Sadly, one of the most epic trips of the year has had to come to an end. It’s been three sensational days of the latest tech, shooting videos and planning future events with some of the biggest names in the industry, but it is time for us to retire back to South Africa for some well-deserved shut-eye before we take on the world once more.
Our final day at the expo started with a well-thought-out plan: a strawberry-flavoured drink of yoghurt and a high-cadence march to the MRT station down the road from us. While we still managed to get to some of our favourite brands at the expo, time still managed to disappear as quickly as the Red Bulls we were chugging.
Due to an unforeseen error with the camera late yesterday, we were back at the MSI booth in the morning to catch up on all the gaming peripherals, storage devices and GPUs that they had on show.
The always enthusiastic George was more than happy to show us the new storage and storage cooling solutions, again starting off with an up-to-4 terabyte portable SSD built with iPhone users in mind. The drive has a magnetic back and snaps right into place on Apple’s MagSafe devices just neatly enough to make you forget you have four terabytes of extra storage strapped to your phone. It also comes with a sticker magnet in the box that you can stick to other devices, such as the lid of your laptop, for the SSD to stick to. Besides this, the other most exciting tech from the storage stand had to be the non-metal vapour chamber. This new cooling mechanism sits on top of your SSD and manages to dissipate all the heat without the use of the standard metal heatsinks we’re used to seeing. Besides being said to provide an 11-degree cooling improvement on the traditional heatsink, it also looks absolutely sick, and I can easily picture it in a full white build.
We then took a spin past the peripherals stand, where MSI had their mice, keyboards and gamepads showing off all they have to offer. The most exciting was the new MSI Force Wireless Pro, a controller with removable joysticks and auto-calibration. The removable joysticks offer customisability for both the face plate and joysticks of the controller and easier repair should you need it. At the same time, the auto-calibration ensures that the joysticks are never drifting. The controller has not yet been officially released, but with a good few of them on the stand to play with, we’re certain we’ll see them later this year.
In sticking with the AI theme of Computex MSI 3D printed a few AI generated dragon plates for their GPU’s that we’re still trying to convince them to give us. We think we may have been able to at least get them to ask the engineers, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed. The AI Dragon GPU range was a knockout on the booth and most definitely caught everyone’s attention, even the president of Nvidia Jensen Huang.
Checking that the camera was still in tact after filming those fire GPU’s, we then headed on over to the Huntkey booth, where they had some of their gaming brands on show. MVP Land offers a full range of gaming peripherals and branded items. From mousepads to AIOs and even a thermos to keep your favourite late-night gaming drink warm.
On display, they had their latest PC Case, the VS970 Skyfall Full View, which offers three glass panels: one on the front, one on the side and one on top. It’s aesthetically pleasing for those who love to show off the insides of their build and even has enough space to throw in a figurine for that extra flavour. We also checked out their AIO range, which included the MVP V360 a three fan AIO with a gravitational LED screen. The gravitational screen means the device will automatically pick up which way is up and display whatever you want the right way around. Besides the obviously stunning VS970 Skyfall case, I really thought the MVP Platinum P1000 was a cool PSU. Its modular has a platinum efficiency rating, a fanless mode during low power usage and the ability to connect and power two separate RTX 4080 cards.
At this stage of the day, we were still on track to make it back to the hotel early enough to get a few good hours of sleep before our next-day flight. So we confidently made our way over to the next booth on our list, Thermaltake.
Thermaltake were definitely on the hunt for all the chassis connoisseurs out there, as they had one of the largest stands at the expo completely covered with custom-designed cases from top to bottom. Even their new racing simulator, the GR500 Racing Simulator Cockpit, with all it’s RGB and peripheral accessories was pushed to the outer edges of the booth as the PC cases took center stage, literally.
While there were a variety of other cases on display from the Thermaltake brand, it was the Tower 300 that stole all my attention. Traditionally, the Tower 300 is an upright chassis with a more capsule design than the rectangular chassis we most commonly see on our desks. There were a variety of custom-designed Tower 300s, ranging from a Skyline GTR-inspired, racing red version to a Buzz Lightyear edition in that show-offish white, purple and green, but my favourite of them all was an apocalyptic edition that had been placed on its side. Most people would think twice before deciding to put their PC case on its side while in use, but the Tower 300 almost looks more natural this way than it does in its regular upright position. Pair that with the crazy rust-like effects of the design and a tucked-away second display, almost like a Pip Boy, and you have a case that even your partner wouldn’t mind you showing off to everyone who visits the house.
After ogling over the rusted-out Tower 300 for a good few minutes, our watch alarms went off, letting us know it was time for the NAG Computex Dream Team to head their separate ways. Regardt was going to hang out at Computex to catch a few more stands while I was invited to an exclusive (again, not-so-exclusive) tour of the Gigabyte factory.
Regardt ventured back out into the wilds of Computex and managed to checkout another handheld device that was attempting to throw it’s weight around the handheld gaming market.
The Zotac Zone is this latest handheld, and it’s trying to learn from the previous brands that have already released devices. Zotac has gone the route of “features-galore” with this device, as it will sport a 7-inch 120Hz OLED screen, symmetrical hall effect joysticks with programmable dials around each one, a USB4 port on both the bottom and the top of the device and a camera. The same AMD processor as the original Asus ROG Ally and 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM will be on the inside. It’s also a whopping 310mm x 135mm x 40mm, making it even larger than the Lenovo Legion Go. The device is said to launch sometime around September at around $800, but we don’t have any confirmation that we’ll see it in South Africa. Even with all that handheld on display, though, Regardt still managed to find himself distracted by a backpack with a couple RGB lights on the back.
He then popped on over to the Endorfy Booth, and for those of you who aren’t aware, Endorfy is a “we-do-everything” brand similar to Thermaltake or Cougar. Their devices include keyboards, mice, chairs, cases, cooling, power supplies and even gaming desks and Regardt was just blown away by the quality of the product on display. He played around with a few of the keyboards, even managing to pick one up for “testing” later at NAG HQ, and grabbed a few business cards for some even more exciting stuff, so keep your eyes open for anything Endorfy-related, hopefully coming soon.
All this time, I was enjoying a guided tour of the Gigabyte Factory. I got to watch as motherboards were assembled, all the way up from a simple PCB to a completed and boxed product. It was mesmerising to watch all the machinery put each part together and test it all along the way. The preciseness and attentiveness of all the line workers and line heads on duty go to show why Gigabyte’s products are such heavy hitters in the industry. We’ll be posting a few sneaky pics and a video or two showing off some of their deepest darkest secrets, soon.
Regardt and I then met back up at the Nangang Exhibition Center to say our last goodbyes to the venue for this year. While we may be tired, sore-footed and a little exhausted, Computex 2024 was an event that I will never forget, and I’m already trying to figure out how I can bribe my way back onto the Computex team for next year.