When we met Christoph Katzer way back at COMPUTEX 2010, he was just the new guy at Antec. But what he and along with a number of other new faces at Antec represented was a major change in the way the company does business. The new guy at Antec now has the responsibility of a whole new power supply business unit, but with it, all the powers he has always wanted in order to affect changes that make customers happy. He took time to sit with us during a stop in Vancouver, BC Canada, to tell us a bit more about what this shake up at the company means including more about his new role. He also drops a few hints about new products that haven’t even hit the radar yet which include…
New 80PLUS Platinum Power Supplies – Everyone has an 80PLUS Gold power supply, but few have an 80PLUS Platinum unit. In order to really shake up the market, we have reason to believe that Antec will be pushing out these new power supplies under their coveted “Signature Series”. If you remember these from a little while back, they really were something special with their dual PCB design and up-spec’d components all around. Could this be the foundation for a new “Signature II” series?
New SoundScience Headset – Christoph also let slip that the company would be expanding the offerings of the SoundScience product line up. Currently, there are only two products in the line up which include the Rockus 2.1 Speaker System (reviewed here) and a new LED BIAS lighting kit which has nothing to do with sound at all. Now it appears that Antec’s SoundScience will be putting out their own headset. Whether this will be a gamer or more of a general home theatre focus, Christoph would not say. In fact, I think he said too much already.
Also shown off in the interview video above was a finalized version of the new High Current Gamer Series Plus power supply that was originally shown off at COMPUTEX 2011. The unit is basically finished now with the proper black stealth cabling that makes it easier to hide the cables if you use it in a windowed case. They should be pushing this out to retail very soon and it really does look good.
Along with the new Antec P280 case and many other products to look forward to down the road, it definitely looks a bit like a NEW Antec. With a quarter century of history down, it looks like the next quarter of a century for the company is getting ready to unfold. We’ll definitely be bugging Christoph and watching Antec during this transition.
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