2019 COMPUTEX
Computex gets bigger every year and it’s something we always look forward to. It’s as vibrant, colourful and busy as ever. This year saw the debut of a second packed Nangang exhibition hall, which, combined with numerous hotel suites, the packed out World Trade Centre and International Convention Centre on top of far flung company headquarters, dinners and briefings, means it’s not a stretch to say that Computex takes over Taipei.
Taiwan is arguably the centre of the PC industry and there’s no doubt that Computex remains as relevant as ever. Unlike last year, which was relatively quiet as far as major releases go, this year saw the introduction of a new CPU and motherboard platform from AMD. The company came out of the blocks and dominated the news cycle right from the pre-show keynote, not to mention some serious reveals at E3 (which we cover at the start of this magazine). All the media were talking about Ryzen 3 and X570, and all the major vendors were eager to show off their AMD wares.
Every year there seems to be an overall trend or theme, and this year it was content creation. While gaming remains a strong focus for PC manufacturers, there is recognition that a huge number of people need a PC for their work as well as play. Whether it’s working with video, rendering, design, artistic endeavours, or ‘influencing’, there’s a massive market out there for users who don’t care about gaming, or don’t only care about gaming. That’s not to say gaming was sidelined. That’s never going to happen. Gaming was everywhere.
Computex always brings us a massive range of innovative and diversified products. With many ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’, and the occasion ‘eww’, join us as we dive in and take a look at the best of Computex 2019.
INTEL SNEAKS BY
A LOW KEY COMPUTEX FOR INTEL, BUT NEVER UNDERESTIMATE BIG BLUE.
Intel’s CPU announcements were much lower key compared to AMD, but there were some cool things announced that are definitely exciting. It seems like we’ve been waiting forever for Intel’s 10nm process technology to get off the ground, and now that time is coming closer with the reveal of its 10th-generation Ice Lake CPUs. The Sunny Cove architecture is limited to mobile for now but with its focus on power consumption reductions and improved efficiency, that’s understandable, at least until Intel can get the clock speeds up enough to match the mature 14nm current desktop class of processors. Look for 10th generation mobile CPUs to appear from major OEMs shortly.
Intel didn’t totally neglect the desktop CPU market. In fact it revealed what is likely to be the fastest gaming processor you’ll be able to buy, perhaps for some time to come. The i9-9900KS is essentially a binned 9900K that can hit 5GHz on all of it eight cores. While its performance is expected to be class-leading, if an overclocked 9900K is anything to go by, then you can expect it to run hot and consume a lot of power. Maintaining 5GHz on all cores consistently will likely require some serious cooling. Nevertheless, if you want the best gaming processor on the market, the 9900KS is worth keeping an eye out for when it goes on sale later in the year.
MOTHERBOARDS
X570 DOMINATES.
With the release of Ryzen 3 comes a new chipset, dubbed X570. The major motherboard manufacturers showed off complete ranges of X570 motherboards. X570 is positioned as a new high-end chipset above X470. X470 is not being replaced or superseded, but will continue to be available in the market well into the future. X570 really is a HEDT (high-end desktop) platform despite its mainstream AM4 socket. Many of the boards on display had some genuinely top end specifications and designs!
Perhaps the most headline-grabbing feature is support for PCI Express revision 4.0. PCIe 4.0 doubles the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 meaning there’s more bandwidth for next generation graphics cards and I/O. PCIe 4.0 is not expected to benefit gamers for the foreseeable future as PCIe 3.0 is not a bottleneck except under certain synthetic benchmarks or highly specialised workflows. Its real benefits comes from its extra bandwidth and therefore ability to support more auxiliary controllers which would otherwise require two or more PCIe 3.0 lanes. The flexibility of the X570 platform means vendors can kit out their boards with bandwidth-hogging features such as 802.11ax Wi-Fi, extra SATA or M.2 slots, LAN controllers, USB 3.1 and just about
