Contents
Power supplies and cases
Antec
Antec had, as last year, quite a large booth under their German partner at CeBIT 2016, showing all of their power supplies and most of their cases. As for power supplies, there isn’t really anything much new: I’ve already covered over half of their line-up, some units will be reviewed very soon and others maybe in future. But as most of their series are already quite old, I asked them if there are plans for something new and they responded that there indeed are. So we should expect something new this year, maybe around the time Computex comes around.
As for the cases, I took a specific interest in their latest products from the Gaming series: the GX330 and the relatively new GX1000. However, there were a couple more prototypes shown which weren’t familiar to me, but they have not been pointed out to me. So I have to rely on Antec’s own pictures, which are of even lower quality than those from my obsolete camera. These are the GX1200, the “Cube” (name not yet confirmed), and the Crown. The black&white GX330 with mesh and window is optimized for long graphics cards and zone-cooling as it only carries a single 5.25” bay and two 3.5” on the bottom. There will most likely not be a window-less version and it should arrive to retail in Q3 of this year.
The Cube prototype comes in several different colors and the front side reminds of some old trucks. It has zone cooling once again and a position for a standard ATX power supply, though it can only support a Mini-ITX motherboard, but with a full-length graphics card.
The Crown case also has somewhat of a cubic shape, but it is made out of aluminium panels. Finally there is the GX1200, back to ordinary mid-tower shapes. It has a couple of LED fans of which colors you can switch between red, green and blue. It also has a kind of zone cooling, a small bottom compartment for two hard drives, a single 2.5 inch position under the motherboard plate and that’s all. So definitely not for somebody with lots of hard drives.
Be Quiet!
Be Quiet! doesn’t seem to offer a wide variety of products, not yet at least. Besides the Pure Power 9 CM we’ve already previewed, there was also the new System Power 8 at CeBIT 2016. This series sits below the Pure Power so it is more value oriented. It offers 80 PLUS @230 V (which equals to Bronze @115 V) and is probably also made by FSP once again. We have also discussed the overall higher prices of their products in the Czech Republic which makes them often fall into a higher-priced category, as well as their 5 year warranty.
They have no plans at the moment to increase this, but I’ve been told that Be Quiet! also offers some kind of post-warranty support or assistance to their customers for free. And I got confirmation that they can still track each unit’s individual movement geographically (some brands have so many of them that they can’t always do this) so their warranty support should be top notch. That is why they haven’t been pressured into offering more than 5 years warranty at the moment.
Other than that, Be Quiet! also exhibited their only case (Silent Base) they have at the moment at CeBIT 2016, as well as their complete line-up of air coolers. They use the familiar Silent Wings fans on them, as well as in their PSUs.
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