CES 2020 is all about impressive hardware, and on the PC front few impressed as much as the MSI MEG Aegis Ti5, for all the obvious reasons. After all, it is a gaming PC with a chassis shaped like the head of a futuristic robot.

MSI claims the MEG Aegis Ti5 carries a not only the highest-level specs, but also an HMI (Human Machine Interface) design popular with the automotive industry. A so-called MCU (MSI Commander Unit) allows the PC to display real-time information on a small circular display on the front. In addition, a knob dubbed the "Gaming Dial" allows gamers to do at least some tweaks to system performance on the fly, although MSI fails to specify how extensive said tweaks can get.

The compact Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) range gets a next generation addition at CES 2020-- "Ghost Canyon", an option large enough to fit a desktop graphics card, making it more ideal for gamer customers.

Allowances to fit regular GPUs make Ghost Canyon, also known as the Intel NUC 9 Extreme Kit, larger than other products in the Intel mini-PC range. In fact, it is more of a mini-desktop machine, if anything else. Intel is still to fully detail this latest NUC iteration, but does say it is powered by 9th gen Core H series processors ranging from Core i5 to Core i9, including a high-end Core i9 in an unlocked SKU.

AMD looks to butt heads with the Intel NUCs as it announces plans to create an "open ecosystem" for OEMs wanting to create high-performance mini PCs powered by Ryzen Embedded V1000 and R1000 processors.

Initially aimed at the industrial, media, communications and enterprise markets, the machines promise an open and customisable platform complete with high-performance CPU/GPU processor with "expansive" peripheral support, in-depth security features and a processor availability clocking at 10 years. In addition, AMD already counts ASRock Industrial, EEPD, OnLogic and Simply NUc as OEM partners.

As all attentions are on AMD at the upcoming Ryzen Threadripper 3000 launch Colorful announces a micro-ATX motherboard for the X570 chipset-- the CVN X570M Gaming Pro motherboard.

Based on the previous CVN X570 Gaming Pro V14 ATX model, the CVN X570M offers a similar feature set within a smaller micro-ATX frame. The company says the design revolves around CVN class aircraft carriers, and sets to "fly gamers into the battle that use AMD's Ryzen 3000 processors." Colorful is still to provide detailed specs, but does say the motherboard features two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots running at x16 and x16+x4 or x16+x8, together with two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots.