Another year, and another Computex under our belts. Of course, it’s not been just a typical Computex this year, as with Covid restrictions, it’s been four years since we were last here in Taipai, and frankly, it feels like a lifetime ago. This was a test for us as a team and for the industry as a whole, and I’m happy to report, everyone, every brand, and our friends at many PR companies and other media were all there in force, and it was great to see the industry wake from its long unwanted slumber. Not only were the people fantastic, but so too were the products. Computex may not have been about the big stars this year, such as GPUs, motherboards and processors. However, it was a sea of new and innovative components such as cases, coolers, power supplies, and surprisingly, many of the best gaming chairs I’ve ever seen/sat in too.
We had nearly 30 different meetings over a few days of the show, and it was exhausting, but we’re big nerds at heart, love what we do, and still get excited about all the new tech and the little details. We revised many of our favourite products on the last day of the show to present them with our eTeknix Best of Computex 2023 award, and they were certainly well deserved!
Here they are in no particular order!
Silverstone makes amazing coolers, power supplies and cases, many of which deserve this award too. However, they did something just a little bit funny with their IceMyst coolers, which come with magnetically stackable and positional fans for the AIO pump. Do you need it? Well, for some VRM and RAM cooling, it certainly could hurt, but we just thought it looks really fun, and we can’t wait to test one of them!
MSI aren’t the only brand tackling M.2 NVMe cooling this year, but their new Spatium really stands out due to its stylish and compact form factor, but also because of its rather blindingly good performance. With sustained loads pushing modern drives over 100C, keeping the drives cool has become serious business, and the Spatium gets a big thumbs up from us; it seems we’re not the first to give it an award either!
We love the Elgato Stream Deck and likely will keep on loving it, but 2023 has some real competitors coming for it, but mostly with the idea of being a cheaper rival. G.Skill on the other hand are going for a premium competitor with their touch screen interface, and they get the award from us because their software and touch screen were superbly responsive and fun to use; the WigiDash is one to keep an eye out for later this year.
Another crack at the M.2 cooling problem is from TeamGroup, but instead of air, they’ve gone for a full AIO setup. There are two models to choose from a 120mm AIO that directly coolers the M.2, or a larger 360mm version that features a CPU cooler and an M.2 cooler, which I honestly think may be the better of the two, but I love that they’re giving us a choice. Not just that, but as far as AIOs go, these just look fantastic!
be quiet! are pure class, and I don’t think they have a single product that isn’t regarded as excellent or one of the best in their respective class. This lovely Shadow Base 800 may not be their most high-end model, but for its compact mid-tower size, it supports E-ATX, offers up huge GPU support, and vertical GPU mounting, comes with their stunning new Pure Wings 3 fans (Light Wings on the FX edition), and supports dual 420mm radiators. Plus, it looks absolutely stunning and is built to the extremely high standards we’ve come to expect from be quiet!
Nothing gets my attention at a trade show like a comfortable seat, but when ThunderX3 told us about this new model, well we were a little bit sceptical of its movable backrest. It’s mounted on a moving joint so that you can turn, lean, slouch and roll but the lumbar support follows your back… it feels like leaning against a balance board at first, it’s weird. However, it didn’t take long to realise they were onto something here, it’s extraordinarily comfortable. Plus, the seat moves forward and back and tilts independently of the backrest, and even the arm rests are padded. Honestly, this is gaming chairs 2.0 right now, and one I can’t wait to get into the office.
I’m not saying I love noblechairs, but I do have three of their chairs in my house, I’m sitting on one right now, and I have two footrests too… so OK I do love them, there I said it. The footrest is honestly one of my favourite things for the office, as I have had back and leg pains in the past, and I accredit the lumbar support and footrest from noblechairs but there’s a problem, you can’t sit on the footrest. This new model looks broadly the same, but it’s meant to be much stronger, gone is the plastic bracket and inside it’s not metal meaning I can sit on it as a little piano bench or guitar seat when we’re having a little jam in the office. Same product, but finally the award-winning product it should have always been.
One keyboard to rule them all, as the Ducky ProjectD Outlaw 65 takes custom keyboards to another level, with the shell, base, sides, inserts, PCB, switches, and so much more all being customisable. You basically order the colours, materials, and configuration of all the components on their website (coming soon), then they ship it to you and you build it. But you can order only the parts you want and use your own switches and stuff too, of course. It’s superbly robust and overbuilt, utterly stunning to behold, and will no doubt be the keyboard of the year when available.
Thermaltake has a lot of amazing cases on show, and we really had a hard time picking our favourite product of theirs. We were leaning towards the Ceres 300 TG, which is absolutely stunning, but then we saw the Ceres 300 TG TUF Version, which supports the new ASUS TUF motherboard which has all the cable connectors on the back of the motherboard resulting in a clean and cable free build.
