Computex 2007: Thermaltake, ABIT, Corsair, Sapphire

OCZ:

OCZ was showing off a new, fully enclosed water cooling unit called the HydroJet. The HydroJet is a fully enclosed water cooling heatsink, that has a small waterpump, radiator, and fan all built in. Essentially the idea is to give the enthusiast all the benefits of a water cooling setup (more efficient cooling and quieter operation) with the ease of use of a typical heatsink installation. OCZ was very excited about the HydroJet and it will be interesting to see what kind of temperatures the unit will be able to achieve when it goes into full production later this year.

OCZ has another high end cooling unit coming out later this year named the Vanquisher, which uses copper heatpipes and large aluminum fins to cool your CPU. OCZ also showed off a new water-proff extension to their popular flash drives, named the OCZ ATU. The ATU is water proof on the chip level, with the company targeting this drive for users that are in wet environments. The ATU drives on display were actually running a flash memory benchmark under water without any problems or any performance problems. And finally there was a new flash drive on display that uses Firewire instead of USB 2.0, which will likely give up to 70% faster read and 50% faster write times over traditional USB 2.0 drives.

As you may recall, OCZ announced their acquisition of PC Power and Cooling only a few weeks before the show, and therefore they were displaying a new 1200W PC Power and Cooling Power Supply. With the purchase of PC Power and Cooling, OCZ will still continue it’s OCZ line of power supplies, which will be focused on enthusiasts and gamers while the PC Power and Cooling line will focus on enterprise users.

At this year’s Cebit, OCZ debuted a new product they will introduce this fall named the Actuator. The Actuator is meant to replace your keyboard and mouse while gaming and allow you to control your character’s movements and actions by just thinking about them. The Actuator is essentially a headband with three silver colored pads that track the movements of your face and translate them into movements and actions in game. The demo was running Unreal Tournament 2004, and after a few minutes with the Actuator on, I managed to kill a few bots in Deathmatch mode. The Actuator is a really interesting idea, but as a hardcore PC FPS player, I don’t ever see myself using anything but a keyboard and mouse to play my favorite shoot em’ ups.