OCZ Fatal1ty memory, new flash drives, keyboards

OCZ has today announced it will soon offer Fatal1ty branded mainstream memory “for gamers”. The idea is not to overlap the more popular overclocking brands like Flex or Reaper, but to provide a brand that a wider audience can identify with.

We were shown PC2-8500 C5 branded memory (further specifications will be released next week along with the official announcement) with black XLC heatspreaders that had the Fatal1ty logo in the middle. Other Fatal1ty products include OCZ PSUs with black casing and red fans.

While we agree the differentiation is a good thing, how much can you do to memory and PSU? That said, there’s no doubt that the appeal for Fatal1ty merchandise is certainly polarising in the community and why does a massively popular memory brand like OCZ need to leverage another brand on top?

In other memory news, OCZ will relaunch its Flex modules but with black aluminium headspreaders, re-engineered fins and a single watercooling nozzle, rather than two. The heatsink feels a lot lighter and more industrial, but looks less pimped out compared to the original chromed FlexXLC heatsinks.

OCZ whitebox laptops might also be on the cards for the future - all you need is hard drive, memory and CPU, the rest is in there. In the future OCZ would like to offer MXM graphics support for simple upgrades (something Nvidia has been wanting since it launched the standard many, many years ago), but finding MXM modules, let alone mobile CPUs for a reasonable price, is a pretty hard task at the best of times. The company hasn't yet finalised the design and specifications - so take it all with a fist of salt until you hear something solid.



The company also has new keyboards too, commonly branded Alchemy – the Elixia has fully rubberised feel keys and ten programmable macro buttons, as well as general productivity buttons down the side. The price is around 25 Euros, and it will be the first of a few keyboards OCZ will launch – future ones will be higher end, but are taking longer to develop.

We'd like to say we tried it and loved it, however the palm rest was largely uncomfortable although the rubberised keys felt not bad to type with – but there's no really satisfying "click" there when a button is depressed.

Finally, while there are several new flash drives, the one that caught our attention most was the Fortress, which OCZ claims is even bullet proof. It’s undoubtedly designed to take on the Corsair Survivor and there is only a mock-up currently available with no indication yet what the final product will be made of. It comes in sizes up to 32GB (for now) and include an OLED screen on the side. We did ask about the Firewire key, dubbed Firefly, which we heard about last year at CeBIT, however we were told that there were still persistent controller issues.

Keyboards, Flash, Memory heatsinks, Fatal1ty and white-box notebooks – is OCZ spreading in the right direction? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.

Windows Vista SP1 Core Performance

Take the bit-tech Reader Survey and win prizes!

Sony considering external PS3 HDD?