At this year’s CES, Asus showed us its latest gaming desktop, the Republic of Gamers (ROG) TYTAN CG8890. While this machine had already been shown earlier in 2012 at Computex and IFA, it has still yet to be released, and Asus was showing it off again at CES running Windows 8. We shot some video of the TYTAN in action, which you can check out below.
This powerhouse of a machine features an Intel Core i7-3960x 6-core CPU with liquid cooling, running on an Asus Rampage IV Formula X79 motherboard. It comes with 16GB of RAM, and Nvidia’s top-of-the-line dual-GPU GTX 690 video card. It has an Asus Xonar DX for audio, two 128GB SSDs in RAID 0 for the OS, a 2TB Hard-drive for storage, and a Blu-ray writer. Asus is also including with the TYTAN a gaming-grade ROG mechanical keyboard, and a ROG gaming mouse that has a 4000 dpi laser sensor.
The stand-out feature of the TYTAN (since the specs, to be honest, are nothing you cannot find in other top-end premium gaming desktops) is the "one-click Turbo Gear overclocking". A one-click button on the case can overclock the CPU to three different levels, from 3.8GHz to 4.2GHz, without needing to reboot. When in Turbo Gear mode, the sides of the case power open, almost like KITT engaging Super Pursuit Mode, to reveal six additional cooling fans. At the same time, the case lighting changes to colour from blue to red, to reflect the overclock level. This definitely gives the TYTAN some ‘woah’ factor, that elevates it beyond your run-of-the-mill gaming desktop, and it was still surprisingly quiet, even with the sides open and extra fans going (of course it wasn't running under load at the time, so YMMV).
Exact pricing and a release date for the ROG TYTAN CG8890 were not announced at CES, but we were told it would be around $4000, and that it would only initially be available in Canada towards the end of Q1.
