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Cooler Master CM Storm Gaming, Cases & Coolers - Linus Tech Tips CES 2013

2013-01-11
welcome to Linus tech tips at CES 2013 our trip to the show this year is powered by Corsair maker of quality PC components and peripherals our trusted storage partner is Seagate technology and our trusted networking partner is Linksys the Quickfire is already cooler masters most popular mechanical keyboard but that doesn't mean they're gonna stop changing things about it and I don't mean changing things like randomly changing things that aren't necessarily good things I mean making changes that have been asked for so you see this is an older version this has sort of CM storm branding here it has CM storm branding sort of over here on the right by the arrow keys it's got some CM storm branding on the top of the keyboard the feedback from gamers that Coolermaster received was look we like these premium mechanical keyboards they're awesome we love the Quickfire but what we don't like is having branding all over it we want a cleaner look so they introduced sort of the newer revision which has a very very very very plain very clean look as well as just a small CM storm logo up here at the top now this is an existing product so this is this is nothing that new the quick-fire stealth on the other hand changes the quick fire making it again even cleaner so moving the writing to the side of the key like this does a couple of things number one is it makes the keyboard look extremely stealthy and very cool from the top and number two is it actually increases the durability of the keys themselves so even though they're laser etched there is still the the eventual chance that the writing can wear down or it can become less visible but because of the way that they've done this it is absolutely absolutely impossible so no matter how greasy or oily or cheeto stained your fingers are you are not going to be able to affect the way the typing appears on the keyboard now this guy over here is new this is basically a longer version of the Quickfire this is the XT which stands for extension or extended or extreme tactile or whatever you want it to stand for basically this is a full 104 key layout so you get the number pad in addition to everything you already liked about the Quickfire one thing that's missing from the Quickfire is the cable routing here at the bottom so the reason for that is that they've actually D priest there you go they've decreased the profile of keyboard it is 28 millimeters at its thickest and 18 millimeters at its thinnest making it the thinnest mechanical keyboard using Cherry MX switches on the market they've also added and I believe oh shoot yes okay I missed something on both of these so they've added an 8 X polling rate option to both the stealth and the XT that makes it the fastest input available for a mechanical keyboard which is if you're looking for every little competitive edge obviously a factor for you so right instead of the cable routing on the bottom they've just gone with a full-size USB port although they are going to implement it a little bit differently I think on the final model where it'll be kind of coming out at an angle so it's a little bit easier to route while the four types of Cherry MX switches that we're most familiar with our blues Browns reds and blacks there are actually other kinds of switches from Cherry now some of the reasons that we haven't seen these as often is maybe they aren't as ideal so you know maybe people don't like them as much or maybe they're more expensive and companies haven't wanted to implement them now cooler masters taking almost every model they have and throwing a whole bunch of different switch types at it because their idea is that look we're not gonna say okay you're a typist you want blues you're a gamer you want reds we're gonna say you're a whoever you are and you want whatever you want and go for it so this is the trigger green this is the first fully your MX green keyboard that I have ever encountered and both slick and I are in perfect agreement that it is without a doubt pretty much as good as it gets it feels like a heavier blue so it has an 80 gram spring in it and what that means is as you push down to things it eliminates a bit of the DoubleTap issue that you have with blues where the actuation point is actually a little bit before the click so you don't have that that audible feedback for the actuation point on a blue here they line up much more closely and it also gives you more well more resistance and more pushback so it feels more like a buckling spring if you've ever used a model M this is as close as it gets with a cherry MX key switch without you having to sort of find an old model M on eBay or something along those lines now it's got some of the estimize ability that we've seen with other Coolermaster keyboards so you can change the mode of the keys you got breathing you've got a gaming mode that lights up your arrow keys you can adjust the brightness you can turn the LEDs off outright but what I think is the coolest feature about it is the fact that you can fully program any key so if you decide okay I want a Windows key over here I don't want a storm key you reprogram that to a Windows key it has a few macro profiles as well as profile keys and if you decide ok I want my delete key here then you can do that the only key on the keyboard that cannot be reprogrammed is the one right here I also really like the implementation of the wrist rest here I know that large wrist rest sometimes don't look as sexy as a very small