CoolerMaster certainly had a lot on display, and also was showing some chassis that where under NDA, expect some seriously cool stuff in Q2 ! For the stuff that we actually can talk about we setup a photo gallery.

The gallery will show the new Silent M chassis series ready for mATX / ATX motherboards, affordable and in a completely black styled design.  On display was also the new GX series power supplies with a 85% efficiency rating, and as prototype that have a power supply on display which is going to be called the silent PRO Hybrid PSU. This thing could end up with a Platinum certification as efficiency ramps up towards 94%

In the cooler segment you'll see the new low-budget two heatpipe based Vortex cooler, the new Hyper 412S series with aluminum cover, a Hyper 612S series cooler and what is very interesting, a all-in-one single 120mm radiator based liquid cooling setup that hints towards Asetek and CoolIT.

This product is not final and neither does not have a name, hence the A-L2 label at the moment. Be sure to check out the copper cooling block with what seems to be weaved layers of copper for optimal cooling.

Cooling wise you'll also notice the new and huge Gemini which is intended for the USA market, likely not Europe due to 'audible' reasons.

You'll also spot some new chassis, mouse's like the Spawn and Sentinel Z3ro G and a really cool Headphone set in the CM STORM series called Sirus.

Check out the full photo-gallery right here.

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Over at CeBIT another eye catching product series that is yet to be announced is the high-end Intel Z68 motherboard chipset.

Intel has started production of their Z68 chipset this week along with other Cougar Point SKUs like H61 and Q65. All of them are based on the new B3 stepping therefore the SATA port 2-5 issue is fixed before they hit the market. Judging from the specs, it seems Intel has catered Z68 specially for enthusiasts which allows better processor overclocking, discrete graphics support and SSD caching capability.

Partners that had them on display are amongst others, MSI and ASUS, have a peek:

  

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We'll start reporting from CeBIT today, lot's of stuff to see this year, and many manufacturers are there. Some eye catching stuff definitely is on display. Per manufacturer we'll post a news item that is going to link to a full photo-gallery.

I wanted to show you some items in a  separate news-post as well, first the Radeon Radeon HD 6990 is on display at several AMD partners, amongst them MSI. The dual-GPU card is lined up to be AMD's 2011 flagship, and MSI proudly proclaims that it's "the most powerful" unit available, the card is to be release next week.

  

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BlizzCon first started in October 2005, held annually at the Anaheim Convention Center. It features announcements of new content for Blizzard's franchises, previews of content for upcoming games, developer Q&A sessions, PvP competitions and more. This was Blizzard's 5th annual Blizzcon, held October 22-23 in sunny Anaheim, California at the Anaheim Convention Center. For those of you who may not know, Blizzard is responsible for the wildly popular Starcraft, Diablo and Warcraft franchises. Blizzard is so big they hold their own separate convention packed across 4 halls.

We'll cover the games and hardware shown at BlizzCon 2010 in this 10 page article. You can read it right here.

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Ubisoft have announced another unique title in their digital lineup -- Project Dust, the new development from famed game creator Eric Chahi (Heart of Darkness). The game is supposedly a spiritual successor to Populous. Players will play a god-like character who can manipulate nature to their whims -- ground, water, lava, fire, plants and trees to name a few things. In Dust you'll curve nature in order to save, migrate and expand their population. Project Dust is intended for release during the spring of next year as a downloadable title for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.


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Here are some E3 2010 images from the officially licensed FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) game, produced and developed by Black Bean Games and Milestone. The WRC 2010 game will contain the teams and drivers from the World Rally Championship and include all 13 rallies that appear on this year's calendar.

Here's a video about the making of the game:


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Ok one more new trailer. There's another gameplay trailer here for your scrutinizing needs :P Call of Duty: Black Ops will be out this November for the Xbox 360, PS3, and the PC.


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The CEO and President of Crytek was on hand to give a demo of Crysis 2 at the 2010 Electronic Arts E3 press conference.


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More motherboard news from Computex, DFI let us know that they have stopped developing the enthusiast class LANparty motherboards.

LANParty motherboards are known and reputed for their high class style and tweakabilty. it seems that in 2009 the LANParty division made a rather substantial loss resulting in closing down that segment. DFI's focus will be more profitable motherboards from now on.

It will certainly be a loss for the industry, then again it will create more headroom for other companies.

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In a previous post we already told you that Indilinx pushed back their SATA 6G (SATA III) controller based SSDs. However over at Computex Marvell seems to simply not care adress  the market and kick out new products.

S501 is A-Data's first solid state drive with  SATA 6.0Gbps connection. The MLC based S501 boasts a cache memory of 128MB. The Marvell controller is able to utilize these resources to push read and write speeds to 350MB/s and 200MB/s, respectively. It seems though that this product isn't exactly meant for the consumer segment, being better suited for the enterprise market, in applications such as data centers and servers.

Regardless of the market segments it will be meant for, end-users will have to wait a while before getting a chance to buy A-Data's new storage unit, though exact pricing and availability details have not been disclosed. When shipments do start, however, variety, at the very least, won't be an issue, as there will be 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and even 512GB versions on shelves.

