CES 2013

Eagletech at CESEagle Tech has a wonderful line-up appearing for the 2013 year, with a new line of headphones, speakers, and keyboards making their way onto the market.

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The Gamer at CES 2013My interest in technology stemmed from video games, so when surrounded by so many emerging electronics, its natural to seek out those that cater to the gamer within. The Consumer Electronic Show has plenty of technologies to whet appetites from countless industries, but the gaming audience has drawn a significant amount of attention. From the hardware you may be packing to LAN parties in the upcoming year to peripherals that will help you reach a new competitive level, I've scoured the show floor with the intent of bringing you a preview of what you may be gaming with, on, or as in 2013.

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Swiftech at CES 2013I was told our meeting at the Mandalay Bay would be something I’d find interest in. Though the suite had many products scattered about, the majority of our time with Swiftech would be spent with an all-in-one water cooling kit. With all of my rigs currently air cooled, it’s a fairly obvious entry point; but this isn’t a new concept. Gabriel Rouchon, prepared an impressive demonstration of why the H220 stands out from the rest.

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CES 2013 AdataSome of you may not know it, because they are a little less known in the US, but Adata is the second largest manufacture of ram in the world. Because of that, when I went to visit their suite I was really curious what they had up their sleeves. As a manufacture of SSD’s Memory, and other flash products I wasn’t sure if they would be showing off new variations of the same old thing, or something new altogether. It ended up being something new altogether.

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TrendNet at CES 2013Amidst the craze of Pepcom Digital Experience, we managed to catch up with Zak Wood from Trendnet, exhibiting the company’s latest offerings. With 2013 the projected approval date for the 802.11ac standard, Trendnet is already taking advantage of the technology to dip into a higher threshold of wireless speed.

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Gigabyte at CES 2013Tablets, mini-PC’s, and All-in-One’s have been at many of the suites we visited this week, especially those who produce components to go within. There is no doubt this is a rising market, and it’s overlaps into the desktop realm as well, where small form factor builds are becoming more popular. Our tour began in a neighboring suite of the Venetian with Gigabyte’s offerings in the tablet realm.

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CES 2013 Booth Babes Not everyone is so easily excited about new technologies as we are. To assume an attendee of the show is going to give every new external hard drive solution a chance is unfortunately unrealistic. Companies deploy many tactics to attract visitors to their booths, but when walking a convention center featuring more than 1,2000 exhibitors, choosing someone other than an exhausted engineer to show off your product can be the key to catching eyes. A little skin never hurt, either.

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SteelSeries at CES 2013SteelSeries, like many companies, released some teaser images just before CES and they did exactly as planned: got people talking. The Apex, the first non-mechanical keyboard released for a long time, was announced and quickly a lot of questions began to form. SteelSeries saw a busy 2012 with the launch of many new products, especially in the portable market, and we suspect that trend to continue.

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CES 2013 Cooler Master PartyWe just got back into our temperary office from Cooler Master’s CES party and I just wanted to share a couple photos. They did a small “fashion” show with their models showing off the goods (the goods being Cooler Master’s newest products pervs). While we stay up working on putting together more coverage for you guys/girls, you can click the read more here to see the photos.

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Seagate LaCie at CES 2013 Back in 2010, when we got our hands on the Momentus XT from Seagate, solid-state technology was an emerging, but expensive, technology. A hybrid drive that allowed a cache of flash memory and the capacity of mechanical drives allowed consumers to experience the vast improvements of SSD’s at a much lower entry price. Three years have given Seagate time to improve on this technology, and today I get a tour of what’s next with SSHD as they are now known, Seagate in general, and the recently acquired premium LaCie brand.

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MSI at CES 2013We had the chance to visit the MSI suites where they were showing off both components and notebooks that will be upcoming in the next year. Although our time there was limited, I did have a little time to get to play with a few of their upcoming products.

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Asus at CES 2013Asus seemed to have an entire floor of the Trump tower to themselves, and in reality probably needed it. There were plenty of products on exhibit, and still quite crowded given their floor space. JJ recognized us right away, and dove straight into the demonstration. We had passed monitors, motherboards, routers, and more as he guided us through the suite, arriving at the start line with a Cosmos II and the word ARES glowing from within.

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Cooler Master at CES 2013

Lersar

title Our first meeting of CES officially was Cooler Master. We made it over to their Suite at the Palms to see what they would be bringing out over the next year. Not only that we we got to check out all of the case mods they had sitting around along with Cooler Master’s Booth Babes. As usual they had a wide selection of new products to show off, check out what is upcoming inside.

