Hardware Computex 2008: Pre-show products

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/06/02/computex-2008-psp/1

We visited a few of the most popular hardware manufacturers here in Taiwan in the last few days to get the low down on what will be new on the Computex show floor for 2008.

 

Looks like its going to be as impressive as ever at Computex this year, and these are just the pre-show products.

 

Now this is all nice, but I'm more looking for the stuff we won't see just yet.. More Nehalem, more SSDs!

 

Looking nice there Rich. The MSI 9600 Hybrid Freezer looks beefy..

 

"Cooler Master was already designing a unit that was over 90 percent efficient" that is pretty amazing performance for any regulated power supply.

 

Coolermaster new products look really nice, particulary the centurion silent edition (i hope that they put cable management orifice). It will be a shame, if they don't. (specially for a silent case).

 

I liked the Gigabyte Atom Mini-ITX motherboard. Now all we need is to compare it against similar offerings from VIA.

 

The Cooler Master Case, I like/want. Everything else meh-ish.

 

Rather boring stuff really. Lets see if they come up with something new as well...

 

Call me back when Asus offers a Cardbus and an ExpressCard version of the Xonar.... or at the very least, a USB one with 5.1-channel analog outputs, and DS3D GX 2.0 or 3.0. Stereo (as on the U1) and EAX2 emulation just don't cut it.

 

That first Coolermaster case looks horrible.

 

True, but that's (most) americans for you. Obviously the ones that visit this site have better taste!

Does anyone else think that the square at the top of the image below looks like it would be perfect to mod a Kaoss pad into?

 

That would be pretty cool if you were creating a music related machine/mod

 

cant wait to see all the things from this years show looks like a great year to be spending my money

The atom based motherboards look great for a media pc or file server

 

wHy would you want 5.1 analoge outputs? I rather have a optical out leading to my Onkyo suround amp.

 

I do like the look of the second Coolermaster case. It looks a bit like the Metal Boned K7
And the new Asus sound cards also look awesome.
It is a shame that the new Abit motherboard doesn't have the option for x16/x4 like the current IP35 does

 

I like both of the coolermaster cases. The first one isn't pretty, but I am a fan of the industrial look and the functionality out of the box is better than any other case. The second looks like an excellent choice for a basic box which isn't ugly and cheap looking, but doesn't cost a bomb.

MSI's 9600 looks nice as well and I can see it working well with the HAF in a theme case. Now hopefully they'll put that cooler on a better card.

 

only the current IP35 Pro does (the other IP35s in the range don't) & it's equivalent under P45 will do dual x8 PCI-E 2.0 which = dual x16 PCI-E 1.x so it will be better.
Also production IP45 MAXs are supposed to get a black PCB.

 

Exciting stuff!

I am all over that PCE Xonar card when it comes out, and I think I will also be buying an Atom based board for my new fileserver this year.

 

Several reasons:
1. My Logitech Z-5300 speakers only have analog inputs.
2. Dolby Digital (or DTS) encoding breaks Vista's automatic Room Correction feature.
3. Dolby Digital encoding introduces some extra latency.
4. Dolby Digital encoding is lossy.
5. I don't want to have to manually route PulseAudio (on Linux) through the 'a52' encoding ALSA plugin.

In addition, the USB Xonar still doesn't even offer "DS3D GX 2.0".