Computex's showpiece display is an obelisk of liquid cooling

Features
By published

And every motherboard on the wall is a working open-air PC.

Well this sure makes an impression. The first thing I saw upon walking into Taipei's Nangang Exhibition Center, which houses tech convention Computex, was this gargantuan display of liquid cooling and RGBs. It's called Inception Project, and it's a huge collaboration between hardware companies and pro case modders spearheaded by Cooler Master. Twelve PCs! All mounted to a freestanding display and loaded to the brim with RGB LEDs.

A ton of Cooler Master power supplies give the array juice, with cooling components from Bitspower and loads of motherboards, graphics cards, and SSDs from big names like Asus and Gigabyte. Each motherboard has a custom cooling loop set up, running down to the tanks at the bottom of the display. That's about $100,000 or so of PC gear up on a wall.

I got a sneak peek at the immense amount of wiring hidden behind the display, and it's surprisingly organized given the complexity. The rat's nest behind my TV is way worse.

I love this display, because it shows the heart of Computex is still rooted in PC hardware excess. May that never change.

What it takes to bring an installation like this to life.
Wes Fenlon
Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).