CES 2011 Coverage

Corsair

Corsair has a lot on display this year from a complete lineup of power supplies, solid state drives and desktop memory, to some of its recently unveiled audio equipment.

Corsair has had several new items added to its arsenal from last year. One of the first things we were introduced to was Corsair's power supply lineup, which tailors to many different consumer price points and performance ratings. Corsair's top "Professional Gold" series features fully modular cables and offer outputs from 750W to 1200W. Next down is the standard Professional series, which has semi-modular cables and is available in 650W to 1000W units. Further down are the Gamer, Enthusiast, and Builder series, which have decreasing wattage ratings, respectively. Corsair's power supplies currently retail from as little as $50 for the entry level Builder series to over $300 for the most powerful unit currently offered.

Displayed at Corsair's press event earlier this week was one of the latest creations by Corsair, a new line of 2.1 speaker setups. The model on display at the CES booth is the SP2500, which has a massive 8" subwoofer in a fourth order bandpass enclosure. For those who do not know what a bandpass enclosure is, it uses a very precisely designed system of internal baffles to maximize frequency responses in desired ranges. This provides an incredibly clear output, though it lacks a little bit of "punch". The SP2500 pulls an RMS 252W, which is significant on a 2.1 setup. A neat thing about the SP2500 is the wired controller, which has a 1.8" LCD display for the user to interact with, select modes, equalization and other customizable factors. The SP2500 has an MSRP of $249.

Another new bit of audio equipment that Corsair was showing off was the new HS1A headset, which is the analog version of the incredibly popular HS1. The HS1 uses a USB connection, which makes it only compatible with computers. However, the huge amount of positive feedback for the HS1 drove Corsair to offer an analog version, which can be used for anything with an audio output. This includes MP3 players, TVs, consoles, and more. Widening the range of compatibility will certainly make the HS1 series even more popular than it already is. The HS1A retails at $79.

Other showcased products at the Corsair booth included the 2.5" SSD line, ranging from 60GB to 256GB. Underneath these were the Vengeance and Dominator line of desktop memory, as mentioned earlier in the Corsair press event. Further down, Corsair had its line of flash drives out for display, including the Corsair Flash Voyager, which is said to be nearly unbreakable. One of the Flash Voyagers was even in a glass of water!

To rest his tired feet, Mike (Airman) volunteered to try out the powerful gaming system that Corsair had set up in its booth — three massive 3D LCD monitors powered by an Intel i7 Extreme, 24GB of Corsair Dominator memory, a 160GB Corsair SSD, the 1200W Professional Gold power supply, all inside an 800D case with no mention of the video cards used. The game of choice is the latest installment of the prolific Need for Speed series.