Raspberry Pi board supplier Premier Farnell lists what it believes are the top accessories for the micro-PC-- including cameras, displays and controllers ideal for customers of all ages, levels and professions.

The top accessory according to Premier Farnell is the camera. A number of official Raspberry Pi camera modules are available, and these found uses ranging from low-light photography (NoIR Camera), drones, security cameras, school projects and even a theremin, an electronic musical instruments played without physical contact.

In second place is the official Raspberry Pi 7-inch touchscreen. It can make Internet of Things (IoT) devices with a display, or enable a range of educational software and programs. The community also used it to create a connected picture frame, Pi alarm clocks, a plant health camera and even a mobile media centre.

Cooler Master announces a pair of additions to the MasterBox case series-- the Q300L and Q300P, micro-ATX cassis with enough room for full-size ATX PSUs and radiators up to 240mm.

"Case options in the mATX market aren’t as vast as our community would like," the company says. "People that want a compact, customizable gaming case can look forward to the Q300 Series."

The Q300 cases have a side-mounted I/O panel users can adjust to one of six locations around the chassis. One can place it on the front, top and bottom of both sides of the case, making it ideal for customers wanting to fit a PC system in a tight spot. Inside, the cases fit a standard mATX motherboard, ATX power supply up to 160mm in length and graphics card up to 360mm. Vertical clearance for CPU coolers and graphics cards is 157mm.

ASRock updates the DeskMini GTX/RX compact barebones desktop PC line with support for 8th generation Coffee Lake Core i7/i5/i3 Pentium/Celeron processors (socket 1151).

Such support comes through the addition of the ASRock Z370M-STX MXM motherboard. The board is slightly larger than the standard mini-ITX form factor, and accommodates a PCIe gen 3.0 MXM slot together with further two M.2 slots. That said the chassis remains small at 213 x 154.5 x 81.9mm.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) reports Q4 2017 GPU shipments are down by -1.5% on a Q-o-Q basis following "normal seasonal shipments," while shipments dropped by -4.8% for the full year 2017.

For overall 2017, desktop graphics shipments are down by -2% and notebooks decreased by -7%. Vendors released 363 new GPU products in 2017. As for the main market drivers, JPR says that while cryptocurrency miners bought over 3 million add-in-boards (AIB) worth $776 million in 2017, gaming remains the primary GPU sales driver.

As such, the analyst predicts demand from crypto-miners will decline, as the use of GPUs for currency mining should eventually become less economical. Further dampening the appeal of GPUs are advanced ASIC manufacturing projects from the likes of Samsung and TSMC. However, as the situation currently stands AMD is making a killing from cryptocurrencies, with Q4 2017 shipments growing by 8.08% Q-o-Q.

Cooler Master announces the MasterCase 500P White Mesh-- a self explanatory version of the H500P chassis in a white colour the company says is ideal for customers wanting to paint their PCs.

The front acrylic panel of the case features a dual-layer mesh providing superior airflow as well as visibility of the two integrated 200mm RGB fans. The second layer of the mesh is finer and in steel, and Cooler Master says it should filter out dust. The case measures 544 x 242 x 542mm, making it large enough to fit a range of motherboards, including Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX and E-ATX, as well as extra fans and radiators. On the storage side it fits up to x5 2.5-inch SSDs, plus two additional mounts supports both 3.5- and 2.5-inch drives.

Slovenian cooling specialist EKWB announces a pair of monoblocks for Gigabyte and MSI Threadripper X399 motherboards-- both all-in-one (CPU and power delivery) cooling solutions with a redesigned cold plate and fin area.

The cooling solutions claim to cover most of the Ryzen Threadripper surface for better thermal transfer, while cooling the power delivery with liquid flowing directly over the necessary components. Both monoblocks have a nickel-plated electrolytic copper base with an acrylic glass top, and come fully assembled with nickel-plated mounting screws and brass screw-in standoffs preinstalled.

Corsair upgrades the "category defying" One small form factor (SFF) gaming PC range through the addition of 8th generation Intel CPUs, as well as GTX 1080 Ti graphics and m.2 NVMe flash storage.

First announced back in February 2017, the One is the first pre-configured and branded PC from Corsair. It has a design sitting somewhere between a regular desktop PC and the Apple Mac Pro cylinder, with a compact (12l) chassis fitting a silent liquid cooling system as well as all the guts required for a higher-end gaming machine.

Biostar announces what it says is an entry-level motherboard for AMD FM2+ processors-- the A68MDE, based on the micro-ATX form factor and featuring the Radeon Dual Graphics-capable A68H chipset.

Being aimed at customers on a budget, the A68MDE features a single PCIe x16 slot for discrete graphics together with another PCIe slot for x1 devices. It has two DIMM slots for dual-channel memory, and supports up to 32GB DDR3 RAM overclocked up to 2600MHz.