Insomnia 61 (i61) is the UK's biggest gaming festival held annually at the NEC in Birmingham. Primarily the festival is about gaming competitions with a huge LAN hall with hundreds of people battling it out. There are also a couple of halls full of booths and stands from all the major gaming companies/brands/manufacturers and online retailers showcasing all their latest products and technology.
Here are a few highlights from my wondering round the halls.
Start off with an anti-SFF case from Thermaltake, not sure what this case is, but it could certainly serve a dual purpose as a fish tank:
The Logitech booth had a Mclaren F1 car on show and were also running qualifying for their WFG competition, the winner will become Mclaren’s simulator test driver for a year. It’s safe to say it won’t be me, I couldn’t keep the car on the track:
Arcade Zone with many classic games to play:
Retro Console Zone:
There was a Robot Wars arena with a few teams competing throughout the weekend, they also had some of the house robots on show from the TV series:
Scale model of the Robot dog from the game Recore (not sure its name):
The iSeries Drone Racing Grand Finals were being held here, the youngest competitor was just 9 years old!
I think there were eSports teams competing on this stage, not completely sure what was going on here:
All the big online retailers were showcasing their latest and best pre-built systems that cost insane amounts of money.
Here is pcspecialist's liquid series range, ultra violet style white and blue lights seemed to be a popular theme around the exhibition:
Cyberpower PC had some beasts on display, including this £4k custom water cooled system:
And finally onto the reason I was visiting i61, Overclockers UK were displaying their 8Pack extreme overclocked range along with the introduction of their new Kube pre-built system, a custom Lazer3D case:
This was also the first time I've seen the new Phanteks Shift-X in person, it really is a nice looking case up close, but also pretty darn big for an ITX case.
The LZ7 got an honorary mention too! I was hoping for Overclockers UK to have a couple of them on display to showcase its scale and configuration options, but sadly not. Hopefully they will for their next trade show.
They did however have the Kube which was running a Zotac GTX 1080Ti Mini with an Intel i7-7700:
Here are a few highlights from my wondering round the halls.
Start off with an anti-SFF case from Thermaltake, not sure what this case is, but it could certainly serve a dual purpose as a fish tank:
The Logitech booth had a Mclaren F1 car on show and were also running qualifying for their WFG competition, the winner will become Mclaren’s simulator test driver for a year. It’s safe to say it won’t be me, I couldn’t keep the car on the track:
Arcade Zone with many classic games to play:
Retro Console Zone:
There was a Robot Wars arena with a few teams competing throughout the weekend, they also had some of the house robots on show from the TV series:
Scale model of the Robot dog from the game Recore (not sure its name):
The iSeries Drone Racing Grand Finals were being held here, the youngest competitor was just 9 years old!
I think there were eSports teams competing on this stage, not completely sure what was going on here:
All the big online retailers were showcasing their latest and best pre-built systems that cost insane amounts of money.
Here is pcspecialist's liquid series range, ultra violet style white and blue lights seemed to be a popular theme around the exhibition:
Cyberpower PC had some beasts on display, including this £4k custom water cooled system:
And finally onto the reason I was visiting i61, Overclockers UK were displaying their 8Pack extreme overclocked range along with the introduction of their new Kube pre-built system, a custom Lazer3D case:
This was also the first time I've seen the new Phanteks Shift-X in person, it really is a nice looking case up close, but also pretty darn big for an ITX case.
The LZ7 got an honorary mention too! I was hoping for Overclockers UK to have a couple of them on display to showcase its scale and configuration options, but sadly not. Hopefully they will for their next trade show.
They did however have the Kube which was running a Zotac GTX 1080Ti Mini with an Intel i7-7700:
