COMPUTEX is Asia’s biggest tech event and its prime location, Taiwan, is the home of some of the foremost hardware companies in the world. COMPUTEX is an annual event which sees a lot of announcement from many companies invested in both IT enterprise solutions as well as consumer products. It serves as a launch pad for many ideas that were announced in earlier events in the year like CES and are now market ready. This year repeat that very cycle with a lot of expectations falling on AMD and this year’s event is big for them as all eyes are towards their newest announcements.
Aside from AMD, its still everyone’s ball game and everyone is ready to play. Hometown brands are gearing up for one big motherboard launch to coincide with AMD’s announcement. Intel has never backed down and is expected to have a response to AMD’s new announcement. COMPUTEX is divided into consumer expo and a B2B expo and most of the big announcement will be from the consumer side. With esports and gaming serving a significant force that progresses the rest of the market, not just graphics, its also exciting to see what peripheral manufacturers are readying in their pipe. Everyone will usually be quiet during the build up to COMPUTEX and we’re here to give you guys an idea on what to expect from this year event.
Leave a comment on what you’re looking forward to.
PROCESSORS
Much of the weight of COMPUTEX’s hype lies on the shoulders of AMD. They’ve made it so that the they have the biggest announcements by having their CEO Lisa Su be part of the opening keynote. On the whole view of things, both processor maker Intel and AMD are on the show just not in the form that most exhibitors are. While AMD will surely make an announcement about their upcoming 3rd-generation Ryzen processors based on their 2nd-gen Zen (Zen2) architecture, its still unknown if Intel will fire back with announcement of their own.
AMD demo’d their 3rd-gen Ryzen processors against Intel’s 9th-gen during CES earlier this year and that set off increasing attention which we see today for the new processors from AMD. Intel is still struggling with its newer 10nm fab while AMD is on TSMC’s 7nm process. This leads to estimates that the smaller chip will allow AMD to have 16-core mainstream chips. Speculations are also abound that AMD may unveil a new Ryzen 9 family but no concrete proof of this have been made except for leaks which were later removed.
While all that is happening at the desktop side, many manufacturers are also turning to AMD for their laptop processor needs. While their branding will be similar to the 3rd-gen Ryzen chips, the mobile Ryzen+Radeon mobile CPUs are based off last year’s Zen+ built on the 12nm node. While it isn’t expected to debut concurrently with their desktop counterpart, it will still eventually make its way to mobile so AMD may make statements regarding this during their keynote.
Reliable key sources have revealed to us an event in US following COMPUTEX from AMD and have also mentioned that the launch for the new Ryzen chips is at July 7 (7/7) which makes sense given a similar release date format was used on the Radeon VII (2/7).
MOTHERBOARDS, LAPTOPS and PRE-BUILT PCs
As with most new CPU generation releases, an accompanying chipset is in order. For AMD it is the X570 chipset which still retains the AM4 socket. Previous chipsets from X370 and X470 and their B and A counterparts will still retain support for the newer chip but it is with the high-end CPUs that power delivery is a concerned as some boards may not be equipped to deliver power on the newer chips although they may work. Still, much like the transition from X370 to X470 where AMD asked board makers to provide a much more robust VRM, the same may be said for X570.
The AMD X570 hasn’t had any official details revealed yet but a recent leak posting by BIOSTAR should give us some ideas of what board brands are working with.
First off, DDR4-4000 seems to be supported which coincides with previous reports that the chip does support memory speeds up to DDR4-5000 although reports claiming that as stock would be false. This increase is good as it breaks through a barrier that has been a nuisance for some who want to use higher-speed memories on their AMD systems. Although gaming may not benefit from high-speeds, the lowering of memory prices as well as increases in kit speeds have created a market where in DDR4-4133 is easily accessible and for those that can use it, is highly desirable.
Another addition is the presence of PCI-e 4.0. The new standard will make its debut on this platform and it has been cited that the PCIe 4.0 sips more power than previous gens with an increase from 8w to 15w thresholds which may see the need for cooling on the PCH heatsink as seen on the BIOSTAR X570 board. Other than that, there’s no mention of its software support like StoreMI which was a strong component for X470 during its launch.
For the majority of the motherboard makers, this going to be a big part of their launch program with ROG and AORUS already sending invites to their press access events.
Other brands who are not AMD partners or are not releasing them yet may are expected to reveal more modern takes on older boards including remakes that fit the Intel B365 chipset based on 22nm chipset.
Pre-built PCs will most likely be shown off rocking the new 3rd-gen Ryzen mixing them with NVIDIA RTX cards or probably teased with new Radeon parts.
