COMPUTEX 2 0 1 9
CHRIS SZEWCZYK AND BEN MANSILL SPENT A LONG WEEK IN TAIPEI FOR THE BIGGEST PC SHOW IN THE WORLD. HERE, WE PRESENT THE MANY NEW PRODUCTS, TECHNOLOGIES AND RANDOM WONDERS THEY SAW.
CHRIS SZEWCZYK AND BEN MANSILL SPENT A LONG WEEK IN TAIPEI FOR THE BIGGEST PC SHOW IN THE WORLD. HERE, WE PRESENT THE MANY NEW PRODUCTS, TECHNOLOGIES AND RANDOM WONDERS THEY SAW
EVERY YEAR FOR A WEEK IN THE BLAZING TAIWAN HEAT, THE PC HARDWARE INDUSTRY GATHERS TO SHOW OFF ITS WARES. COMPUTEX IS THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT ON THE PC CALENDAR, AND MORE NEW PRODUCTS ARE LAUNCHED HERE IN THIS WEEK THAN AT ANY OTHER TIME IN THE YEAR.
HERE’S WHERE WE SEE EXCITING NEW TECHNOLOGIES COME TO LIFE AS PRODUCTS, IT’S WHERE THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE DESIGN AND ENGINEERING ARE ON HAND TO DISCUSS THEIR GEAR AND WHAT MAKES IT WHAT IT IS. IT’S ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT FOR THE GREAT MANY TAIWANESE PC COMPANIES BECAUSE THIS IS THEIR HOME BASE. ALL THE BIG PLAYERS LIKE ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE AND ASROCK, SYNOLOGY, QNAP, COOLER MASTER, THERMALTAKE AND THE VAST SEA OF PERIPHERAL MAKERS ARE HERE IN FORCE, WITH ABSOLUTELY EVERY NEW PRODUCT THEY CAN MUSTER. INDEED, COMPUTEX IS SO CLOSE TO THE HEART OF TAIWAN THAT THE SHOW IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC FOR ITS FINAL TWO DAYS – AND ATTENDANCE IS STRONG.
WE GO BECAUSE IT’S THE VERY BEST WAY TO GET A HANDLE ON WHERE PC TECH IS AT, AND WHAT’S JUST AROUND THE CORNER. PUTTING THE ANNUAL COMPUTEX REPORT TOGETHER IS ALWAYS EXCITING FOR US, AND WE HOPE REWARDING AND INFORMATIVE FOR YOU. THE GEAR IN THE PAGES THAT FOLLOW SHOW WHERE THE PC IS HEADING, AND IN THE MONTHS AHEAD MANY OF THESE PRODUCTS WILL FIND THEIR WAY INTO OUR LABS FOR TESTING AND COMPREHENSIVE REVIEWS.
CPUs INTEL
We came for the CPUs, but left seeing so much more. Yes, Intel at long last unveiled its first properly available 10nm CPUs. They’re up to four-core parts intended for laptops. Known as the Ice Lake family, they’re officially named ‘Intel 10th Generation Core’. Inside is Intel’s new Sunny Cove architecture, which boasts built-in support for Wi-Fi 6 (aka 802.11ax) and Thunderbolt 3. They also have new Iris Plus Gen11 integrated graphics.
There are 11 of these 10th gen CPUs in this first release, covering i3, i5 and i7. Detailed specifications and model names were not announced at Computex, but they’re in the hands of manufacturers, so it won’t be long before we see 10th gen laptops and will know more.
As in the past, Intel has split its new laptop CPUs into two ranges – the Y-series, which will be low power (9W TDP, up from 5W in the last gen), and the U-series which will have a nominal TDP of 15W, though can run higher. Interestingly, both series will have the new integrated graphics (IGP), so even lowly fanless Y-series devices will have some graphics heft. The IGP will run at up to 1.1GHz and sport up to 64 Execution Units, while the CPUs will have a top turbo frequency of 4.1GHz. All up, the new CPUs are said to have a performance boost of around 18% over the last gen Skylake mobile parts introduced in 2016.
