Hardware Asylum at CES 2026

As an overclocker I am always on the lookout for special and unique computer hardware.  Maybe it will help to improve performance or maybe it will just improves looks.

What if it could do both?

MSI is bringing back the famed Lightning Z Series of graphics cards with a special limited edition (one of 1300) RTX 5090 complete with a monster PCB, integrated AIO watercooling and an extremely large LCD screen.  The card has already broken some overclocking records and may continue to do so as more people get their hands on one.

One of the forms of overclocking that often eluded me was getting extreme clocks from memory.  It’s not that I didn’t understand the math but rather the 100’s of different settings and their interrelationship to each other.  Call me crazy but I’m more about the challenge in balance type of overclocker. 

Patriot had a very special set of DDR5 modules on display clocking in at 10,000MT/s (Mhz).  This is a dual channel 48GB kit was on a Z890 motherboard with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K processor.

Core CPU frequency remains factory along with most everything else including the ARGB light bar across the top of the module.  Keep in mind these are engineering samples but gives you a glimpse of what is to come.

Bitspower is still offering LN2 cooling supplies with CPU and Memory overclocking gear on display at their CES suite. 

I’m also rather impressed with the CPU block that has no upward facing water ports.  As I understand it, the water enters and exits though a block on the reverse side of the motherboard to give you an extremely clean look, especially on reverse connector motherboards and systems.

Not to be outdone but, Alphacool was also at CES showing off many of their new products including a very cute MiniITX full coverage waterblock for specific boards.  The blocks were also styled to match the original design for the intended audience. 

Alphacool is also heavily invented in the workstation and server market offering entire racks of cooling options from dedicated chillers to configurations for compute modules with individually cooled GPUs.

While not overclocking focused the new MA-01 chassis from CyberPowerPC is pretty amazing.  For years CyberPowerPC has used 3rd party chassis designs in their customer builds which is great and one of the reasons those cases exist in the first place.  However, by building chassis unique to CyberPowerPC they remove the dependency of using outside suppliers, remove limitations and can provide a product that is truly custom.

The MA-01 design takes full advantage of the reverse connector motherboard ecosystem offering a cable free build to highlight your selected system components.  Internal panels fully interlock delivering as completely clean appearance that not only hides cables, fans and screws but aligns with the height of the motherboard as well.

Speaking of fans, the creative venting does much to hide the physical appearance of the included fans while still providing fully directional airflow in an extremely elegant way.  The three knobs in the lower section are a fully analog ARGB controller with the ability to change lighting profiles and lighting colors in a hyper accurate way without the use of additional software.