ECS showed off a large array of products at their booth at Computex this year, demonstrating the range of markets they cater to, from consumer to industrial. To start with, their long lived LIVA series of mini PCs have received an update to Intel's 13th gen Core series of processors with the LIVA Z5. The LIVA Z5 lineup includes three new models: the Z5 Plus, a more spacious Z5E Plus, and a completely passive Z5F Plus. Each of these feature the new processor generation up to 15 W and are designed for smart retail and kiosk deployments. The series not only boasts the new processor generation, but also expandable DDR4-3200 with capacities up to 64 GB, M.2 PCI-E NVMe Gen 4x4 SSD storage (plus 2.5" SATA in the Z5E and Z5F), optional Wi-Fi 6 module, dual 2.5 GbE, three USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 Type-A, USB Type-C, HDMI, and COM ports. Each of these new models can support up to four simultaneous 4K displays. ECS had the Z5 and Z5E Plus running as a multi-display automated self-service kiosk in their booth where visitors could order a bubble tea. Beside these was also the new LIVA P300, a slightly larger ITX barebones machine with a Q670 motherboard supporting both 12th and 13th Gen processors on LGA 1700, up to 65 W TDP.

ENERMAX came to the Computex 2023 in full force, showcasing a wide range of new products including new PSUs with ATX 3.0 certification, as well as the new LIQTECH and LIQMAXFLO AIO liquid CPU coolers with new pump design.

ENERMAX definitely had a lot to show at the Computex 2023 event and there were some rather unique and innovative new products on display, including the PLATIMAX GEMINI, a PSU that meets both ATX 3.0 and Intel's new ATX12VO (12 V-only) standards. PLATIMAX GEMINI is an 80 Plus Platinum 1200 W power supply, that surpasses efficiency standards of the ATX12VO standard. ENERMAX also had the who new REVOLUTION D.F. X PSU lineup that is ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5 ready with a native 600 W 12VHPWR cable and an extra dual 8-pin to 12VHPWR 600 W cable, and features new patented Dust-Free Rotation (D.F.R) technology, a new feature that promises to significantly reduce the accumulation of dust around the fan blades. It also features an ARGB side panel with 14 built in lighting modes, and an RGB control button. ENERMAX was showcasing the SPLAVE X REVOLUTION D.F. X PSU, a special edition 1200 W PSU designed in cooperation with a well-known overclocker Splave.

Editor's note: Our in-depth review of Endorfy Arx 700 Air is now live.

At Computex 2023, Endorfy has launched the Arx 700 Air and Arx 700 ARGB PC cases, designed with maximum cooling potential and easy component access. The cases accommodate a tall cooling system, up to 8 fans, and any current graphics card, with the Arx 700 Air featuring 5 Stratus 140 PWM fans and the Arx 700 ARGB including 4 illuminated Stratus 140 PWM ARGB fans. The design is minimalist, with a tempered glass side panel that allows internal component visibility. Both cases measure 486×228×472 mm (H×W×L) and support ATX, microATX, and ITX motherboards, with a graphics card clearance of 410 mm, CPU cooler clearance of 179 mm, and power supply clearance of 340 mm. They have 7 expansion slots and internal bays that include 1× 2.5"/3.5" and 6× 2.5". The cases can accommodate up to 8 fans and come with built-in dust filters. The front I/O includes 1× USB-C, 2× USB-A, 1× headphones (minijack 3.5 mm), 1× microphone (minijack 3.5 mm), and power and reset buttons. The Arx 700 Air and Arx 700 ARGB are priced at 109 and 119 EUR, respectively.

The Endorfy Arx 500 Air and Arx 500 ARGB are also shown; however, we don't have exact specifications yet, and we expect them to follow soon. Visually, we see that the 500 series is shorter than the 700 series. The cases are priced at 99 and 109 EUR, respectively.

Seasonic had a lot to show at Computex 2023, including its full range of power supply units from the PRIME, VERTEX, and FOCUS series, that are now fully compliant with ATX 3.0 and PCIe Gen 5 specifications. In addition, Seasonic also had its new MagFlow ARGB fans on display, and a wide range of high efficiency industrial PSUs.

