Tom’s hardware visits Cooler Master headquarters in Taipei and gets an interesting view of upcoming developments in home pc building

What are some of the trends Cooler Master sees?

• Case design
  • Flatpack cases you assemble
  • Impressive designed minicases
  • More colors and select premium materials such as exteriors featuring leather, wood, and bamboo alongside traditional PC case materials like metal, glass, and plastic
  • Upward trends in computer cases:
    • aquarium-style cases with lots of glass
    • integrated display cases
    • high-end showcase chassis
    • designs with tasteful RGB lighting.
  • Downward trends in case design:
    • ‘old school’ RGB
    • classic towers
    • pure workstations due to the host of attractive alternatives now available.
• Back-plugin motherboards – motherboards that feature plugs on the back/bottom of the motherboard. Components like memory, cpu, M.2, and other components go on top, and all the cable clutter goes on the back.
  • Asus calls these the DIY APE motherboards, MSI refers to them as Project Zero motherboards, and Gigabyte calls them Project Stealth motherboards. 
• Power supplies: quieter and silent passive cooled PSUs, delivering more watts for silent and SFF builds, offering more 12VHPWR connectors, and providing white versions of new and upcoming PSUs.
  • Sizes were also shrinking by demonstrating some truly tiny 1000w power supplies.
  • They are also offering quite 1100W, 1300W, 1600W, and 2000W supplies that come with heat pipes and passive cooling blocks to reduce noise.
  • 12 year power supply warranties
• Immersive experience devices like the Dyn X Dynamic Racing Experience and the Orb X Gaming Throne.