XPG is a brand I know best for their peripherals and PC cases, but they’ve been making some serious moves into the PSU market in recent years, and few come close to their incredible Fusion power supply. It was sitting here running not one, not two, not three, but FOUR ASUS RTX 4090 graphics cards, all being run hard in multiple benchmarks to pull around 1800W+ give or take 100W at any given moment. Now bad for a unit that’s actually rated for 1600W, and all while delivering stable performance, voltages and reliability even in this hot and humid tradeshow; this is a seriously potent and well-built bit of kit!
We love our graphics cards, and while there are no new models being revealed at the show, the RTX 4060 series having released just before we flew out, there’s no reason why we couldn’t pick our best of the show. Admittedly, it’s splitting hairs these days, as all the big brands have something really impressive to shout about. However, we loved the stylish aesthetic of the Inno3D RTX 4090 X3 OC White and just how clean it looked, a nice break from the overly gamer-RGB models on the market.
When it comes to cases, few come as capable as the new Morpheus from DeepCool. It’s a case you can break down to its flat components, you can rebuild it as a single or even a dual chamber case, you can fit huge radiators, you can add fans in the bottom, the panels are interchangeable, and you can even write your name on the mesh panels using the little plastic lego-like bricks that come with it. This is going to be a huge hit with the enthusiast modding community, so keep an eye out for this one later this year!
Ah Noctua, we could throw a few awards at their booth as they’re always leading the way for next-level cooling performance. However, it’s the new Direct Die Mounting Kit for the AM5 platform that really gets a big thumbs up from us. So long as you don’t mind delidding the CPU and tearing up your warranty, their new mounting kit, combined with their also new AMD off-set mounting kit, can drop CPU temperatures by over 15c on air cooling; given NOctua already leads the pack, that’s a big drop!
When it comes to AMD graphics cards, we think there’s only one choice, and that is Sapphire. I’ve always felt they made the absolute best AMD cards on the market, and I think that’s been true for many generations! In 2023, their flagship Nitro+ is no exception, with high-quality fans and a mighty heatsink that combines their class-leading Vapor chamber design to get every last bit of performance out of the AMD flagship.
The Lian Li 011-Dynamic is the go-to high-end case for many PC enthusiasts these days, and actually, at Computex 2023, many brands are trying to imitate that case or try to tweak that design to be better or cheaper, or both. However, Lian Li hasn’t been sitting idle, and their new 011-Vision takes things to the next level with three sides of pillarless tempered glass making it the new lord of showcases.
The award for the most insane PC case goes to InWin, or should that be PC cases… Their new Mod Free series is basically just a bunch of parts. Mid-tower frames, radiator frames, Mini-ITX, PSU, HDD cages, and a bunch of filters, side panels and covers. You can build a mini system, mid-tower, ATX, full tower, or as you can see above, a monster multi-PC workstation beast that uses 15 different Mod Free modules. There’s no limit to how tall, deep, wide or crazy you can make this… perhaps other than your imagination and budget.
The Raijintek Paean series is a beast for high-end PC builders, but the new C7 comes in more compact, more stylish and more affordable than ever! It’s got plenty of tempered glass, supports a lot of high-end hardware, and has top 360mm, side 360mm and bottom 360mm fan and radiator mounts, but get this, it’s going to be under 70 EUROs. How is it that cheap? I don’t know, but I just checked and it was £56.90 EUR, my god, that’s cheap!
When it comes to high-end memory, Predator creates many of the best! However, their Hermes memory delivered bleeding edge DDR5 speeds of up to 8000 MHz, but what makes it really award-worthy is the extremely low latency (for DDR5), bringing it down to CAS32 on the 6800 MHz kit, which combined with the high speeds should make this one of the fastest kits we’ve seen in a long time. I am eager to see which is best for gaming, the 8000 MHz or the 6800 MHz with the better latency, but I suspect it’ll be the latter.
HP’s new SSD P900 looks great in pink, but with a choice of grey, black, silver and green, there’s something for everyone. It’s coming in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, and thanks to its internal SSD it’s pretty swift too, delivering an impressive 2000 MB/s read and write with the USB 3.2 2×2 20Gbit interface, making it extremely fast for portable storage users.
It’s currently a work in progress is the FSP CUT593 Special Edition, which will come in both black and white variants, but what really makes this one stand out is the easy-to-swap front panel. There’s a cut-metal one and a soft fabric one, and different kinds of mesh too, giving you plenty of choices. There’s a really comprehensive cable routing system, allowing it to have tempered glass on both the left and right sides while still looking great.
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