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No no, it's not as dramatic as the topic hints, but Artic Cooling is no more. With the recent product line Artic Cooling will halt it's current brandname and start a new under ... "Arctic".

" The company ARCTIC COOLING has grown steadily in recent years and has expanded its product portfolio across the range of cooling article also in new fields. To accommodate the change, ARCTIC COOLING will change its name to ARCTIC from today on. All products of the ARCTIC family have the high quality at an affordable price in common. The creativity and love to the detail of ARCTIC engineering team is inserted in each individual product. The basic idea behind the entire products can is expressed in three words, which are also at the same time the new slogan of the company: the spirit of innocation".

With a new name comes a new logo ...

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If you want a quick an d east way to add USB 3.0 to your PC, eVGA now offers their EU30 PCI-E host card which  adds an additional 2 USB 3.0 ports capable of up to 5 gigabits per second of data transfer, and is also backwards compatible ensuring all your favorite USB devices still work great. PCI Express x1 support ensures compatibility for a wide range of motherboards.

Key features introduced on the EVGA EU30 USB 3.0 Host Card:

• Supports up to 5Gbps of Data Transfer
• Low Profile Design
• Backwards Compatible for all USB Devices

EVGA EU30 USB 3.0 host card will be available through EVGA's network of leading Etailers, Retailers, System Integrators, OEM System Manufacturers and Distributors soon.

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Earlier today we've already shown you that Galaxy is working on a dual-GTX 470 Fermi (single PCB) based graphics card. That prototype definitely looks interesting, however, Galaxy has brought along some very impressive gear and is working on all kinds of new innovations to bring their products at the very least customized to a next level. Let's walk through some of the extraordinary gear they have on display shall we ?

BTW, you can click on all photo's to see a high-resolution photo.

So in the photo below you can see a Galaxy GeForce GTX 470 card, if you look a little closer though, you'll notice that it has two GPUs, the smaller one is in fact a simple GeForce GT 240 GPU and it's there for PhysX. Cards like these are not new, eVGA has shown a similar product in the GTX 200 series last year called Co-Op. Whether or not this product will make it to market, we doubt a little bit but it surely shows something new and different.

The following photo is showing a fully customized GeForce GTX 480. Custom PCB, custom cooling. The cooler has a vapor chamber in order to keep the temperatures at much better levels compared to NVIDIA's reference cooler, have a peek. Admittedly, that is one good looking card.

The next photo (below) shows something new and refreshing as well. It seems like that all mid-range and faster graphics cards these days are based on a dual-slot design, hogging much space. Below you can see the Galaxy GTX 470 Razor. This in fact is a single slot design. Considering that the GTX 470 is a card that runs very hot, we are a little skeptical about it's performance and noise levels. But never judge a book by it's cover they say.

The two photo's below are all about monitoring your graphics card. To the left you can see Galaxy's "Magic Box HD" which will display essential registers and values coming from your graphics cards like temperatures and fan RPM.

To your right you can see an iPhone with a new Galaxy applications. Their Xtreme Tuner software will come with a new application. With the help of your phone you can now access data like retrieved from your graphics card like temperatures, driver revision, BIOS revision. It does go one notch further, as you can overclock directly from your iPhone as well.

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In this post a couple of photo's showing you what a presentation booth looks like at Computex. When you hit the thumbnails you can see the MSI booth from the Nangang fair ground.  MSI is showing a lot of gear, obviously the MSI X58 XPower is on display, their latest and seriously greatest motherboard ever. (we reviewed it here).

Next to that they have a handful of affordable Hydra motherboards on display, which we told you about yesterday already.

Two motherboards are planned for release very soon. One based on AMD's 870 chipset and one on Intel's P55 chipset. The AMD 870 based motherboard with Hydra chip will go through life as the Fuzion 870A. The addition of 'A' means the board both USB3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gbit / s on board, the latter due to the SB850 Southbridge.  Two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots can accommodate a mix of so many video cards. The 870A board offers support to the new hexacore Phenom II X6 processors from AMD and also has a feature that can unlock disabled cores. The new update will get an OC Genie button for automated overclocking. The board will be equipped with military class components, DrMOS chips and components while contributing their bit to stability.

The Fuzion P55A, also with USB3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gbit / s on board, it will be the cheaper version of the Big Bang to Fuzion. With a P55 chipset and LGA1156 socket it can house i3/i5/i7 Core processors. This board comes with two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots. OC Genie, DrMOS, button are standard here as well. MSI's Fuzion 870A will cost approximately

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As we all know next to ASUS real soon, MSI already offers Lucid Hydra based motherboards. Hydra allows you to combine ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards or a combo of the same brand yet different series.

Back at CES MSI already hinted that new motherboards would be equipped with that chip, and right now at Computex they are showing what is is to be an affordable motherboard with Lucid Hydra 200 chip. Two motherboards are planned for release very soon. One based on AMD's 870 chipset and one on Intel's P55 chipset.

