KitGuru visits the UK’s largest gaming festival, i46

It's that time of year again, when gamers from across Europe flock to the International Centre in Telford to attend what has become the biggest gaming festival in the UK. This bank holiday weekend marks the 46th iteration of Multiplay's Insomnia series which will accommodate over 3000 gamers for five days. Those of you who cannot make it this weekend, here's a snapshot of what you're missing out on! Over the last few years the size of the exhibitor's area at Multiplay's Insomnia series has ballooned. It seems that all the big names in the gaming industry are present to entice gamers into buying their latest and greatest kit. The gaming area is absolutely huge and is like two large warehouses full of rows and rows of PCs. There is also a massive tournament area featuring large screens and seating for hundreds of spectators. As soon as we walked into the exhibitors hall we were greeted by the massive Overclockers UK stand which had some really impressive systems on display. They also have some special deals on for the show which are also available on their website here. There were three systems in particular which caught our eyes. First of all, the two Titan Prodigy LAN gaming systems which are based around the new BitFenix Prodigy case that we reviewed here. These are quite reasonably priced and have very capable components which make an ideal LAN gaming system thanks to the compact case. They are available to buy here. We were also quite impressed by the look of the Overclockers Ultima 9700i which offers a great specification for the price which includes nVidia's GeForce GTX 690 graphics card alongside an overclocked Intel Core i7-3820 processor. This is available to purchase here. Just in case you had forgotten about Overclockers presence at the event they had also decorated the bar in an Overclockers UK theme which included everything from banners to beer mats. While there were no booth babes on the Overclockers UK stand, we only had to go just round the corner to the Thermaltake booth to find some. It may take you a few moments to notice but the models in the picture above are showcasing the brand new Level 10 mouse. They also had a wide range of existing products on display as well as the new Tt eSPORTS Chao Dracco headphones which were kindly modelled for us by one of Thermaltake's babes. Asus weren't showcasing any new products at i46 but they did have a few competitions running for event goers with some great prizes up for grabs including a RoG Vulcan ANC headset. There were a number of System Integrators exhibiting alongside Asus who all use their motherboards exclusively in their systems. These were PC Specialist, Chillblast, Wired2Fire and Dino PC. PC Specialist had a couple of their systems on display which were somewhat of an advert for both Asus and Corsair who's components featured extensively in both systems. There was also a rather familiar looking award logo being displayed on the stand... Dino PC had an rather large triple-screen system on display with various games running to show off its performance. u Chillblast were also showcasing a number of Asus and Corsair components in their systems. We were very impressed by the extremely tidy cable management achieved by their engineers. Wired2Fire may be one of the smaller manufacturers of the four but their section of the stand was definitely the most exciting. They were displaying a water cooled X79 system installed in a modded Corsair 800D. This is actually available for you to win if you like their Facebook page. Scan had a large stand which was showing off some of their custom gaming systems including the 'Swordfish' and 'Great White'. Gigabyte had reserved a corner of the stand which featured a few models from their motherboard range. Kingston didn't have their own booth and were represented on the Scan stand. This didn't mean that they didn't have booth babes, though! Their memory was also on show all around the show in various display systems. They were showing off their impressive range of memory. Some models available in a choice of colours including red and blue which is sure to excite those users who like to colour co-ordinate their systems. Antec had a wide range of cases, power supplies and other goodies on display. Our friends at eTeknix were occupying a corner of the stand where they were showcasing some of Antec's latest 850W power supplies which can be connected together for systems with a high power requirement. The two power supplies together would be capable of supplying 1700W. u Cooler Master had a few of their latest peripherals on display including their mechanical keyboard range. There was also a competition running to win some Cooler Master goodies which involved throwing a ball into different sized holes in the front of three cases. Samsung had an interesting competition running to showcase the durability of their SSDs. This involved operating a ShakeWeight with the assistance of their booth babes... who seemed to know exactly what they were doing! In Win had a few of their latest cases and power supplies on display. Iiyama were showing off some of their gaming monitors on their stand. There was another familiar looking logo on display here! The Quiet PC stand wasn't so quiet as they had a Guitar Hero competition on. CCL were displaying a few systems and were running their usual PC building competition against the clock. KitGuru says: Another impressive show from Multiplay!