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Introduction
New Orleans is known for Jazz, Cajun Food, and Mardi Gras; and this year was the site, at the DoubleTree Hotel, of Chaintech's first US press/media conference: Chaintech Reloaded. Also present at the conference, were Nvidia, Corsair, and Intervideo. These awesome companies, combined with a kickass city, resulted in quite a rocking conference.
Friday, May 16th
After a long travel day from New Jersey, I arrived in a humid, 80 degree Fahrenheit New Orleans. After throwing my luggage into my room and heading upstairs, I was greeted by a box that said "Motherboard Chaintech".
Unfortunately, I had been cleverly deceived. After flipping the box around, I saw the actual top said "Marketing Kit" in big yellow letters. Damn. I threw the box, along with a nifty (unless you're in hot and sweaty New Orleans) blanket in my room and continued to dinner. A good majority of the people who attended all got up and out, and Milton took us all on a nice walking tour of New Orleans.
Saturday, May 19th
11:00 AM:
After a good nights rest, we all congregated at 11:00 to eat brunch. Unfortunately, I didn't get too much grub in me, as the same room that we were eating in was also the room which was set out to be the showroom for Nvidia, Corsair, and Intervideo. I grabbed my camera, and set off to taking shots of the room:
You can barely make out the computer on the left… There was more than just that to pique our interests though.
Along the back wall, motherboard boxes made us drool.
Chaintech's colorful product boxes.
The first thing that caught my interest was Corsair's HydroCool setup. I had seen preview shots of the unit on [H]ardOCP, and might even get to review it - I was intrigued by the product, to say the least. The HydroCool is similar in function, though not necessarily in design to the Koolance Exos.
Corsair's HydroCool self-contained cooling unit.
It is a completely self-contained cooling unit, which is located outside of the computer case.
The sleek black Plexiglas was stunning, surely an eye-turner. (who originally came up with the idea) also showed off how the hoses could be detached and reattached without water spilling everywhere. He claimed that he actually transported the computer without taking any of the tubes out of the computer. He simply disconnected the HydroCool from the computer (the two tubes and data/power connection,) and when he got to the conference, put the tubes back into the unit, and presto - it worked. The unit bleeds itself, and Robert was pretty damn sure that the tubes wouldn't come loose from their fittings… I don't know about you, but from my experience, if you're going to move a water-cooling PC, you had better take the whole water-cooling setup apart, reassemble and run on-site without turning on the computer, and then when confident that there are no leaks, proceed to install into case, and turn on computer. With the HydroCool, that whole process won't be needed…
Nvidia was showing off their new GeForceFX 5900 in Koolance's PC2-601BW case. Regardless of the mess that was the inside of their computer, they ended up showing us some pretty nifty stuff - all of which was demo'd after the presentations. Intervideo was also reluctant to say anything until after their presentations.
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Chaintech Reloaded: New Orleans is known for Jazz, Cajun Food, and Mardi Gras; and this year was the site, at the DoubleTree Hotel, of Chaintech's first US press/media conference: Chaintech Reloaded.
