To be sure, at Computex 2023 in Taipei, Taiwan, the AI wave was inescapable, with Arm, Intel, and Nvidia showing off and talking up new advancements in local and cloud hardware AI acceleration during the event. In fact, Nvidia’s AI showing at Computex helped briefly drive the company past a $1 trillion market valuation(Opens in a new window).
AI—the hype, the dread, and the head-scratching about it in equal measure—dominated conversations throughout the show. But what also pervaded the 2023 Computex? A sense of excitement, gratitude, and optimism among attendees. This was the first "all-out" international version of the show since the pandemic began, and it was hopping. Computers, new display gear, PC DIY gear galore, and much more: We found plenty of products worth calling out, making picking our annual best-in-show a bit tricky. Vendors like Acer, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI brought genuinely interesting, always thoughtful, and sometimes powerful hardware developments to the biggest pure computing event of the year. Come to Taipei with us and dig in: Here are the best accessories, components, and systems that we saw.
Best New Laptop
MSI Raider GE78 HX Smart Touchpad
The sheer showing of new laptops at Computex 2023 was lighter than usual—we're between Intel mobile CPU generations, with "Meteor Lake" 14th Gen coming later this year, and AMD's Ryzen 7000 chips just revving up. MSI took that opportunity to seize the spotlight, with an interesting innovation on the classic laptop touchpad in one of its Raider gaming laptops. Similar to what Asus has done with its light-up LED touchpads that double as numpads, MSI has brought a touch-sensitive LED surface to its MSI Raider GR78 HX Smart Touchpad edition—only this time it’s much larger, it’s expandable, and it’s complete with an array of macro function keys that you can toggle on and off. Now, with two laptop vendors pushing laptops to market with pop-up, visual touchpads, the technology has a better chance of catching on. The MSI Raider GE78 HX Smart Touchpad will launch online in June, and you can pre-order a top-end model with the above-listed specs now for $2,699.
Best New Desktop
Zotac Zbox PI430AJ Pico With AirJet
We've been impressed by Zotac's tiny pocketable mini PCs for years, so it's not a huge surprise that the Zotac Zbox PI430AJ Pico made the list this year. But it's the addition of something entirely new that grabbed our attention: This will be the first product to include AirJet solid-state cooling chips by Frore Systems. AirJet is a fanless cooling solution that has potentially huge implications for everything from laptops and mini PCs to IoT devices. The new cooling tech is slimmer, requires less power, and is orders of magnitude quieter than current fan technology, making this a major leap forward for compact computing. AirJet enabled Zotac to equip this PC with an eight-core Intel Core i3 CPU instead of a Celeron. The company plans to start selling the AirJet Pico starting in Q4 of this year, at $499.
Best New Display
ASRock PG558KF 8K
A large-screen monitor only earns its keep if your panel has a high enough resolution—and equally high pixel density—to make your image look sharp on its jumbo-size screen. The ASRock PG558KF easily fills that part of the bargain. This 55-inch IPS flat-panel display packs 8K (7,680-by-4,320-pixel) resolution for a density of 160 pixels per inch (ppi), which is high enough for intricate graphic arts work. It's also more than enough for gaming, which according to ASRock is this screen's intended use case. It is bright, with a typical 750-nit luminance and DisplayHDR 1000 cred, and it has a 1,200:1 contrast ratio. You’d need a rig with one heck of a powerful GPU to get decent frame rates out of this panel (and more 8K-optimized games are overdue). Plus, its refresh rate is only 60Hz. But whatever compatible content you show on the PG558KF should surely look dazzling.
Best New Input Device
Cooler Master MasterHUB
Taking on Elgato’s Stream Deck and one-upping it in a big way, the Cooler Master MasterHUB is a modular solution for managing live streams, executing shortcuts, and easing media-editing workflows. You can opt for one of several bundled versions of the MasterHUB, geared to photo work, video editing, or live streaming, each equipped with a subset of modules that include faders, touch screens, scrubbing dials, and knobs, in addition to StreamDeck-style shortcut-button grids. (In the case of those grids, each button is a programmable miniature IPS LCD screen!) You snap the modules onto a FlexBase foundation in different arrangements and combinations. Cooler Master also plans on releasing MasterControl, a software utility that will accompany the MasterHUB. Both the MasterControl and MasterHUB will be powerful tools for any streamer, creator, or tech enthusiast when they arrive later this year.
