Regardless of the chassis, there is an increasing sense of reluctance to use AMD superior CPU’s ar Raze for any of their main products. For a gaming oriented company this will cost them a lot.
DELL is another brand that clings onto Intel lick a sucking pig.
Regardless of the chassis, there is an increasing sense of reluctance to use AMD superior CPU’s at Razer for any of their main products. For a gaming oriented company this will cost them a lot.
DELL is another brand that clings onto Intel like a suckling pig.
Dell sells more G5 laptops a year than AMD makes processors. AMD may have the best CPU’s currently available but look at it this way, TSMC has 4 7nm fab plants in operation, AMD gets about 30% of their combined output. That output is split amongst their CPU’s, GPU’s, PlayStation, and Xbox systems, as well as a few sub components along the way. Intel currently has 14 larger 14nm plants in operation. And the only thing they both have in common is neither is able to keep up with demand.
Intel does not sell CPUs to the OEMs - they sell complete designs and component packages - which makes it easy for the OEMs to create systems... Intel has been doing this since at least "Ultralight" and continues on to "Project Athena" and most recently "Evo". So from an OEMs point of view, it's simple and easy - and Intel gets to decide what tier of products it's parts are in - in Dell's case the high end is the XPS line - from 13" to 15".
Looking at it from Dell's POV - they would buy a CPU/APU/GPU from AMD and would have to spend significant $$ to engineer a design similar to what they get from Intel - as a result the designed for AMD typically are older as they are still much lower volume compared to an Intel design - and are rarely if ever seen in a high end XPS class design. Dell's AMD offerings start at the 15" Inspiron - while Intel's start at the 13" XPS (laptop and 2 in 1).
So not a question of clinging onto Intel like a suckling (correct term, not sucking) pig but one of economics - Free high end design for high margin high volume vs costly engineering for low margin low volume.
I don't consider the Element or Tomahawk to be NUC - for me the NUC is the ~4.5"x4.5" form factor - Intel has expanded the NUC line to include more sizes.
Superior is subjective. And this is NOT Intel vs AMD - this is about why OEMs like Dell favor Intel
Even some of the video capture hardware for gamer uses Thunderbolt; IDK on what basis you think Thunderbolt is rarely appreciated. Many manufacturers were cheap and waited till it's royalty free to use; that was for products for average joes.
Unless I'm mistaken, pro users aren't going to be turning out in droves to buy a NUC based on a 9-series Intel mobile CPU.
The main use case of Thunderbolt is for docking, which doesn't really apply to this. The next case is external storage, which might make sense, but would rather defeat the point of the small chassis.
When I replace the older NUCs with NUC11 (TGL) - I will deploy Sonnet TB3 to SFP+ (10Gb/s) to make better use of the new network I have installed - testing on my Dell XPS 13 (Tiger Lake) - the performance in great and light years ahead of the 1Gb/s in current and 2.5Gb/s in NUC11.
The most developed TB market is on the Mac - which used TB to replace FW.
Razer has been an intel exclusive since they started making systems (laptops mainly). AMD wasn't competitive at that time especially in gaming, even Ryzen wasn't a thing then.
And now, Razer is a small OEM, and doing two platforms costs more, while it will cost them less than doing a completely new one from ground but it will still cost them, and they're trying to evaluate these decisions depending on the market and demand, if there's an actual demand that will overcome the extra R&D costs and bring them more profits then I don't know why they won't do it unless they're a stubborn intel fans or have something exclusive with intel. Intel usually have bad practices like giving discounts or paying some of the R&D cost for being exclusive to intel.
In this case Razer are using a pre-existing Intel product (the "NUC" board) to base this around, so I suspect Intel are giving them a solid price for those. I can't imagine Intel sold many themselves.
Third parties do, though. Razer design their own laptops, so it's not inconceivable that they could have used this to release something that actually performs well for the form-factor instead of dumping rebadged Skylake junk into it..
So this is a "NUC" because it uses the Intel NUC CPU.... Its a horrible design and nobody should follow it.
Its an absolute disaster thermally when you have so much more cooling potential in chassis this size, and given that you are defining a new "standard" can/could/could have (if Intel didn't suck) designed the case around a set heatsink position and used that to optimize both CPU and case cooling.