These CPUs are exactly the shot in the arm that Wi-Fi 6 needs and there’s no doubt their impending ubiquity will help uptake of the new Wi-Fi standard. It’s also nice to know that Thunderbolt 3 will be on pretty much every new 10th gen laptop, too, and having it supported on the chip will mean minor cost and space savings for manufacturers.
The biggest drop for sheer quantity saw Intel announce 14 new vPro CPUs for professional enterprise platforms, both desktop and laptop. These are all 9th gen products, and are accompanied by 14 more Xeon CPUs with single core Turbo speeds up to 5GHz.
CRANKING HEDT
While HEDT 10th gen CPUs will be announced later, we did get a monster new desktop chip at Computex. In what is probably the last hurrah for 9th gen, Intel announced the i99900KS which is a binned 9900K that turbos to 5GHz on all cores and runs at a 4GHz base. This will be a limited part because yields are low.
9th gen is far from over in the mainstream, with the i9-9900KS being one of three new i9-9900 parts, which are accompanied by a pair of i7-9700 CPUs. They have eight physical cores and a base frequency of 3.6GHz.
Intel also showed off a new oneclick overclocking utility that really got our attention. The Intel Performance Maximizer is able to
clock each individual core to its maximum limit. We saw it run – which takes a long time in order for it to thoroughly explore the limits of each core – resulting in each of the eight cores on the CPU running at a different frequency. It’s due for release in a month or two and will initially support 9th gen K-series CPUs.
A new Optane module was announced, this one combines Optane X-Point memory for its now established task in boosting boot times and acting as an overall cache, with Intel’s quad level cell (QLC) NAND supplementing the Optane memory for storage. The Optane H10 will be available in the second half of the year.
CPUs AMD
Computex started with a bang and the spotlight was on AMD, which came right out of the blocks with a pre-show keynote that set the tone of the entire show and got everyone talking. AMD’s CEO Dr Lisa Su revealed the new Ryzen 3rd gen line of CPUs with some exciting details. We saw the first 12-core CPU demonstrated, along with unconfirmed whispers that a full 16-core CPU is in development, all on the AM4 platform, and all are backwards compatible with existing X370 and X470 motherboards, depending on manufacturer BIOS support.
We saw several new models teased. First up was the Ryzen 7 3700X. It’s an 8-core 16-thread 7nm CPU that has a base clock of 3.6GHz and a boost clock of 4.4GHz. “That’s similar to a 2700X” we hear you say, but the impressive reveal is a TDP of just 65W. Compare that to the 105W TDP of the 2700X and it’s clear that AMD’s 7nm tech looks pretty solid from what we’ve seen. We’re wary of placing too much emphasis on unverified benchmarks, but AMD claims the 3700X is up to 15% and 18% faster at single and multi-threaded Cinebench performance vs. the 2700X. We’ll reserve judgement until we test it ourselves, but if these numbers hold true, the US$329 chip could give Intel something to sweat about.
Next up is the 3800X. It’s fundamentally similar to the 3700X but features higher 4.5GHz boost and 3.9GHz base clocks at a 105W TDP. AMD compared it favourably to an Intel i9-9900K on stage using the PUBG game. Its price was revealed to be US$399.
Given the core arrangement of Ryzen CPUs, it’s only logical to assume we’d get models beyond eight cores, and so we did. The Ryzen 9 3900X is a 12-core, 24-thread powerhouse with a 3.6GHz base clock and 4.6GHz boost clock, still at a very respectable 105W TDP and it’s priced at just US$499.
Just a week after Computex, AMD also announced the new king of the family. With 16 cores and a 4.7GHz boost clock for US$749, the Ryzen 9 3950X is potentially the fastest consumer CPU in the world – and we’ll be testing one very soon!
EVEN MORE CORES
It’s rather incredible to think that we’ll see 12 and 16 core CPUs on AMD’s mainstream AM4 platform. Content creators certainly have something to look forward to, without the high cost associated with Intel’s X299 and AMD’s Threadripper platforms.
AMD isn’t just focusing on the consumer this year though. Dr Su’s keynote gave us the best look yet at its upcoming Epyc range of CPUs, including a 64-core 128-thread behemoth codenamed Rome. Its aggressive pricing is expected to put a significant dent in Intel’s stranglehold on the enterprise segment. Rome, along with Radeon Pro graphics, are being used to build a 1.5 exaFLOP supercomputer, expected to be the world’s most powerful, to be completed sometime in 2021.