Input Devices

Last night at one of the parties we were at, our Cooler Master contact Joe was asking me what we were looking forward to the most from CES. My honest answer was that I was excited to see what Cooler Master would be showing off with their mice and keyboards. Carter has been the PM over that line for over a year and I was excited to see what he had come up with in that time. I wasn’t disappointed. Jumping right into their keyboards he showed off new Quickfire Rapid Stealth with the lettering moved down onto the side of the keys for a low key but still functional look. Along with that the font that a lot of people didn’t like with the Rapids is gone and the same goes for the logo that used to be in place of the windows keys. In fact there is almost no branding at all, something I think mechanical keyboard enthusiast will love.

They also had a new Quick Fire XT that is similar to their Quickfire Pro without any of the extra styling that you either loved or hated. The new look has the thinnest bezel (22 8/10mm) on the market and a subtle look with only the one hidden logo (on the side facing away from you) and the rubber finish that people enjoyed on the Rapid. They dropped their former power cord style and went with an easier to work with full size USB port as well that is placed right on the back of the keyboard. This is a Costar manufactured board with Costar stabilizers as well.

The new Control-RX mousepad is HUGE. I love the rounded edges, it helped keep the pads extra thickness from feeling TOO thick.

They were showing off a few white peripherals just to see what people thought of them, but they aren’t officially announced.

Another batch of prototypes they had were an all aluminum series. The keyboard is much larger than what they offer currently and might not be the flavor of traditional mechanical keyboard enthusiasts.

Cooler Master had more of their mobile and tablet accessories out for everyone to see. I was a big fan of their Carbon iPad accessories, hopefully we see these on Android devices in the future. Beyond that they had a variety of stands including one that will allow you to attach your iPad and spin it around.

Mobile also had a few refreshes with their notebook coolers this year. The SF-19 that I use for my 18.4 inch laptop for example has a new model coming out that packed in another fan and also the ability to tilt up even more when needed. I was also interested in their new lap series that is designed with padding built in. This is perfect for those who want to get on their laptop on the couch or on their bed, something a LOT of people do. Speaking of that they had a prototype out to show off that is actually designed to go over your legs like breakfast in bed. The cooler section actually pulled off and doubles as a normal cooler for when you aren’t in bed as well.

They only brushed on Cooler Master’s new power supplies for the year but we did get a peek at them. The most notable feature being the individually sleeved cables on their top of the line models.

It wouldn’t be a Cooler Master CES without new cases to show off. Most of their new introductions fall into their budget lines as well as well as international offerings. One thing that did stand out to me was that most of their cases are sporting more room for water cooling. If you look closely most of the cases pictured actually had 240mm radiators installed, this is especially interesting because this is something that most budget cases normally lack. We even saw one model that isn’t going to be available in the states that had room for a radiator to go in sideways and pull air in from the side of the case.

As a big fan of past ATCS models, I was excited to see that they will be bringing out a new model in 2013. The ATCS 910 is a throwback to early Cooler Master cases with its all aluminum design.

Cooler Master's cooling offerings for 2013 include a new fan design that is designed to be much quieter with a full rubber mount. They will have the new fans in four LED colors and an all black non-LED design as well.

They also had the german designed Eisberg 240L on display but it won’t be available in the states until later in the year. They had what they called Eisberg Solo that I was especially interested in, this is a pump/res/waterblock that they are looking to sell for the DIY watercooling market. I love that you can see the gears inside moving when everything is up and running.

The Scout 2 will also be getting a small refresh that now includes three fans over the original one fan that a lot of people including us complained about. The price point will be the same for the black model and the white model that will also be coming out will have a MSRP of $10 more.

On the heatsink front they were especially proud of their new V8 GTS with a horizontal vapor chamber design that goes almost directly onto the CPU to spread the heat out to all of the heatpipes. This same design was carried over to most of their product line as well. The V8 GTS also is sporting two 140mm fans. The original was very popular but I’m concerned that this new design might be harder to sell due to its fan shroud design being a little busy, the original had a great styling that most people (especially car guys) loved.

Booth Babe and Case Mods of Cooler Master

One thing that Cooler Master never skimps on is their models, they always have some of the best and nicest girls of CES. Along with that they always bring in case mods from all over. Here are pictures of what we saw including a couple pictures of JJ’s mod WITH one of the models.