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I may be married to Ivonne but it's Christine who's been on my mind for the

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last 10 years a project Christine that

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is at CES 2014 Razer unveiled an idea

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that would completely change how we build computers and I was amazed who

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wouldn't be a modular high- performance mineral oil cooled chassis Hardware

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upgrades as easy as plugging in a USB device maybe even easier but Christine's

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promises were as empty as they were enticing and every subsequent attempt

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we've seen at this kind of modularity has ultimately failed even from some

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very big names which makes it all the more surprising that a smaller

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manufacturer kadz who sponsored today's video is making a big move into the

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space with an absolutely tiny modular

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computer called The kadas Mind workstation their approach is both

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similar but also different from what we've seen before remember Google's

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Project Ara the philm that could be assembled from building blocks to help

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you get the perfect device for your needs or how about Moto mods those ones

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actually made it to Market in the form of upgrade modules for your phone like

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speakers battery packs and gam pads and

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they probably bear the most resemblance to what kadas is doing here you start

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with a solid core Computing device and then create an ecosystem of enhancements

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for those who need it let's take a closer look then at the Mind we've seen

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small computers in the past but I don't think we've ever SE seen something quite

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so selt this thing is small like about

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three times the volume of my phone small but they still manage to cram a 12 core

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Intel processor in here it Peaks at up to 55 watts and is paired with 32 gigs

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of 5200 megga transfer per second lpddr5

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a 1 TB WD SN 740 MBM SSD and believe it

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or not a battery it's only 5.55 wat

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hours which if you're familiar with laptops you'll know isn't very big but

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the idea isn't that you're going to run this thing away from the wall for an

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extended period of time rather it's so you can pop it into sleep mode take it

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with you wherever you need to go and then pick up right where you left off up

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to 25 hours later it also doubles as a

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handy battery backup should you ever experience a power outage giving you

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time to save your work and shut down safely along the rear of the device

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we've got our IO which some might find a

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little disappointing both USBC ports

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support 65 WTS of power delivery in but

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only one of them runs at 10 GB per second with the other stuck at USB 2.0

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speeds for displays both the USBC ports

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support DP alt mode and there's an HDMI 2.0 Port as well then there's two usba

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10 gig ports all of which is pretty good

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actually for a miniature PC so why the

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sad face no Ethernet which is kind of a

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bummer on a workstation however speaking of bums the

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real party is on the bottom watch this

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you can pop this little tab off down here just like that for one of the

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easiest m.2 storage upgrade processes that I have ever seen and right next to

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it is the Mind link high-speed connector

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and the first mind it linked must have been mine because the mind dock that

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plugs into it solves pretty much all of

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my complaints adding 2 and 1/2 gig networking a metric whack of HDMI and

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USB ports 3 and 12 mm combo Jack and an SD card reader the dock also has a

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fingerprint reader for Windows hello and a volume knob that kind of reminds me

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the ones on Logitech keyboards oh and they threw in speakers for good measure

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too bad the whole thing is let down by a proprietary

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interface what I would normally say except it's a little less proprietary

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than you might think the Mind link connector is basically just a Juiced up

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PCIe by8 gen five connector with some

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thoughtful additions first up it's much more compact than a standard PCI slot

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and for another it's much more robust the slots that you see in a desktop PC

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are going to be rated for dozens or at most hundreds of Cycles but kadas

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expects people to use this interface potentially multiple times per day for

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years at a time so their target was 10,000 Cycles so then I can do this

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right wow the magnets really help make

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it easy to abuse also their connector allows future products to suck more

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juice or even blow it I'm talking up to

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200 watts in either direction much more

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than the 75 Watts that you'll get over a typical PD connector oh and did we

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mention that it's hot pluggable yeah I mean it is a bit of a downer that this

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thing has no Thunderbolt 4 when the chip does support it but if I was going to

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plug a GPU into this thing I would rather have the extra bandwidth not to

