CES 2007 Wrap Up

Well, our wild and crazy week has come to an end, Paul and Blake are both safely home, having endured a full week of my ranting and rambling. We definitely saw the full spectrum of quality (and marketing) at this years show and today HardwareLogic takes a look at the good and the bad of CES 2007.

High quality enclosures were definitely in no short supply as ANTEC, Thermatake, Cooler Master, and Silverstone, among others, showed off some very impressive cases ranging from the mainstream mid-tower all the way up to the go for broke, spare no expense full tower monsters. The ANTEC Sonata III really impressed me as a great choice for anyone looking for great quality on a budget, and coupled with a 500W PSU, I see this case being one of the more popular choices of 2007.

Awfully surprising to me was the strong presence of water cooling. ANTEC, Thermaltake, and Cooler Master all showed off cases built for, or around, water cooling. Cooler Master, Zalman, and Thermaltake all had some very impressive and easy to install cooling units on display.

How popular will water be? Tough to say! On one hand, cooler processors from both INTEL and AMD, along with much better ventilated cases, means that air cooling is sufficient for most users. What will be interesting to see is how these units cool the new graphics solutions in SLI, or Quad SLI. Regardless, I'd only consider a cooling unit that allows for cooling the chipset and/or graphics cards, as a simple, one block solution really makes no sense anymore.

It's always a pleasure to catch up with Silverstone, a company focused on the higher end side of the PC world, and this year they had no shortage of quality products on display. One that particularly caught our eye is their NT06 heatsink. The 8mm thick sintered powder heatpipes are press-bonded with the finned heatsink atop a copper base, and the upper aluminum heatsink can accommodate a 120mm fan. A fan controller is thrown in too, and we'll be eager to get one of these coolers on our testbed.

Like a lot of companies this year, Silverstone had on display their newest power supplies dubbed the Olympia Series. Ranging in wattage from 650w to a massive 1200w, each one utilizes a single +12V rail (the same approach that PC Power & Cooling takes) with up to 80A on their high end model, and a peak of 88A!

Of course, what CES coverage of Silverstone would be complete without some snapshots of their cases? These folks put out some stellar chassis designs, and are often picked by Maximum PC magazine for their annual Dream Machine feature. This year at CES, Silverstone had quite a few HTPC enclosures on display, one of the more interesting of which was their Decomatic Model 12 Home Media Center. The retro wood design was conceived by Jeffrey Stephenson, widely renowned for his many innovative case mods.

And finally, we snuck a peek at the ultra compact SG03. This aluminum tower SFF enclosure sports two 120mm intake fans and can hold a standard ATX power supply, as well as large sized videocards such as the current king of the hill, the 8800GTX. Notice the 3.5" drive in the lower left hand side, with I/O ports sitting directly above.

The definite feeling from our meetings at CES was that "bigger is better", with every company we talked with (except Corsair) pumping out 1000W+ power supplies. Another popular trend is the move away from PSUs featuring multiple rails. As strange as it might sound to some, many companies are in fact offering single +12V railed PSUs with anywhere from 70-95A being pumped through. Cleverpower, one of our favorite companies at the show which we feel has a lot of potential, is currently ramping up production of 1000W PSUs in both multi-rail and single rail configurations.

Another extremely popular trend, although not a new one, is the modular PSU. While these have been around for a couple years now, questions about the power quality have really scared off some. But with everyone from Enermax to Corsair bringing high quality modular power supplies to market, it seems as though modular may be the way to go.

Look forward to DirectX 10 compatible PCI-E video cards. eVGA showed of an extremely impressive collection of cards in every budget range. More importantly, they spent most of our meeting stressing their dedication to customer service and support.

While you all know Razer as a maker of gaming mice, we've watched them evolve into a full fledged gaming company, offering mice, keyboards, sound cards, and headphones. The Razer Mako really impressed us with some super high quality sound aimed towards the audiophiles, but even for them it might be a tough sell as a $300 2.1 sound solution with no surround sound emulation.

We met quite a few people at CES, from representatives of various companies we've never seen in person to folks from other review sites and news sources. I have to say that for the most part we are lucky to be part of such a great community. The crew from PCApex and DragonModZ left a great impression on us, as they were definitely having a blast wandering the show floor. We also ran into Nate from Legit Reviews and the guys from Tech Gage. Make sure you check out their reviews and coverage of CES.

Now that I've touched on some stuff that impressed me, I have to say CES 2007 overall was a disappointment. I live here in Vegas, and have attended the CES for the previous 3 years. Having said that, the crowds were noticeably smaller this year. In my opinion (and it's just that, my opinion).....
1. Las Vegas is changing.......Gone are the sweet deals that make coming to Vegas a great getaway. No more cheap rooms, great amenities, free stuff, and honestly, gone is a lot of the fun. From $25 parking lots, jacked up hotel prices, long walks, and outlandish prices on everything from water to food, it just wasn't as entertaining as years past.

2. The Show itself.....Poorly laid out, with a lot of rude and pushy people. Security and guest relations people that were either poorly informed or simply didn't care, CES has seemingly outgrown itself. Most vendors we dealt with didn't even have exhibits on the show floor, instead opting for suites at posh hotels like the Bellagio and Wynn.

3. Vendors.....There was nothing really new or exciting to be seen. Sure there was Windows Vista, huge booths for AMD and INTEL, DirectX 10, and some big TVs, but seriously, there was a whole wing dedicated to incredibly silly cars with LCD screens implanted in the bumpers (if you looked at one car, with the exception of the paint job, they were all the same). Many companies didn't even bring new products to the show, instead wanting to discuss the next year and stuff they released 3-4 months ago.

I personally blame a lot of the issues on Las Vegas, .but that's another story. Needless to say, the 2007 CES wasn't really anything special, which is really sad, as this show and city have so much potential to be something special.

The INTEL lady was without a doubt the most obnoxious person on the show floor, although the Vonage girls were pretty bad.

Anandtech isn't wrong very often, but they sure were on this one; INTEL didn't even have the most impressive silicon in the city, let alone the world. Yep, that honor goes to the very lovely Katie Morgan.....

and then there are the pics you just can't find words to describe.......

Forum Member Yuri made an appearance......

And finally, having insulted several people, and almost destroying the ASUS motherboard display (honest, it wasn't my fault!!!), it was time to leave.

Here's Paul being subdued by security (due to the graphic nature of the images, we can't post the full cavity search that followed). We'll be posting several more pics in our Forum's Photo Gallery, make sure you check them out.