motherboards money can buy? Well,
that certainly seems to be the case.
For the gaming side, what can
I say? With E3 happening almost
immediately after COMPUTEX, we
were missing some vendors such
as RAZER, LOGITECH and a few
others. However, that doesn’t mean
there wasn’t anything to see as far as
gaming peripherals are concerned.
What was of particular interest here
is that for the first time there was
some innovation. We have truly moved
on from the days of vendors making
near identical keyboards and mice,
just varying the number of macro
keys on them. Now that virtually
everyone is on the mechanical key
and LED bandwagon, the time has
come for some real ingenuity and we
got it via the CORSAIR RGB series of
Keyboards. Improving on what we had
with the previous generation, this time
you can truly configure your keyboard
exactly as you want and there’s even
software apparently that will let you
(in a supporting game obviously) know
from which direction an enemy is
approaching via lighting different
sections of the keyboard. Once again,
thinking outside the box and pushing
gaming peripheral development
further than it has been in the last few
years. CORSAIR may not have been
on the show floors, but they did host
a fantastic party at HIVE, a night club
that was a perfect fit for the evening
and the RGB theme CORSAIR was
going for. This is where we also got
to see the new CORSAIR HG10 GPU
Water Cooling Bracket for reference
AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards.
Similar to what NZXT has with the
Kraken G10, this one cools your
VRM area and memory as well. While I’m at it, I should
mention that CORSAIR displayed two of the best looking
cases to ever come from the company, probably two of
the best looking cases period in the form of the Graphite
780T and the smaller Mini-ITX 380T. When you place the
Obsidian series cases next to these two it’s hard to imagine
they are from the same company. Angles, angles and more
angles is what I remember and they sure look spectacular.
I’ll definitely be on the lookout for these.
During the countless hours spent snapping photos
and visiting vendors, I also came across GAMDIAS. A
relatively new brand, but when you look at the product
lineup that becomes unimportant. All their peripherals
are inspired by either Greek or Roman mythology and
they sure have some nifty gear. Aiming right at
the top and all the way to the bottom, the products
are purpose built not only for professional gamers but
for regular Joe soap as well. Of particular interest to
me was their ambidextrous mouse which isn’t just a
symmetrical design, but can actually be configured
to fit left or right handed user’s palms. An obvious
feature that strangely enough had never been put in
place in any other gaming mouse I know off. It is such
things that made me take notice of this brand and I’m
confident they’ll go far, despite just how saturated this
market is quickly becoming if not so already.
ROCCAT was another vendor that had an interesting
mouse concept with the TYON that features an analogue
rocker which will make it a lot easier to fly air crafts and
steer vehicle mounted turrets amongst other things in FPS
games. This is but an example of the change I was talking
about earlier. It’s definite progress from what we saw in
previous years. One can only imagine what we’ll be seeing
in years to come. As always I do believe that peripheral
vendors need to embrace the casual gamer with controllers.
Eventually more will figure out that products such as
the RAZER ONZA and SABERTOOTH are viable products
to make and have huge potential outside of the traditional
gaming peripherals.
Here is the rest of COMPUTEX for you then in pictures.
There was no way to cover all of it, but this is some of the
kick-ass stuff we saw and if you haven’t figured it out by
now, COMPUTEX 2014, rocked hard.
Issue 30 | 2014 The OverClocker 15