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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Powermoloch - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
Very nice guys, great job on the report and such. Especially showing what OCZ is up to with their phase change coolant thing (first time I seen it). Pretty neat to be honest.Son of a N00b - Saturday, January 14, 2006 - link
man that OCZ phase change unit was looking sexy as hell, especially with that oh so tempting price...If only they were able to incorporate northbridge and GPU cooling into it also (even if it was more expensive) to truly earn the name of the revolution...Also it is aimed for the enthusiast market, so space as someone ws complaining about does not matter...
JarredWalton - Saturday, January 14, 2006 - link
They talked about the possibility of a dual GPU cooler block. Part of the problem with that is phase-change requires a lot more complexity than something like water cooling. You're not just cycling liquid through a tube; you have to worry about evaporator/condenser stuff as well. NB and RAM are down on the list in terms of importance, especially with chips like the FX series that have unlocked multipliers.R3MF - Thursday, January 12, 2006 - link
What was the Shuttle s754 'update'?was it a G5 Chassis with a 6100/430 chipset, silent power-brick PSU and support for AMD Turion/A64 processors?
that would be interesting.
JarredWalton - Thursday, January 12, 2006 - link
Actually, I think it was a G2 chassis. I believe http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SK21G.a...">this is the unit we saw. K8M800CE chipset doesn't seem like anything really impressive, and there isn't a DVI port. The newer stuff at Shuttle was another Viiv unit, with Core Duo support (as opposed to Pentium D). I don't think I saw anything really new on the AMD side.MrSmurf - Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - link
I was intrigued by the phase change cooling unit as well but it's too big. I like my system to be powerful but tidy and neat at the same time.