The AMD 870 based motherboard with Hydra chip will go through life as the Fuzion 870A. The addition of 'A' means the board both USB3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gbit / s on board, the latter due to the SB850 Southbridge.  Two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots can accommodate a mix of so many video cards. The 870A board offers support to the new hexacore Phenom II X6 processors from AMD and also has a feature that can unlock disabled cores. The new update will get an OC Genie button for automated overclocking. The board will be equipped with military class componentns, DrMOS chips and components while contributing their bit to stability.

The Fuzion P55A, also with USB3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gbit / s on board, it will be the cheaper version of the Big Bang to Fuzion. With a P55 chipset and LGA1156 socket it can house i3/i5/i7 Core processors. This board comes with two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots. OC Genie, DrMOS, button are standard here as well.

MSI's Fuzion 870A will cost approximately

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Intel Corporation unveiled new products and features based on its low-power Intel Atom processor family, including plans to further differentiate the popular netbook category and expand into several new market segments beyond its growing PC, laptop and server businesses.

In the past 45 days, Intel and its Atom processor has entered a variety of markets beyond the more than 50 million Intel-based netbooks sold in the past 2 years. Intel announced a processor and MeeGo* software win with Chinese carmaker HawTai Automobile for a future in-vehicle-infotainment platform; a greater than 50-times lower platform idle power reduction with Intel's next generation Atom processor platform for handheld devices including smartphones; and a collaboration with Google*, Sony* and Logitech* to deliver a new Smart TVs experience powered by Intel Atom CE products and running Android*-based Google TV*.

Intel recently unveiled the future System on Chip (SoC) Atom-based "Tunnel Creek" that, for the first time, will allow other companies to connect their own custom silicon to Intel's SoC product. The Intel Atom processor also powers the Intel Reader, and the company has received more than 3,000 non-PC design inquiries - most new-to-Intel potential customers - ranging from fish finders to golf carts.

During his keynote, David (Dadi) Perlmutter, executive vice president and co-general manager, Intel Architecture Group, touched on these and other Intel efforts, which included showing off the world's thinnest netbook running on the upcoming mobile dual-core "Pine Trail." At just 14mm, the razor-thin "Canoe Lake" innovation platform runs cooler and is 50 percent thinner than any other netbook consumers can find on the market today. In addition, Perlmutter showed a range of other Intel Atom-based devices spanning energy efficient blade servers, retailing systems, presentation projectors and multiple tablets.

"Intel believes the strength of the Atom franchise can help consumers realize the true potential for a common experience to enable the compute continuum," said Perlmutter. "With platforms ranging from compact and portable netbooks, to Smart TV experiences and innovative tablets designs, Intel Architecture is driving innovative products based on a unique 'port of choice' software strategy."

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High-end computers are getting more and more demanding when it comes to power requirement.  The latest top of the range graphics cards from both ATI and Nvidia are demanding more power than ever before and the latest flagship motherboards are equally demanding once you start pushing the limits of your system by overclocking it. As such Cooler Master deemed it right to release the new Silent Pro Gold series power supplies. The new batch comes with a nice 90 percent power efficiency under load at 220V, which gains it an 80 Plus Gold certification.

The Silent Pro Gold series features an entirely new design with several innovative and patented technologies. Cooler Master has created HTT

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I'm hogging this one of the colleagues of TPU, but eVGA is preparing a new rounf of X58 motherboards. eVGA is ready with two new boards, the EVGA X58 SLI3 and X58 Classified3. With this release they are making a move to USB 3.0 and SATA 6G as well.

While being based on essentially the same board design as the X58 SLI LE and X58 Classified, these boards have feature updates which include USB 3.0, and SATA 6 Gb/s. Both these features use 3rd party controllers from NEC and Marvell, and are available in 2-port forms. For existing users of X58 SLI LE and X58 Classified, EVGA developed its own 2-port USB 3.0 addon card. Check out the thumbnail for a little mroe info, courtesy of tpu.

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Doing it a little different MSI has a  Golden Edition GeForce GTX 465 on display at Computex. This card uses an copper GPU heatsink, complete with copper fins, base, and heat pipes, and a copper-colored cooler shroud.

 Expect this card to be quite costly (whould it ever reach the market). Well, it is a lot of bling-bling alright, but we like that :)

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Silicon Power has unveiled a new external portable hard drive called the Armor A80. The new HDD uses a USB 3.0 interface and is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 as well. The HDD is rugged, meets US military standards for drop survivability, and is water resistant to IPX7 standards.

The HDD can be submerged in water up to a meter deep for as long as 30 minutes without any damage. The USB 3.0 connectivity allows the driver to support up to 5Gbps of data transfer. Other features include a LED light to show drive activity and an integrated USB cable that tucks into the side of the drive chassis.

The drive measures 139 x 96 x 18mm and weighs 270g. The drive gets all the power it needs directly from the USB port so no AC adapters are needed. The drive is offered in 640GB, 500GB, or 320GB and it comes in blue color. Pricing and availability are unknown.

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