compact wrist rest but I can tell you guys right now that for some people my wife being one of them she refuses to type on anything that doesn't have a wrist rest about this big so the only keyboard out there for her is a SteelSeries 7g as soon as I get my hands on one of these I'm gonna get her to try and see what she thinks cuz she's a much faster typist than me she was about 145 words per minute and she's kind of one of my one of my go-to people but slick is the only one I have here you'll you'll have to do for today's slick and he says sounds great I love it too these products don't actually exist yet this codename luxe or something like that and they're sort of referred to as the Coolermaster CM storm aluminum series or something what they are is they're kind of a concept that they're working on right now for customizable keyboards now you might have seen back in the day I think there was I forget who it was but they were custom painting Logitech G 15s I can tell you guys right now the finish you're gonna get painting something like made of plastic is never gonna be as good as you can do with something metal also the fact that you can't take them apart makes it much more difficult to do you have to have more specialized equipment and it's just it's never gonna look as good so what they've done is they've integrated aluminum metal aspects into a full range of gaming peripherals chips so we've got a headset that has two removable plates one on each side that allow you to take it off you can paint it you can color it you can take it off completely if you want it to look kind of goofy but that's totally up to you it's sort of the point there's also a keyboard that has the entire top plate removable so you want to put your favorite game graphic let's say you're let's say you're a partner of cooler masters you want to release you know a game branded keyboard or even you want to do like a cool giveaway so you grab a few of these you send them to a sweet paint shop you get some really cool airbrushing done on them boom you're done so it's the pretty much thing meant to be a template for the easiest to customize peripherals there's also a mouse and a mousepad so you can see here's the aluminium plate on this guy this is full aluminum and while I probably don't think I'd recommend painting a mousepad I guess you'd have the option if you really want to the last thing I missed here before was the control Rx and what's cool about this guy is it's sorry polyurethane back correct polyurethane back and it's very very thick so this is great for land parties where you don't always get your own table and sometimes you're stuck on sort of the butt crack between the tables so what you could do is you take this and at least as long as you don't have a huge lip you're gonna have a reasonably smooth surface bridging that gap because it's so thick and because the back is so stiff it's also extremely sticky probably the most grippy back I've ever felt on a mousepad and I think that pretty much wraps it up for CM storm so they've got a lot of exciting stuff going on don't miss any of our CES 2013 coverage by making sure you're subscribed to Linus tech tips not content to just make PC cases anymore Coolermaster has on display at CES a fairly wide range of Apple accessories so I want to start with the rock basically it's a sort of no frills nice heavy typing the name is appropriate because it feels and looks about like a rock except like a more of a glossy elegant Rock and the idea is you take your iPad or I don't know presumably you can even check an iPhone there if you felt like it there you go you could do that or you take your MacBook you put it in there it slides in pretty nicely it's got a nice rubberized finish on the inside so it's not going to slip out or go anywhere you put that next to your computer if you use an external display and it's sort of a stand it's just a stand speaking of just a stand this is the jazz pro which does not stand for just a stand pro but what this guy does is it allows you to put your Mac next to an external display it's probably not that practical from me sitting there using the computer perspective and I just hit the power button I'm very sorry about that but if you're going to put it next to a display then and use actually an external keyboard and mouse then something like that could work very well for you moving right along over here we have the Wren so this guy is an iPad iPad mini holder and I actually didn't get briefed on how it all look there's a button there you go I didn't get briefed on how it works but what it does is it locks into several different positions depending on whether you want to be in portrait mode with a full size iPad landscape mode with a full size iPad or in portrait mode with an iPad Mini it rotates like this so it allows you to kind of take your tablet and prop it up like this take your tablet prop it up like this it also comes with a couple of accessories so this guy allows you to hang it off of sort of a horizontal surface this is a very thick table so that's not gonna work for me but if you're gonna hang it off a bookshelf or something like that then you just slot this into the back here there you go hang it off something sort of rotate it wherever you want it to go and then it also comes with another optional one right here which allows you to clip it to a vertical surface so then you could sort of rotate it out and around this way and sort of I figured my pitch to them was you should come you should sell them as a 10 pack so that the customers can actually put them all over their house and