Nintendo WiiU hands on!

Trace Hagan | Gaming | Jun 6, 2012 1:42 PM CDT

Nintendo is really pushing the whole WiiU thing at this E3. Their massive booth is almost entirely dedicated to the WiiU with many different demo stations demoing many different games. They had an interesting way of getting people to try out all 5 different "attractions" in Nintendoland: They gave a pin after you played the attraction hands-on.

I've spent a good hour with the WiiU now and can give you some idea of how it is. The tablet controller works much better than I previously thought it would. Players really only need to watch the tablet controller's screen in most instances. The TV provides a different view for those watching the game.

Since the tablet can display a completely different screen than the TV, it allows some forms of competitive play that would not be possible without it. For instance, in Luigi's Ghost Mansion, the player with the tablet plays as the ghost, and the rest of the players use a regular Wii controller to walk around hunting the ghost. You can see the obvious issues if everyone were watching the same screen.

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A tease from the SAPPHIRE room at Computex

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Jun 6, 2012 9:58 AM CDT

Computex 2012 - I'm sitting here in the famous house of our reviewer Shane Baxtor (who is one of the best guys you'll ever meet btw) and I look to my left, I look to my right, heck, I can walk into his kitchen and there's SAPPHIRE gear everywhere. More exciting is seeing some gear in person, at Nangang today we checked out SAPPHIRE's huge demos where multi-monitors and GPUs were being shown off.

I'll keep the details low on this, and just let this post make itself with pictures - check out the 5-screen portrait mode setup. This is something I want to crank at home. There's also a 6-screen portrait setup, and wait for it... a 12-screen setup. Yes, that's 12, as in 2 more than 10 and 11 more than 1. 12 screens in portait, I put my finger to my wrist to make sure blood was stil pumping through my veins and I had not died and gone to heaven. SAPPHIRE, I bow to you.

Another thing that caught our eye was SAPPHIRE's HD 7770 Ultimate, which is a passively-cooled GPU. Yes, no fans so this thing is completely, 100-percent silent. Apart from the screams of joy you'll do when you're using this thing.

Continue reading: A tease from the SAPPHIRE room at Computex (full post)

Corsair shows off new stuff in Computex 2012

Anthony Garreffa | Cases, Cooling & PSU | Jun 6, 2012 7:47 AM CDT

Computex 2012 - From our guest blogger and competition winner Roshan!

Corsair has refreshed their newer lineups and showcased them this Computex 2012.

Starting off with USB 3.0 drives, Some of Corsair's newer flash drives that are displayed along with Voyager, Voyager GT and Survivor are Survivor Stealth (32GB & 64GB) and Voyager slider (8GB, 16GB, 32GB & 64GB).

Continue reading: Corsair shows off new stuff in Computex 2012 (full post)

Short interview with Nick Shih about his new ASRock Z77 OC Formula motherboard

Cameron Wilmot | Motherboards | Jun 6, 2012 7:23 AM CDT

Computex 2012 - Walking around the Computex Nangang halls today we ran into Nick Shih from ASRock which is a good thing considering he and ASRock just announced their newest product, the Z77 OC Formula.

We gave you a quick preview of the Z77 OC Formula a couple of days ago, but it's best to let Nick give us a personal introduction as well as some details on some of the 2D world records they've already broken.

Watch the video above to learn more about this new extreme overclocking motherboard from ASRock. Think 7GHz Ivy Bridge and G.Skill RAM running at 3000MHz and MSI's Lightning video card running at insane speeds. Tasty!

Continue reading: Short interview with Nick Shih about his new ASRock Z77 OC Formula motherboard (full post)

Biwin NuvoDrive NX featuring NovaChips NVS3600A Bugatti controller on display

Chris Ramseyer | Storage | Jun 6, 2012 7:19 AM CDT

Computex 2012 - Biwin is also making news in the 2.5" form factor market with the new NuvoDrive NX SSD. This drive uses the fresh Novachips NVS3600A controller, AKA Bugati. Hopefully the Biwin NovaDrive has Bugatti performance and not a Bugatti price!

This is an enterprise targeted product so all bets are off on the price. The designer of the controller has a history of producing solid SSD controllers, we can thank him for a large part of the Indilinx Barefoot design.

The performance looks really good, at least with the benchmarks provided by Biwin. We've very excited to benchmark this drive in the coming weeks... or maybe hours.

Continue reading: Biwin NuvoDrive NX featuring NovaChips NVS3600A Bugatti controller on display (full post)

Patriot introduces new Viper series memory kit at Computex

Shawn Baker | RAM | Jun 6, 2012 6:59 AM CDT

Computex 2012 - Moving away from the G2 / Gamer series name it looks like Patriot is expanding upon the popular Viper name that we've seen them use for their high end Viper Extreme memory kits over recent time. The new Viper kit from Patriot are set to launch later this month in four differant colors that represent four differant kind of markets.

