Day 4 @ Insomnia i46

And onto day 4 here at Insomnia i46, where we will continue to take a look at what some of the booths have on offer here at the show. It’s been a very busy weekend here for everyone, with the gamers burning the oil throughout the 24 hour a day gaming events, tournaments and of course casual gaming too, the event organizers working around the clock to keep everything up and running and the rest of us in the exhibition hall running the booths to keep the crowds entertained between games, as well as put on a show for the visitors to the event with day passes.

The world famous iSeries pub quiz rounded off the day 3 events, even though our team didn’t win, we still had a fantastic time, so did the 500+ other people who took part in the quiz thanks to its tough questions, endless banter and of course a few (or more) beers all round.

Asus have a great display this year, with a really nice selection of their most popular motherboards on display such as the Chrosshair V Formula Z, Maximum V Gene, Sabertooth 990FX and the P8Z77-V Deluxe.

Also on offer from Asus was one of the more interesting competitions, with a few of the girls from the stand handing out keys throughout the event which you can then use to attempt to unlock their prize box which contains different prizes, including their premium motherboards, graphics cards and more.

PC Specialist have brought along some of their most desirable and popular systems to their booth, including the Vengeance X680 Pro, Vengeance C70X, Vortex III HD75 Laptop and the stunning Inferno Laptop, which may only be a net book to look at, but can benchmark around 40fps in Unigine at maximum settings! of course you need to pay around £700 for the privilege, but it really is an impressive piece of kit.

Also on the PC Specialist you can find a triple monitor gaming rig running F1 2011 with the Steelseries Sim Raceway wireless wheel, where you try set the fastest lap time to win everything from a 24″ Asus monitor, Corsair PC Chassis and Kingston Ram.

Dino PC have a great looking and performing rig on display fitted in the ever popular Cosmos II chassis, a case that never seems to disappoint on lookers at these kind of shows.

Along side their display Dino PC have a nerf gun shooting gallery, fire darts at some foam Kingston Memory heads to win a number of little prizes over the course of the weekend.

Chill Blast are another system building company that have their wears on display here this weekend, with two rigs running playable games, one a Asus 23″ passive 3D display running games like Batman Archam City and Battlefield 3 on a GTX 670, the other is a triple monitor setup running Max Payne 3 on a pair of SLI GTX 680s, both systems are getting plenty of attention and playtime from the visitors to the booth.

Wired2Fire are another addition to the system builder collection here at i46, bringing with them another triple Asus monitor setup (a popular choice it seems), as well as the chance to win a stunning water cooled rig via their Facebook page as well as getting their name out there and working to sell a few systems and peripherals while at the show.

Games Stacker are one of the more unique booths down here at the show, offering information on their new service which allows you to trade games for free, the concept is you have the android / iOS app, scan the barcode on your game, it pairs up people near you who may want those games and lets you pick one from their trades to swap with each other, its down to you to decide if its a worth while trade or not, a very interesting concept and one that offers a nice alternative to the current trade in options that many gamers use. The catch is, you can trade any systems games, even old Snes games.

2K Games booth has been proving very popular with gamers this week too, allowing gamers to play a good 15 mins co-op section of Borderlands 2, plus they have some custom units running their strategic battle game XCom Enemy Unknown, both games are a welcome addition to the show, but so are the awesome free T-shirts everyone who plays has been given.

That’s it for now, but be sure to check back later when we should have some videos of the booths as well as even more coverage and photos from the events of i46.