MOTHERBOARDS
Accompanying the release of Ryzen 3 is a new chipset, logically dubbed X570. Motherboard manufacturers proudly showed off their top to bottom lines of X570 motherboards, and boy, do they have some top shelf specifications and designs! The most noteworthy new feature is support for PCI Express revision 4.0. PCIe 4.0 doubles the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 meaning there’s more bandwidth for next generation graphics cards, but more importantly, the ability to support more auxiliary controllers including SATA, USB, networking and other functionality that would otherwise require two or more PCIe 3.0 lanes.
Our first stop was the Gigabyte Aorus press conference. Our eyeballs are still recovering from the sun-like lights shining in our eyes, but once we could see again, we were treated to some truly feature-packed Aorus X570 motherboards. At the head of the pack is the Aorus Xtreme. It’s got just about everything you could want on a high end motherboard including a genuine 16 phase VRM, 802.11ax Wi-Fi, 1GbE and 10Gbe LAN and, interestingly for a high end X570 board, no chipset fan, one of very few that we saw. Gigabyte claims that the expansive thermal design dissipates heat very effectively. Aorus showed off thermal imagery with triple PCIe 4.0 SSDs which showed temperatures well under control. This is a board we definitely look forward to getting in our labs.
“Of course there will
be a full Aorus range
including Master, Ultra and Pro models, and even the Aorus X570 Pro Wi-Fi ITX board for the small form factoractor fans. ”
Of course there will be a full Aorus range including Master, Ultra and Pro models, and even the Aorus X570 Pro Wi-Fi ITX board for the small form factor fans (myself included).
PCIE 4, TAKING ADVANTAGE
Our next visit was to MSI. We would expect MSI representatives to take us straight to its gaming boards, but surprisingly (and refreshingly) our attention was drawn towards the X570 Creation. This board has all the highend features you’d expect, including 10GbE LAN, 802.11ax Wi-Fi, a PCIe 4.0 add-in card for even more M.2 support, strong cooling and notably, a massive array of USB ports, with 14 on the back panel alone! Not bad at all for a supposedly ‘mainstream’ Socket AM4 motherboard.
MSI also proudly showed off a range of gaming motherboards, including perhaps the most loaded X570 board of all, the X570 Godlike. It adds gamercentric features such as Killer networking, an onboard OLED information screen, attractive RGB and add-in M.2 expansion and 10GbE LAN cards.
It’s not all about the high-end though. MSI also showed the mid-range Ace, Pro and Edge models as well as the X570 Gaming Plus, which the company expects to be one of its highest volume boards targeted at gamers looking for something with the essentials.
It wouldn’t be Computex without the massive presence of Asus and we were shown a full range of X570 motherboards from its sub brands including ROG, TUF and Prime.
Topping the list is the ROG Crosshair VIII Formula. This board is aimed at liquid coolers with its EK VRM water block, array of customisable controls and sensors and full cover back plate on top of an impressive specification list. The Crosshair VIII Hero will no doubt find its way into many a gamer’s rig. It still has a very strong VRM solution but doesn’t include the water cooling centric features of the Formula. Asus also caters for the more budget conscious gamers with the ROG Strix models.
Asus’ TUF product ecosystem has gathered quite an impressive list of industry partners, with its focus on affordability and reliability. It’s possible to build an entire yellow-andblack-themed TUF system. The TUF Gaming X570-PLUS (Wi-Fi) looks like it will be a solid board for the budget conscious gamer desiring something simple and reliable.
If gaming and excessive bling aren’t your thing, then the Asus Prime X570-PRO is probably going to be more your speed. It ticks all the important boxes and looks nice and subtle with its white themed design. Finally, given the increase in core counts for 3rd-gen Ryzen CPUs, workstation users with mission critical workflows will be looking for something suitable. The Asus Pro WS X570-ACE brings all the X570 features to the table and adds ECC memory support and x8/x8/x8 triple GPU support.
THE $1,500 MOTHERBOARD?