At the top we've got the Black version which main focus is speed with the kit we saw on display today coming in at 2133MHz DDR using a 11-11-11-30 @ 1.5v setup. Outside of the heatsink, though, what has really grabbed our attention is the Black PCB which we hope Patriot uses.

The bottom end of the scale will see a Green kit which will focus on lower voltages while a red and blue kit will sit inbetween aimed at differant segments. Of course if you're after the highest speeds you'll want to look at the Viper Xtreme Kit. If you're looking for some quality RAM at a strong price point, though, the new Viper series due out soon could be what you're after. We've already organised samples so keep an eye out for a review in due time.

Continue reading: Patriot introduces new Viper series memory kit at Computex (full post)

G.Skill shows off 3000MHz DDR memory kits on two boards at Computex

Shawn Baker | RAM | Jun 6, 2012 6:56 AM CDT

Computex 2012 - When it comes to RAM this year at Computex the big number that everyone is talking about is 3000MHz DDR thanks to the excellent overclocking ability that is present on the new Ivy Bridge Platform. Making sure that 3000MHz DDR can be run on multiple boards we saw G.Skill showing off the speed on both a GIGABYTE and ASUS board.

On the GIGABYTE front we found the 2800MHz DDR TridentX kit from G.Skill sitting in a GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H with an Intel Core i7 3770K. The 2800MHz DDR 16GB kit was running at 3001MHz DDR with an 11-13-13-35 setup while HyperPI was running.

Just next to the GIGABYTE setup we saw the ASUS Maximus V Formula running the same 3770k with the same TridentX kit running at 3002MHz DDR at the exact same timings. The biggest issue for people who want to make use of 3000MHz DDR memory kits, though, isn't the motherboard, but the CPU.

Continue reading: G.Skill shows off 3000MHz DDR memory kits on two boards at Computex (full post)

G.Skill shows off huge 96GB DDR3 RAM kit at Computex

Shawn Baker | RAM | Jun 6, 2012 6:52 AM CDT

Computex 2012 - Over in Nangang today for Computex we found our eyes drawn to a EVGA Classafied SR-X motherboard over at the G.Skill booth that was packed full of RAM. Sitting along side two Intel Xeon E5-2680 CPUs was a massive 96GB RAM kit from G.Skill which consisted of a massive 12 modules.

While on the speed front the kit doesn't sit the highest coming in at only 1600MHz DDR and a 11-11-11-28 at 1.5v setup, the sheer amount of memory and cores present on the system was enough to grab our attention.

While no doubt the kit isn't going to be for everyone, the sheer awesomeness that was present meant that we couldn't help but take a picture and show it off to our readers.

Continue reading: G.Skill shows off huge 96GB DDR3 RAM kit at Computex (full post)

BitFenix shows us its new Prodigy Mini-ITX case and Recon fan controller

Cameron Wilmot | Cases, Cooling & PSU | Jun 6, 2012 6:49 AM CDT

Computex 2012 - Our next stop along the Computex Nangang hall path was BitFenix who had its full range of computer cases on display including the new Ghost as well as what we are focusing on right here, the new Prodigy.

The Prodigy is BitFenix's latest case that comes in a range of different colors and supports Mini-ITX motherboards. Obviously seeing the increase in performance Mini-ITX motherboards going onto the market, BitFenix saw a chance to produce a new case model. It's going to make a wicked LAN gaming PC or small gaming PC, that doesn't have to sacrifice moving down to low-end parts due to the high end performance models of things such as video cards and power supplies being too big to fit into small cases.

In the video above David from BitFenix also introduced us to the brand new BitFenix Recon which is a fan controller, but by no means your normal fan controller. This is something that BitFenix has been working on for a long time, in fact we even saw early mockups at Computex last year.

Continue reading: BitFenix shows us its new Prodigy Mini-ITX case and Recon fan controller (full post)

ASUS Crosshair V Formula refresh sneaks under the radar

Shawn Baker | Motherboards | Jun 6, 2012 6:47 AM CDT

Computex 2012 - Sitting in the corner of the ROG booth amongst a bunch of other motherboards we found the new Crosshair V Formula-Z, a refresh of the popular 990FX motherboard from ASUS that we know as the Crosshair V Formula. Looking at it you could easily find yourself thinking that it's just the regular non-Z version, but if we look a bit closer we can notice a few things.

One of the first comes with the removal of the legacy PCI slot that was present. That has now been swapped out for a PCIe slot. The audio side of things has also got an upgrade thanks to the addition of SupremeFX III now being present on the board.

Along with that ASUS said that they've also just done some overall tweaking to the board to increase the overclocking ability while we can also see the layout has slightly changed with the power and reset buttons being moved from the bottom of the board to the top with the LED Debug readout also being present now.

Continue reading: ASUS Crosshair V Formula refresh sneaks under the radar (full post)