CES 2012 - As I was perusing through the vast display of Corsair product I ran across this beauty sitting amongst the various new and older flagship models of the cases on display there. I never did get a name for the artist of this piece, but I can definitely appreciate the time and effort that goes into a case mod, especially one of this magnitude!

Not only did the visible side of the chassis get the full treatment, even the side most of us leave against the wall gets gold trimmed parts to give this 400R a very steam punk, yet almost destroyed look, that I for one really like.

The top of the chassis got a new section added to the front with toggle switches now used for power with a small LCD display just behind it. The unit was not powered up, so what is actually displayed here is still a mystery.

CES 2012 - Corsair plans to take the budget chassis segment by storm with the latest addition to the Carbide Series chassis with this new 300R. Corsair is launching the 30R at just less than $90, and is rumored at this point to possibly drop below the $79.99 price point if it is at all possible to do. That leaves us a chassis that stands on its own in aesthetics externally, but also is a new interior design to allow room for a large system for those who want to house a full ATX and multiple card setup, but don't want to spend $150 or more to get what they want.

Of course you can see the inside of the chassis here, but the main point I wanted to make was that even with the large mesh area at the bottom of the front bezel, there are also side ventilation slits cut into the sides of the bezel in the 300R to allow even more places to let the cooler ambient air onto the chassis to deliver a cooler interior while in use. Also both sides of the bezel are very pillar like and makes for an attractive yet very functional use of the front bezel.

The tag line for this chassis from Corsair's description of the interior is "it's big where it counts." This means that while this is a mid tower solution, you will have all the room you need to get in larger video cards with the removal of the middle of the drive assembly. This chassis has only the trio of optical bays and the quartet of hard drive bays. The 300R is made to allow users the ease of room for cards without having to remove and store extra components. For most of us with gaming systems, we don't typically fill the front of the chassis, and Corsair noted this and is delivering a more basic layout to simplify and make the users experience on of ease and joy, versus frustration and an empty wallet.

CES 2012: Intel had quite a few announcements at CES 2012, and one of them was from Intel PC chief Mooly Eden where he says that so far, there are 75-plus Ultrabooks set to launch this year. Yes, more than 75 different Ultrabooks!

Out of these 75, 50-percent of them will sport 14- and 15-inch displays. This is a move to take some of those customers away from buying an Apple MacBook Air, as they'll be just as, if not more thin, light and inexpensive than their fruit-logo'd counterparts.

On top of this, Intel is kick starting one of their biggest marketing campaigns for the Ultrabooks. This new marketing campaign has been dubbed "A New Era in Computing". This will be Intel's biggest marketing campaign since 2003, so you can see they mean business. They haven't planned a launch this large since they introduced Centrino chips for Wi-Fi-capable laptops eight years ago.

ASUS are rolling out their eagerly-awaited Transformer Prime update, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). This is actually 48 hours earlier than previously known, with a few sites and people already updated to the new OS, the first impressions of it seem to be that the Prime is vastly-improved with ICS, especially with web browsing.

Sites that usually took 10-20 seconds, now reportedly take around 6 seconds. A very nice, and free, improvement. Another nice UI update that comes with ICS is the Roboto font scheme Google have introduced. Swipe-to-dismiss notifications are now baked in, which is much better than trying to squeeze your finger down to a smaller pin size to hit that 'x' next to the notification you want to dismiss.

But, it feels like a bit of a sour update. Considering ASUS teased the super-Transformer yesterday in the form of the TF700T Transformer Prime that sports the 1920x1200 display and is overall, much better - the OTA update feels... stale. But, you can't complain about getting something for free. If you've got a Transformer Prime and haven't updated to ICS, you should really do so. Once you're done, let us know how you go. I'm interested on your thoughts between Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich, which one tastes better?

CES 2012: Razer are a hardware PC gaming orientated company and are constantly living life on the edge by releasing new product after new product. At CES, they unveiled Project Fiona. It is handheld PC gaming, made by Razer. The possibly future of portable PC gaming.