The PC on a board also sucks in terms of expandability; cause there isn't any... iTX boards fit into similar form factor cases and let you upgrade the CPU, RAM, and seeing two nVME isn't uncommon.
Yeah... this design sucks. Maybe AMD can work with some board and case manufactures and come up with something dosen't suck.
People who want small form factor gaming PCs are often putting form over function. IMO even ITX has severe limitations due to it's size unless you're completely content with never upgrading the system at all with anything other than replacing the GPU.
Yeah, ITX is pain to work with but thats kinda my point. When Intel came up with the upgradable NUC standard (does it actually have a name?) it could have been so much better than this.
There is absolutely no reason for the cooling to be built into the PC board and use laptop grade cooling components. You have the entire volume of this new form factor to play make room for a heasink/fan solution with a decent amount of surface area which would give you legit good performing and quiet cooling. There also isn't any reason why the RAM shouldn't at least be upgradable and would be easy to accommodate if they didn't cram garbage cooling onto a PC board that can just barely fit.
ASRock has a couple of Ryzen APU-based UCFF offerings, and they are nice for what they are, but no discrete GPU support. I'd love to see a manufacturer take something like this and go all-AMD with it.
I recently built an all-AMD unit roughly 9" x 7" x 11" and 10.9 liters using a mini-ITX chassis from Silverstone, a Ryzen 5 3600, and a RX 5600 XT. It was very, very loud compared to the same components in a micro-ATX case.
The AMD version is codenamed Series X. It comes with custom low power 3700x CPUs and cut down RDNA2 GPU. While not quite as fast, the MSRP is much better.
Yeah, so maybe the term never had any meaning. But I consider Intel's many NUCs as prior art, and those all had a similar, very small form factor. Certainly didn't have dedicated GPUs.
Look up at the SFF market, so many people build machines which are better than a console. A PC is always superior to Console and will be. Console is already outdated and non upgradeable. The perf is maxed out at sub 3700X, due to TBP and Clocks. And GPU is lower than a 3060Ti, it's a dead end.
SFF PC, gets a 5600X and a 6700XT. Next year drop in ugprade with GPU even more perf. And a 5950X will run circles around the Xbox PC, whatever it is called. And one can even run compute workloads and etc on that.
yeah and the Xbox is $600 CAD, and it has an 8 core CPU and GPU that in Canada if you want the 5600x and 3060 ti for example you've already spent $1000 CAD
have you looked at the average mini itx motherboard like what the xbox uses? $300 CAD... SSD? $200 CAD at least, plus $100 for ram, and $100 for a case...
nobody cares about what you can build on PC, it is too expensive, the entire point of my comment that you seemed to miss, and if it was running Windows, it wouldn't be a console anymore either, but you didn't read my comment at all
The onyl console that could potentially meet this is the PS5, and that is only theoretical sequential speeds over a very special compression format.
on the whole, drives like the samsung 980 pro and the sabarent rocket plus will be faster IRL, especially since they are not tied to a locked down console.
If it had Ryzen 4800H and ≥2.5 GbE I'd buy it instantly. For more compact (no discrete GPU) alternatives I am very much looking forward to CES in January with hopefully Zen 3 Cezanne-based versions of Asus PN50, Asrock Mars, Asrock Industrial 4x4 and Gigabyte Brix.
They probably got these from Intel for next-to-nothing, so what they're thinking is that if they can get even a couple of fanboys to buy these then they'll be rolling in fat margins.
Essentially DOA for enthusiasts who can roll their own. Looks like an overgrown DAN A4 or Sliger mITX case - except that the Razer can't accept standard parts and looks way larger physically based on the GPU shown for scale.
Also, the dimensions listed do not match the appearance. No way this thing is 19.23 x 24.15 x 1.60 inches (HxWxD)! Please double-check and update.
I like the concept to a point, but we live in a world with a multitude of standard SFF mITX options. This thing has 'mom's credit card' written all over it.
Look at the shape of the Tomahawk, keeping in mind the vid card in particular.
Dimensions: 19.23 x 24.15 x 1.60 inches (HxWxD)
Does that thing appear to be less than 2" in any direction? Nu-uh. And a 19 inch by 24 inch case ain't tiny either. Razer doesn't list dimensions on their website, but that info can't be accurate.
Didn't read all the comments, so maybe this was posted.
