Just a quick round-up of today's hardware news. ASUS Republic of Gamers has announced a new gaming laptop that goes by the name of Chimera - powered by GeForce GTX 1080 graphics. BenQ's gaming line of products, ZOWIE, has released a new optical keyboard as it gears up to present the BenQ ZOWIE eXTREMESLAND ANZ LAN Finals of CS:GO. Plus, a pretty impressive new headset coming soon from Astro Gaming. And, a demonstration from Sony - highlighting the impressive 3D surround of its own Platinum Wireless Headset for PS4. Phew!


On the ASUS front the company had a lot of Republic of Gamers love to unveil recently, with the most impressive being the new ASUS ROG Chimera - which features "an ultra-responsive 17.3-inch Full-HD wide-view display with G-SYNC technology for a 144Hz refresh rate and 7ms response time". Impressive, doubly so as it's powered by a GeForce GTX 1080 GPU and overclocked Core i7 CPU. Although this is now becoming standard among premium gaming laptops, it's also great to see that the Chimera will feature built-in Xbox Wireless - which means pairing Xbox devices won't require any additional hardware. Awesome.

ASUS also unveiled two other impressive bits of tech, both featuring two GeForce GTX 1080 GPU's running in SLI. One a new ROG laptop with the intimidating title GX800, and the second a desktop PC with the title GT51. Also announced, a ROG Strix XG35VQ is a 35-inch UWQHD (3440x1440) curved monitor with a 100Hz refresh rate. And yeah, we're a little scared to find out how much these will go for.


BenQ ZOWIE has released the ZOWIE Celeritas II optical keyboard, designed for esports in stores across the country today. And joins a lineup of ZOWIE mice, mousepads, cable management and audio devices. Designed for both durability and performance, the Celeritas II features red LED backlights for each key that can be adjusted on the keyboard itself - making it both driver-less and easy to setup. This comes ahead of the BenQ ZOWIE eXTREMESLAND ANZ LAN Finals (for CS: GO) at ESL Studios in Sydney on September 9.

For details and tickets to the event, head here.



In the world of sound, ASTRO Gaming has unveiled the follow-up to its popular A10 headset - the ASTRO A20 Wireless Headset. Once again versions for Xbox One/PC and PlayStation 4/PC will be made available, with the A20 featuring state of the art 5.8GHz wireless tech plus the sweet ASTRO Command Center. A separate app that allows audiophiles to fine tune every input and output parameter, including mic level adjustments and custom equalizer modes. Both the standard and special Call of Duty: WWII versions are expected in October, for $249.95 AUD and $269.95 AUD respectively.

Oh and speaking of headsets if you're a fan of surround sound, and why wouldn't you be, Sony and Guerilla Games have release the following video that goes into the 3D sound design featured in Horizon Zero Dawn. Well worth a watch.



And sure it's both a plug for PlayStation 4, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Sony's Platinum Wireless Headset for PlayStation 4 - but it's also super informative. Which means we now want to go out and buy a pair to go with our PS4 Pro.