CES 2006: Motherboards, Memory, Cooling, and a Few Surprises
by Wesley Fink & Jarred Walton on January 11, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
OCZ
OCZ recently went beyond their memory roots with power supplies aimed at the enthusiast. That move was a huge success for OCZ, so this year, OCZ is taking aim at a new product line for the Enthusiast.
When computer hobbyists get the overclocking bug, it isn't long until they discover that the key to pushing the performance envelope is cooling the CPU. The first stop is improved air-cooling, and OCZ has been a supplier of air-cooling solutions for many years. The next logical performance jump is water cooling, which cools better than air with the added advantage of near silent operation. The ultimate is phase-change cooling, which operates much like a freezer with a compressor. Phase-change allows insane CPU overclocks, but the cost of admission has been $800 to $1500 or higher - which makes it out of reach for all but the most dedicated, and well-heeled, enthusiast.
OCZ hopes to make phase-change a real choice for more buyers with the introduction of a $299 MSRP Phase Change cooling system. Shipments should begin in about 30 days, and OCZ tells us that once sales volume picks up, they are hopeful that prices can drop even further to the $200 range. This will make OCZ phase-change about the same price as some of the better water-cooling kits.
That $299 will include a copper head for the processor. The OCZ design is not a full case, but a compressor with a phase-change head. OCZ tells us that the shipping design will have the head cable coming from the top of the compressor box - which will allow modders to use the compressor case as the base of an existing case if they choose.
The front of the unit reports operating temperatures at the CPU. The demo unit was reporting -25 to -27C driving an AMD FX57 processor at 3.2 GHz through loops of FutureMark 3DMark2005.
OCZ recently went beyond their memory roots with power supplies aimed at the enthusiast. That move was a huge success for OCZ, so this year, OCZ is taking aim at a new product line for the Enthusiast.
When computer hobbyists get the overclocking bug, it isn't long until they discover that the key to pushing the performance envelope is cooling the CPU. The first stop is improved air-cooling, and OCZ has been a supplier of air-cooling solutions for many years. The next logical performance jump is water cooling, which cools better than air with the added advantage of near silent operation. The ultimate is phase-change cooling, which operates much like a freezer with a compressor. Phase-change allows insane CPU overclocks, but the cost of admission has been $800 to $1500 or higher - which makes it out of reach for all but the most dedicated, and well-heeled, enthusiast.
OCZ hopes to make phase-change a real choice for more buyers with the introduction of a $299 MSRP Phase Change cooling system. Shipments should begin in about 30 days, and OCZ tells us that once sales volume picks up, they are hopeful that prices can drop even further to the $200 range. This will make OCZ phase-change about the same price as some of the better water-cooling kits.
That $299 will include a copper head for the processor. The OCZ design is not a full case, but a compressor with a phase-change head. OCZ tells us that the shipping design will have the head cable coming from the top of the compressor box - which will allow modders to use the compressor case as the base of an existing case if they choose.
The front of the unit reports operating temperatures at the CPU. The demo unit was reporting -25 to -27C driving an AMD FX57 processor at 3.2 GHz through loops of FutureMark 3DMark2005.
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semo - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
am i the only one annoyed of the fact that the graphics card is almost always ignored when it comes to exotic cooling.why no phase change cooling option for you graphics card? and not just the gpu i'm talking about the memory aswell. pc ram may not get very hot but gddr does.
Puddleglum - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Check this image: http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tradeshows/200...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tra...ows/2006...Turin39789 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Now that just needs to drop to $299 and we'll be all setTurin39789 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
This was the problem I saw with the ocz phase change setup. It seemed very nice for extreme cpu speeds, but it would be nice if they offered an expanded system that had cooling for other system componentsJynx980 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Can you imagine being the one responsible for getting that $50,000 Brightside TV to the show and then f-cking it up?!"Oooooh, sorry guys, my bad."
JustAnAverageGuy - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
OUCH! That's gotta suck.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Supposedly was the shipping company. That's a hefty insurance bill, I'd wager. It was pretty awesome to see true black from such a crisp LCD, though. They had Doom 3 shots and some other stuff running, and it was all very impressive looking. Hopefully, we can see something get into the market like this in the next year!DigitalDivine - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
i like the tiny dualcor computer. if it has a vga out and usb in, this will be a winner and i would get one as fast as i can.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
According to the Specifications, the DualCor has 3 USB 2.0 ports (2 type A and 1 type B), a mini VGA port, and a compact Flash slot. It also has both 1GB of DDR2 Memory and 1GB of Flash Memory. It looks like your wishes are all there.JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
They had it hooked to an LCD, but I don't know if it can run non-native resolutions or not. (Probably a driver update will be required, as at the show it was only outputting 800x480.) It looks like the unit is in early Beta to me, but it's still pretty interesting. Getting 40GB of easily accessible storage for your PDA is nice.