MSI CES Booth Summary: USB3.1 Motherboards, Keyboards, Headsets, More

It’s CES time again and, after hopping on planes and braving Southern California traffic, we safely arrived in Las Vegas. Our first stop this year was at the MSI suites, where we already wrote about a gaming laptop equipped with a mechanical keyboard. Associate Marketing Manager David Chang started our tour and was even kind enough to showcase the benchmarking of the USB 3.1 interface in one of our upcoming videos.

MSI proudly showed off a few milestone pieces:

• X99A – first commercial motherboard to feature the 10 Gbps USB 3.1 port.
• GT80 – the world's first gaming laptop to feature a mechanical keyboard. Read more here.
• AG240 4K Edition – Ultra-Slim gaming 4K all-in-one PC.
• GTX 970ME – a commemorative GPU to celebrate 100 million total GeForce units sold.

In addition to these items, we also had the opportunity to check out their full line-up of motherboards, GPUs, laptops, a laptop docking station, all-in-one units, headsets, keyboards, and more. Most of the new tech MSI showed should be available in February, but the prices for most of these are still TBD.

A quick overview of some of the items that will be available:

DS-502 headset: The DS-502 gaming headset features a frequency range of 20Hz-20kHz and virtual 7.1 multi-channel technology and an omnidirectional microphone. It comes with a 2-meter USB cable and stylized LED MSI dragon on both ear cups. There is also the DS-501, featuring a 3.5mm jack and lacking a mic. The DS-501 and 502 have a similar feel to the Siberia V2 with their distantly familiar suspension headband mounts; however, when asked, MSI stated that there's no partnership with SteelSeries.

GK-701 Gaming Keyboard: The GK-701 is a mechanical keyboard that uses Cherry MX Brown switches. Red backlighting with variable illumination levels provides low-light visibility.

Thunderstorm Mouse Pad: The Thunderstorm is a lightweight aluminum-based mouse pad that features one slick slide and a textured side. To tailor the pad to the preferences of the user, the sides offer speed or precision. The Thunderstorm pad is 16.4” x 11.6” x 0.08” and should be durable enough for any normal use.

AG240 4K edition: This AIO can handle up to 3xSSD in Raid 0 and has an i7 processor on the HM87 chipset and the latest NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900M series GPU. The screen is a 23.6” 4K LCD panel with MSI's Anti-Flicker and Less Blue Light technologies.

Motherboards, GPUs, and Laptops: We have videos and articles in the works covering these, so feel properly teased until we release them.

Keep posted to our YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts to get our CES coverage as quickly as we can put it out. As always, if you have any questions or anything you want us to check out while we are here, drop them below in the comments section or in our forums.

Also, if you drive a smart car and are at CES this week, be polite and don't pull all the way forward when you park next to a van or large SUV – ‘cause that just gets our hopes up. Here’s looking at you, Vegas.

- Scott "Abibiliboop" Griffin.