Asrock also had some surprisingly innovative wares, including the US$999 X570 Aqua board! Yes, if it ever comes to Australia, this could be a $1,500 motherboard! It’s a 999-piece limited edition product that features integrated CPU and chipset water blocks. It looks gorgeous and comes with almost every conceivable feature, including dual ThunderBolt Type-C ports. Notably, the board lists support for memory speeds of up to DDR4-4666. Everything points towards 3rd-gen Ryzen having much improved memory support.
Asrock’s Taichi series has been well received with its unique aesthetic and focus on essential features and value. The X570 Taichi departs somewhat from the line’s previous simplicity and adds quite a bit of RGB lighting and a large black heatsink across the lower part of the board. Expect this one to still offer good bang for buck.
We noted several Asrock boards featured an internal DisplayPort, which is connected to a back panel Thunderbolt port for TB display support. Interesting!
The motherboard manufacturers showed off their existing lines of Intel Socket 1151 and 2066 models, though there was little that was new. We’d expect a new motherboard platform when Intel launches its 10nm desktop CPUs in the future.
GRAPHICS CARDS
With Nvidia’s Turing lineup having already taken shape, there wasn’t too much on display from Nvidia’s partners that we haven’t seen before. One notable exception was a special 10th anniversary GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z from MSI. The card comes with a useful OLED display that can show various monitoring info, it has a rather sexy genuine carbon fibre back plate and uses a binned die for the best overclocking performance. It’s not expected to be cheap, though we still want one!
We did get a sneak peek at AMD’s Navi graphics cards, which are scheduled to launch in July. Details were scarce at Computex, but we saw it all just a weeks afterwards – see the feature following these pages for that report – but, in short, they’ll be built with TSMC’s 7nm process, support PCIe 4.0, GDDR6 and receive a new naming scheme; the Radeon 5000 series. They’re built with an all new ground-up architecture called RDNA, replacing the ageing GCN architecture found in AMD models going back several generations. If AMD’s claims of 1.25x performance per clock (tied to increased clock
speeds) and 1.5x performance per watt hold true then AMD could have a very competitive range on its hands (price depending). Oh did we mention that Navi will appear in the next generation of PlayStation? That’s great news for AMD.
MEMORY
DDR4 memory technology has pretty much stalled in recent years. Bling is the name of the game, with memory vendors proudly showing off their bold new designs. New memory was on show from the likes of Adata, G.Skill and HyperX. The HyperX Fury grabbed our attention. Yes it’s fundamentally the same DDR4 you could buy last year and the year before that, but the RGB implementation was classy. It features something called Infrared Sync which we’re told allows precise synchronisation of RGB effects across all of the modules. We aren’t going to argue, as the various effects looked lovely.
We really look forward to the introduction of DDR5 memory, which we’re likely to see introduced sometime next year.
PERIPHERALS
Computex wouldn’t be Computex without a comprehensive array of keyboards, headsets and mice on show. Many manufacturers displayed their fully custom designs, featuring inhouse designed and built switches.
SteelSeries revealed its ‘adjustable activation’ switches. In an area where innovation can be sometimes lacking, this really impressed us. The Apex Pro is available in both full size and ten-keyless variants. In addition to the adjustable switches, they both feature an integrated OLED display, per-key RGB lighting, aluminium construction and a magnetic wrist rest.
Cooler Master revealed its MM710 ultra-lightweight gaming mouse. It weighs in at an incredibly light 52 grams. Supposedly, it’s the world’s lightest. If you’re seeking the fastest and most responsive movement possible, it’s well worth a look.
Continuing the content-creator theme that ran across the whole show, CM revealed its SK851 Bluetooth low profile mechanical keyboard. It features Omron low profile switches that are just 7.4mm tall, meaning the entire keyboard is very slim. It’s one I’d be more than happy to have sitting on my desk.
Elgato had a presence in the Corsair suite. The company showed off its Stream Deck. The new Stream Deck XL features a total of 32 shortcut keys, each of which is individually programmable. It’s aimed at streamers, but all sorts of users should find it useful. You can start and stop various tasks, trigger on screen functionality, adjust lighting or audio levels and a whole bunch of other cool things that are frequently accessed.
