Computex 2025 showed that innovation in PC hardware often involves sticking a screen on something but don't let that distract you from the genuine improvements underneath

Last year, I reviewed a new liquid cooler with a screen on it. It's called the Hyte Thicc Q60, and it comes with a 5-inch screen powered by an ARM chip and running Android. I had two main thoughts at the time: 'this is a novel idea' and 'this is absolutely ridiculous'. Little did I know that a year later, I'd be walking around the showfloor at Taiwan's top tech show, Computex 2025, and the majority of the companies I would visit would be a liquid cooler with a screen plonked on the top.

Hyte wasn't the first to stick a screen on a liquid cooler, but it certainly went to great lengths to stand out from the crowd. At Computex, I saw companies going to ever more extreme lengths for much the same reasons. Over at Lian Li, it showed off a prototype for a liquid cooler that not only features a screen but said screen is motorised, allowing for a to move it up, down, left, and right with the click of a button. Next to it, a liquid cooler with a dial to control some of its functionality.

Then there's the unit over at Xigmatek's booth. Not to be one-upped by anyone, Xigmatek thought it wise to plonk a 7-inch screen on its liquid cooler pump unit. Connected via magnets, imagine my surprise when the rep at the booth cuts the video playing on the unit and uses it to browse the Windows desktop as a second monitor instead.

I like absurd technology and weird PC builds, let me make that clear, but I was left wanting for some real technological advancement from the showfloor. I get that screens are popular, and they do stand out, which is advantageous when you're fighting for attention with the next booth, but where's the innovation in performance, thermals, and acoustics? What is going to make a real difference to my next gaming PC build?

Turns out, there's a lot to be excited about headed to our gaming PCs. I just needed to dive a little deeper.

Since we're on the subject, the latest development in liquid cooling from Asetek is one such innovation. The company manufactures liquid coolers for many brands, including Fractal, MSI, latest cooler design is called Ingrid. Ingrid is promised to be the company's quietest yet, featuring a new pump design that increases tolerances for, what I'm told by Asetek R&D head, Thomas Ditlev, is operation "on a level where you can't hear it."

Ingrid is aimed at workstation s as much as open to gamers, but it will be headed to gaming PCs in the near future. Antec had an Ingrid-powered liquid cooler on display at the show, though ittedly only a prototype, and Asetek says it has others signed on and interested in using it. I did try to test out the Antec Vortex View—this prototype liquid cooler has a screen on it, just in case you forgot my previous point—but the hubbub of the showfloor made any acoustic testing nigh impossible. I couldn't hear it even with my ear up close, for the record.

"When it's installed, you can always hear the fans, you can't do much about them," Ditlev says. "But with good thermal performance and really low noise pumps, and then you can dial down the fans, and get it close to noiseless."

That is a genuine improvement that will make a difference to our gaming PCs and how they function, especially if you're using an older liquid cooler with one of the frightfully loud pumps at full whirr.

With good thermal performance and really low noise pumps, and then you can dial down the fans, and get it close to noiseless.

There's another new product headed our way with aspirations much the same as Ingrid. It's Noctua's new liquid cooler, or rather its first-ever liquid cooler. It's a big step for the famous brown and beige cooling brand, and that's why it's using Asetek's older, performance-focused Gen8 platform under the hood. But that's not the exciting bit. No, Noctua says it has managed to make the louder Asetek pump much, much quieter (around a 5.7 dB(A) average noise reduction) using a combination of 3-layer soundproofing and a tuned-mass damper.

Tuned-mass dampers, as I'm sure you're aware, are used in large skyscrapers to counter movement, ie earthquakes, such as the one found in Taipei's famous 101 building, which sits just down the road from the halls of Computex. That's a convenient comparison for Noctua and one that it takes full advantage of when explaining the concept to me at its booth.

Fun fact: the Taipei 101 has its own mascot designed by Sanrio, owner of Hello Kitty, and it's a tuned-mass damper with arms and legs called the Damper Baby.

I could do with my own tuned-mass damper to get me back on point. Ahem, the main takeaway is that, even in liquid cooling, there's a lot more going on that's set to improve our PCs in material ways and beyond big screens and bright lights. Noctua also had its thermosiphon liquid cooler prototype on show at Computex 2025, a novel design for a chip chiller that doesn't use any sort of pump. Science keeps this cooler functioning, and that it does—Noctua had it operational at its booth on a U playing one of the F1 games.

