, the Altair A322, which looks like it belongs in the living room with its sleek, classy appearance.

Kingbox's Booth

Memory vendor Kingbox with a booth design that integrates its logo rather nicely.

Kingbox's 64GB SSD is rated at up to 240MB/s for reads and 170MB/s for writes.

The entire range of Kingbox's SSD solutions, all sporting an eye catching graphic design. They are all made in Taiwan, with a two-year warranty and with similar specs.

Kingbox's triple channel kit has speeds of up to DDR3-1800 though what surprised us was the lack of heat spreaders. In fact, the company's overclocking oriented DDR3-2000 memory modules are also depicted without any heat spreaders. The company however seemed confident that there was no such need. Additionally, they all have a LED indicator on the PCB to show its status.

Nanya's Booth

Nanya is another memory vendor at Computex. Certainly, we are spoilt for choice here.

This DDR3-1600 module from Nanya is rated at 1.5V, with latencies of 9-9-9 with a density of 2GB.

For laptops, there's this 1GB DDR3-1066 SODIMM module, rated at 7-7-7.

And for those who need more, there's this DDR3-1333 2GB SODIMM module.

Lian Li

It's all about angular aluminum chassis at Lian Li's booth, where the vendor had a couple of new tool-free, anti-vibration designs.

Meant for the home theater enthusiast, Lian Li's X2000 is unconventionally tall, resembling a full tower but with a much reduced depth. There's space for up to six internal 3.5-inch drives, with eight expansion slots.

Hard drives are isolated from the main compartment in the X2000.

The hard drive bays are hot swappable and foam padding at the bottom of the drive for more noise isolation and dampening.

The X1000 is designed for either gaming or HTPC users and the form factor is similar to the X2000, with its height. The hard drives are also isolated at the bottom of the chassis, with three large 14cm fans at the front.

Tool-free mechanism to lock the PCI expansion cards.

We almost overlooked this slot here for 2.5-inch drives like SSDs. The X1000 comes with two such slots.

Lian Li's newer chassis here at Computex 2009 includes the PC-A70F, which is tool-free with anti-vibration features for the hard drive and PSU racks.

A view of the internals of the A70F, which is outfitted with water cooling in this demo.

The hard drives are suspended using a rubber ring mechanism, with large thumb screws to fulfill the 'tool-free' requirement.

To ensure that large and heavy graphics cards get the support they need.

Even the PSU can be secured without the use of screws with this locking mechanism.

The PC-P50B supports both mATX and ATX form factors, with a total of 4 system fans that spin at a maximum of 1200rpm. Three internal 3.5-inch drive bays are present and a massive nine 5.25-inch drive slots.

The B25F is similar to the PC-A70F in terms of its tool-free and anti-vibration features, so what you have seen earlier applies. The design is obviously different, with a sleek front panel with an attractive circular LED design.

For those who want something small and unobtrusive, the mini-tower PC-Q07 has sufficient space for one 3.5" and one 5.25" inch drive bays, along with space for one 2.5". It supports micro-ITX form factors with only a single expansion slot.

PQI's Booth

And there seems to be no lack of flash based products as we found out at PQI's booth, where more flash memory cards, SSD, DRAM modules and USB drives confronted us.

Interestingly, PQI has this SSD (S520)which uses the ExpressCard slot which should be handy for notebook users. It's hot swappable and also has USB 2.0 interface. Capacity is quite modest, at between 8GB and 32GB.

Or you can opt for this S530 eSATA combo drive which uses eSATA and its own patented Intelligent Stick interface. Small and light, the capacity is from 8GB to 64GB.

Some examples of PQI's memory modules, which are as fast (DDR3-2000) and as dense (2GB per stick) as one would expect.

PQI's fastest 2.5-inch SSD comes in either 128 or 256GB, with reads up to 240MB/s and writes up to 161MB/s. It has a built-in RAID feature.