Chinese manufacturers are most likely poised to release All-in-One PCs featuring more high-end parts featuring both Intel desktop and mobile parts as well some with AMD parts. More mainstream brands might opt for a Intel and NVIDIA combo for their should they reveal AIO PCs. Ultimately, we expected the prebuilt sector to play around with what they have already with only the top OEMs having access to the new Ryzen chips in their preview.
GRAPHICS CARDS
There’s not much graphics card related news expected from COMPUTEX although there are expectations that AMD Navi GPUs may see an announcement or hinted at. AMD Navi chips are expected to be made on the same 7nm fabrication and speculations are already making rounds on which SKUs match which but there is no concrete proof of details as of yet even from our sources.
On NVIDIA’s side, they have a press event but do note that the company may keep its scope rather large. They do have a lot of leftover tech from last year’s COMPUTEX that have yet to see release and may be coincide those release this year as an aside to other announcements in the HPC, AI and other enterprise sector. One does need to pay attention to these things from NVIDIA’s other markets as some of the technologies usually do find it way into consumers. Real-time raytracing was announced for the professional industry a few years back now it sees its way onto every high-end GPU of NVIDIA.
And surprisingly, Intel makes it into the graphics discussion. Not much news has been had from their graphics development team but with former Radeon-team head in their side now, its only a matter of time before Intel moves into the discrete graphics market. COMPUTEX is a great time for that and Intel has a press event but this tying into a brand parnter may not necessarily be the awaited Intel GPU.
MEMORY & STORAGE
As with new motherboards will come a new wave of memories brandishing certification for them. They may or may not be new SKUs but nevertheless, its going to be that time of the year where brands like Corsair and Gskill push-out new technology or new takes on existing ones e.g. the Infinity Stones-like TridentZ Royal from last year. For Corsair, they saw a big overhaul in their management software with the then-brand new iCUE system.
There’s really not a lot to expect except for what’s been said already. Some brands may come out with new designs like Apacer recent NOX memory release but with no new standard, speed upgrades, redesigns and certifications are pretty much what to expect.
For storage, its going to be a huge stage for SSDs. With solid-state drive prices dropping during the start of the year, its expected that 1TB and 2TB SSDs will be a big draw for some makers as well as the mainstream advent of more 500GB drives. The choice to go M.2 or SATA is still dependent on which NAND will be used, but ultimately users get more storage and faster speeds regardless.
We really don’t put much stock over RGB on SSDs but just know that its a thing and its an option for brands but doesn’t improve performance.
PERIPHERALS
Its a big part of the gaming market and one that is more exposed to the eSports portion of the industry. Progression in this segment is on many avenues with monitors, keyboards, mice and audio gear all evolving heavily on their own and its really hard to compile them into one section. It also doesn’t help that some brands have different takes on what gamers should have or not.
In most instances, not a lot of the top peripherals brands are present in COMPUTEX with Razer, SteelSeries, Logitech and other longtime brands not exhibiting in this event. Kingston’s HyperX will have a showroom as well as other Taiwanese brands like Xanova by GALAX and Gamdias. Not to be outdone, ASUS ROG, MSI and GIGABYTE all have their own peripheral products.
Running down each one would take a while but to summarize a few things, Kingston has been very heavy on their audio gear with the highly successful Cloud still spawning rendition after rendition long after its initial launch. HyperX is tackling the console market as well so they may have more Switch, Xbox and PS4 products ready. Its been a while since their last keyboard and mice but Kingston has not been known to release on an annual cycle but still, that may be an announcement from them.
ROG is going big on their peripherals and with announcements last year just recently making stores, its going to be exciting to see which one they upgrade or introduce a new rendition of. ROG announced the wireless charging pad Balteus Qi last year and the wireless Gladius II but its going to be in the monitor front that ASUS ROG will probably come swinging.
GIGABYTE AORUS press event may hint more on motherboard but the company has had a history of showing more to key people. Their AD27QD monitor has been a runaway success and a 4K version seems to the only logical step forward in the horizon.
CASES, COOLERS & FANS
Cases haven’t seen an evolution in a while but some tech from last year still need to see the light of day this year. Popular case designs like the NZXT H700i and H500i may see upgrades but with the success of these chassis, that’s not really needed. INWIN also had a good run with their cases last year with some of their products teased an update of existing ones. INWIN has had a tradition of launching big and bold designs every year and there’s no reveal yet from any modder what that may be.
Noctua has been teasing black versions of their fans for a while and they did release dark versions recently it is their new Sterrox fans that have yet to see this change. The NF-A12x25 is one of their most promising fans and its performance is so good the U12S single tower equipped with a pair of these fans rival the performance of the NH-D15S twin tower with 14mm fans. Still, Noctua sticks to their guns and company colors but they’re softening up. Meanwhile, we’re expecting to see some update to their cooler line-up that could maximize the new NF-A12x25 fans.
