CeBIT 2008: The Best of the Rest

Introduction

While attendance was clearly down this year at CeBIT, it doesn't prevent it from still being a mammoth show with many companies attending. There's so much to see and not enough time to see it all – we covered the major announcements in our news feed, but there wasn’t time to write about everything we saw during the week. So here’s the best of the rest we came across in our four days of show floor adventuring.

Akasa

While Akasa may be a well known brand name to us, it’s not predominantly known for its cases. The new Omega-62 is surprisingly impressive and carries some serious mod potential for those wanting a large case, with lots of core features, but without the hassle of working around styling.

It’s conservative and black on the outside, like a lot of other cases, but the attention to detail is where it’s at here. The predominantly aluminium construction is powdercoated inside to match the black outside, so it looks consistent throughout, and while usually aluminium cases are either thin and flimsy or thicker and weigh as much as steel – Akasa has managed to build a solid construction without compromising weight.


The sides and top are separately removable – there’s even space for a watercooling radiator in the roof and Akasa even makes a fan controller slim enough to still use the obstructed 5.25” bay. On the topic of fan controllers – even though the Omega-62 has a door it’s got space recessed into the back of it to accommodate switches and knobs from many controllers should you use one.

The most expensive part of the case is the polished, removable stainless steel EATX motherboard tray. The tray has a hole in the back to increase airflow and allow cable routing but since the whole chassis is wider than normal it has plenty of space to hide excess cables down one side.

As we said, the top is removable so allows much easier PSU installation – the large support bar underneath also allows it to hold larger, heavier PSUs as well, without relying on just the four case screws.

Comparatively though, the fantastic “Impreza Blue Pearl” paintjob done by Scan on the same case makes us think Akasa needs to relaunch its case to look like this.

Featuring a Skulltrail motherboard complete with all blue lit Akasa CPU heatsinks and graphics card heatsinks on the three Radeon HD 3870s it looked very impressive for a show system, which are usually blinged up to the max and often look tacky as a result. The theme through this was consistent, good looking yet functional, and not overwhelming.

The case shouldn’t be too expensive either, retailing around the £100 mark.