then just carry the tablet around with them and have it kind of you know like hanging up here above the shower and sort of in the kitchen and wherever else it happens to be this right here is not actually available yet this is the cooler master macbook air they are going directly up against Apple with this we know I'm just kidding it's actually the stand underneath of it so this is an evolutionary step forward from the jazz pro where not only can you adjust the height but you can actually also adjust the angle so you know you're a DJ you're someone who wants to use their computer and have it sit on a nice solid aluminum stand with rubberized base and rubberized grips it has a very very nice feel to it I mean look how thick the aluminum is here this most of this stuff is available on the Apple store so it's all Apple approved Apple Authorized accessories so if you're into Apple then you might care about that sort of thing last but not least we have the duo so this guy right here slides together like this so you can use it as an iPad Mini stand or presumably a full as iPad stand although I haven't tested that personally on the bottom you see a couple of different things so you have a past three four headphones you have a pass through four I don't know what the difference between battery and battery is here I guess they allow you to run two cables into it either way when you pop it out here you can see you can there we go you can actually plug because of the iPhone 5 has the headphone jack on the bottom you can plug your audio cable in there and you can just kind of have it sitting in the dock next to this one you can kind of hide it a little bit inside this one you can put it completely inside this one and it's got like a nice rubberized feel to it and this is a solid piece of aluminum all down here so that pretty much wraps up the Apple accessories don't miss any of our CES 2013 coverage and don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips they're our bucket loads of new desktop products at the cooler master suite we're gonna start with the Centurion six this brings back sort of the the metal accent and the that feel of sort of metal quality that I think has been missing a little bit from the $69.99 price point because that's where they're going to be positioned this stripped down here on both the silver accented version and the black accented version is aluminum and check this out guys these are not plastic meshes we are done with plastic meshes on $70 cases these are actually metal meshes but gives I hope you can see this in the video but in person it gives it a better look and it gives it a better overall feel to the chassis other than that it's a pretty it's something we're pretty used to seeing on the inside so it has support for dual 120 millimeter rads in the top and it has a removable cage here so you can put in as long a graphics card as you could possibly want to have this guy right here is a little bit unique this is the elite 241 it's a very very small chassis and the idea is it fits an ATX motherboard and it's at a very very low cost and it's small and narrow so there you go next up here this is kind of a concept chassis right now this actually repositions the water cooling radiator to the side so check this out dual 120 millimeter rad on the side what this allows you to do is save on the height of the case so if you had for example a little all Club you wanted to chuck your water cooled system into this would allow you to save at least a couple inches on the top of the case in order to make that fit so the radiator is look it's slipping the radiator is right here which gives you not as ideal of an airflow situation as if you had it in the top of the case but it allows this case to come in at a lower price point because it has a top power supply and it doesn't have to have that extra height last but not least we've got the end 200 and this is sort of representative of what will be a bit of a new look for some Coolermaster cases so it's glad this is a plastic mesh again but it's just sort of a cleaner look so the half line has been has done really well and that aesthetic has been great and it's gonna continue but they're also experimenting with a few different things as well so the idea behind this guy is that you can have check this out a dual 120 millimeter rad and up to another 120 millimeter add in the back can throw a couple hard drives in there and there's lots of space so it's an idea the idea is it's an m-80 X chassis that gives you options so you're not gonna be able to put in a ton of hard drives and a long graphics card and a bunch of water cooling but you can do kind of any two of the three without sacrificing very much at all this is the Scout to ghost white so they've got a couple different colors on display you can check out the inside it's just basically showcasing all the really cool stuff that Coolermaster has going on in terms of their technologies so they've got their iceberg cooler in there you got your removable cages you've got your support for liquid cooling I really love the handles on the top of this case they're extremely robust they're extremely strong this is the case that I actually took in my video where I unboxed it lifted it up by the by the handle alone on the top over my head shook it around and it didn't have any flex to it whatsoever thank you for checking out our coverage of the cooler master desktop products at CES 2013 don't miss any of our CES 2013 videos and don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips you
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