Kingston and HyperX had an impressive line-up of headsets on show, including a high-end planar driver model, the Cloud Orbit S. The Audeze planar drivers deliver excellent sound quality as well as 3D positional sound and it should make an excellent set of regular headphones too. It’s compatible with PC, consoles and mobiles.
HyperX has developed its own inhouse switches and these can be found in the Alloy Origins keyboard. We’re told these switches approximate Cherry Reds, making them likely to appeal to gamers who prefer the high responsiveness typical of a red switch. HyperX has tweaked the red design further, however, shaving the travel distance and actuation point down to 3.8mm and 1.8mm respectively. Accompanying the Alloy Origins was a very appealing and very squishy wrist rest that felt like memory foam. It was a pleasure to type with.
CASES
We could use this entire report to talk about some of the amazing cases on display at this year’s show.
In Win had some seriously impressive cases out, catering both for the RGB crowd or to those who prefer something a bit more subtle. The In Win 925 was probably this writer’s favourite case in the whole show. It’s built like a battleship and is simply gorgeous. If cloth is your thing, how about the simplistic but pleasing Alice concept chassis? It’s amazingly lightweight and unique.
Alternatively, if you treat your PC as a piece of art, there’s the Yong chassis, but at US$4,000, it’s not for everyone.
Thermaltake didn’t have a whole lot that was new this year, though the A500 has impressive build quality and subtle good looks that appeal. The Level 20 cases still look great if you want to show off your PC.
Cooler Master’s SL600M stood out with its darkened tempered glass, but perhaps our favourite CM case was the H100M Mini-ITX case. It has a 200mm front fan for good airflow, a carry handle and can house a fullsized ATX power supply.
Lian Li showed some amazingly customisable cases including the Odyssey X, which can be onfigured to such a degree that it becomes almost unrecognizable as the same case. The Lancool II will be affordable, so we’re told. It features all kinds of removable panels for placing radiators or hiding cables and SSDs.
Lian Li showed the most impressive desk of the whole show, the DK05-F. It’s a very sturdy and solidly built unit capable of housing two full systems. It comes with customisable servo height adjustment and perhaps its most unique feature, the ability to switch
“Lian Li showed some amazingly customisable cases including the Odyssey X which can be configured so much, it becomes almost unrecognisable. ”
the glass top between transparent and opaque modes. There’s even three mounts for triple monitors and the whole unit is rated to hold 80kg. It’s a really lovely unit... it’s going to cost US$2,000 though!
COOLING
There are always plenty of cooling products on display at Computex. Corsair revealed its new Hydro X water-cooling range, complete with waterblocks, fittings, tubing and pumps. Corsair has a custom configurator website that advises which parts to buy depending on your system configuration. It’s definitely easy for those who might be daunted by building a custom loop. Corsair also had some gorgeous systems on display.
The Cooler Master MasterAir Maker is probably the most impressive air cooler we saw. It utilises a U-shaped vapour chamber technology instead of the traditional heatpipes to dissipate the heat from the CPU. This means greater surface area and is the kind of thing that makes us wonder why it isn’t standard for air coolers.
Thermaltake showed off a truly unique cooling product – a water cooling reservoir that’s also the chassis itself! It’s very much in the prototype stage though. The P200 chassis is essentially a mounting plate that functions as a reservoir and open air case at the same time. It won’t appeal to everyone, but it’s great to see case and cooling companies think outside the box and show off something unique and innovative.
LAPTOPS
Computex is always chock full of new laptop designs, and this year was no different. While gaming remains a strong focus, there was a definite change in theme this year, with content creation being at the forefront of many manufacturers’ booths. Slim, lightweight and silver
“The P200 chassis is essentially a mounting plate that functions as a reservoir and open air case at the same time. ”
was all the rage. Perhaps the goal is to entice some of the Mac legions over to the PC ecosystem...
At the head of this new charge was Nvidia’s Studio Laptop announcement. Studio Laptops were on display from all the major OEMs. They’re aimed at professionals and content creators who want both GPU grunt and portability. Nvidia Studio Laptops include RTX GPUs, which means you get real-time ray tracing, AI processing and an extensive array of validated software for all sorts of production oriented tasks. You’ll also get special extensively-tested drivers that are validated with many major production suites. Expect more coverage of Studio Laptops in upcoming issues.
