EVGA Shows Off New Gaming Case, VR-Ready Custom GeForce, And Future Audio Products At CES
EVGA set up shop in a swank suite at the Bellagio Hotel a short distance away from the craziness of the Las Vegas Convention Center, to display its latest products to CES attendees. As you’d expect, EVGA had a wide array of motherboards and NVIDIA GPU-based graphics cards on hand, including a custom GeForce GTX 980 Ti geared for the upcoming wave of VR gear, but the company also revealed some upcoming products that have nothing to do with graphics.
Some of EVGA’s high-end, custom GeForce GTX cards were displayed in a glass case, with a trio of EVGA’s custom SLI bridges situated just in front. The company’s TORQ gaming mice were on display as well, along with an assortment of power supplies. All of these products had been previously introduced, however.
The first piece of new gear EVGA was showing off – an elaborate enthusiast chassis -- was front and center in the entryway as visitors walked into the suite. The EVGA Gaming Case (which won’t be the official name) is tuned for maximum cooling and has an aggressive look all around. The entire front and top of the case is vented, and there’s a chamber at the rear that can be used to tuck away cables. The bottom of the chassis can also be outfitted with a large fan controller that features simple button controls and a readout for tweaking fan speeds.
The first piece of new gear EVGA was showing off – an elaborate enthusiast chassis -- was front and center in the entryway as visitors walked into the suite. The EVGA Gaming Case (which won’t be the official name) is tuned for maximum cooling and has an aggressive look all around. The entire front and top of the case is vented, and there’s a chamber at the rear that can be used to tuck away cables. The bottom of the chassis can also be outfitted with a large fan controller that features simple button controls and a readout for tweaking fan speeds.
The version on display also has a built-in modular liquid cooling solution. Quick disconnects make it easy to plug additional water blocks into the cooling loop, so incorporating multiple GPUs and chipset cooling is possible. In fact, a second EVGA gaming case was being shown that packed in a quartet of graphics cards. Multiple versions of the case will be offered when it hits store shelves, with differing cooling setups and with / without the fan controller.
To help better take advantage of all of the Virtual Reality kits due to hit the market soon, EVGA also readied a custom VR Edition GeForce GTX 980 Ti card. For the most part, the card is similar to EVGA’s previous offerings that featured ACX cooling, but this new VR Edition moves one of the HDMI outputs from the front mounting plate to the back, internal edge of the card’s PCB and it includes a bay-mountable rack that houses an HDMI output and a couple of USB 3.0 ports. This setup allows users to move an HDMI output to the front of a system, so they aren’t fumbling around the back when connecting VR gear.
The EVGA SC17 Gaming Notebook also made an appearance in the company’s suite. The SC17 packs in Intel’s latest Skylake-based processors and NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 980M mobile GPU. The notebook features a 17” 4K screen, backlit keyboard, and sleek overall design aesthetic, with a lighted EVGA logo in the lid. EVGA designed the machine for power users as well as gamers though, as it features a 240W power brick of EVGAs own design and a system BIOS that’s as robust as EVGA’s enthusiast-class desktop motherboards, which allows for plenty of tuning and fine-grained overclocking.
A new Z170-Classified K motherboard also made its debut. The EVGA Z170-Classified K is similar to the original Z170-Classified, but it has a different slot configuration and does away with the expensive PLX PCIe bridge. The K in the model name signifies that the board is packing the latest Killer Networking from Rivet.
EVGA also demoed some upcoming audio products, including an internal PCIe sound card and an external USB-attached audio solution. Both were still early prototypes, but we’re told the goal is to hit a signal-to-noise ratio of 130dB and that the products will feature top-shelf components including Japanese-made Rubycon capacitors and Italian-made resistors. EVGA is working on the audio products in cooperation with a U.K. based company called Audio Note that specializes in high-end audio equipment and components. No word on pricing or availability of EVGA’s audio products was available just yet, but we’re looking forward to them. A side by side comparison to standard integrated audio was like night and day. The tuning done to EVGA’s audio solutions resulted in significantly better sound quality that was immediately apparent upon listening.
