CeBIT 2009 - Part 1
Join as we take a look at what Antec, Arctic Cooling, ASRock, Axle, Biostar, Cooler Master and DJ-Tech have to offer in the first part of our CeBIT 2009 show floor coverage.
Antec's Booth
Antec proudly showcased its casing solutions, but too bad there were no newer casings than those that were recently launched. However, we did catch a few interesting items�
Fusing together two of their famous enthusiast open-air casings, the Skeleton, they are now toying with a Skeleton Proto II.
Here's another view of their proto on display.
On the other end of the scale, we've here the Mini Skeleton. It takes motherboards of a Mini ITX form factor and is able to house one 5.25-inch drive and four 2.5-inch drives. Comes with a 180W external adapter.
Antec Veris is a series of multimedia front-panel add-ons to convert your existing chassis to be more HTPC-like and comes with a corresponding remote controller as well. While not really new, they are one of the more recent additions to Antec's line-up.
Arctic Cooling's Booth
Arctic Cooling never fails to attract attention with its huge all-white booth design.
Some of their newest highlights include their recently expanding series of Accelero Xtreme tri-fan graphics card coolers. They now have versions for the Radeon 2900, GeForce 8800, 9800 and GTX 280 series.
Coming soon in April is a new addition for the Radeon 4870 X2. With 320 watts of cooling capacity, this eight heat-pipe monster is the most powerful cooling solution yet from Arctic Cooling. You can probably expect to see a few graphics card vendors adopting this solution for improved cooling and reduced operation noise.
This new Accelero Twin Turbo is built to tackle performance range graphics cards like the GeForce 9 series and Radeon 4800 series. Dual 92mm PWM fans and quad heat-pipes achieve up to 160 watts of cooling capacity.
The Accelero L2 Pro is more for mainstream graphics cards such as the Radeon 4600 series and the equivalent GeForce 9 and older graphics cards.
More Arctic Cooling
The Arctic Cooling Fusion 550R is not brand new at this point of time, but it is still one of their more recent additions. This 550W PSU carries both 80 Plus and ECO80 certifications and is able to achieve up to 86% efficiency.
The Arctic NC (notebook cooler) sports dual 60mm PWM fans and comes with a four-port USB hub at the rear. Suitable for notebooks of 12-inch to 19-inch sizes and should hit retail from April onwards.
Those into extreme overclocking will appreciate these extensive Arctic RC memory coolers. The first set of RAM coolers are using the RC Turbo Module which just latches on to the Arctic RC memory coolers.
Arctic Cooling has a whole new range of updated casing fans and come in three sizes and three varieties:- plain, the TC version for temperature controlled fan speed operation, and the PWM version that are controlled via the BIOS.
What's special about these fans are their newly designed fan blades. The thicker mid section of the fan blades were found to increase airflow while keeping noise levels lower than conventional blade designs.
ASRock's Booth
ASRock is getting more aggressive these days by keeping up with times and introducing motherboards based on the latest chipsets. Take for example; this board here is the X58 SuperComputer. With four PEG slots supporting Quad SLI and Quad CrossFireX, dual Gigabit LAN with teaming functionality and supporting DDR3 ECC buffered memory, ASRock is not only aiming high but is also aiming at the workstation market with their marketing tactics as it supports single-socket Xeon 3500 processors. With one less Gigabit LAN controller and some marketing fluff, ASRock has the X58 Deluxe motherboard for the rest of us consumers.
Of course they are still very much into unique board designs for the cost conscious and here we have an nForce 740i SLI chipset based board (N7AD-SLI) supporting the latest Intel Core 2 Duo and Quad processors. Supports 1600MHz FSB processors, dual-channel DDR2-800, dual PEG slots with a switch card to split the single PCIe x16 interface to dual PCIe x8 interfaces to enable SLI, dual FireWire 400 ports, one Gigabit LAN and one eSATA port.
Over on the AMD side of things, they are also equally updated with this M3A790GXH/128M based on the AMD 790GX chipset supporting AM3 processors and DDR3 memory. The board integrates a 128MB SidePort frame buffer memory for the integrated IGP. More interesting though is its triple PCIe graphics card slots - the first two operate at x8 speeds while the last orange slot manages an x4 speed. Otherwise, the board supports all the expected features from the AMD 790GX chipset.
Axle's Booth
Would you have guessed that this is a GeForce 9500 GT? Quite a large cooler from Arctic Cooling keeps this mainstream Axle card operating as cool as possible. The card itself has standard specs and nothing out of the ordinary.