ULTRABOOK 2.0
As excited as we are for Intel 10th gen, we were more impressed in a hands-on sense with Intel’s debut of the Project Athena laptop specification, along with other new form factors unrelated to Athena. You could consider Project Athena to be ‘Ultrabook 2.0’. It lays out a series of requirements and optional but not essential specs for its partners to follow as they produce new machines, though unlike the original ultrabooks, Athena machines won’t carry a specific moniker. The specs will be revised each year and the version-1 guidelines cover several areas. They must wake from sleep in under a second and have online Wi-Fi 6 and optional Gigabit LTE connectivity instantly available. Thunderbolt 3 must be supported, and Athena machines will have at least 8GB of dual channel RAM and at least 256GB of NVMe or Optane SSD storage. Interestingly, having Optane is not considered one of the essential Athena requirements. No minimum dimensions are set, but it’s expected that Athena machines will all have touch screens and be thin and light. All candidate Athena PCs will need to be submitted to Intel by its manufacturing partners for final approval. Several early machines from Dell, Acer, HP and Lenovo were displayed, and are expected to hit the shops soon.
SIMPLER AND SMARTER
Building upon its mighty success with its NUC PCs, Intel announced NUC Elements, which is a CPU and memory module the size of a credit card. It’s bound to be a winner with low cost laptop and device manufacturers, as it can form the basis of a quickly designed and produced device.
AI was an oft-heard buzzword at this year’s Computex for Intel, with its new Movidius AI dev kit in the hands of partners. This M.2 format unit is essentially a mini CPU with 16 cores which will handle tasks like face and object recognition, or computing tasks like relieving the CPU and GPU of handling video calls. Partners can choose to install the M.2 card in PCs, or engineer the chip itself onto motherboards.
OLED INCOMING
Gigabyte’s Aero laptops really impressed us with its OLED screens. The deep blacks, colours and contrast from these amazing displays is simply stunning. The Aero 15 OLED comes pre-calibrated by X-Rite Pantone before leaving the factory, features 100% DCI-P3 gamut and HDR 400. Gorgeous.
Probably the most impressive laptop we saw at Computex 2019 was the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo. Decadent is a word we’d use to describe it. It features a full-width 32:9 4K screen along with a 4K UHD OLED main display. You can use it with a stylus. This amazing machine is actually the first real product to come out of Intel’s ‘Honeycomb Glacier’ companion screen project, which it has collaborated with partners on, with the Asus team producing this beauty. It really was stunning to behold, and compared to last year’s screen touchpad. this new model really is next level, with genuine rea-world applications.
Even more impressive was a prototype Honeycomb machine developed in-house by Intel that,
because it’s the way these things usually go, probably won’t ever become an actual product – though we can hope. This one is another companion screen laptop, but the second screen can be raised up to produce an almost vertical twin-screen array.
‘Ambient’ was another Intel concept laptop, the idea here being it’s always ready to respond to the user’s needs by monitoring human presence and its surroundings using a 180º camera, voice monitoring and secondary displays on the laptop front edge.
A fully dual-screen concept called ‘Twin River’ also impressed. We’re reassured seeing the physical keyboard, as typing on a screen (no matter how good) will always be a second rate experience. All up, it seems that there’ll come a day when any laptop without a second screen will either be budget or old.
DELL & ALIENWARE
Over at Dell we saw many new laptops, including from Alienware. We hunted down the new XPS machines – the new 13-inch 2-in-1 was the highlight. Here, Dell’s switched from a 16:9 to 16:10 aspect ratio screen – but the focus for that change wasn’t screen real estate so much, but how the larger screen translates to a larger base area which allows for a larger keyboard with bigger keys and more spacing between them compared to the previous model.
Alienware showed off its mighty Legend m15 and m17 models. Strutting that fine balance between over-the-top gaming laptop design and something an adult wouldn’t be ashamed to own, they looked amazing, with a beautiful magnesium finish. The screen options go all the way up to a 144Hz OLED panel, but it won’t support G-Sync, with the explained reason being that G-Sync requires the discrete GPU to be powered on at all times, which negatively impacts battery life if you just need IGP for non-gaming tasks.