It looks like they have basically dropped in an Intel NUC Compute Elements module which run to around $1900 so around $500 for the case, PSU, RAM and Storage then £800 for the graphics card. https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/products...
Makes sense: this is what I just did with a new Mac Mini basically (Razer Chroma Core eGPU Enclosure). Why not throw it all into a slightly bigger box? The form factor would fit perfectly under my dual person desk in our home office whereas as standard ATX has zero chance of fitting anywhere here.
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forextor - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
No AMD version?dishayu - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
NUC is an Intel form-factor. AMD does not create small form factor kits like this.Agent Smith - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Regardless of the chassis, there is an increasing sense of reluctance to use AMD superior CPU’s ar Raze for any of their main products. For a gaming oriented company this will cost them a lot.DELL is another brand that clings onto Intel lick a sucking pig.
Agent Smith - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
TYPOS REMOVED (fat fingers)Regardless of the chassis, there is an increasing sense of reluctance to use AMD superior CPU’s at Razer for any of their main products. For a gaming oriented company this will cost them a lot.
DELL is another brand that clings onto Intel like a suckling pig.
Agent Smith - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Brands like XMG are growing fast in popularity as they offer what gamers ask for including broader choices at comparable quality levels too.Unlike Razer which has taken to following what their accountants or ill advised marketing team want.
IdBuRnS - Saturday, December 5, 2020 - link
"Dell is another brand that clings tonto Intel like a suckling pig".Except they have Ryzen CPUs in their latest desktop...
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/cty/pdp/spd/alienw...
Lakados - Sunday, December 6, 2020 - link
Dell sells more G5 laptops a year than AMD makes processors. AMD may have the best CPU’s currently available but look at it this way, TSMC has 4 7nm fab plants in operation, AMD gets about 30% of their combined output. That output is split amongst their CPU’s, GPU’s, PlayStation, and Xbox systems, as well as a few sub components along the way. Intel currently has 14 larger 14nm plants in operation. And the only thing they both have in common is neither is able to keep up with demand.Deicidium369 - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
Intel does not sell CPUs to the OEMs - they sell complete designs and component packages - which makes it easy for the OEMs to create systems... Intel has been doing this since at least "Ultralight" and continues on to "Project Athena" and most recently "Evo". So from an OEMs point of view, it's simple and easy - and Intel gets to decide what tier of products it's parts are in - in Dell's case the high end is the XPS line - from 13" to 15".Looking at it from Dell's POV - they would buy a CPU/APU/GPU from AMD and would have to spend significant $$ to engineer a design similar to what they get from Intel - as a result the designed for AMD typically are older as they are still much lower volume compared to an Intel design - and are rarely if ever seen in a high end XPS class design. Dell's AMD offerings start at the 15" Inspiron - while Intel's start at the 13" XPS (laptop and 2 in 1).
So not a question of clinging onto Intel like a suckling (correct term, not sucking) pig but one of economics - Free high end design for high margin high volume vs costly engineering for low margin low volume.
I don't consider the Element or Tomahawk to be NUC - for me the NUC is the ~4.5"x4.5" form factor - Intel has expanded the NUC line to include more sizes.
Superior is subjective. And this is NOT Intel vs AMD - this is about why OEMs like Dell favor Intel
StevoLincolnite - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Clearly they don't care about CPU performance if they aren't even using the latest Intel CPU's.lmcd - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Razer is a Thunderbolt supporter. Expect AMD to increase its marketshare dramatically once it actually manages a single (1) good chipset design.scineram - Saturday, December 5, 2020 - link
Mobody gives a shit about Thunderbolt.lilkwarrior - Sunday, December 6, 2020 - link
That's extremely false. Most pro hardware takes advantage of it + USB4 has Thunderbolt 3 integrated for a reason.lilkwarrior - Sunday, December 6, 2020 - link
Also note that the best A/V equipment use Thunderbolt for the bandwidth.lilkwarrior - Sunday, December 6, 2020 - link
Even some of the video capture hardware for gamer uses Thunderbolt; IDK on what basis you think Thunderbolt is rarely appreciated. Many manufacturers were cheap and waited till it's royalty free to use; that was for products for average joes.Pro hardware? Entirely different story.
Spunjji - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
Unless I'm mistaken, pro users aren't going to be turning out in droves to buy a NUC based on a 9-series Intel mobile CPU.The main use case of Thunderbolt is for docking, which doesn't really apply to this. The next case is external storage, which might make sense, but would rather defeat the point of the small chassis.