Best New Storage Product
MSI Spatium M570 Pro Frozr+
When we first saw the MSI Spatium M570 Pro at CES in January, this PCI Express 5.0 SSD was tallying throughput speeds in Crystal DiskMark testing in the neighborhood of 12,000MBps for both read and write operations, nearly 5,000MBps faster than the speediest PCIe 4.0 SSDs. But that’s sedate compared with the tweaked version of the M570 Pro (whose commercial release is expected imminently) that MSI showed off at Computex. It tested, in show-floor demos, even faster than the 14,000MBps theoretical maximum sequential read speed for Gen 5 drives, and topped 12K in write-speed testing. To keep the M570 Pro cool, MSI demoed two massive heat-dissipation solutions: The tall, passively cooled Frozr, and the Frozr+, a beefy RGB-lit fan. MSI also showed off a pair of M570 Pros with Frozr heatsinks arranged in an impromptu RAID 0 array. They could clear, ahem, “only” 22,000MBps in sequential read and 23,000MBps in sequential write speeds.
Best New Networking Product
Asus ExpertWi-Fi Routers and Access Points
Woeful Wi-Fi speeds in coffee shops, gyms, and home offices could finally be a problem of the past, thanks to the new Asus ExpertWiFi family. Available in either mesh or standalone-router variants, the new system is designed for people who don’t have their own network administrator to plot out a robust network that won’t crash when many people connect to it at once (a common problem for, among others, trendy independent coffee shops). Using the Scenario Explorer in the ExpertWiFi app, you can choose a setup usage case that matches your specific business type, and the app will automatically select and adjust advanced features to complete the configuration process. You also have the ability to use your smartphone's wireless connection as a fallback if your primary ISP connection goes down.
Best New Motherboard
Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Xtreme X
Motherboards with tacked-on little LED screens have been a costly luxury feature for some time...except those screens aren’t always so small anymore! Gigabyte’s new-for-2023 Aorus Z790 Xtreme X comes with an absolutely massive screen built over its rear I/O shroud for an eye-catching display of custom graphics on your gear. It’s also among the largest screens we’ve seen used like this on a motherboard to date. As for more practical features, The Z790 Aorus Xtreme X will feature Wi-Fi 7 support, and it has one of the highest counts of M.2 slots you'll find on a consumer board. In addition to one well-cooled PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, the board has five more M.2 slots, all PCIe 4.0 and hidden under a very easy-to-remove unified heat spreader. Given these six M.2 slots and the falling price of M.2 SSDs, you can stuff many terabytes of wildly fast M.2 NVMe SSD storage onto this board.
Best New Graphics Card
Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090
We didn't see any brand-new graphics chips debut at Computex, but we saw some exceptional new takes on existing GPUs. The most impressive of these was the Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090, which features liquid-metal thermal interface material on the GPU die and a 360mm water cooler. These additions make this easily the best-cooled commercial GeForce RTX 4090 model, and Asus noted it would come with a fittingly high factory overclock to match. We don’t know exactly how high the card will be clocked right out of the box, but it’s likely to be one of the highest factory-overclocked RTX 4090 models, if not the highest. The GPU's exceptional cooling potential also means that you’ll have all the thermal headroom you’ll need to push the 4090 to its limits.
Best New PC Case
Lian Li O11 Vision
We see a lot of PC cases at Computex (it's surely the world's top showcase for this category of gear), and we've seen plenty of winners from Lian Li over the years. But none has been more eye-catching or jaw-dropping than the Lian Li O11 Vision, a fantastic case with three tempered-glass windows that all join together seamlessly to create a cool "glass box" effect. This gives you a large section that lets you see straight through into the case and all of the components mounted in it. Plus, the top glass is mirrored on the inside, but transparent through the top, creating a double-RGB fiesta when you look at it from below. We have seen other heavy-on-the-glass PC cases before, but they have had supporting braces between the glass sheets. This is the first major-maker case to do it without such obstructions, and the aesthetic is stunning. Pair it with some of Lian Li's equally striking fans and Strimer RGB cable mods, and you'll have a PC build that's tough to top with out-of-the-box products.
Best New PC DIY Product
Corsair iCUE Link
There was a lot of competition for this slot, but it's hard to ignore a new ecosystem that aims to both simplify and beautify PC building. The iCUE Link initiative from Corsair is a new way to connect PC cooling gear such as AIO coolers, case fans, and more in as neat and easy a manner as possible. Fans that support iCUE Link snap together; you can then join series of fans and iCUE Link-capable AIOs in a single sequence, chained together by short cables and controlled by a single, little hub that lies inline. Hit the link for more of the logistics and a list of what modules are coming, but the bottom line: iCUE Link will greatly reduce the number of cables in your case, making building fun without all the cable routing. Each iCUE Link component contains additional circuitry for control and identification in the chain, which will add cost, making this a premium prospect. Putting that aside, though: No RGB header and PWM cables? That is priceless.
(Tom Brant, Matthew Buzzi, Zackery Cuevas, Tony Hoffman, Joe Osborne, Michael Sexton, and Brian Westover contributed to this article.)
The Best of Computex 2023 - PCMag
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