Corsair And Quantenna At Computex 2013
Corsair
In Corsair's booth, we started with its newest enclosures. The Carbide Series Air 540 is a double-wide dual-chamber EATX case that puts actively-cooled components on one side of the motherboard, and passively-cooled items on the other. The idea is that with cables and drives out of the way, air flows freely in the chamber that holds the CPU, PCIe cards, 3.5" hot-swappable drives, and fans. It's designed for air cooling, but liquid cooling is supported. According to Corsair, the case will cost about $139 when it hits retail.
Next up was the 330R, an enclosure designed for quiet operation with sound dampening material on every panel. Everything else about the 330R is the same as Corsair's 300R. The company says the 330R will sell for $89.
A representative at the booth mentioned that customers have been asking for different mechanical switches in Corsair's keyboards, so it had a number out on display at Computex. Additionally, Corsair acquired Raptor Gaming, a German company that also makes peripherals.
Speaking of, the K50 is the first Corsair-developed Raptor keyboard. It's backlit, with a full set G keys, and features anti-ghosting functionality. This model costs $100.
The K70 is not new, but it can be had with Cherry MX Brown and Blue switches now.
We got a kick out of the K65 portable keyboard due to its size and the fact that it sports the same key spacing as a full-sized model for $89.
There are two new mice from Corsair in the shot above. The M30 (right) is an updated version of the Raptor M3DKT, sporting a 4000 DPI sensor and a $50 price tag. The M40 (left) sits at the high end of the Raptor family, with the same optical hardware as the M60 and M65, but no metal on the bottom. It does feature a system to allow customization of weight and balance, and should sell for $60.
Finally, Corsair showed off some new memory. Its Vengeance Pro line-up fits between the Vengeance and Dominator Platinum families. This memory will be available with a 3200 MT/s C11 XMP profile, in multiple colors.
Quantenna
Next, we sat down with Sam Heidari, CEO of Quantenna. He told us about the semiconductor company's goal to drive Wi-Fi performance, range, and fidelity with a zero-packet error rate. Company reps showed some demos of its second-generation 802.11ac chipset, featuring 4x4 multi-user MIMO. Sam told us that he considers 4x4 MIMO to be the most important part of the ac standard, with signal processing that allows double the bandwidth when communicating with two receivers at the same time.
The first demo was actually a video that showed Quantenna's chipset delivering a high-def video stream without dropped frames or reduced quality more than 400 feet through multiple walls, and over 1500 feet outdoors.
Given limited space, the live demo wasn't as expansive. Instead, Quantenna pushed three high-def streams to three separate receivers in the same room from a single access point. The technology isn't available yet, but we look forward to putting the chipset through its paces when it shows up in a testable product.