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mention the lower latency of the Mind link anyway of course they Envision an

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ecosystem with more than just GPU enclosures they are working on that in

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addition to their dock but also a studio style display and this twoin one tablet

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thing I'm not sure about that last one but the Mind Graphics is kind of a

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no-brainer and we've asked them to publish their pinout which could make

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this interface a significant upgrade over oculink where eight lanee is

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possible but four is the norm not to mention easier for the community to

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embrace than XG mobile which is also by

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8 PCIe and hot pluggable but completely

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closed and very expensive speaking of I

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did a video about hot plug PCIe some years ago and it turns out that despite

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having been part of the standards making a hot swap PCI Express device is pretty

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difficult and ripping a cart out of a running system can cause anything from

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weird Behavior to a full-on crash or even Hardware damage so how is kadz

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doing it the answer unfortunately is

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substantially more complex than we can get into but here's at least a rough

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rundown when your PC boots up the system takes note of all the components

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installed and allocates memory to properly serve all of those devices no

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device no memory allocated since this is all done by the UEFI BIOS before booting

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into Windows a board or operating system that is not prepared to dynamically

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allocate new memory regions two new devices is well it's not going to be

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pretty there's also the hardware side of things while your GPU might have all the

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pins to fit in a 16x slot not all of those pins may be used and if the pins

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don't connect correctly or in the right order it can cause a short or an

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initialization error that can damage the hardware or data so clearly this

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requires many precautions so for this reason even if kadas did publish their

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pin out hot swapability of Homebrew accessories would be very difficult but

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with their own gear kadas managed to nail

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it let's see it in action let's start with the mind with two displays

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connected to it there those two

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perfect oh crap the peripherals are connected to the dock well you know what

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fine you guys saw the two displays light up let's go ahead and connect the other

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two see how long this

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takes come on hot plug PCI you can do it

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I saw a flicker I saw action hey there we go not too

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bad why don't you put on crab RVE cuz it's got speakers in it and

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stuff that's the max volume which honestly isn't very loud but to their

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credit they don't distort at that level so you'll have devices that'll go way

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louder than that but they sound like garbage past 60 70 80% whereas these

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sound good all the way up to 100 considering how little it's doing right

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now C PE temperatures are a little on the high side at 56° on the package

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but to its credit it's also quite quiet

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so it seems like they haven't really ramped up the cooling system now let's

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see how it Gaines unfortunately kad's egpu dock is not out yet but some

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enterprising individuals are using that super easy storage upgrade slot to put

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an m.2 to oculink adapter in it then

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running an oculink egpu like this one from GPD which I mean

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should work but we don't have one of those you know

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what that is a surprisingly wide Sound

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Stage seriously though the graphics performance is

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terrible yeah we're getting 60 FPS but

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oh my God look at it we're at minimum boys oh okay medium

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is not happen and maybe we'll fa better in cyberpunk

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realistic yeah okay it works of course this is not the point of

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a device like this the point of a device like this is the cool interface which by

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the way contains more than PCIe also DisplayPort and USB and let's check

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just how hot pluggable is it oh right I don't have a keyboard and mouse one

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second one second no no I got this i got

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this oh wait for

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it that is very hot pluggable I'm

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actually amazed check this out boom

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we're on the dock I think Windows is give it a sec give it a sec I believe

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whoa look at that undeniably very cool

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sponsorship aside then this is Far and Away the most refined attempt at a

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modular ecosystem that I have ever seen

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But it comes at a price I understand that quality engineering costs money but

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the kadas mind isn't cheap so All That Remains is to see how the market will

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respond if this looks like a solution for you check out the link in the video

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description to get a kadz mind of your

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own and using the links in the description below put in coupon code LTT

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mind to get a $100 off a kadas

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mind if you guys enjoyed this video why don't you check out our video on the

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Razer Tomahawk a modular Nook Style

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concept that was co-produced with Intel a few years back