Introduction

After running around for most of the morning chasing ATI Crossfire benchmarks and writing our initial article, we also managed to visit some company booths. Our Day 1 coverage looks at ThermalTake, Shuttle, Gigabyte, ABIT and DFI, most of which had some very interesting products to show us.

Given our limited time and need for food and sleep, we'll save the lengthy introduction and just get right into it.

Thermaltake

Thermaltake had a number of interesting PC cases, cooling products and power supplies to show us. Firstly, their latest chassis dubbed 'Taichi' (pictured below), is constructed entirely of aluminum and supports both the ATX and BTX form factors. The more interesting aspects are the hydraulic doors and the built-in water-cooling system, which sits snugly inside the left-hand door. It also comes with two 120mm fans, one at the front (intake) and one at the back (exhaust).

Thermaltake is really pushing the BTX form factor this year, as the Kandalf and Armor cases both boast BTX support. Aside from the image below, we didn't grab too much information regarding Kandalf, but the armor (second image) is a true monster. It's got eleven 5.25" drive bays (3.5" inter-changeable), two 120mm blue LED fans and two 80mm fans.

Their smaller Eclipse case was also quite interesting, particularly due to its CD storage compartment in the front bezel. It also boasts a complex array of blue LEDs, dual 120mm case fans and a transparent side window.

The push towards lounge room PCs seems to be an emerging trend at this year's Computex, and Thermaltake had a number of home-theatre cases on show. As you can see from the image below, these would fit quite well in any lounge room, with a range of styles and sizes to suit different tastes.

The object seen on the left and right appears to be a speaker, but it's actually ThermalTake's 'Symphony' water cooling system. This includes an 'all-in-one' external pump, radiator (five times the surface area of the Big Water) and reservoir, as well as dual pumps (90L/hr flow rate) and five 120mm fans.

Also at the booth were a range of new hard drive controllers, available in three sizes - 5.25", 3.5" and 2.5".

Moving onto their cooling products, ThermalTake is introducing a new external water-cooling system called 'Tribe'. Tribe is the successor to Aquarius III, and definitely looks a lot better. The unit also comes with a number of optional accessories, pictured below.

Another product that we're definitely looking forward to testing is the 'Tide Water', which is a liquid cooling solution for graphics cards. It features universal clips for nVidia and ATI designs, and Thermaltake says that it'll fit on an SLI setup as well.

There were also a number of air coolers on display, the most interesting of which was the Golden Orb - an old-time favorite amongst overclockers that ThermalTake has decided to bring back. It supports both Intel LGA775 and AMD K8 processors, and boasts an all copper base with aluminum fins.

Finally, ThermalTake is introducing a modularized PSU called the 'Purepower Power Station'. It's a 520W model, but being modularized means that cable clutter is kept to a minimum. The images below say it all.