HotHardware's Ten Best Of CES 2016
Best Of CES 2016: PC Components And Gear
We're PC enthusiasts and gearheads at heart so we'll close this best-of with some of the coolest components and peripherals we saw in scenic LV. This year, many of the major component launches happened late in 2015, so we weren't expecting to be surprised or wowed to any great degree. That said, there were a few notables that caught our eye and a few unexpected nuggest of tech goodness as well.
OCZ RevoDrive 400 NVMe PCI Express SSD
We've been waiting on this one and we suppose it's an opportune time for Toshiba's OCZ Technology group to roll it out at CES. Maybe we should have seen this one coming but we didn't. Regardless, OCZ has now fully integrated with design and silicon resources at Toshiba and the new RevoDrive 400 SSD is indicative of their cojoined forces.That's a gumstick style M.2 NVMe stick right there, nestled inside a X4 PCIe adapater card, so that means you could find this new dragster inside anything from a 2-in-1 or notebook to a desktop gaming rig or workstation. The RevoDrive 400 is powered by none other than a Toshiba SSD controller, so the IP on board is a bit of a mystery, until we get it into the lab for the full monty of course. It sports the full NVMe 1.1b spec and is rated for 2.4GB/sec of read bandwidth and 1.6GB/sec for writes, though it ripped through ATTO at the show, at nearly 2.7GB/sec on reads. Cutting-edge Toshiba 15nm MLC NAND and a 5 year warranty to boot - bring it OCZ, just bring it.
EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition
Virtual Reality was obviously a hot topic at this year’s CES. And when you talk about VR, the need for higher resolutions and higher performing graphics solutions inevitably enters the conversation. While many companies showed off VR kits, or even ran demos in their booths or suites, few actually had anything new on the graphics front on hand specifically designed for VR systems, save for EVGA.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition was the only card we came across that actually had specific features designed to ease the integration of VR and the PC. With the GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition, EVGA removed one of the HDMI outputs from its traditional location on the rear case bracket, and moved it to an internal edge of the card’s PCB. And bundled with the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition is a drive bay-mounted insert that connects to that internal HDMI connector and moves it to the front of a PC. There are a couple of USB 3.0 ports on the insert as well. The kit the designed to make it easier to plug in a VR kit without having to fumble around the back of a system with a rat's nest of cables.
There was a lot more to see and hear our at this year's CES. Be sure to check out the rest of our coverage right here.
The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition was the only card we came across that actually had specific features designed to ease the integration of VR and the PC. With the GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition, EVGA removed one of the HDMI outputs from its traditional location on the rear case bracket, and moved it to an internal edge of the card’s PCB. And bundled with the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition is a drive bay-mounted insert that connects to that internal HDMI connector and moves it to the front of a PC. There are a couple of USB 3.0 ports on the insert as well. The kit the designed to make it easier to plug in a VR kit without having to fumble around the back of a system with a rat's nest of cables.
There was a lot more to see and hear our at this year's CES. Be sure to check out the rest of our coverage right here.