Seasonic's PRIME, VERTEX, and FOCUS series were front and center at the Computex showcase, and those high power PSUs with Gold, Platinum, and Titanium efficiency ratings will be equipped with 12VHPWR connectors, meet the latest graphics card requirements, and feature both modular and recognizable stamped cable design. The star of the show were obviously the PRIME PX-1600, PRIME Fanless TX-700, and the FOCUS SPX-750, which is a compact SFX PSU with modular design.

Neo Forza, a Taiwanese brand entity under Goldkey Technology Corporation, had a booth at Computex 2023, where the company showed its next-generation memory and storage products. Starting off, the company presented its DDR5 memory kits running at 8000 MHz speeds, indicating the maturity of DDR5 and that we are way past the initial 4800 MHz speeds at launch. The demonstrated kit was a part of the company's TRINITY lineup, which was displayed in white. For demo purposes, the kit was configured as two 16 GB DIMMs.

Next up, Neo Forza has showcased its next-generation PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD. Running at x4 lanes of the new PCIe 5.0 protocol, the 2 TB SSD was spotted running at 10 GB/s speeds in both read and write tasks set by CrystalDiskMark benchmark. Interestingly, the SSD also boasted a massive heatsink, as shown below.

Transcend brought its latest flash storage and PC memory products to Computex 2023. The company, much like Kingston and Micron, appears to be focusing on the high-volume mid-range of the market that it can sell both in the retail channel and to OEMs, without too much invested on niche high-end ones. To begin with, the company showed us its DDR5 UDIMMs and RDIMMs. Nothing flashy—these stick with JEDEC-standard speeds, such as DDR5-5600 (13th Gen native speed), and DDR5-4800.

The company doesn't have PCIe Gen 5 SSDs yet, but we were shown a handful Gen 4 ones meant for the DIY retail channel, including the PCIe SSD 250H (MTE250H), with its sporty heatsink, and extensive testing for PlayStation 5 compatibility; and its alter-ego without the heatsink, the PCIe SSD 250S (MTE250S). These drives come in capacities ranging between 1 TB to 4 TB, with sequential transfer speeds of up to 7.5 GB/s reads, and up to 6.7 GB/s writes. Also shown were a set of smaller NVMe Gen 3 SSDs in the M.2-2230 and M.2-2260 form-factors, the MTE300S and MTE400S, respectively. With capacities of just 256 GB and 512 GB for the MTE300S, and 256 GB thru 1 TB for the MTE400S, these drives are probably meant for hand-held game consoles, or low-cost desktop PCs, where OEMs or SIs buy them in large quantities.

Leadtek revealed its GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Hurricane custom graphics card at the tail end of last month. The latest refresh of the company's Hurricane cooling solution looked very space age with its curved central X-formation design. Leadtek has chosen to expand upon this aesthetic with bigger brother NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40-series cards shown off at Computex this week. The company's WinFast GPU lineup has grown with the additions of RTX 4090 Hurricane 24G, RTX 4080 Hurricane 16G, RTX 4070 Ti Hurricane 12G and RTX 4070 Hurricane 12G models.

All of these units sport metal backplates, but there are some differences in the makeup of attached cooling solutions. The RTX 4090 and 4080 models are cooled by a triple (100 m) fan array and eight heat pipes. The RTX 4070 Ti sports three "large" fans (size not specified) and six heat pipes. The RTX 4070 (non-Ti) makes do with only a pair of "large" fans, but has the same number of heat pipes (six) as its immediate sibling, albeit packed into a much shorter surround.

AZZA, a company known for creating cases of interesting design, had a new lineup to show at Computex 2023. The star of the show may very well be AZZA's new Sanctum 810, a giant cube case with a cut corner that carries support for up to seven 120 mm fans, creating adequate airflow once configured. There is even room to mount a 360 mm radiator for a custom water cooling build, as shown in the pictures below.

Next, we have AZZA's oddly-shaped Mesa 811 -- a twisted cube case that supports E-ATX motherboards, has glass side panels, and even has perforated aluminium panels. It also fits three 120 mm fans in the front and only has one 120 mm in the back, but there is space to do a custom cooling loop.

