ASUS was one of the companies showing its latest products at DreamHack Winter 2008 and among them were several notebooks, but also the extreme overclocking display we earlier reported about. One of the expected main attractions was family of Eee PCs where they had people test drive a SSD netbook by shaking it as many times as possible during one minute. The netbook didn’t seem to care, while the testers were quite exhausted afterwards.
ASUS also presented its latest creation, Eee Top, which is a stationary lightweight computer with everything integrated into the display. Touchscreen technology makes Eee Top extremely easy to operate, you only need a finger, but the problem is that the technology of today and the applications we have are not totally synchronized. As time passes they will come closer and right now ASUS is trying to get a feel for the market.
We managed to find an upcoming product from ASUS and the name, G-panel, reveals that it is just a project in development at this point. ASUS has developed a panel that is installed in the case and takes up two 5.25″ slots. If we compare to current fan controllers and such this has to be considered the next generation controller. The panel is connected directly to the motherboard through the SM bus and enables the user to control loads of features and functions via the panel without having to install any kind of software. Everything from clock frequencies, fan speeds and voltages can be controlled, and with the right programming you will be able to access all BIOS settings through this external box.
To top it all off it comes with a relatively high resolution color display that can be used for slideshows or such when it’s not being used. There were no specifications available at the time, more than they are similar to those of the latest generation of mobile phones. You will need a special SM port on the motherboard to use it and today there are only three ASUS R.O.G motherboards that has this port. G-panel will not appear until the next quarter, but if it delivers as promised it will become unnecessary to get into the BIOS every time you have to fiddle with the settings. Quite an interesting concept.
G-Panel can also control all fans connected to the motherboard