2011 International CES Coverage - PAGE 1

At the beginning of every year, the entire electronics community piles into Las Vegas to show off their upcoming tech/product lineup for the new year at the International Consumer Electronics Show, better known as CES. This year I was lucky enough to attend the event for Neoseeker and meet with industry insiders to see the new hardware and products that are going to hit the market throughout 2011. Just prior to CES this year there were some major releases from the likes of AMD, Intel and NVIDIA, so it is going to be interesting to see how the industry integrates the new products into their designs. During the event we met with some of the biggest names in the business and got the inside scoop on their new goods.

Corsair:

Over the last few years Corsair has branched out beyond just selling memory as they have managed to successfully break into the power supply, chassis, SSD, headset and heatsink markets. The driving factor behind their successful expansion is each productline having a very high degree of quality and innovation combined with an exceptional design. At CES Corsair laid out their product lineup for 2011 which includes all of the product types released prior to this year, but they will now be adding two sets of high performance speakers to the line-up.

The Corsair event began with a retrospective of the company's products throughout the years. I have to say it was quite interesting to see how they have transformed the company from the time they were founded as a manufacturer of cache-on-a-stick for OEM system Integrators to today's high-end multi-product juggernaut. The slides displayed began with their products released in 1994 and continued to show their gear throughout the years, ending with their 2010 line-up.

The introduction of Corsair's 2011 product range started with their Vengeance memory kit, which is developed with support for the new Intel Sandy Bridge architecture. The Vengeance memory can be found in multiple capacities and includes 1.5V operation, XMP support and a large heatspreader.

Along with the memory, Corsair is also continuing to expand their SSD offerings in the form of their Performance 3 series Solid-State Drives. These SSD's are based on the Marvell 9174 controller and support Native 6Gb/s. The Corsair drives are rated at 480MB/s read with a 320MB/s write and will include full TRIM support and background garbage collection.

The next product showcased was the HS1A gaming headset which uses the same acoustic design as the HS1 series, has analog inputs, an inline volume control with a microphone mute option. It retails for $79.99.

The Hydro line of CPU coolers has been a huge success for Corsair and at CES they introduced a new product to the series. The new cooler will be available in March and is dubbed the H60. The H60 uses a slim 1" radiator, has a redesigned high pressure pump, an improved micro-channel fin design and uses a split flow design. The split flow design essentially has the cool water hitting the middle of the cold-plate first, then pushing across it in a bi-directional flow, meaning the flow is directed over the hottest portion of the CPU and then flows across it in two directions.  According to Corsair the new, split flow, micro-channel design and high pressure pump will improve the efficiency of the cooler to the point where it can perform better than their flagship H70. Like the other offerings in the series the H60 can be used with one or two 120mm fans and will come with a MSRP in the $80 range.

Corsair is also looking to expand their case lineup, and at CES they unveiled the Obsidian series 650D along with a special edition Graphite 600T. The 650D is the kid brother of the 800D and as such includes many of the signature designs found in the higher-end case. This includes all of the cable management options, room for up to 8 PCI expansion slots and a large CPU backplate cutout. In addition to these features the 650D will also include a side window, 200mm front intake fan, tool-less drive bays, external SATA 6Gbps hot-swap dock. The 650D will be available around April and will have an MSRP of $199.99.

The other case demo'ed was a special edition version of the Graphite series 600T, which uses glossy white finish with satin black accents. The white 600T has all the same features as the 600T and includes both a clear side window and side mesh panel. This case is available immediately and retails for $159.99.

The new addition to the Corsair family is the SP2500 and SP2200 series of gaming powered speakers with the former geared toward the higher-end market. The design of the speakers includes a 56 watt two-way bi-amplified satellite speaker with a 3" paper mid-range driver and a Ferro-cooled silk dome tweeter. The driver and the tweeter are separated into different zones, with the 3" woofer producing the mid-range frequencies and the tweeter producing the higher range frequencies. Both the tweeter and driver have a mesh metal grill cover which protects them from damage. In addition, Corsair has also stated the rubber portion of the 3" driver will be optimized for vibrations and even with heavy use will last for 10+ years. Each speaker will also be broken-in prior to release. Additionally, as a 2.1 setup the SP2500 includes a large sub-woofer to produce the low-range frequencies. The sub uses an 8" driver with a durable rubber surround, and dual 60 watt class D amplifiers for 120W of power. It also includes a fourth-order bypass enclosure that places the driver inside of the subwoofer and includes a acoustic filter in front of the driver. This design produces a lower cutoff frequency, but at the cost of a larger enclosure. The price of this setup isn't going to be cheap, as it has an MSRP in the $249.99 range.

Along with the SP2500 powered speakers, Corsair is including a controller that features a 1.8" TFT color display and a large click and scroll wheel with backlit buttons. The controller can be used to to control the volume of the satellite speakers, as well as adjust the sub-level and configure the EQ and program mode. Additionally, the controller has a 3.5mm audio input, a headphone output and a USB connector that will allow for updates to the EQ and program modes.

The SP2200 speaker set is a 2.1 system that uses 46 watt satellite speakers with a 2" driver and a ported sub-woofer with a 6" woofer. This system uses on-speaker control knobs as apposed to a separate controller and is considerably cheaper than the SP2500 with a MSRP of $99.99.

Corsair also introduced their link platform, which essentially allows for system monitoring of the internal temperatures and activity of multiple components of the PC.

Corsair then ended the event with a quick summary of all the new products that we will see on the market this year.