CES 2009 Highlights and Photo-Report

OCZ has a wide range of new and existing products on display at CES. Although, the company wasn't on the show floor, they did put on a good show of their own in a suite at the Bellagio. 

     

     

     

     
OCZ

OCZ was showing off their full line of memory products, including the new Blade series which will have a 6GB triple-channel kit capable of running at 2GHz, with 7-8-7-20 timings at 1.65v. The new Flex EX series was on display as well, which features slimmer water-blocks, that allow the memory sticks to be used in adjacent memory slots, unlike the original Flex modules, which were much wider and simply couldn't fit next to each other in adjacent memory slots.

OCZ also had their lighted Illuminati keyboard and few mice on display, including the aptly named Behemoth laser mouse which is designed for gamers with large hands. While we're talking about peripherals, we should also point out the upcoming Sabre OLED gaming keyboard. The Sabre features 9 programmable OLED buttons, in addition to a standard 109-key configuration, and lighted blue accents on both sides. Expect the Sabre to hit the market in the not too distant future for about $200--much cheaper than other OLED-equipped keyboards.

In OCZ's suite, we also saw a Hypersonic ATC system, packed with a Vertex II SSD RAID 0 array capable of 520MB/s read and 480MB/s write speeds. Those transfer speeds essentially saturated the PCI Express interface connecting the RAID controller to the rest of the system. With the Vertex II series SSDs OCZ will be creating what is basically a RAID 0 array in a single-drive form factor, to increase performance and capacity. OCZ also had a new UPS on display along with a new full-tower case design that should be officially unveiled soon.

We also got a chance to check out some new power supplies coming from OCZ, and their subsidiary PC Power & Cooling. As its name implies, the OCZ Eco 650 pictured here is a 650W PSU that's highly-efficient (think 85%+). And the upcoming PCP&P Silencer 910 is a 910W PSU, that pushes the company's quiet Silencer line of PSUs in the same high-power territory normally reserved for the flagship Turbocool series.

OCZ was also showing off an early prototype of a wireless Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA). The unit was essentially identical to the current, wired version of the NIA, but it used wireless USB technology to connect to the PC.

As is typically the case at CES, the PC and its related peripherals aren't center stage at CES, but if you knew where to look there was definitely some great technology to see.

We hope you liked our photo report from CES 2009 as much as we liked putting it together for you. If you're interested in getting more information regarding some of the hot products we've shown you here, stay tuned to HotHardware in the weeks ahead. We'll be evaluating many of them as soon as they're ready for primetime.