The Cool Cases, Mods, Keyboards And Weird Stuff From Computex 2018

It’s been a busy June, with announcements galore. But before we head off into the quiet sunset, let’s take a moment to look back at some of the cooler tech from Computex this year.

Taiwan is the home of major tech brands like GIGABYTE, Acer, ASUS, MSI, Nvidia, Cooler Master, GEIL, G.Skill, In Win, SilverStone, ThermalTake and countless more. And as a result, every time Computex rolls around, you’re guaranteed to see some flashy tech on display.

I did a tour of the major conventions halls with some spare time, capturing as many of the case mods, cool keyboards, PCs and even the odd butt support as I could. There was even some random vegetables, because hey, it’s Computex, and it wouldn’t be right if something wasn’t a little weird.

The larger manufacturers will have the odd gimmick or two, like this motion-activated stand at the corporate part of the ASUS booth. You basically stood in front and then waved your hand left or right to select from a menu. One option brought up a tech demo, where some light graphics appeared on screen as you waved your hand upward.

Think the piano-playing section in Detroit: Become Human, but instead of hitting the DS4’s touchpad for a tune you’re waving your hand upwards at a screen that’s about four times your size. The melody wasn’t as good as Detroit, though.

There were a ton of 49″ gaming monitors on display this year, owing to the fact that the panels are more widely available now. What’ll we see next year? NVIDIA’s trying to push their big 65″ and larger gaming displays, but only a couple of those were on the show floor.

Labo hasn’t paid off that well for Nintendo, but hey, that won’t stop other people from, er, trying.

This one on the floor was a little creepy. It was basically a combo facial recognition system that would add up to a score – nobody could tell me exactly what the score meant. A range of factors would flash on the screen, like whether you seemed happy, your gender, facial hair and so forth. Made me think of China’s social credit system.

You can’t get Leopold keyboards easily in Australia anymore, which is a shame; they were the entry-level mechanical option when StarCraft 2 started getting big, and they were incredibly good value.

Never been much of a numpad fan, until I load up Sid Meier’s Pirates! and remember that I can’t rebind any of the keys to … well, anything else. (Handy if you want to play Sword of the Samurai too.)

If I could have bought Aussie-compatible versions of these power boards from the show floor, I would have upgraded my whole house at once.

My kingdom for an anime where one hero stands alone, fighting back hordes of green lattes.

This was almost a criminal use of GPU power. It gets worse when you see it in motion.

Not the most difficult case mod, but the colour scheme and end result is outstanding. There were a couple of case mods on the floor – at the ASUS booth, actually – that Aussie retailers will be selling direct to Australians. Shame this isn’t included.

How this could be called a “gaming keyboard” is beyond me. It’s almost as big a nightmare as the ergonomic keyboard that has been destroying my life.

[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/06/my-ergonomiuc-keyboard-finally-arrived-and-oh-god-help/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/06/xbows-keyboard-1-410×231.jpg” title=”My Ergonomiuc Keyboard Finally Arrived And Oh God Help” excerpt=”After many months, my beloved special Kickstarter keyboard has arrived. It’s designed to make life more comfortable, save me from endless physical discomfort, and just make things faster. Prolem is. I can’t type properly now=.”]

I got anxiety just watching this.

These retro keyboards are pretty sweet. They were nicer to type on than they first appear — with the rounded keys and all.

For the rest of our coverage from Computex this year, head here.


The author travelled to Computex 2018 as a guest of ASUS.


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