Gamiac is a brand new gaming peripherals outfit - recently created by Pro Gamersware GmbH. The plucky crew debuted their product range at this year's Computex with the aim of demonstrating gaming devices that offer excellent quality, flexibility and great value for money. The headliners appear to be two mechanical keyboard models - TKL-87G (87 keys) and TKL-68G (68 keys) - both sport 19 RGB modes, Kailh hot-swappable switches and durable PBT keycaps. A variety of casing and keycap color schemes will be available at launch - Gamiac estimates that the TKL-87G and TKL-68G keyboards will be out before the end of 2023.

The young brand also presented their PX-71 super light gaming mouse at Computex - this fancy pointing device features a modular design, so users can configure between solid and honey-comb shells. An interchangeable switch system is installed on the mouse's PCB - providing the option to hot-swap out the primary (M1 + M2) buttons. The PX-71 is a wired gaming mouse with a maximum 16,000 DPI - this likely points to it packing a Pixart PAW 3335 or PMW 3360 optical sensor. Gamiac will provide full specifications, pricing and launch information at a later date.

AeroCool is presenting their newly introduced Performance Nexus (APNX) products at this year's Computex - including a case, power supply, CPU air cooler and case fans. They have decided to offer this hardware lineup in a wide variety of colors - let us start with the APNX-C1 ATX tower case which can be customized further with all sorts of alternative tone top plates. There are standard black and white options for traditionalists, as well as more adventurous variants in the form of green, pink and red color schemes. The internal layout can accommodate a maximum of 10 case fans - three APNX 120 mm units are pre-installed at the front. AeroCool indicates that the APNX-C1 case will be coming out later this year with an MSRP of $149/€139.

The APNX F1 are F2 are PWM case fans with ARGB lighting systems, offered up in two sizes: 120 mm and 140 mm. AeroCool has increased fan thickness to 30 mm on these Performance Nexus units, which they reckon contributes to greater cooling efficiency (by 50%) over standard 25 mm examples. The chunky casing features sizable anti-vibration rubber pads that ensure that the APNX F1 and F2 operate at super quiet levels. There were many color options on display at the company's booth - so system builders will be have plenty of tonal customizations to experiment with. The F1 has a bi-chromatic plastic design, while the F2 has a textured metal frame - the latter will be supplied with a swappable reverse air flow fan blade. AeroCool is still in the process of finalizing these F-models, so availability and pricing will be announced at a later time.

Sparkle already announced that it will be coming up with the Intel Arc graphics card lineup soon, and it came to the Computex 2023 show in force, showing some rather impressive graphics cards, including the Arc A770 Watercooling concept, a couple of custom TITAN OC Edition graphics cards, and the A370 MXM version.

Sparkle's Intel Arc lineup starts off with some industrial low-profile graphics cards based on Intel Arc A310 and Arc A380 graphics cards, as well as standard Mini-ITX size ELF series versions which will be based on the same GPUs. Sparkle is also working on an Intel Arc A370 MXM GPU for laptops, which is a nice surprise. The main part of the showcase were certainly Sparkle's Intel Arc ORC and TITAN OC Edition custom versions of the Intel Arc A750 and Arc A770 chips. The biggest surprise though was the custom Sparkle A770 Watercooling concept. Sparkle is definitely serious in joining the Intel Arc team with Acer, ASRock, GUNNIR, Gigabyte, MSI and others, so hopefully we'll see some of these graphics cards on retail/e-tail shelves soon.

Schenker XMG also unveiled the new PRO 16 Studio workstation laptop at the Computex 2023 event, which will be equipped with an Intel Core i9-13900H CPU and up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070. In addition, the company is announcing the new WORK Base series and Vision-series laptops that are available under the Schenker brand, introducing new form-factors and bringing several other updates.

The new XMG Pro 16 Studio promises to be quite a versatile workstation laptop aimed at content creators, using a 16:10 aspect ratio screen, and packing some serious power with Intel's Core i9-13900H CPU and up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card, as well as two DDR5 slots with DDR5-5200 support, and Thunderbolt 4. The XMG Pro 16 Studio also comes with NVIDIA Studio certification. Schenker also showed the efficient vapor chamber cooling that will be used in the XMG Pro 16 Studio. It also brings several upgrades compared to the current XMG Focus 16 laptop, which it can be compared to, at least performance-wise, including an additional USB-C power delivery, a Windows Hello camera, 2.5 Gbit LAN, longer battery life, and a slimmer aluminium body. Schenker notes that the XMG PRO 16 Studio should be available in Europe in late July or early August.

