Computex 2007: Thermaltake, ABIT, Corsair, Sapphire

Over the last few years, Thermaltake has had an increasingly greater presence at Computex. The company has used Computex as a launch pad for a number of new products, and this year’s show was no exception. New coolers, cases, power supplies, and even a few gadgets were on display at Thermaltake’s booth.

One of the first coolers on display that caught our eye was the DuOrb, essentially two of Thermaltakes popular Orb coolers combined to form one giant heatsink fan. The DuOrb was designed as a quieter and more efficient replacement for the stock cooling units on high end graphics cards like the GeForce 8800GTX. Thermaltake explained that the DuOrb has two 80mm fans connected to the GPU sink by all copper heatpipes, with the quiet operation maintained by having both 80mm fans rotate at a slow speed. Thermaltake was also showing off its new Spirit RS memory heatsinks, which simply provide more heat dissipation to your memory modules.

A new liquid cooling unit was also on display, named the Big Water 760i. The Big Water 760i is an all in one liquid cooling unit that is installed straight into two of your case’s 5.25” bays and provides cooling for your CPU.

Another interesting product that Thermaltake was showing off was their new Mozart IP HTPC barebones system. According to Thermaltake, the Mozart IP is the first HTPC to include an iPod doc right on its front panel, giving you easy access to your entire music library.

On the high end case front, a new version of Thermaltakes Xaser case was shown off. Like its predecessors, the new Xaser is an all aluminum mid tower that has some interesting design tweaks that will appeal to many enthusiasts.

In my personal experience, one of the most tedious aspects of building a PC has always been cable management. Thermaltake realized that a lot of enthusiasts don’t ever tie up any of their cables, so with their new Xaser, they have built in SATA data and power connections inside the hard drive cage. You simply attach your hard drive to the mounting mechanism and slide the drive in.

When looking at the top panel, you can see that Thermaltake has included a big opening that can accommodate an internal liquid cooling unit. And as with many new cases on the market today, the front panel I/O connections include two E-SATA ports.

Thermaltake redesigned another case they first announced at Computex 2005, the SwordM. The new SwordM is a hand assembled limited edition case that is probably the first ever to use hydraulic rods to open its side and top panels. It is made of 100% pure aluminum and can hold multiple liquid cooling units; the one on display had two (one on the top panel and one on the side panel). The side and top panels open automatically by the press of a button, and the case itself acts like a heatsink for the water cooling units by helping to disperse their heat.

The case also features a unique 7” drive bay on its front panel that can be used to install hardware too big to fit into a normal 5.25” drive bay, like Thermaltake’s new 7” touch screen LCD. Designed for gamers that want to show off their rigs at LAN parties, the new 7” LCD is fully retractable inside the base of the unit, connects to a VGA, S-Video, or RCA output, and will cost around $200 when it is released later this year.