CES 2009 - Cases, Coolers, and Power Supplies
by Christoph Katzer on January 14, 2009 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Thermaltake
Thermaltake had the most products on display out of all the companies we visited. Let's get started with the Xpressar, which is nothing new but Thermaltake now brings the cooling unit in the convenient format of a small box that fits into four 5.25" drive bays. You can get two units and cool your CPU and GPU with it, and if you have a larger chassis why not trying to fit three of them inside?
The Element S chassis is a new adventure for Thermaltake. It looks very sleek which is a new move for the company, since most other previous chassis were… let's just say different. The hard drive cage is removable and you can even turn it 90° so that the front of the hard drives faces the fans at the front of the case. We were shocked to see two 60mm fans at the back of the case, but Thermaltake won't actually ship the case with these fans; they only wanted to show what is possible. The company also thought a step ahead and the user will be possible to install 2.5" hard drives in this chassis, which is a very cool idea considering the number of 2.5" SSDs currently available.
Over the last year, Thermaltake has had quite a mess with its lineup of power supplies, and they want to straighten things up now. We saw many power supplies again, but nothing really new other than the Evo Blue - a funny looking product with blue LED lights. We also saw the TR2 QFan series that we have recommended more than once, and it seems that it's finally making its way to the market. Thermaltake claims the delays have been due to the high production costs and a "very small market" - which we find rather difficult to believe, considering the interest expressed by our readers in "reasonable" wattage PSUs. There are also a couple of higher wattage power supplies for some series to fill in gaps.
There were many cases on display as well but nothing particularly noteworthy. The HTPC section was interesting though. Thermaltake has two HTPC cases, the DH 103 and DH 104, and they're so big that you can fit in any kind of graphics card setup with an almost limitless number of hard drives. According to Thermaltake, there is a market where people want an HTPC with the latest high-end components for playing the latest high-end games in addition to other HTPC duties.
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JonnyDough - Thursday, January 15, 2009 - link
What's the name on that new GPU cooler by Zalman? Looks really nice. I think I'll get it for my 8800GTS if it fits it. Do you know if the memory heatsinks come with it? They're nice and spikey.Evinyatar - Thursday, January 15, 2009 - link
That's the VF2000. Looks like a nice CPU cooler for low profile HTPC's.JonnyDough - Sunday, January 18, 2009 - link
Aye. I hope it fits 939 and 478 though. I wish there were more good universal heatsinks.JonnyDough - Thursday, January 15, 2009 - link
It's good to see Thermaltake filling the wattage ranges of PSUs. We need 350w PSUs too!JonnyDough - Thursday, January 15, 2009 - link
Is that a new SilentFlux cooler I see in the Silverstone Raven case? Silent Flux coolers are made by Noiselimit (Noiselimit.com). I haven't seen that particular one before. I'm curious to know more about it if you have any info on it. Thanks.~Ry
Christoph Katzer - Thursday, January 15, 2009 - link
They came with sll of the i7 systems for the show...JonnyDough - Thursday, January 15, 2009 - link
I noticed too in SilverStone's silver HTPC case that they have another Noise Limit bubble pump cooler. Any particular reason they're using those in their displays this year?JeBarr - Thursday, January 15, 2009 - link
I can think of a few good reasons to flip the motherboard 90 degrees to the front, but if they only did this to accomodate 18" graphics cards from the future then what a waste. I did like the ABS black pearl that has the mobo mounted on left side instead of right, if viewed from the front of case. I did like that design except that the mobo mounted too high-up in the chassis, which prevented the 4th hd4850 with aftermarket cooler from fitting in so that project was scrapped. Just might be a new option now with this Raven, but if it is gonna retail for more the the lian-li pc80 then forget it.yehuda - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - link
It's nice to see Antec update this model. I can see they've added audio ports on the front and expanded the side grille. Still, no Firewire, eSATA or a card reader. Any idea what has changed on the inside?Anubis - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - link
Ugly ColorsPointless doors
Useless bright lights
:(