Project Fiona is a proof-of-concept design shown off at CES as part of Razer's strategy to stand out from the crowd of been-there-seen-that smartphones and tablets. Last year they unveiled the Razer Switchblade and now, Project Fiona. Switchblade never really made it to the market, but elements of the technology were baked into Razer's Blade gaming laptop.

Razer's Project Fiona may just be a proof-of-concept, but Razer CEO and creative director, Min-Liang Tan has said that they plan on shipping an actual project by the end of the year, and what will be sold as an actual product, will differ to just shipping a tablet PC with handlebars. Min-Liang Tan said to Kotaku, "I love my iPad," as he explained Project Fiona to them. He went on to say:

CES 2012: LG have announced during CES 2012 that it is adding voice recognition and 3D gesture control to their Cinema Screen range of 3DTV products in 2012. Not only are LG putting the Smart in TV, but they're adding interactivity.

They unveiled an 84-inch "ultra-resolution" TV that has a 1mm bezel, other displays will arrive in 55- and 60-inch and will be slimmer than 5mm. The new Cinema Screen lineup sports an upgraded LG Smart TV platform with a redesigned Magic Remote and touch-screen plasma. It will also include voice recognition and a 3D gesture interface to enable gaming and searching by gesture. You'll be able to talk to the TV and gesture commands at it, too.

LG didn't stop there with the unveiling and announcements, they also mentioned Smart Share Plus with Wi-Fi, which lets you watch whats on your TV, directly on your mobile device. The new platform will also reportedly make it easier for developers to create new apps for the TV.

Shamino posted a thread on the kingpincooling forum, where the ASUS R&D have figured a way to publish voltage modifications for graphics cards.

These include control of the VGA loadline, switching frequency, OverCurrent Protection and core voltage. The picture above shows what to solder with the Rampage IV Extreme. These headers are then plugged into the video card, in the below shot. There are some steps you should follow:

Internode have today begun its first program to rent industry-leading FRITZ!Box broadband routers and accessories to customers, and at the same time, have slashed pricing across its range of FRITZ!Box equipment. Internode customers can save themselves up-front costs from the AVM FRITZ!Box 7270 and 7390 routers, and FRITZ!Fon DECT handsets, by opting to pay a monthly rental fee within a 24-month contract.

Internode will then rent customers the 7270 for $9.95 per month, the 7390 for $14.95 per month, and the DECT handset for $4.95 per month. If customers choose to purchase the equipment outright, Internode has slashed pricing of the two FRITZ!Box routers by $50, and taken $20 off the FRITZ!Fon handset.

Internode product manager, Philip Dempster has said:

CES 2011: CES is a time where technology porn is at its highest. ASUS stepped up their game by showing off their ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard which supports the soon-to-be-released Intel Sandy Bridge-EP Xeon E5 platform.

As you can see in the above shot, the board looks insanely hot, sporting no less than seven PCIe slots, and eight DIMM slots. It also has ten SATA ports, and of course, dual Socket LGA 2011 support. The board is powered by a single 24-pin ATX power connector backed up by dual 8-pin connectors.

Considering how feature-packed the board is already, it's surprising that on the rear panel we only see two USB 3.0 connectors. On top of using Intel PHYs and Realtek audio, there's an ASPEED AST2300 2D VGA controller and also provides management over IP. Also spotted on the board is a swappable LOTES 'X-Socket' which is also used on the X79 ROG boards and CHiL PWMs.

As a huge, huge fan of original two Max Payne games, I can't help but think this is pure marketing speech here, but I have my fingers crossed anyway. VG247 had a quick quote from Remedy Entertainment's Oskari Hakkinen praising Rockstar's work on the new entry into the Max Payne series, Max Payne 3.

Rockstar threw a copy of Max Payne 3 over the Remedy, who made the original two games, to see if it lived up to the franchise, where Remedy said: