From a dual Ascent GX10 mini-rack to live local AI demos, here are the most interesting takeaways (plus the $4,000 giveaway winner’s haul).

Event Highlights

On January 31, we hosted an enterprise event at our Santa Clara headquarters in collaboration with long-term partners ASUS and NVIDIA, highlighting both current and upcoming AI products from each company. Attendees got a joint presentation that covered the hardware and software sides of modern AI deployment, live demonstrations, free sandwiches, and a giveaway that ended with one person walking out with a $4,000 AI supercomputer.

Presentation

The morning kicked off with a joint ASUS + NVIDIA presentation. Jimmy from ASUS walked through the current generation of AI-focused hardware and what’s coming next, while Micah from NVIDIA covered the software stack that enables computer hardware to power AI, from drivers and frameworks to real-world applications. Together, the two sessions gave attendees a clearer view of how AI works from end-to-end.

Jimmy (ASUS) on the left, Micah (NVIDIA) on the right.

In addition to the presentations, attendees had the opportunity to check out exclusive live product demonstrations.

On display, we had:

The centerpiece of the Saturday morning was the ASUS Ascent GX10, a compact AI system built to bring serious local AI computing to users that want better flexibility, more control, and a streamlined on-prem development process.

While we had standalone display models of the Ascent GX10, our corporate IT department wanted to take things a step further. Pictured here is a custom 10" mini-rack containing two Ascent GX10s clustered together via ConnectX-7 that was on display during the event.

This mini-rack was designed and assembled for one of our customers, an educational institution in Southern California. Their researchers and students could not rely on cloud AI services due to strict data governance policies, but they still needed local, high-performance computing.

By running workloads locally with the dual Ascent GX10 system, they gain:

Thanks to the ASUS Ascent GX10, this institution was essentially able to create a private AI lab for its researchers and students, with enhanced security and flexibility.

Attendees also had the chance to check out a wide range of ASUS ProArt and Eye Care monitors, including options geared toward professional content creation as well as comfortable everyday productivity. Seeing them side-by-side made it easy to compare panel sizes, ergonomics, and which models make the most sense for different workflows.

We also had an ASUS ROG NUC setup on display with the latest ASUS ROG peripherals, such as the ROG Harpe II Ace, so attendees could get a feel for what compact performance looks like from a gaming standpoint. This station was a fun change of pace from the B2B-oriented discussions, and helped bridge any gaps that attendees may have had by grounding the event in a hands-on, real-world experience.

We had multiple prebuilt workstations from Central Computers on display and demonstrated how to run local AI workflows using ComfyUI as a front-end for Stable Diffusion models. The stars of the show were the Orion Advanced and Creator Pro preconfigured workstations. The Orion Advanced is our high-end, Threadripper-based HEDT system paired with an NVIDIA RTX Pro Blackwell GPU, while the Creator Pro sits closer to the mid-range with a Ryzen CPU and a consumer NVIDIA RTX GPU.

By making the value of local AI immediately tangible to attendees with highly varying degrees of familiarity with the technology, we successfully demonstrated that local AI is not just for enthusiasts or enterprise users. With the right hardware and a clear workflow, anyone can explore AI tools without sending any of their data to third party cloud services that can charge significant usage-based fees.

Before we wrapped up, we held a raffle giveaway, including a $4,000 AI supercomputer as the grand prize. Thank you to everyone who joined us and stayed through the end.

Giveaway prizes included:

Huge thank you to our long-term partners ASUS and NVIDIA, and to everyone who came out to make the conversation special.

If your organization is exploring AI hardware or wants help scoping the right setup for your workload, our Corporate Sales team can help recommend, build, and deploy a solution based on your environment, timeline, and goals.