Best Gaming Hardware at CES 2017 Friv 0

Dell UltraSharp 32-inch Ultra HD 8K monitor

Dell announced the first 8K monitor at this year’s show, and it’s outfitted with a 32-inch 7680x4320 resolution panel. With over 33 million pixels, it’s as sharp as 16 1080p monitors combined. It’s also a 10-bit monitor, which means it outputs over a billion colors. It’s arguably the best-looking panel we’ve seen yet. We only got to see it with one static image, but it was sharp enough that we couldn’t make out any pixels, even up close, and the Windows icons were so small that they were illegible. All of this comes at a price, however. Dell’s 8K monitor will retail for around $5,000. It will also require two DisplayPort cables. The panel is set to launch on March 23 and is geared towards media production professionals.

HyperX Predator LED RAM

RGB LED peripherals have been popular in recent years, but RGB RAM has been hard to find, so HyperX is jumping in with its Predator LED DDR4 DIMMs. Clocked at 3,000MHz, HyperX is designing the RAM to sync with RGB profiles on motherboards from Gigabyte, Asus, and more. No price is set for the Predator LEDs yet, but you should expect to see them by the second half of 2017.

MSI AM4 motherboards

MSI has revealed two new AM4 motherboards to support AMD’s Ryzen processors that are right around the corner. The motherboard on the left is the X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium. It will support DDR4 RAM, USB 3.1, and two M.2 ports.

The motherboard on the right is the company’s more entry-level B350 Tomahawk, which also supports DDR4 RAM. It supports a single M.2 slot.

G.U.S. external GPU amplifier

There are a couple external GPU amplifiers on the market (The Alienware Amplifier and Razer Core come to mind), and MSI is throwing its name into that hat. G.U.S. comes with an 80 Plus Gold certified PSU and is geared to work with any laptop or PC that supports a Thunderbolt 3 connection. MSI says that G.U.S. will support the latest AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.

MSI Z270 Gaming M7 motherboard

With Intel’s newly released Kaby Lake CPUs, MSI has announced its new Z270 Gaming M7 motherboard to go along with them. The motherboard offers eight overclocking presets that push 7700K processors up to 5.2GHz and supports features like M.2, U.2, and USB-C. Did we mention it supports RGB lighting?

In Win Tou 2.0 case

In Win makes some of the most exotic computer cases in the world. The company’s newly announced full-tower Tou 2.0 chassis exemplifies that with its crazy edges, aluminum frame, and all tempered glass panel design.

One gripe that we did have with the case is that the motherboard’s IO ports are sealed off by the back glass panel, which makes accessing USB ports a pain without removing the back panel. It is important to note that the case is still just a prototype, and the design could change.

In Win will throw in a power supply with the chassis, but the package doesn’t come cheap. The company estimates that it will release the case for around $1,000.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Ti?

Gigabyte told us that it flew in this mysterious graphics card from Taiwan right before the show, but wouldn’t name the graphics processing unit. The company only told us that it's an Nvidia GPU that is more powerful than the GTX 1080. Logic would dictate that this is the much rumored Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Regardless, the Gigabyte card offers three fans and uses two 8-pin power connectors.

Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ monitor

On paper, Asus’ ROG Swift PG27UQ monitor (pictured on the right) comes with nearly all the bells and whistles. It’s a 27-inch 4K HDR panel with a 144Hz refresh rate. It also offers adaptive VSync through Nvidia G-Sync technology and uses 384 back-lights to produce a wide contrast ratio. We got a chance to see it right next to a top of the line non-HDR display, and it was clear that the PG27UQ was able to offer much richer, more accurate colors. The standard RGB monitor looked much more de-saturated in comparison.

HTC Vive Deluxe Audio Strap

One feature that the HTC Vive lacked at launch was integrated audio. The company’s Deluxe Audio Strap add-on alleviates that issue by incorporating Oculus Rift-like headphones that you pull down over your ears. Not only does the strap provide audio, but it makes the head-mounted display more ergonomic by using a hard shell design. This helps balance the weight of the headset. Without it, the Vive feels much more front heavy. The strap also incorporates a dial on the back, which you can crank to tighten the strap. It’s very similar to the PlayStation VR HMD in this regard. We tried the strap on for ourselves and it adds a huge layer of polish to the product. The HMD is much more comfortable and convenient to put on, especially since you don’t have to fumble around putting on a discrete set of headphones.

HTC Vive TPCast wireless add-on

The TPCast add-on turns the HTC Vive into a wireless headset. The small peripheral rests on top of the head-mounted display and has a cable which connects to a battery pack that’s meant to sit in one of your pockets. The company asserts that it only adds two milliseconds of delay, which is appreciated since high VR latency could exacerbate motion sickness issues. Given our limited time playing a shooting game with it, it worked really well. As a matter of fact, it was freeing being able to walk around without having to worry about tripping on a cable.

Asus Maximus IX Extreme

Asus’ Maximus IX Extreme is the company’s highest-end Z270 motherboard, which supports Intel’s newly-released Kaby Lake CPUs. What really makes it unique is the monoblock on top of the CPU socket. Not only does it offer RGB lighting, but it has integrated sensors that can detect temperatures, liquid flow rates, and even water leakages. It’s a motherboard designed with custom cooling in mind.

AMD Ryzen CPU

Intel has ruled the performance roost for many years, but early Ryzen benchmarks seem to indicate that AMD is back in the CPU race. Ryzen’s top SKU will feature 8 cores, 16 threads, and carry a base clock of 3.4GHz or higher. Also, all Ryzen processors will be unlocked and overclockable. The rumor is that the processor will launch toward the end of February.

AMD Vega GPU

Vega is AMD’s next GPU architecture. While the company has working prototypes of the graphics card, AMD is still holding a lot of information close to its chest. We do know that it will use HBM 2 (high-bandwidth memory). In terms of performance, AMD tells us its early un-optimized prototypes are outperforming the GeForce GTX 1080. We saw it running Doom at 4K with ultra settings, and it got around 65 average frames per second with the Vulkan API. This puts it roughly in-line with Nvidia’s flagship GPU. AMD says it will ship during the first half of the year.

New Nvidia Shield

Nvidia announced a new version of the Shield, its video streaming and gaming device. It will be equipped with the Tegra X1 ARM processor and 16GB of storage for $200. The 500GB model will retail for $300. Steam will also be integrated out of the box.

The new Shield is much smaller than the original and the controller is more compact. Speaking of the controller, it will feature a high-powered microphone to take advantage of the Shield's new smart-home features. One of the more significant changes is the integration of Google Assistant. Nvidia also plans on incorporating an app for Samsung's SmartThings devices.

HTC Vive Tracker

The Vive Tracker is a new device that will accessorize the VR world with actual objects. We tested it in a few applications such as a batting simulator that's in development for Major League Baseball level players. The tracker was attached to the bottom of a wooden bat, which was rendered in VR. We used it, and can say swings registered accurately.

We also used the Vive Tracker with a gun accessory in conjunction with the TPCast wireless add-on. The accuracy of the gun and its tracking in VR was consistent.

Razer Project Ariana

Razer’s Project Ariana is a projector that complements standard displays. It’s intended to fill your peripheral vision with what’s happening in real-time in games by virtue of increased field of view (FOV). The projector itself outputs 4K and has sensors to automatically detect where your main display is situated.

Developers must implement support for Ariana in their games. Without support, Project Ariana can fill a room with RGB lighting that reacts to the color palette of the on-screen game. It can also be used as a traditional projector.

Razer has yet to release price and release data info as Ariana is still just a prototype.

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