And would you have guessed that this is a GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics card? We didn't either till we checked its tech specs.
Those who require a more powerful cooling solution with the intention of overclocking and the likes, you should consider their better endowed GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics card.
Biostar's Booth
Biostar's Booth.
Need something better than an AMD 740G board but not quite as powerful as the AMD 780G? We're not quite certain if such a fine segmentation is needed, but that's where AMD's 760G chipset comes to fill in the patch and Biostar has this A760GB M2+ microATX motherboard. The Southbridge is an updated SB700, the SB710.
This is Biostar's latest AM3 motherboard with DDR3 memory support, the TA790GX A3+. This board has a 4 + 1 phase power design, 128MB of SidePort frame buffer and all the other expected features from a full functional AMD 790GX board.
The Biostar Tpower X58 motherboard has a 12-phase power design, full SLI and CrossFire support, dual Gigabit LAN, dual FireWire 400 ports and all the other features of any good Intel X58 board.
And here's their upcoming Intel P55 motherboard for Core i5 processors (LGA-1156). This new upcoming processor will incorporate even more of the traditional Northbridge functionality like PEG support. It will however only support a single PCIe x16 interface; thus the dual PEG slots seen on the board are most certainly for PCIe X8 / X8 operation. Only CrossFire support is available on these boards.
Seen here for the first time ever is the new Intel P55 chipset uncovered. This is a single-chip platform controller hub for the new Core i5 based systems. Expect board designs to get simpler and hopefully cheaper for us customers.
And last but not least, here's a look at their new GeForce GTS 250 graphics card. It will have DVI, HDMI and VGA outputs. Clocks are at 740MHz for the core and 2200MHz DDR for the 512MB memory.
Cooler Master's Booth
Surprisingly, Cooler Master took on a closed-door approach this time around. Let's take a look at what secrets are in store for us:-
Cooler Master is all ready for the mini revolution with this mini ITX-1 chassis. It has a steel chassis that measures 280 x 95 x 330mm and comes equipped with a TFX power supply of up to 200W. It can house a single slim 5.25-inch optical drive and a single internal 3.5-inch hard drive only. Minimalist in appearance, it is a very petite chassis that should easily tuck away in many places. Tuck in a GeForce 9300 mGPU mini ITX board inside and you're all set for a tiny HTPC system.
We always thought that there's a big gap between the Cooler Master Elite series and the rest of their offerings, but that's going to get patched with this new Gladiator series of casings. This is the Gladiator 600. Still mostly made from Steel, it features better build, styling and features. This comfortable sized medium tower casing measures 202 x 435 x 480mm and can take in five 5.25-inch devices, six 3.5-inch devices (five internal and one external). Cooling is taken care by a 140mm casing fan on top and a 120mm casing fan at the front.
Costing some US$50 less than its bigger HAF 932 brother, this is the new smaller HAF 922 medium tower HAF 922 casing which is set to steal the limelight. It can take in the same number of 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch devices as the Gladiator 600 casing above. Dimensions are at 255 x 502 x 558mm and it has most of the features of the HAF 932. Cooling is taken care by a 200mm fan on the top and front while a 120mm fan sits at the rear.
Here's a special demo whipped up by Cooler Master using their ATCS-840 casing which they dubbed as the 53GHz system! Let's take a closer look at what's it made of�
Cooler Master managed to stack five systems each equipped with a Core 2 Quad 9400 processor. Now each of those run at 2.66GHz and with four cores for each of the five processors, that adds up to 53GHz. Anyway, besides the catchy name, the real deal here is that a single 1KW PSU of theirs is powering these five systems. We got to admit that they've managed to keep the system extremely tidy despite cramming five times more cables than normal. Amazing cable routing indeed and homage to the humble ATCS-840 that can handle it all.
Always wanted to get a secondary power charger for your notebook but think the original is too much? Well Cooler Master too now has a universal 95 watt notebook power charger with all the necessary adapters.
DJ-Tech's Booth
DJ-Tech had some interesting options for the audio professionals and audio enthusiasts.
Check out their range of Vinyl to MP3, USB Turntable converters.
Here's one of them in detail.
And here's their DJ USB Controller to manipulate MP3 music in real-time. This model is known as the iMix Club Edition. Despite its name, it's PC and Mac compatible.
The package also comes with DJ-Tech's Traktor 3 LE and DeckaDance software for all your audio mixing control needs.
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