Anacomda, a Taiwanese memory, storage, and accessories maker, had a booth at Computex 2023, where the company presented the new DDR5 memory kits with speeds ranging up to 7000 MHz. Starting off, we have the model called "Standard," which is just a standard DDR5 UDIMM memory kit available as 8 and 16 GB DIMM, in 2x 8 GB and 2x 16 GB capacities. Running at 4800 MHz, the standard kit has a CAS latency of 40, with a running voltage set to 1.1 Volts. Next is the KingSnake Overclocking UDIMM, which is, as the name suggests, a kit optimized for overclocking. Available in frequencies of 5600/6000/6200/7000 MHz, these memory modules run at 1.25 or 1.45 Volts at CAS latencies of 40 and 36. They also come in 16 GB and 32 GB capacities.

Last but not least, there is an ET (EryxTataricus) unbuffered UDIMM kit that is basically an RGB version of KingSnake, with all the same features except the inclusion of RGB lighting capable of syncing with all modern motherboard RGB software.

During Computex 2023, Montech had an entire fleet of new products spanning new PC enclosures, new open-frame cases, air-cooling products, and ATX 3.0 power supplies. Starting with the regular cases, Montec introduced AIR 903 MAX, AIR 300 MAX & AIR 3000 MAX series; the AIR 900 MAX can accommodate a broad spectrum of needs, as it supports both true E-ATX form factors and SSI-EEB motherboards. The case also has a capacity for 5 SSDs and 2 HDDs and is equipped with a USB TYPE-C port and USB 3.0 ports. It supports up to 360 mm AIO coolers at the front and top. Customers can choose between sleek black and pristine white, available in two variants, the AIR 903 MAX and AIR 903 BASE. Optimized for airflow, the front panel has a 51% porosity ventilation rate, along with four pre-installed HP 140 fans in the case.

Next up, we have two new models: AIR 300 MAX and AIR 3000 MAX. Both models have a detachable top bracket and a patented quick-slide metal dust filter, allowing for easy radiator adjustments and compatibility with RTX 4090 GPUs. The AIR 300 MAX is an m-ATX case featuring support for a 280 mm radiator at both the top and front, plus a 30 mm clearance provision for cable management. It has ARGB PWM Fans (2x HP140 & 1x HP120) for ventilation. Contrarily, the AIR 3000 MAX, is a full tower case, offering support for a 360 mm radiator at the top, front, and side, along with a large storage capacity for up to 11 HDDs using stacked brackets. This model comes fitted with four HP140 ARGB PWM fans.

Asustor at Computex 2023 pointed us in the direction in which personal high-capacity storage, particularly NAS servers, are headed. The company unveiled its first pure-flash based NAS, and conventional HDD caddie-based NAS that have M.2 NVMe slots. The Flashstor 12 Pro (FS6712X) packs twelve M.2 NVMe slots, and is driven by a Celeron N5105 processor with 4 GB of DDR4-2933 memory on an SO-DIMM slot (which you can expand).

The M.2 slots support various NVMe RAID modes, including single, JBOD, RAID 0/1/5/6/10, etc. Besides these you get two 5 Gbps USB 3.2 ports. Networking interfaces include one 10 GbE. The company also unveiled a more compact version of this, with the Flashstor 6 (FS6706T), which comes with six M.2 NVMe slots, the same processor and NVMe RAID features, but two 2.5 GbE interfaces instead of the 10 GbE on the Flashstor 12 Pro.

Cooler Master has showcased a couple of new PSUs at the Computex 2023, including the X Silent series Max and Edge PSUs, which are "near-silent" and fanless models that should be coming soon. In addition, Cooler Master has come up with some high-quality 12VHPWR 90 degree cables that should be better than standard ones.

The X Series Max is described as "near-silent" since it has a low speed RGB fan in order to support higher wattage, but will keep the noise at 20dB. The X Silent Max will be available in models of up to 1300 W and uses a single-piece heat dissipation structure. The X Series Edge is a whole different beast as this is a completely fanless PSU, that features special airflow-improving extended fan cover, vapor chamber technology, and the same single-piece heat dissipation structure. The X Series Edge will go to up to 750 W. Both of these X Series PSUs are ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 compliant, which means they come with 12VHPWR cables, and both support Cooler Master's MasterControl software, allowing users to monitor temperature, current load, and overall performance. Cooler Master also unveiled new 12VHPWR cables, with 90-degree angle that should prevent unnecessary bending, as well as an upgraded connector design with double springs and thicker wire, which should be better than those previous cables and reduce the connector temperatures by 5 degrees.

