G.SKILL

This year's Cebit was a first for G.SKILL. In the last years they have been there with a really tiny booth where all other Taiwan booths were. Now they had a pretty big stand in a high-traffic area together with their biggest european distributor. Very good - the business seems to be growing. At display were some very powerful overclocker's systems, one featuring an extreme cooling solution by our friends from MIPS Computer.



For Cebit G.SKILL announced three new products:


The first is a DDR module "F1-4000BIU2-2GBHV" which I have already lying on the testbench here, so stay tuned. The specs are 2x 1024MB DDR-500, CL 3-3-2-8, royal blue heatspreader. Street price is expected to be around 300 USD.


For the DDR2 users two new products were announced. The "F2-5400PHU2-2GBZX" featuring 2x 1024MB DDR2-667, CL 4-4-4-12, azure colored heatspreaders for about USD 270. On the right side with the black heatspreaders are the " F2-6400PHU2-2GBHZ" which are 2x 1024MB DDR2-800, CL 4-4-4-12 for about $280.

All G.SKILL memory products are backed by a manufacturer's 10 year warranty.

Kingmax

Kingmax is the worldwide only manufacturer who can make colored memory packaging. Well, others could probably too, but Kingmax owns a patent on it. Together with a gold colored PCB this DDR-400 memory module looks very impressive. It comes without heatspreaders, and like most other memory doesn't need them. Nowadays heatspreaders are usually used to improve the looks of the memory.


For their DDR2 series a 1066 MHz memory was on display that uses Kingmax' counterfeit technology. The small red chip in the middle is "Kingmax's unique anti-counterfeit red ASIC decoder chip (which uses Kingmax's exclusive patented TinyBGA colour packaging technology) to prevent counterfeiting". While product piracy is not such a big issue in the west it is very common in India and other Asian countries.


This is one of the most impressive things I have seen at Cebit this year. That tiny white piece of plastic is a USB 2.0 stick and comes in sizes up to 2 GB. With dimensions of 34mm x 12.4mm x 2.2mm this is probably the smallest USB Drive in the world. Transfer speeds are around 20 MB/s read and about 12 MB/s write.
This was not a mockup or non-working sample. Every girl at the Kingmax booth had one of these sticks hanging from her wrist with a little chain. For me this USB stick would probably be too small, I would certainly lose it in no time.

OCZ Technology

At this year's Cebit OCZ was not so focused on bringing out new memory products. The "only" new modules they had were the PC2-8000 and PC2-8800 DDR2 sticks. While other manufacturers are showing off 1 GHz memory, OCZ already has 1.1 GHz ready (5-6-6). Also the latencies of the 1 GHz module are better than the competition with CL4 while everybody else has CL5.


Maybe some of you remember, OCZ had air cooling products a long time ago. Now they are back with a new product geared towards the cost aware performance user. This fin-based heatsink is made from aluminum, the copper colored version is just copper plated for looks. However, the base plate where the important stuff is going on is made from copper in all versions. Also a protective foil is included for shipping. Some other manufacturers go through a lot of work flattening and polishing the contact surface only to get it scratched during shipping. Another nice feature of the OCZ heatsink is that the fan can be easily replaced in just a few steps.


Going from air cooling to super-cooling. The OCZ phase change unit has already been seen at CES earlier this year. Unfortunately the unit got damaged on its way to Germany, so no running system was on display. The Cryo-Z is engineered to deliver solid cooling performance for a price which will be competing with high-performance watercooling. The mounting mechanism includes the insulation which forms a tight seal with the motherboard, so it's a really quick and easy installation.


OCZ has also improved the OCZ Rally USB sticks (I carry one of them around with me all the time in my camera bag). The OCZ Rally 2 is similar to the Rally from a performance perspective, because it is hard to improve there. However, the design looks a bit more sleek in my opinion.


Last but not least, OCZ also has new power supplies coming up. The new models are GameXStream which is geared towards the power hungry enthusiasts and is available in 600W and 700W configurations. For the even more demanding hardcore overclockers the EvoStream has been created. Also available in 600W and 700W configuration it is designed to provide maximum stability and additional features like manual voltage adjustments.