The Gigabyte motherboard division was across the hall and saying they had a lot on display would be putting it lightly. Most of the boards on display were refresh editions that will feature their new Ultra Durable 5 technology. The highlight of this technology refresh is a replacement to the driver Mosfet design with a single silicon based driver using the IR PowIRstage controller. The net benefit here is higher power delivery (up to 60A per driver) and lower temperature.
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Motherboards that feature this new technology will be noted with a UP in their product name however not all of them will feature the same 60A driver. For instance the ultra high-end Z77 UP7 comes with 32 power phases and didn't physically have enough room to use the high current controller.
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The new X79 UP5 is designed to allow you the ability to build your own super powerful workstation by using the 8-core Xeon processors, ECC memory and 8 SAS drive connections.
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Motherboards with TH in the name all will feature on board Thunderbolt and if you look closely you will find two Thunderbolt connections on the I/O panel.
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Intel platforms are not the only ones to get the Ultra Durable 5 refresh, here you can see a Trinity based motherboard with the matte black PCB and 8 phase Ultra Power PWM.
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After my Gigabyte meeting I headed back to the Hyatt hotel to meet with a German company called beQuiet. beQuiet is not well known outside of German but they are working hard to get an international presence and will be doing so with their unique line of power supplies, cooling fans and CPU coolers.
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Note the black nickel plating on the CPU cooler. The cooler comes with a solid cover across the top to hide the exposed heatpipes and really dresses up the heatsink nicely.
Corsair was right down the hall and had an entire suite full of new products. Two of them that caught my eye were the new 1200 PSU featuring a digital signal processor that gives the PSU a platinum efficiency rating and also allows you to control, monitor and configure the power delivery to suit your needs.
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I normally don't pay much attention to SSDs but the new Neutron and Neutron GTX drives using the new LM87800 controller is really going to change the face of retail SSD performance. And with 90k read and write speed performance it is no wonder why.
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There were also new Dominator modules on display featuring a completely new heatspreader design and rated speeds up to 2800Mhz.
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My last stop was with NZXT. Sadly with NZXT most of what they show is "for your eyes only" so aside from this LED strip that changes color and lighting patterns you'll have to trust me that they have some great things coming.
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Random Booth Babe of the Day
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Asus Girl
