CES Las Vegas: Party with OCZ

     CES started off with a bang this year.  All of the big wigs were throwing parties and having a great time after hours.  We were lucky enough to get invited to several of the parties this year.  The one I'm going to talk about is the OCZ party.  Ryan Petersen can really throw a party.  He started off by reserving the penthouse suite at the Bellagio. 

Image taken from the balcony of the Bellagio penthouse suite.

     That's enough right there to get me there, but then he sweetened the deal by having an open bar and had some very nice looking women serving the drinks.  Half way through the party, some OCZ staff walked through and handed out raffle tickets.  This was pretty exciting since the only thing on display were three Hypersonic notebooks. (picture withheld due to shaky cameraman LOL )  Anyway the party went on into the wee hours of the next morning.  The staff came through and handed out another round of tickets.  Shortly, after Ryan and staff brought out some boxes and started raffling off goodies.  I was the first one hit from ClubOC and received a 4GB kit of the new Reaper DDRII memory (this was one of the main prizes).  Shortly after that Scott was hit for the second main prize a new PC Power & Cooling power supply.  We were very happy with the two gifts we had won, when we were hit again for the third time with the main prize.  A prototype of the Cryo-Z Phase Change cooler.  We were very stoked that 3 out of our 4 tickets had won and that all three prizes were the top three prizes handed out.  It was a lucky night for ClubOC.  Ryan ended the party by tossing his new Ruggedized memory sticks into the crowd, we were able to snag a 4GB one.  It was a great party and a great way to end the first night of CES.  By now it was pushing 1:30 and we had a long day ahead for day two.

CES Las Vegas: Meeting with OCZ

     Half-way through day two we had a private meeting with OCZ.  They brought us in and showed us their new products for 2008 and we're going to give you a few photos and text on some of them.

OCZ started the tour with the normal assortment of memory selections that has made them famous.  However, new this year is their solid state drives.  These drives are going into their Hypersonic laptops and will also be available for desktops.  Currently, they are offering 32GB and 64GB SATA II drives.  The Extreme Liquid Convection (XLC) memory is getting a makeover this year.  The redesigned water-cooled heat spreader allows for the water to completely circulate through the heatspreader and not just through a single channel on the top.  Likewise, the Reaper series heatsink is getting a makeover.  This makeover includes new heatspreaders that have more heatpipes to take away more heat.  All in all it looks like it's going to be a good year for OCZ memory products.

With OCZ's recent acquisition of PC Power & Cooling, OCZ has vaulted themselves up to the top of the power supply market.  PC Power & Cooling will still sale power supplies under the PC Power & Cooling brand, but OCZ will take their technology and incorporate it into their own brand of power supplies.  This way people that want the quality of PC Power & Cooling but the affordability of OCZ power supplies can have both.  OCZ was also one of only a handful of power supply companies displaying units with ESA built in.  I'm sure it's only a matter of time before ESA is standard on all power supplies.

OCZ has made quite a few changes this year.  One of them is getting into the laptop and desktop market with the purchase of Hypersonic.  These are some incredible high end systems.  This one in particular is marketed as a desktop replacement system.  This system sports a 6600 C2D, 8800GTX graphics card, 4GB of low latency OCZ memory and the new solid state drive.

     That was all fun and stuff but now it's time to get into the stuff that's not out yet.  When we first walked in, the first thing we did was to take a quick glance around the room.  Sitting at the computer was this dude sporting an OCZ headband. 

It was a little odd and I wanted to meet this guy that loved the 80's so much that he still wore headbands.  This guy turned out to be Michael and we was playing with a new toy that he had designed.  After a quick explanation of the new device he proceeded to kick some ass in Unreal Tournament 3.  This may not sound that impressive, but the controller he was using was the headband.  It was very kewl to watch this guy run around the map, straffing, jumping and killing while just sitting there relaxed in a chair as if he were reading the Sunday newspaper.  This device is called the OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator and measures brainwaves and slight muscle movement of the head.  Michael was only using the mouse to "free-look", everything else was controlled by the NIA.

It was obvious that we had to try it, so we volunteered our own Michael to give it a shot.  One of the most amazing things about the device is the learning curve.  It only takes a couple of minutes to get used to it and you are off killing bad guys like a pro.  I can see that once you get used to this concept, your reaction time is going to be far greater than using the standard keyboard and mouse setup.  The device barely uses any power and only requires a simple USB connection.  By the time this goes to market, the device will be much smaller than the black box pictured.  I posed to Michael an interesting question.  I asked him how would the device react to people with ADD.  The answer I got was even more amazing.  This device has the potential to help people with ADD.  This has never been tested and is only a theory, but the device will allow an ADD person to focus their thoughts and actually see results on the screen.  Just for that answer, I'm going to take one.  Just think, playing a video game may help some people with ADD.  OCZ is hoping to market this for about $250 and it will be ready for the market in 4-8 weeks.      OCZ has dabbled in water-cooling in the past, but this time it looks like they are going to get serious about it.  Michael also displayed the water block that he designed and is almost ready for production.  The water block displayed was a quick 20 unit run to check for any flaws.  They did find a couple and will have the problems corrected before the unit is ready for production.  The unit features a lucite top and is prone to cracking.  The cracking is most likely caused by the fact that OCZ chose to use copper crush washers instead of the standard rubber O-ring seals.  Also the barbs are metal and simply replacing them with nylon bards could prevent the cracking.  However OCZ decides to fix it, I hope they can manage to keep the lucite cover.

This last part is pure speculation on my part and is based on something that I saw and not what someone told me.  Please do not take this for a fact only as information.      While watching Michael play Unreal Tournament 3, I noticed a danger den logo on the machine that was powering the NIA.  Seeing that OCZ is taking a serious look at water cooling, this could possibly mean that there is a collaboration in the works between the two companies.  It could also mean absolutely nothing.  Anyway, it was obviously nothing that was trying to be kept secret with the logo being displayed on the case.      We are being told that everything that we saw from OCZ is just a few short months or even days away from being released to the public. I for one can't wait! The entire ClubOC crew would like to thank the OCZ staff for taking the time to show us their new products as well as hosting a great party!

CES Las Vegas Daily Coverage