Thunderbolt the wicked fast interface developed by Intel which you can learn
more about here has always been based on
PCI Express yes the same PCI Express
that you use to add internal expansion cards to a desktop computer so to say
that I've been amped about the idea of being able to staple a video card to a
laptop for a long time would be an
understatement well it's finally a
reality let's take a look then at the razor
core the Phoenix otor is a full-sized
minimalistically designed keyboard complete with goldplated Cherry MX Brown
switches check out the link in the video description to learn more laptop CPUs
have for about three generations now been available in quad core variants
that boast sing SLE threaded performance that's fast enough for them to avoid
being a gaming bottleneck while being power efficient enough not to require a
nuclear reactor strapped to the bottom of your computer to run for more than an
hour or so laptop gpus or video cards
while they've made enormous strides are a different story
altogether relatively speaking they are hot either thermal throttling during
real world use or requiring large cooling systems and they suck so much
power that if you're running on battery they not only drain it during operation
but in the case of very high-end ones they can't even run at full capacity if
they wanted to due to battery power delivery limits well that's easy lonus
just buy a desktop I mean yeah you could do that but not everyone wants more than
one computer and lots of people actually
prefer to use a laptop and this problem
of how to satisy the people who value portability and battery life and who
also like PC gaming is one that the industry has been trying to solve for a
long time some of these Solutions never
made it to Market this really cool prototype from Gigabyte used proprietary
connectors on high-end shielded cables to take a full PCI Express 16x interface
to an outside box While others did
Alienware designed a proprietary PCIe 4X
cable and and interface that was implemented on a couple of their gaming
laptop models and the MSI gs30 Shadow
rocks a PCI Express 16x connector hidden
by a dust cover on the back that plugs into a proprietary box that not only
supports an expansion card but also additional storage and IO neat but while
they both addressed the heat power and
upgradability issues that plague gaming notebooks they introduced cost
compatibility and usability ones since
PCI Express cannot be hot plugged requiring a full system shutdown
whenever the user wanted to unplug it or plug it back in enough history lesson
though let's take a closer look at the core razor solution that promises to fix
everything including doing away with proprietary interfaces in favor of
Thunderbolt 3 using a USB type-c
connector man these guys are good at industrial design this thing could be in
a cardboard box with holes punched in it for all the difference that would make
to Performance but instead Razer turned out what is in my opinion a shockingly
attractive piece of high-tech art that I would be happy to have on my desk it's
constructed almost entirely from thick black anodized aluminum with two LED
lighting zones on the bottom and on the inside by the left side mesh window that
can be configured to any color and effect you want from with synapse even
off if you care less about the Flash and more about the dash on the subject of
speed I couldn't actually believe how fast it was to get started with the core
a complete graphics card installation can be done in less than 5 minutes even
if you've never installed a graphics card before just open the lock at the
back that doubles as a handle pull it out revealing a single PCI Express 16x
physical slot and a customized 500 W enhanced power supply remove the back
plate screw slot in your new video card plug in the power connectors screw it in
and bippity boity Boo that is it thanks
to ample Headroom and the inclusion of two 6 Plus TW pin connectors you can
install almost any graphics card on the
market though it wouldn't be a terrible idea to consult razer's compatibility
list before making a purchase for my part I went ahead with a GTX 1080
Founders Edition that wasn't on the list but worked just fine though your mileage
may vary with the graphics card installed we can take a look at the
business end of things the back here you'll find a standard PC power input a
USB type-c connector that is carrying Thunderbolt 3 four USB 3.0 ports and
Hallelujah a gigabit Ethernet port yay
setup was actually pretty straightforward you'll need the latest drivers for the video card you installed
from AMD or Invidia website you'll need Razer synapse driver utility and in the
case of the blade 14 but not the blade stealth you'll need the GPU Switcher app
that sits in the system tray it's beta right now but functionality wise it does
what it's supposed to allowing you to select which dedicated video card you
want to use and even remembering your preference through a system reboot or
you can just leave it on auto mode but
how much of a performance boost can you expect how well does a video card
operate over this Rinky Dink little cable the short answer is well I guess
it depends on what graphics card you put into it and the long answer is much more
complicated and actually looks like I'm sorry it's going to end up in a separate
video but in the meantime here are some numbers with a GTX 1080 as a point of
comparison against the 970m that I use in my blade 14 let's talk about the
usability a bit though notably absent from the core is a power switch instead
it simply detects when the device that it's plugged into turns on and Powers up
alongside it this is the first thing that stood out to me as a potential area
for improvement for the Next Generation it would be nice to be able to power up
just the USB hub and Ethernet port to use the core as a more basic dock which
is something I actually wouldn't desire if it weren't for complaint number two
the core is not very quiet and surprisingly it doesn't seem to be the
video card's fault I mean it's certainly quieter Under full game load than a
blade 14 under full gaming load using its dgpu but the enclosures fans are
significantly louder at idle than a blade 14 at idle making light
productivity applications kind of frustrating number three is both praise
for the core and a huge complaint about the blade 14 2016 I assumed the core
would require an external display connected to the back of it to work but
it actually doesn't which is awesome you can use the power of your
external video card to drive that 3200
by 1800 onboard display sick
unfortunately the type-c connector is on the right on this laptop meaning that
the cable can get in the way of using the mouse and this is made worse by the
pathetically short cable that Razer includes in the box and there are other
niggles at the moment as well mostly to do with transitioning between your IG
dgpu and what I'm going to call egpu the
one in here the Switcher app can be hard to dismiss sometimes um I plugged in
while the computer was asleep and my trackpad buttons weren't working until a
reboot once running fire strike back to back on dgpu then egpu yields a massive
Improvement in scores but going the other way resulted in a black screen
after the first segment of the second test until I rebooted the system I was
able to repeat that several times and there were a few little things like
that but with that said my experience
using it now and we're still a bit early by the way gives me a lot of Hope
performance improvements are real thermals look great and while at CES
2016 I managed to force a hard reset on
the demo system by pulling the plug while running
a 3D application impressively 6 months
later with Heaven running not only does the system not fully lock up but after a
little while oh no it did crash that time I've seen this work though after a
little while Heaven actually managed to get back up and running albeit slowly on
the igpu a lot of progress has been made
and while Esports titles will probably be fine with a blade 14's built-in
graphics for years to come making the future proofness argument for spending
this kind of money a moot point for a
gamer who wants to play the latest AAA titles and heaven forbid VR games on his
or her notebook the core looks on the surface like a superbly elegant albeit
expensive solution but as I alluded to before
there are a lot of deeper questions that I found myself asking about this product
during my time with it so many in fact that I'm going to set aside a
significant chunk of time four the core is available to you guys to buy to
attempt to answer them all speaking of
answers you were probably asking yourself wow where did lonus get that
sexy pink skin for his razor blade to
which the answer is of course from dbrand dbrand is your source for awesome
vinyl skins for your phone tablet console controllers and more they're
affordable and they ship worldwide but the best thing about dbrand is the
configurator on their site you pick your device you pick all your colors and you
can actually mix and match colors which I personally think looks freaking
awesome but your mileage may vary with that you get to preview what it's going
to look like you place your order and boom their robots pack it and ship it to
you and if there's anything wrong their customer service robots are Ace so go
ahead and check out the link in the video description and start skinning your devices today so thanks for
watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or
check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured at Amazon in the video
description also linked in the description is our merch store which has
cool shirts like this one and our community Forum which you should totally
join now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to
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