MSI showed off its GT76 Titan, a true desktop-replacement laptop. How does a desktop i9-9900K and RTX 2080 sound? It’s got the cooling to match. Hands down, it’s the most powerful laptop we’ve seen yet, but at 4.5kg it’s not exactly a lightweight.
Acer surprised us with a very comprehensive line-up of models. The eye catcher was the Concept D9. It features a screen that you can flip or reverse like a 2-in-1, but on steroids. Also noteworthy was the surprisingly compact Concept D7. It features a lovely 4K, 100% Adobe RGB screen and Max-Q GeForce RTX 2080. Amazing in such a small package.
MONITORS
There was plenty of exciting new monitor tech on show all over Computex 2019. We’d hoped to see more Big Format Gaming Displays that were shown last year come on sale, but we’re told they are still coming. The Asus ROG Swift PG65UQ uses a 64.5-inch 8-bit 4K Ultra-HD AMVA panel with HDR support and up to 144Hz refresh rate. It’s gorgeous and should hopefully arrive later this year.
Mini-LED is an exciting new display technology, it competes with OLED but doesn’t suffer from drawbacks such as static screen burn. The Asus ROG Swift PG27UQX boasts a 4K UHD resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, HDR 1000 support and is simply stunning, if not ideally demonstrated with the purple lighting in the ROG booth. We look forward to giving this one a thorough review.
Gigabyte announced it’s making a big push into the gaming monitor market with its Aorus Tactical screens. The line-up features impressive software support, which allows users to adjust all monitor settings on the fly with their mouse or keyboard with incredible ease.
MSI wowed us with its 34-inch Prestige PS341WU monitor. It features a 5,120 x 2,160 ultrawide resolution, 98% DCI-P3 color gamut and 100% sRGB coverage. It’s aimed at users who require maximum colour accuracy. It can also integrate with MSI’s Prestige software suite for things like sharing colour profiles between users, something that’s essential to creative teams.
Acer’s CP7271K is an interesting monitor that should appeal to gamers and professionals alike. It’s a 27-inch 4K display with 99% Adobe RGB colour gamut and HDR 1000 support. It comes with a 144Hz refresh rate and supports G-Sync Ultimate. As an all-rounder, this one looks pretty amazing.
STORAGE
One of the big talking points this year was PCI Express 4.0 and the upcoming NVMe SSDs that support it. We saw the CEO of Phison, one of the third-party controller manufacturers, make some bullish statements at the Aorus press conference. All the PCIe 4.0 based drives we saw across the show floor contained Phison controllers.
Gigabyte showed off its Aorus PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD along with a 4 way PCIe 4.0 x16 add-in card that was demonstrated with sustained read and write speeds above 15GB/s. Fifteen Gigabytes per second. Wow. Gigabyte’s Aorus standalone PCIe 4.0 SSD was shown with a very attractive and chunky copper heatsink. From what we heard, these drives run hot and need serious cooling to prevent thermal throttling.
Adata and Corsair showed off their PCIe 4.0 drives, so as we enter Q3 and Q4, we should have some good choices. No word from the big guns in the SSD space, Samsung and Western Digital, about their drives, though it’s only a matter of time. Obviously Intel won’t be going hard on PCIe 4.0 until their own motherboards support it.
We took the time to visit Synology’s new Taipei headquarters and came away impressed with how the company continues to innovate and evolve its DSM NAS software.
While there weren’t a lot of new NASs shown, we were impressed by a couple of small form factor designs, the DS419slim and DS620slim. These small units can accept four and six 2.5-inch drives respectively and can still max out an aggregated dual Gigabit link at 220MB/s.
Over at QNAP, a new media NAS was debuted. The QNAP HS-453DX has a 1.5GHz Celeron processor to handle HD streams and can take a pair of M.2 SATA drives. We also saw a couple of very nice consumer-level switches offering 10GbE as well as 10/100/1000T ports. The QNAP QSW-308 is one of a new breed of ultra-fast home switches which could see good uptake as demand for faster connectivity grows.
We also saw a new Alexa screen system that replaces the more toyish looking QNAP AfoBot. This one is intended for home use as well as a virtual receptionist, or for remote medical care.
Our thanks to Panasonic for the loan of a Lumix LX100 II camera, which was used to take many of these photos.