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
We've already had a lot of coverage from this year's CES, with most of that focusing on the true consumer portion of the show. That's a broad market, which covers just about every conceivable electronics device, but so far, we haven't focused a lot on the computer enthusiast segment. With our wrap-up coverage of CES, we have some information from many of the more familiar names in the computing industry, along with a few miscellaneous tidbits that we haven't mentioned so far.
Memory & Cooling
Corsair
Corsair was showing their first water cooling solution at last year's CES, and this year's offering incorporates what Corsair has learned in the past year about water cooling.
The Nautilus is a standalone self-contained water-cooling appliance powered by the 12V line in a 4-pin Molex connector from the motherboard. You definitely do not need an external plug and setup is said to be a fast 10 minutes or less. The Nautilus gives new users a fast, easy choice for efficient overclocking of the CPU and the added advantage of almost silent water cooling. One of the best features is the price - Corsair expects the Nautilus to sell for about $150.
Kingston
Flash Memory seems to shrink in size with every new announcement, and Kingston launched their Micro SD memory at CES.
The tiny Micro SD (lower right) joins Kingston's extensive line of mobile phone flash memory designed for ultra-low power consumption and a small size that makes transfer between phones an easy task. Kingston Micro SD is available as a 256MB card weighing just over a gram - targeted for use in the new smart phones.
Kingston also was promoting its own 15-in-1 flash reader that will retail for $19.95. With so many cheap readers around, you might wonder why Kingston decided to enter the market. They tell us that many readers are extremely slow and make high-speed flash perform very poorly in read operations when attached to a computer. The Kingston unit was designed to read at high-speed with no performance compromises. A fast, low-cost, flexible reader from a company like Kingston is certainly a welcome choice in today's market.
Memory & Cooling
Corsair
Corsair was showing their first water cooling solution at last year's CES, and this year's offering incorporates what Corsair has learned in the past year about water cooling.
The Nautilus is a standalone self-contained water-cooling appliance powered by the 12V line in a 4-pin Molex connector from the motherboard. You definitely do not need an external plug and setup is said to be a fast 10 minutes or less. The Nautilus gives new users a fast, easy choice for efficient overclocking of the CPU and the added advantage of almost silent water cooling. One of the best features is the price - Corsair expects the Nautilus to sell for about $150.
Kingston
Flash Memory seems to shrink in size with every new announcement, and Kingston launched their Micro SD memory at CES.
The tiny Micro SD (lower right) joins Kingston's extensive line of mobile phone flash memory designed for ultra-low power consumption and a small size that makes transfer between phones an easy task. Kingston Micro SD is available as a 256MB card weighing just over a gram - targeted for use in the new smart phones.
Kingston also was promoting its own 15-in-1 flash reader that will retail for $19.95. With so many cheap readers around, you might wonder why Kingston decided to enter the market. They tell us that many readers are extremely slow and make high-speed flash perform very poorly in read operations when attached to a computer. The Kingston unit was designed to read at high-speed with no performance compromises. A fast, low-cost, flexible reader from a company like Kingston is certainly a welcome choice in today's market.
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swatX - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
i am so dissapointed at DFI. i thought they were going to show off their mATX nforce 6150/430 board. are they even planning to release it or was this just a rumor.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
I went back to our CES pictures and found shots of the new DFI mATX GeForce boards. Since you are interested the images have been added to the coverage. It looks like the new DFI 6100/6150 boards are for real and not just rumors.swatX - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Thanks a lot!do you know by any chance if the bios of those motherboards will be simillar to bios of their Nforce 4 motherboards.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
The red DFI matx board is based on the ATI RS482 chipset, not the 6150 as we reported earler. We have corrected the article. DFI was not displaying a 6150 Socket 939 board, but they did have the 6100 Socket 754 which is pictured on the DFI page. We have asked DFI to update us on their 6150 plans and we will let you know as soon as we hear more.highlandsun - Thursday, January 12, 2006 - link
I read the specs for the ATI board on the DFI web site. Too bad it uses the ATI southbridge instead of ULI. http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_detai...">http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product...=4497&am...Otherwise, it looks pretty interesting, doesn't seem to be missing anything critical as an HTPC platform.
Avalon - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Eh, top air cooling is somewhat close to good water cooling. However, this OCZ Revolution phase change has me very excited. The possibility of $200-$300 phase change is phenomenal!Xenoterranos - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
No Kidding. That's how much Koolance was asking for the Exos a few years back. Phase change for this cheap would cause either a massive increase in quality and quiteness among water-cooling solutions, or a massive price-drop.rjm55 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Great job on covering the processor cooling at CES. I've been looking for this everywhere and no one else was posting much about it. Does this attention to cooling mean you guys may be launching a cooling section in the future?tuteja1986 - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
"We couldn't provide pictures, but the new ATI video card will be launching soon. Vendors tell us that they already have GPUs and completed cards this time around and therefore, product will be on the shelves at launch. Specifications hint that this may well be the new top-end video card, outperforming even the 7800GTX 512, which appeared in small quantities in what nVidia is now calling "limited release", and which has now disappeared from the market."irony ... lol
i wonder what how fast G71 will be and will it make it in this month or late feb/early march as various website are reporting it.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
We'll be looking into it for sure. Air cooling is all about equal once you hit the $40+ parts (well, the good ones are equal anyway). Water and phase-change are way beyond anything air can do, though.