Four days at Asia's biggest computing show, one booth — M1403 —, a prototype with twenty-two fans and two cameras. A look back at M.RED's first time at Computex.
Taipei, 30 May 2023
On 30 May 2023, Computex reopened its halls in Taipei. This wasn't an edition like any other: it was the first fully in-person one since the pandemic, and Asia's biggest computing event had three years of reunions to make up for. More than a thousand exhibitors from twenty-six countries, three thousand booths, and tens of thousands of trade visitors expected over four days.
You don't visit a show like this one, you cross it. It's the place where manufacturers show what will come out twelve months later, where distributors decide what they will stock, and where the press chooses what it will talk about. The theme of the edition — Together we create — summed up the place rather well: you come here to meet people.
Somewhere between two industry giants, one booth carried a name you didn't yet read much in the aisles. M1403. On the arch, three words: Up Your Game. It was the first time M.RED had exhibited at Computex.
- from 30 May to 2 June 2023, in Taipei
- 4 days
- exhibitors, from twenty-six countries
- 1 000
- booths across the halls of the Nangang Exhibition Center
- 3 000
- fully in-person edition since the pandemic
- 1st
- our booth number, for the record
- M1403
One team, four days on their feet
A trade show booth is first and foremost people standing from morning to night.
Paris on one side, mainland China on the other: M.RED designs in France and manufactures in Asia, and Computex is one of the few moments in the year when everyone meets on the same square metre of red carpet.
The booth welcomed two audiences at once. Visitors, who come to look and touch. And professionals — distributors, resellers, importers — who leave with a business card and, sometimes, a deal.
Mirage, the chassis that pivots
On its rotating base, tempered glass front, packed with ARGB fans: the piece on the stand you couldn't miss.
Its idea fits in one sentence: the inner chassis pivots. Components can be mounted in several orientations — twenty-four combinations in all —, the motherboard tray slides and can be adjusted after cabling, and the power supply has three possible positions. It all goes together tool-free, in E-ATX format, behind fully ventilated magnetic mesh panels.
Up to twenty-two fans. The kind of figure you put on a spec sheet just to see the visitors' faces.
- fans maximum
- 22
- build combinations in total
- 24
- positions for the power supply
- 3
- assembly is done by hand
- 0 tools
- motherboard format supported
- E-ATX
Mirage: the prototype presentation video
What was in the display case
The rest of the stand was under glass: liquid cooling, fans and air coolers, each with its own spec sheet.
An all-in-one with a screen
An all-in-one liquid cooler in aluminium, with an LCD screen on the pump that rotates through 240° to stay readable whatever the mounting orientation. Rated above 300 W TDP, on Intel and AMD sockets alike.
The screen can be customised from Nova by M.RED, our in-house software: more than forty options, plus the option to upload your own background image.
From 240 to 480
Four radiator lengths — 240, 360, 420 and 480 mm —, Intel and AMD sockets, fans from 800 to 1,800 rpm, 43.5 m³/h airflow and 1.1 mmH₂O pressure.
32 dB(A) maximum, hydraulic bearing, 50,000 hours stated MTBF, 4-pin connector.
Fans that slot together
120 mm ARGB and PWM fans that slot into one another : no cables between them, a single link to the controller. Fewer wires in the case, a quicker build, and a perfectly aligned row.
The Nova controller is magnetic and removable, and an Android and iOS app drives the lighting.
The all-black air cooler
Six heat pipes, a 120 mm PWM fan, an aluminium heatsink and an all-black finish — no LED, no chrome. Rated at 220 W TDP and 28 dB(A) maximum, on Intel and AMD.
Does the name ring a bell? A Zephyr Dark Pro ARGB is in the catalogue today.
The booth, in pictures
What Taipei left behind
A trade show isn't judged on the day. What you bring back from it fits into a contact book and a handful of decisions.
M.RED cases sell for between €65 and €150 depending on the model, and a complete custom watercooling build — like the one assembled at the booth, in a Crystal Sea Black with an MRR-850A power supply — comes to between €2,500 and €4,000 depending on the components. The brand is launching on Amazon in the United Kingdom and Germany, and is looking towards the Middle East, India, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
Asked about the competition, our COO names Cooler Master, Fractal Design and Thermaltake without hesitation. Measuring yourself against established brands is already a way of saying where you want to go.
And Mirage?
It isn't for sale. It's a prototype, and that's the nature of show prototypes: they aren't there to fill a shelf, they're there to show how far you can go. The Crystal Sea Black and the MRR-850A used in the booth build, on the other hand, are in the catalogue.
They talked about it
Both videos in this article come from media outlets that stopped by the stand. You can read and watch their work on their own channels:
MRED, the French brand, arrives in force at COMPUTEX 2023 — Cowcotland, 4 June 2023 (article and video)
Mred Introduces PC Cases & Water Cooling Solutions at Computex — Charbax, ARMdevices.net (in English)
COMPUTEX Taipei — the show, its programme and its exhibitors
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