Computex 2014 - Day 3

Computex 2014 - EVGA

EVGA's biggest segment is the graphics card market. However, much like Zotac, news related to this at Computex this year is limited, due simply to a lack of recent GPU releases. That said, it did have on show two versions of Titan Z, one air cooled and one with a waterblock. The former is a true dual slot design, which is already an improvement as the reference cooler is triple slot. Despite the smaller dimensions, EVGA claims it has dropped the average GPU temperature by 5°C, though it's currently unclear whether it will see a final release – Nvidia's regulations on Titan series coolers means that users would need to install the cooler themselves. Meanwhile, the waterblock version is definitely coming to market, for approximately $3,300 – a 10 percent price hike. The waterblock is thick, solid and very hefty, and it's manufactured by EK – previously EVGA has used Swiftech.


EVGA is also launching a new version of its Precision X software – our favourite Nvidia GPU overclocking tool. The software is now fully produced in house, and it has seen some UI upgrades including easy access to pixel clock rate and displaying absolute clock speed values rather than just offset ones.


Also on show were EVGA's two new mice, the Torq X10 and the Torq X10 Carbon, which has a real carbon fibre exterior as opposed to a plastic one. These have just launched this week in the US with MSRPs of $99 and $119 respectively, and should be making their way to the UK and EU markets in two or three months. The Torq X10 mice feature an 8,200 dpi laser sensor, an adjustable weights system, customisable RGB LEDs and onboard profiles.


To complement the mice, EVGA also revealed a very early keyboard prototype. For this, the company is looking to use the popular Cherry MX red switches, though additional switch types may also be used. The final design is likely to differ somewhat from the photo, but one feature is confirmed – the LCD screen. We haven't seen a keyboard using one of these for some time, but EVGA said it can be used in conjunction with Precision X 5.0 to show GPU and frame rate information, for example.


EVGA's motherboard range is smaller than most – it only has three Z97 models, for example, all of which it had on show (and at least one of which we're hoping to review shortly). These are the high end Z97 Classified, the mid-range Z97 FTW and the mini-ITX Z97 Stinger. The most interesting product on display, however, was the X99 motherboard. As with ASRock and MSI's showings, the design isn't finalised, though it will likely be called the X99 FTW (it won't be the top end model). It features five PCI-E x16 slots with two capable of x16 speeds and three with a maximum of x8, as well as a PCI-E x4 slot. There are also ten SATA 6Gbps ports and four USB 3 ones. EVGA also said that it is very likely to release a micro-ATX X99 motherboard but that mini-ITX is out of the question due to the upcoming chipset's size.


Finally, EVGA showed us its new ultra high wattage Supernova power supplies – its PSU division is second only to its GPU one in size. It had four models to show us – the 1600 G2, 1600 P2 and 1600 T2, with 1600W outputs and Gold, Platinum and Titanium 80 Plus efficiency ratings respectively, as well as the 1200 P2 (1200W, 80 Plus Platinum). All four are modular and are manufactured originally by Super Flower, with availability scheduled for August/September.