Essencore KLEVV brought in a formidable lineup of new PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs and DDR5 memory for gamers and overclockers, at the 2023 Computex. The lineup is led by the KLEVV CRAS V RGB series of DDR5 memory that comes in high-end speeds of DDR5-6000 (30-36-36-76 @ 1.35 V), DDR5-6400 (32-38-38-78 @ 1.35 V), DDR5-7200 (34-44-44-84 @ 1.40 V), DDR5-7600 (36-46-46-86 @ 1.40 V), and DDR5-8000 (38-48-48-128 @ 1.55 V). These modules feature both Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO SPD profiles. The KLEVV BOLT V series form the company's mid-range, offering speeds of DDR5-6000 (30-36-36-76 @ 1.35 V), DDR5-6400 (32-38-38-78 @ 1.35 V), and DDR5-6800 (34-40-40-80 @ 1.35 V). Both XMP 3.0 and EXPO are to be found even with these modules. The company interestingly also has standard modules for DDR5-4800 and DDR5-5600, which make do with just 1.1 V. We also spied KLEVV's odd-capacity 24 GB and 48 GB CRAS V RGB modules.

The storage lineup for Essencore is led by the KLEVV CRAS C950 PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD, and the CRAS C910 Gen 4 SSD. The CRAS C950 comes in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacities, and uses a Phison E26-series controller paired with 3D TLC NAND flash. The 1 TB variant offers up to 11.5 GB/s sequential reads, with up to 8.5 GB/s sequential writes, while the 2 TB and 4 TB models do up to 12 GB/s sequential reads, with up to 11 GB/s sequential writes. The drive uses a chunky passive aluminium heatsink to keep cool. The CRAS C910, on the other hand, comes both as a bare drive (without heatsink), and as the CRAS C910 RGB, where it features a heatsink with an RGB diffuser. The drive uses an InnoGrit IG5220 controller, comes in capacities of up to 1 TB, and offers speeds of up to 5 GB/s sequential reads, with up to 4.8 GB/s sequential writes.

Iceberg Thermal this Computex introduced some of the stuff it didn't show us at this year's CES. While the company focused on air coolers there, here we caught several new AIO liquid CPU coolers. The company also showed off its first cases, but they're just prototypes for now. The Invisible 415 (working name), gets its name from its mirrored body panels that can make it look "invisible," or so its designers say. We think it just looks very pretty. The mid-tower features a conventional horizontally partitioned layout, with room for graphics cards up to 37 cm in length (if you forfeit the front radiator and fans); CPU coolers up to 17.5 cm in height, and PSUs (and their cabling) up to 41 cm in length, if you can pull out the bottom drive cages. You get 7 conventional and 3 vertical expansion slots, and fan-mounts that include three 140 mm (or smaller) front, three 140 mm (or smaller) on top, and a rear 140 mm. You can mount radiators up to 360 mm in size along the front- and top panels. Not sold on the black-mirror front panel? The company is also working on a mesh variant.

be quiet!, a German company focusing on creating PC components and accessories, had a strong presence at Computex 2023. Showing off its cases and power supplies, the company introduced a few additions to its portfolio of offerings. For starters, be quiet! has introduced a new case series called Shadow Base. The new Shadow Base lineup is focused on maximum airflow and maximum performance, where the company has made a new open mesh design that allows for "exceptionally high airflow." Inaugurating model of the series is the Shadow Base 800, which comes in three flavors: standard, DX, and FX. The standard edition is just a regular case without flashy RGB; the DX model has an RGB strip, while the FX model is tailored for maximum RGB illumination across the case. With up to E-ATX motherboard support, the case supports three or four 140 mm fans, depending on the variant. You can see the specification sheet below.

Cooler Master had plenty to show at the Computex 2023 event, including a pair of new MasterLiquid AiO coolers that should eventually find its way to retail/e-tail shelves, the MasterLiquid 360 Ion and the MasterLiquid 360 Atmos. Cooler Master is also looking into some new markets with its open-loop cooling system concept design.

