Lian Li's new water cooler with a curved and motorised screen is basically pointless but you're still going to want one
We predicted that screens on everything was likely to be something of a trend at Computex this year. So, an AIO cooler with a screen on the water block isn't exactly radical. So, to give it an extra twist, Lian Li made their water cooler screen curved. Oh and stuck some motors on it and made it controllable both wireless and through a Windows app.
Why, you ask? Why not, Lian Li replies. We give you Lian Li Hydroshift II LCD Curve. It's still in prototype form and won't be available until later this year, and not before October, so the details are a little sparse.
However, the screen is 1440p / 2K resolution, so the pixel density will be very sweet indeed. The screen can be moved both with a remote control and via an app. It both pivots and can be moved up and down, so there's a remarkable amount of articulation on offer.
What you do with that functionality, well, that's up to you. Typically your choices are system info like operating temps and CPU frequencies. Or you can just set up some jazzy graphics to keep you entertained.
It's not clear if you could, for instance, set the thing up to move around according to some predetermined pattern. Heck, it might be cool for it to move based on CPU load. Maybe the screen could turn red and move around manically when the cores are being loaded up, then turn blue and move gently during idle.
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The possibilities are kind of endless, albeit few if any of them will make your PC any faster. That said, the cooling block does have a fan to help keep the nearby VRMs and RAM cool. So, it's a highly specified AIO in cooling terms, and not just a pretty motorised face.
As for pricing, you're looking at $269. As your typical AIO water cooler for CPUs goes, that obviously isn't exactly cheap. Arguably, you'd be better off putting the price premium into a faster GPU. But PC gaming isn't always about maximising your frame rates to the nth degree and it's not as ridiculously expensive as we might have expected.
So, we're not going to harsh on this Lian Li cooler for being tangential to your PC's outright performance. It's a little bit of fun and if you're trying to build the ultimate whizz-bang rig in terms of visual impact, you're probably going to want to put the Hydroshift II LCD Curve on your shopping list.