PQI also uses Intel's MLC SSD and chipset design for the best performance that one can find on a SSD currently. These come with both PQI and Intel brand markings.

Super Talent's Booth

Moving on, we have Super Talent, which again deals primarily with flash based products.

Its Chrome series is its fastest DDR3 memory modules, with speeds of up to DDR3-2000. They are meant for the Core i7, with Super Talent selling them in 3GB and 6GB triple channel kits.

For those looking for performance memory but not necessarily for the Core i7, there's the Project X and Black series, which start from DDR3-1866 and goes up to DDR3-2000. They are available in dual channel kits instead.

Super Talent showed off a premium 128GB USB drive which comes with AES-256 hardware encryption and boasting up to 200x speeds.

With read speeds of up to 260MB/s, Super Talent has a very fast MLC based SSD. The UltraDrive ME has capacities from 32GB to 256GB, with 64MB of internal cache.

And the capacity gets larger, with Super Talent having a 2.5-inch 512GB SSD that is claimed to be the world's first commercially available.

Then, there's the RAIDDrive SSD which can support up to 2TB of MLC or 1TB of SLC flash memory. Backed by battery to prevent data loss, it uses the PCIe x8 interface and can gives speeds of up to 1.3GB/s.

Team Group's Booth

We're still deep in memory vendor territory, with Team Group's booth up next.

Team's Xtreem DDR3 memory is up to DDR3-2133, with triple channel kits available. Latency is at a decent 9-9-9-24.

The Xtreem-G1 SSD is a MLC version with 250GB capacity and rather typical read and write speeds.

Meanwhile the Xtreem-R SSD adds RAID0 functionality to a design that's similar to the G1.

This 2.5-inch 256GB combo SSD has both SATA and mini-USB interfaces.

Team Group also has these 500GB combo SSD, with added RAID0 feature.

A winner of Computex 2009 design awards, this Diamond drive USB flash drive comes with embedded crystal and in capacities of 2, 4, 8 and 16GB.

Transcend's Booth

Transcend has quite a large presence at Computex 2009, as befitting its status as one of the biggest memory vendors.

A display cabinet of the different memory module series offered by Transcend.

A dual-channel DDR3-1800 kit from the company that is XMP ready.

A 1.8-inch small portable hard drive (solid state) with both eSATA and USB 2.0 interfaces. Capacity range from 32 to 128GB.

This is Transcend's 2.5-inch MLC SSD SATA hard drive with external DRAM buffer. It has a capacity of 120GB.

Xigmatek's Booth

Xigmatek had made quite a splash in the cooling scene with its successful direct touch heatpipe design (HDT). What do they have this year?

This is the answer, Thor's Hammer or the S126384 doubles the amount of heat pipes and cooling fins on the heatsink and it's also entirely black nickel plated.

The Xigmatek Blackblock uses the vendor's HDT design with four heat pipes and aluminum fins. It will come with a 92mm fan rated between 1200 and 2800rpm.

The Raider has only three heat pipes and has the same 92mm fan as the Blackblock.

The original S1283 now comes with a water block version so those with water cooling setups can find it very easy to adapt to their systems.

The same HDT technology is applied to its graphics card cooler. The Palkia is suitable for the latest ATI and NVIDIA GPUs and comes with six heat pipes. It is paired with two 100mm fans for maximum cooling.

Xigmatek also showed off a few of its chassis and here is the Alfheim, which is a SECC chassis with seven expansion slots and up to four 3.5-inch internal drive bays. Water pipe holes are found at the rear and it looks like a rather typical mid-tower chassis.

The Midgard is Xigmatek's earlier chassis and again, it's nothing unconventional. It has all the nice features expected nowadays, like tool-free design and anti-vibration rubber for the PSU. It comes with preinstalled front and rear 120mm fans with white LED.

This full tower is the Yggdrasil, which can support up to seven 5.25-inch and 5 internal 3.5-inch drive bays. Tool-free like the other chassis, it has a removable motherboard tray and supports larger form factors too.