KitGuru spent the weekend atteding the UK's biggest gaming festival, Insomnia 43. Those who have seen our coverage of previous i-Series events will notice that Multiplay have changed the location for i43 from Newbury Racecourse to the International Centre in Telford because of the massive demand for tickets.
With the change in venue, the number of spaces for gamers has increased massively. The exhibition hall has also expanded to accomodate an even larger number of companies showing off their latest products. We took a look around to see what was going on.
First of all we visited the Thermaltake booth where they had their entire range of eSports products on display including the latest MEKA G keyboard and a variety of mice and headsets. They also had some of their other products on display including the Level 10 GT case and the Frio cooler.
Next we moved onto the Zotac booth where the ‘booth babes' talked us through some of their latest products including the latest iteration of the Zbox which features AMD Fusion technology.
Cooler Master were showing off some of their latest CM Storm gaming perpherals including their latest Sirus 5.1 surround sound gaming headset and upcoming Trigger mechanical gaming keyboard. These were attached to a series of gaming systems for people to try out.
Over at the Asus booth they had their latest range topping graphics cards on display including the MARS II which we reviewed in depth over here. They were also showcasing the automatic overclocking functionality of their motherboards which gives a performance boost to those who don't have the know how to overclock manually.
Kingston had a modest selection of products on display including the latest HyperX solid state drive that we reviewed recently. The main attractration here, though, was the pile of stress balls that Kingston were giving away for all those frustrated gamers.
Moving on to the Antec booth, they had their latest range of closed loop watercooling units on display alongside a selection of their power supplies and a variety of their other cooling products.
Some of the tastiest kit on display was over at the Aqua Tuning stand where there was a number of impressive looking custom water cooled rigs on display. The most exciting of these featured an EVGA SR2 motherboard which was mounted in one and a half Cooler Master 840 case which are attached together. There were also plenty of water cooling goodies on display.
CCL Online had a number of products on display on their stand but the biggest attraction was the build-a-PC competition to win. Whoever registered the fastest build time by the end of the weekend would win an AMD Fusion Media Center PC.
Mad Catz were showing off their range of Tritton gaming headsets and Cyborg keyboards and mice.
Finally, SteelSeries were showing off their range of Xbox gaming headsets although Rock Band was the main attraction at their stand.
KitGuru says: Lots of exciting gear on display this weekend, we look forward to i44!
Shame I missed it, but im in a different part of the world.
I wonder how many cans of cola were consumed over the weekend?!