And it's not just liquid cooling seeing real innovation.

From perusing the many new cases on show at Computex, I can say that Corsair, Havn, Geometric Future, and Lian Li are all set to shake up airflow optimisation, striving for higher airflow and lower temperatures.

Havn has carved out a scoop to collect the air from its new and enormous 180 mm fans in the front of its new BF 360 case. This design has gone through testing to ensure it's up there with the best PC cases around, and Havn would like to believe it's actually better. We'll have to see about that when we get one in ourselves for testing. Lian Li has adopted a vent on the side of its Vector V200 case, which helps pull in air from the side up through fans mounted in the bottom of the case, aiding a chimney-style airflow.

Corsair had the triple-chamber Air 5400 on display at Computex—a close second for my top case of the show. This features Venturi effect fan shrouds and a small chamber to the front-right of the case, which is designed to fit a 360 mm radiator. Behind that is a scoop—again with the scoops—to collect the hot air from the rear of the radiator and disperse it out the side of the PC case and away from any of the components inside the other two chambers.

It's a smart design, but Corsair is not alone in coming up with the concept. Geometric Future's massive Model 9 also has a separate chamber for the radiator to keep the rest of the components out of the firing line. It's not quite as small or sleek as Corsair's Air 5400, but the concept is clear: get the hot air from your radiator as far away from your thermally-sensitive components as possible.

A slightly different approach to case cooling, adopted by Tryx, is a specialised cross-flow fan. This pulls in air from the side of the case, through a vertically-mounted intake running the length of the chassis, and it's used in this instance to by the fabric overlaid on the front and side s. It's intended to be used alongside the front fans, helping to maintain airflow that might otherwise be somewhat restricted, but I'm keen to see how well this solution works. Tryx also had a liquid cooler, a case with a screen on it at the show—who'd have thought?

Another company not afraid of sticking a screen on a liquid cooler is Cooler Master, though when I visited their HQ, there was something more exciting for fans of air cooling like myself. It's called 3DHP, for 3D Heat Pipe, and it's a slightly confusing name given to the fact that heatpipes are already 3D objects, but that's never stopped a company branding exercise before. The underlying tech is essentially the addition of an extra heatpipe to the existing U-shape.

Strip an air cooler back to the basics, and you end up with a U-shaped heatpipe. The lower, shorter edge runs through the coldplate, which comes into with the U, and the longer, upright edges on either side are where the heatsink is mounted. If you look at this U-shape and imagine turning it into a trident with a line down the middle, that's what 3DHP is. It's an extra heatpipe.

The benefit of this extra heatpipe, Cooler Master tells me, is that it allows the centre of a heatsink to be more effectively utilised in dispersing heat generated by the chip.

This is the new era.

That's a new technology rolling out with Cooler Master's latest air coolers, which just goes to show there's still life in that old, air-cooled dog yet. As a fan of air coolers, it's good to see some progress on the air cooling front, though I'm still doubtful it'll lead to any major change in perception for air coolers—you certainly want liquid for a properly high-end gaming U, especially if overclocked.

Now for something completely different from my chat with Cherry, makers of mechanical key switches. Or should I say makers of key switches? Its latest lot are far from mechanical. These are its Ducky One X, though these are totally different from the ones used there. Cherry is extremely excited about IK's prospects in the market for a few reasons: I'm told they're cheaper to manufacture than mechanical switches, more reliable, and less power hungry than Hall effect—though Cherry also has new Hall effect switches.

"We at Cherry say, after 30 years of MX, this is the old era. Our combustion engine. This [IK] is the new era," says Gunnar Schreck, Cherry global product manager.

Now that's a serious shake-up to the market, and yet not all that well signposted over at Computex. In fact, Cherry had one test board at the back of its booth to showcase the new technology, which it seems confident will be as ubiquitous as mechanical switches in the near future. Just another potentially huge development in PC hardware that doesn't get quite as much screen time as flashier components with lots of lights.

Clearly there's a lot to be excited about in PC hardware in the near future, outside of the parade of new processors and new graphics cards. Cherry's IK switches are coming later this year, Cooler Master's 3DHP coolers are already on the way, Noctua's first liquid cooler is set to arrive by 2026, and Asetek's new Ingrid platform is likely to reach the market around that same time. All promising genuine improvements in ways that matter to PC gamers… though, okay, I it I do want the motorised liquid cooler screen.