Computex 2012: Asus Republic of Gamers launch

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

We'll likely never understand Asus' choice of venue — deep within a shopping mall — but it doesn't seem to have affected the turnout at the Computex press event for its Republic of Gamers brand.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

The biggest surprise at Asus ROG press conference: a new, "classified" Thunderbolt SSD, called Raidr. The company left it till the end of the presentation, and didn't divulge any details beyond "Thunderbolt" and "SSD". We heard that it will be at Asus' Computex booth, so we hope to learn more soon.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

Asus' 15.6-inch G55 gaming laptop packs the latest hardware, from a quad-core Ivy Bridge processor to a full-HD 3D display.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

CNET Asia has previously reviewed the larger sibling of this laptop, the Asus G75VW, and you can expect similar features on the G55.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

Asus showed off its enthusiast-class graphics cards, which comes with a number of overclocking options that allow users to push clock speeds even higher.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

This is the Asus Matrix HD 7970 graphics card, which is based on AMD's top-of-the-line Radeon GPU.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

The Orion is a new, lightweight gaming headset that comes with 50mm neodymium magnet drivers, and is supposed to block out noise passively up to 30dB.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

Asus has launched a second headset in its Vulcan series of active noise-cancelling headphones. The Vulcan Pro has all the features of the original Vulcan, along with a portable USB dongle that integrates a hardware DSP audio engine to enable 7.1-channel virtual surround and other special audio effects.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

Nothing beats a high-end desktop PC when it comes to gaming, and Asus knows this too well. The company introduced a new PC, the ROG Tytan CG8890 gaming desktop, which packs a six-core Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processor (3960X) with 16GB of RAM, dual SSDs and Nvidia's top graphics chip, the GeForce GTX 690.

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The CPU within this desktop is liquid cooled, and can be instantly overclocked with the press of this "Speed" button. Once you do that, the sides of the chassis open up automatically, presumably to let in more air from its surroundings. It's also a pretty cool party trick to impress your friends with.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

One of Asus' high-end motherboards, the Maximus V Extreme, is built with expensive components, such as metallic capacitors from Japan that are claimed to last up to five times longer than the usual solid version. But the main attraction of Asus ROG is the number of software and hardware tweaking utilities integrated with the board.

(Credit: Vincent Chang/CNET Asia)

The Xonar Phoebus gaming soundcard comes with a desktop attachment that allows users easy access to adjust the volume and the settings for their headphones and microphones. The attachment also contains two array microphones that Asus claims will reduce environmental noise by up to 50 per cent.

Via CNET Asia