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CeBIT Sydney 2005 |
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Thermaltake, Altech, Wilkahn
Thermaltake had the same large stand as last year and again successfully used a tricked-out case to attract attention. This year it was one of their "Armor" cases with the "Tribe" watercooling kit. This is an entirely external, self-contained kit with just coolant tubing going down to the case internals.
 
There's various extra bits you can buy for the kit such as HDD coolers, in-bay radiators etc. They also had the "Rocket" passive radiator, or the box at least, which is truly enormous - taller than a full-tower case. It seems a bit excessive but if it's the last step in a fanless system then fair enough. Also of interest was the "Schooner" which sadly wasn't full of beer, but is a fanless video card cooler. Note the heatpipe-connected radiator section; this protrudes out the back of the case through a PCI slot cover to remove GPU heat from the system. They also had a fanless silent power supply with a similar external heatsink fitted.
  
Altech had an absolutely huge stand this year, showing off the many brands they distribute.
  
Of particular note was the fanless heatpipe-encrusted fulltower from Zalman, which uses the entire outside of the chassis as a heatsink. This isn't a new product, but it's still super-exotic and was worth taking a look at. Check out the CPU block, the PSU built into the door and the HDD cooling bays. Remember, this case is totally silent during use, with no fans at all. Apparently one TV station has used a heap of them in their sound booths, where the slightest background hum can be disastrous. If you ask me I'd just put the PC's outside the booth and run cables inside, but maybe that wasn't an option. However, bear in mind that a HDD will make motor noise while it's powered. I guess you could use a RAM drive and put the HDD into powersaving mode? Use a boot-ROM network card, no hard drive at all and load everything from the network? Anyway, enough hypothesizing.
  
What's more interesting is the new little brother of this case from Zalman, called the "Maestro Senza". Altech were demonstrating a prototype, kitted out with various high-performance goodies including Corsair's Xpert memory with a custom message scrolling on the LEDs. This is a midtower version of the older fulltower and although an RRP wasn't available it is said to be more affordable than the $1000 or so RRP of the previous model. Estimates have it between $500 and $800 though, so it's still going to remain exotic. I guess when you factor in that it includes the PSU and all your cooling, that's not too unreasonable, compared to a more conventional non-cheap tower case, decent PSU and say a watercooling kit.
 
Altech had another prototype case from Zalman, this one called the "Fatal1ty", apparently designed in association with the professional gamer of the same name. They had it stocked with ELSA 6600GT's in SLi - note the Zalman coolers that come standard on those cards. The motherboard is ABIT's AN8-SLI Fatal1ty, with Corsair Xpert RAM once again displaying a custom message. The bottom-mounted hard drives are on rubber standoffs to reduce vibration and you can apparently also mount hard drives on the inside of the door. Speaking of gamers, Altech were running a CS tournament to win an ABIT X800XT video card. When I left the final was underway between Hoss and King - congrats to whoever won. :)
  
Finally, Altech had some little displays from Seagate, showing the inner workings of hard drives:
  
Something else that caught my eye was this rear-projection "InterWall" screen from Wilkahn, a German company with an Australian presence. It's actually a giant touchscreen as well, constructed of glass with a holographic film embedded. You can use it as a whiteboard and then print out your notes/diagram and the screen contents. The viewing angle wasn't great, but from mostly ahead of it, as would be typical for a boardroom-type environment, it's crystal clear and very bright.
  
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