The MasterLiquid 360 Ion is obviously the star of the show as Cooler Master was proud to display it alongside its X Silent Max PSU, and this one comes with a 2.1-inch LCD screen on the dual-chamber pump that can display pretty much anything. The 360 mm radiator comes with Cooler Master's Mobius 120P ARGB fans, and Cooler Master also included RGB light strip around the pump. The MasterLiquid 360 Atmos is also an interesting upcoming product and while it does not feature an LCD screen, it comes with customizable pump cover that can be 3D printed. It features three SickleFlow Edge ARGB fans that promises exceptional performance and low noise levels. Unfortunately, there is also no word on the availability or the price of the new MasterLiquid AiO coolers. Cooler Master also showcased its open-loop concept cooling components including fittings, radiator, pump, tubes, as well as GPU and CPU water blocks, which could be something that Cooler Master could get into eventually.

Somewhat unexpectedly, QNAP has entered the high-end video production market with a couple of products that the company was demoing at Computex. First up is the TBS-574TX, which is a high-end, yet compact NAS with 10 Gbps Ethernet and Thunderbolt 4 support. However, what makes this device so unique, is that it features five hot-swappable E1.S drives, which means that video production companies can easily swap between different projects which can be put in cold storage when not worked on. The TBS-574TX is based around a 12th gen, 12 core Intel Core i5 CPU, although QNAP didn't specify the exact model, but it's likely to be a mobile part with native Thunderbolt 4 support. The CPU is paired with 16 GB of RAM, which should make this a fairly snappy NAS overall. QNAP will also offer E1.S to M.2 adapters, but the company is still working on how to implement these with a suitable cooling solution.

For companies that need something faster than 10 Gbps or even 25 Gbps networking to shuffle files around, QNAP also demoed the QSW-M7308R-4X—a model name that just rolls off your tongue—which features no less than four 100 Gbps ports and eight 25 Gbps ports. The key selling point of this fibre based switch is that it doesn't require any user configuration before it can be deployed in a network, even though it can be managed when needed. It also features quieter cooling fans than your average enterprise switch, plus it comes in a much more compact half width 1U form factor. QNAP will also launch the QSW-M3216R-8S8T later this year, which will be an updated version of its current 10 Gbps managed switches, but with around a US$100 lower price tag.

Regular readers of TPU might remember our in-depth USB4 article that we posted almost a year ago, but since then, very little has happened and ASMedia has as yet to make its ASM4242 USB4 host controller available to its partners and then ASM2464 USB4 to PCIe 4.0 bridge was suffering the same fate until May this year, when it was released to ASMedia's customers. It turns out most of it is related to USB-IF certification and the USB4 design documentation, as the certification wasn't quite ready for a third party host controller and the design documents were—shall we say—less than complete and relied too heavily on the Thunderbolt 3 spec. This meant that ASMedia had to retest and redo a lot of work they had done, due to a certain spec donator having assumed that other companies knew how it had designed its Thunderbolt products.

The good news is that we should see the ASM4242 in the market before the end of this year and ASMedia is busy testing it and its ASM2464 with a wide range of products to make sure compatibility is as good as possible. In the company suite at Computex, ASMedia was showing the ASM2464 connected to Apple's M2 silicon, as well as Intel's latest CPUs with integrated Thunderbolt 4 support. There had been some performance related issues from Apple's side, but this has apparently been resolved in a recent update from Apple. As far as Intel is concerned, there are no compatibility issues with the 13th and possibly 12th gen mobile chips, but older Thunderbolt hardware might require a firmware update, which may or may not exist. Older Intel hardware also doesn't perform as well as its most recent solutions, but it doesn't mean there will be compatibility issues outright. As for AMD, ASMedia informed TPU that there were no issues, since AMD has a USB4 implementation in its mobile products that follow the USB-IF spec.

So far it has been very quiet on the market when it comes to USB4 hubs, with most products being based on Intel Thunderbolt hardware costing Thunderbolt money. Realtek was demoing its RTS5490 "hub router controller" at Computex and it's as far as we're aware, the first USB4 hub IC that has been announced. The RTS5490 supports speeds of up to 40 Gbps and it has one upstreams and four downstreams ports. It's also backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps), as well as slower USB standards. It also supports the USB PD 3.1 standard and should as such be suitable for docking stations that can deliver up to 240 W to a connected laptop.

