Razer Project Christine Fully Modular Gaming PC Concept - CES 2014
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,323 words · ~6 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by nc.com your source for
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great technology selection and service along with Corsair memory and Western
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Digital guys we are here with the
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hypothetical future of the desktop gaming PC this is an
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undisclosed thing that Razer has just unveiled here at CES 2014 they're
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calling it project Christine and to even
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gaze upon it would make anyone who is not a true disciple of the almighty gab
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Ben wither and
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die oh God I
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lived this is it guys this is the
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modular gaming PC concept it's not a
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real product at all there are engineering samples that probably don't
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even look anything like this that are somewhat working but this is and and and
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the end product might not look anything like this but this is a concept for what
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could be the truly easy to upgrade fully
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modular silent yet powerful PC so to
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start with you have this base station here so it's one single piece of
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aluminum and I mean these guys are such masters of industrial design I mean I
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the only comparison that I've ever really made in the past is to someone
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like apple they're kind of like the apple of PC to me which we absolutely
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Ely need and it is a thing of beauty so
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it starts with the base station that then all down the front and all down the
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back it has these modules that can be
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modularly unexpected right I know I'm throwing you guys for a loop here that's
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the most unexpected thing about this video that can be modularly added and
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subtracted to the middle Tower so you can see on the back we've got a
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completely proprietary interface although Razer hasn't said that they're
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100% clear about whether they would make it an open standard for others to create
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upgrade modules or not maybe there'd be a certification process but for now it's
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fully custom and completely proprietary interface as well as two quick
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disconnect fittings so why would you need two quick disconnect fittings and
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why is it so quiet well because it is fully mineral
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oil cooled so every one of these modules on the back we've actually got GPU 1 GPU
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2 GPU 3 CPU memory as well as rear io on
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here is mineral oil cooled so the idea
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is that you would be able to Simply upgrade from single Graphics to SLI by
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buying one of these modules and plugging it into the back so you might say okay
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lonus that's absolutely insane that Space Age we must be years away from
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that and you know what the reality is we probably are but they are potentially
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working on it depending on how much demand there is for this technology so
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for those of of you who are you know excited about it please do Post comments
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on the video and let them know that you love this and you want to see it and for
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those of you who think it's crazy go ahead and do that too but I would ask
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you if they already somewhat have it working and this is without actually
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being close to a finished product is it that crazy it uses PCI Express for
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communication between the different modules and between all the different
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parts in some form would it necessarily work with exactly the technology we have
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today as a finished product no not necessarily but it's an evolution of
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what the PC can be I mean you look at what a high-end gaming PC is now for
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someone like me I can upgrade a graphics card in probably about 45 seconds if I
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only have one hand to use but not everyone's like that not everyone wants
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to open up their PC I mean I've I I I've
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encountered professional Gamers who need
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advice about what antivirus to run or like how to how to install a memory
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module so not everyone's like that and that doesn't mean that you're not an
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Enthusiast and you're not a gamer it just means you're not necessarily A
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Hardware guy so this the idea is that it
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would completely eliminate that uncertainty you would just you would buy
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a new PSU and water cooling module you would plug it into the bottom and you'd
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have a silent powerful new module that
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should be forward compatible with everything else in it so the idea is
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that we'd be able to have these systems last over an entire sort of PCI Express
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generation rather than being tied down to a system
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that's only upgradable within a single CPU socket cycle or something like that
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like it's all very again it's very space AG I haven't even talked about the front
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yet either so I'm going to go ahead and uh turn this baby back yeah I'm actually
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turning the table it's not motorized we're not quite that advanced although
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the PC is so there's a Blu-ray reader and writer here there's also a control
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module here that is you know very much a work in progress but it has some cool
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video playback you know you could probably have a touchcreen on there control your fans and all kinds of stuff
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like that we've got a couple ssds front IO front audio and then I don't know
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maybe this is a speaker I I don't know it can be anything it can be what you
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want it to be but one thing is for certain and that is that it is modular
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that is the concept obviously it's not a finished product I cannot stress that
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enough it is easy to upgrade in fact I mean this could open up completely new
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business models such as you could have a a subscription based PC without being
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tied into something like a cloud gaming solution where latency might be a
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problem for you you could just say okay I'm going to pay 30 bucks a month and
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rather than leasing something that I don't own maybe I just have a subscription so you guys can keep
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upgrading me and I don't even have to I don't even have to read the latest reviews necessarily I'll let someone and
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whether it's Razer or someone else if it is an open standard I mean the sky is
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the limit maybe you just send me the new module I pop it in I send the old one
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back and it's Off to the Races and then the last thing is that silence and power
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is key and mineral oiled Cooling in a
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consumer grade desktop machine is something that I'm sure you don't have
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to be a hardware Enthusiast to kind of geek out over thank you very much for
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checking out our Showcase of project Fiona did I say Fiona because I meant
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Christine Fiona was the uh Edge tablet
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and it's funny that I made that little uh Freudian slip there because project
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Fiona was much like this and that they showed off a completely crazy thing and
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then they got such great feedback that they made it so this is kind of the same
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idea guys thank you for checking out this video don't miss any of our content
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from CES 2014 remember our trip to the show is powered by nc.com your source
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for great technology selection and Service as well as Corsair memory and
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Western Digital big thanks to those guys because we wouldn't even be here without
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them