Rolling your own rig is just as much about timing as it is part selection. Consider that around this time a year ago, hard drive makers were practically giving platters of storage away and backing them with longer warranties. Mother Nature ruined all that, and she's partially to blame for rising motherboard prices, which some industry sources predict are getting ready to spike.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas isn't just about media players and mobile products, there are also core PC products on display, and it doesn't get any more 'core' than motherboards. In a way, the convention is an ideal stomping ground for Gigabyte, which loves to throw around fancy terms and tout highfalutin-sounding technologies, like "3D Power."

Vin Diesel and the Fast and the Furious movie franchise helped popularize tricked out Civics and other modded imports, and maybe it was only a matter of time before it became vogue to sell motherboards sporting over-the-top eye candy. MSI continues with the aggressive motherboard theme that's become all the rage lately, but a peek at the company's new Big Bang XPower II mobo is all it takes to understand there's a serious board underneath all the fluff.

Getting a jump on CES in Las Vegas, MSI today announced a couple of new products, one of which is a do-everything front panel and the other is Voice Genie, the world's first voice control technology with system startup support without the need for a keyboard or mouse, MSI claims. Using just your vocal cords, MSI's Voice Genie allows you to start and shutdown your system, enable and disable OC Genie, open a Web browser, put your system to sleep, and wake it back up.