It also has native support for DisplayPort 2.1 Alt mode and UHBR20 up to 80 Gbps for DisplayPort signals. The demo board only had an older MST controller, so it would be limited to DP 1.4, but hopefully some company is working on a DP 2.1 MST controller, as this is required to split off the DP signal to the physical ports from USB-C. We were not given any details on when the RTS5490 will be available in the market and pricing will obviously depend on what kind of extra features are being added by the device makers, as it's unlikely that the first products based on it will be simple hubs.

Considering all the buzz around WiFi 7, there weren't many live demos at Computex, but Realtek had a demo running in its suite at the show. Realtek will offer both client and router/AP solutions, with their client product which goes under the RTL8922AE model name, coming in M.2 2230 and 1620 formats, where the latter is a solder down module. To simulate a real world scenario, Realtek was running a second radio to cause some additional interference, but the RTL8922AE test setup was still capable of delivering between 1,750 and 1,950 Mbps, which is almost twice as fast as WiFi 6, using a similar 2x2 antenna setup. This was obviously over a fairly short distance, so the question is how well WiFi 7 will work over longer distances.

The RTL8922AE has a claimed maximum sync speed of 2800 Mbps when connected to the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands simultaneously and combining the bandwidth of both bands. However, it is limited to a 160 MHz channel bandwidth, whereas WiFi 7 can go up to a 320 MHz wide channel, but it's unclear if competing first gen clients will support this. The RTL8922AE also incorporates support for Bluetooth 5.4 and is as far as we're aware one of the first WiFi chips to support the upcoming standard that mostly focuses on improving BLE Audio and Auracast support. The RTL8922AE should launch sometime in the fourth quarter this year to Realtek's customers, so it might not appear on the market until early 2024.

The time has finally come for Streacom to reveal the fruits of their collaborative labor with CALYOS in creating the SG10 fanless chassis. Though originally based on the NSG S0 (or NSG0), the entire project has undergone a complete redesign over the last few years to deliver the SG10 being shown off at Computex 2023. The new design is a 15 kg metal and glass monster featuring two of CALYOS' specially designed "Loop Heat Pipe" evaporation cooling systems that pull heat from the CPU and GPU, then passively radiate that heat away via two large condensers at the top of the chassis. The main body of the chassis is assembled from steel and extruded aluminium, and features tempered glass side panels. The front, rear, top, and bottom are all open to allow air to move through the chassis. The interior of the chassis uses a dynamic rail system, similar to Streacom's other case designs such as the DA2 and DB4, where adjustable brackets mount to structural rails running along the top and bottom of the chassis. The main components, such as an ATX motherboard and the GPU, are to be mounted to these rails in an X configuration on opposite sides of the chassis, facing each of the glass panels, while the power supply mounts to the floor of the chassis behind the motherboard. For drive support the chassis features an array of extra brackets with slots for screws to affix five 3.5" or 2.5" drives to. The front and optional rear I/O plates mount to the vertical steel structures and can be placed anywhere on those sides.

Streacom had a demo at their booth with the SG10 cooling a Core i9-13900K and GeForce RTX 4080 under a FurMark load with a total system power draw of around 680 W. While the RTX 4080 was sitting at a quite comfortable 75° C, the i9-13900K was stuck right up against its thermal limit of 100° C. Streacom claims the CPU and GPU loops of the cooler utilize identical designs with the only difference being the mounting bracket, however due to the GPU block being mounted directly to the GPU die the cooling is rated at 350 W rather than 250 W. They claim if the CPU loop is mounted direct-die it would perform similarly to the GPU loop, and it's possible to add 120 mm fans along the top, below the condensers, to further improve cooling. Another complication—not unlike with custom water cooling parts—is the GPU side of the cooler requires that mounting brackets and VRM/VRAM heatsinks be made to fit specific generations of cards. As such Streacom only advertises compatibility with the most recent generations of GeForce RTX 3000 and 4000 series, as well as Radeon RX 6000 and 7000, and only those which have a PCB shorter than 280 mm, but support is expected to improve with new bracket kits available after launch. The pricing has yet to be confirmed for the SG10 but it's rumored that it will land around the $1000 USD price point when it launches.