PAX AUS 2024 - The Coolest Tech and PC Hardware At the Show

PAX Australia 2024 has once again come and gone, presenting another weekend chock full of gaming-related goodness for those living in or making the trip to Melbourne. When it comes to games, indie titles once again stole the show.

From the stylish retro adventure game The Drifter to the first-person insanity of 420BLAZEIT 2 and the wombat and Australiana-infused Primordials Legends: Hollow Hero.

Publishers like Ubisoft and SEGA were also on hand to showcase titles like Star Wars Outlaws and the latest game in the Sonic franchise. Still, this year, companies like ASUS, MSI, Samsung, Intel, LG, and others took center stage with hardware and gear showcasing the latest PC gaming. Once you reached PAX AUS 2024’s PC hub, you couldn’t walk five meters without running into an impressive display or system running games like Final Fantasy XVI or Black Myth: Wukong with ray-tracing and DLSS enabled.

And with Valve also making the trip to PAX to celebrate the long-awaited local debut of the Steam Deck, it was hard not to see PC gaming as the driving force of this year’s show.

Aftershock’s Incredible Alien and Medusa GeForce RTX 4090 Rigs

Aftershock is all about custom gaming PCs and laptops and creating one-of-a-kind creations like what you see here. With its prominent and menacing Xenomorph, this custom Alien PC was put together for 20th Century Studios Australia to celebrate the recent release of Alien: Romulus. It looks even more impressive in person, and in terms of hardware, it’s right up there thanks to the water-cooled GeForce RTX 4090 - the most powerful gaming GPU currently available.

Aftershock’s second head-turner would have to be this Medusa-themed custom PC inspired by Greek myth. With a name like Kosta Andreadis, you can be sure that this spoke to me on a deep level, but outside of that special kinship, it’s hard not to look at this as anything but a work of art. One that also just so happens to feature the absolute beast of a GPU is the GeForce RTX 4090.

LG’s Racing Sim Has Three OLED TVs and Smooth 120 Hz NVIDIA G-Sync Visuals 

Making the jump to an OLED TV back when the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro launched back in 2017 or so, it was one of those ‘one you do that thing, you won’t go back to that other thing’ moments. Infinite contrast, perfect black levels, ultra-low-latency response times, sumptuous color accuracy (yes, sumptuous), OLED is the best, etc. Three OLED TVs arranged to present a panoramic view of racing in F1 24? Bliss. Especially when hooked up to a racing rig, wheel, and PC delivering buttery-smooth 4K G-Sync visuals. At PAX AUS 2024, LG even gave out TVs to those posting the fastest lap each day. Not that we needed an excuse to jump on.

A Wall of Steam Decks Hits Australia Ahead of its Official Launch

Valve is finally, officially, bringing the Steam Deck to Australia with all SKUs and variants coming - including the fantastic OLED version. The Steam Deck differs from other PC gaming handhelds like the ROG Ally and MSI Claw (see below) because it runs on SteamOS, Valve’s custom operating system built specifically for Steam and the Steam Deck. This means you’ve got an incredibly intuitive UI, smooth navigation, and hardware optimized for PC gaming in the same way a console like Nintendo Switch is. Valve announced that the Steam Deck was Australia-bound during PAX and even flew down to Melbourne to set up shop and let everyone jump in and jump on. Seeing this many Steam Decks lined up after waiting so long is enough to put a smile on anyone’s face.

Hands-On with the MSI Claw 8 AI+ PC Gaming Handheld

The new MSI Claw 8 AI+ PC gaming handheld isn’t out until next year, but at PAX, we got hands-on with the Intel-powered device that is running on a more powerful and more efficient chip than what was seen in the original MSI Claw. MSI’s decision to choose Intel as its partner gives the Claw gaming handheld a unique identity, but with the latest Intel Lunar Lake architecture and next-gen Arc graphics, the result is pretty impressive. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a handheld with decent performance and visuals on par with the game's console version makes you want to pick one up. Outside of performance, it’s also lightweight and comfortable to hold, which is a plus because the new MSI Claw 8 AI+ PC features a large and bright 8-inch display and a larger capacity 80wh battery.

Two More Custom Rigs - A Futuristic Space Station and Fantasy Health Potion

Aftershock’s PAX AUS 2024 booth was like visiting Willy Wonka’s factory for PC gamers, where the liquid cooling flowed like a river of neon chocolate. The only thing missing was a group of green-haired weirdos breaking out into song every few minutes. The large ‘Infinity’ build, which looks like an orbiting space station, fittingly included a piece of hardware from the near future, the new flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU, and NVIDIA’s most recent 4K gaming card, the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER. This case features the "largest 180-degree curved glass on a PC" and is motorised to rotate by up to 45 degrees automatically.

The final Aftershock creation to highlight is ‘The Elixir of Life, ’ inspired by dark fantasy worlds where health potions are popped nonstop in the heat of battle as long as they are not on cooldown. Although smaller than the Infinity, this closed-loop build manages to cram in a GeForce RTX 4090 GPU inside its mid-tower case. What makes this one awesome is how the liquid nails the red-colour that PC gamers associate with health potions.

ASUS’s Console-Sized RTX Gaming PC

When you think about PC gaming, you probably picture someone sitting at a desk with a high refresh-rate display, keyboard, mouse, and RGB lighting setting the mood. Sitting on a comfortable couch with a controller is the realm of PlayStation and Xbox. Unleash, you’ve got the ASUS ROG G22CH, a gaming PC the size of a console - which means it could easily sit next to a TV. Why would you want to put your PC in your living room? Well, with the ROG G22CH’s GeForce RTX 4070, Steam, and PC Game Pass, you’ve got access to a vast library of games with ray-tracing, DLSS upscaling, Frame Generation, Reflex, and other cutting-edge technologies that only exist on PC. 

Keychron’s Funky Keyboards Add Some Colour to PC Gaming 

You’ve got to the right gear to game with, and for PC gamers, that means a great keyboard, mouse, and headset. Keychron is a company that is primarily focused on creating mechanical keyboards. It currently offers gamers and PC users dozens of models, sizes, and layouts from which to choose. If you’re a fan of keyboards like us, Keychron’s PAX booth was like stepping into the mechanical pre-lubed switch and dampening foam heaven. Ahem. With a giant working keyboard on display alongside several of its stylish boards. All we can think about now is picking one of these up. Maybe one with wood paneling like those American station wagons from all those 1980s movies.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Gets Limited Edition Gear and a Custom Gear Seekers Build

There’s a lot of hype surrounding the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, especially after the somewhat lukewarm response to last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. Seeing a bunch of Call of Duty-themed gear is not unusual, but thanks to this new entry’s art direction and heavy use of orange, what you’ve got is hands-down the best Call of Duty-themed gear we’ve seen. Activision has partnered with Corsair to release limited edition Black Ops 6 keyboards, headsets, mice, controllers, and even some of its Elgato gear for content creators. The showpiece at PAX, however, was this custom orange neon and brushed metal build from local creators Gear Seekers. Putting a Founders Edition GeForce RTX card was an excellent choice as it complements the water-cooling and splashes of paint.

This article is presented by NVIDIA and GeForce RTX.