Deicidium369 - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
When I replace the older NUCs with NUC11 (TGL) - I will deploy Sonnet TB3 to SFP+ (10Gb/s) to make better use of the new network I have installed - testing on my Dell XPS 13 (Tiger Lake) - the performance in great and light years ahead of the 1Gb/s in current and 2.5Gb/s in NUC11.The most developed TB market is on the Mac - which used TB to replace FW.
Deicidium369 - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
Not even close to being true - you may not but quite a few of us are.Xajel - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
Razer has been an intel exclusive since they started making systems (laptops mainly). AMD wasn't competitive at that time especially in gaming, even Ryzen wasn't a thing then.And now, Razer is a small OEM, and doing two platforms costs more, while it will cost them less than doing a completely new one from ground but it will still cost them, and they're trying to evaluate these decisions depending on the market and demand, if there's an actual demand that will overcome the extra R&D costs and bring them more profits then I don't know why they won't do it unless they're a stubborn intel fans or have something exclusive with intel. Intel usually have bad practices like giving discounts or paying some of the R&D cost for being exclusive to intel.
Spunjji - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
In this case Razer are using a pre-existing Intel product (the "NUC" board) to base this around, so I suspect Intel are giving them a solid price for those. I can't imagine Intel sold many themselves.Deicidium369 - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
NUC Element board - NUC board is 4.5"x4.5" - and yes, Element is under the NUC category.nandnandnand - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
No AMD, no buy.AdditionalPylons - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
While you are right that NUC is an Intel marketing name, there are similar boards (the 4x4 form factor, size in inches, approximately) from Asrock Industrial and Ryzen embedded boards from Sapphire, as well as those from systems like Asus PN50 and Gigabyte Brix.https://www.anandtech.com/show/15947/asus-pn50-min...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16265/gigabytes-new...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16236/asrock-4x4-bo...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15549/sapphire-anno...
Spunjji - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Third parties do, though. Razer design their own laptops, so it's not inconceivable that they could have used this to release something that actually performs well for the form-factor instead of dumping rebadged Skylake junk into it..Deicidium369 - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
Most likely Razer is using the same designs that Intel provides to Dell - Tomahawk is likely a rebranded version of Intel Element.Operandi - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
So this is a "NUC" because it uses the Intel NUC CPU.... Its a horrible design and nobody should follow it.Its an absolute disaster thermally when you have so much more cooling potential in chassis this size, and given that you are defining a new "standard" can/could/could have (if Intel didn't suck) designed the case around a set heatsink position and used that to optimize both CPU and case cooling.
The PC on a board also sucks in terms of expandability; cause there isn't any... iTX boards fit into similar form factor cases and let you upgrade the CPU, RAM, and seeing two nVME isn't uncommon.
Yeah... this design sucks. Maybe AMD can work with some board and case manufactures and come up with something dosen't suck.
inighthawki - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
People who want small form factor gaming PCs are often putting form over function. IMO even ITX has severe limitations due to it's size unless you're completely content with never upgrading the system at all with anything other than replacing the GPU.Operandi - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Yeah, ITX is pain to work with but thats kinda my point. When Intel came up with the upgradable NUC standard (does it actually have a name?) it could have been so much better than this.There is absolutely no reason for the cooling to be built into the PC board and use laptop grade cooling components. You have the entire volume of this new form factor to play make room for a heasink/fan solution with a decent amount of surface area which would give you legit good performing and quiet cooling. There also isn't any reason why the RAM shouldn't at least be upgradable and would be easy to accommodate if they didn't cram garbage cooling onto a PC board that can just barely fit.
Yeah.... I really hate these things.
kaidenshi - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
ASRock has a couple of Ryzen APU-based UCFF offerings, and they are nice for what they are, but no discrete GPU support. I'd love to see a manufacturer take something like this and go all-AMD with it.I recently built an all-AMD unit roughly 9" x 7" x 11" and 10.9 liters using a mini-ITX chassis from Silverstone, a Ryzen 5 3600, and a RX 5600 XT. It was very, very loud compared to the same components in a micro-ATX case.
Golgatha777 - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
The AMD version is codenamed Series X. It comes with custom low power 3700x CPUs and cut down RDNA2 GPU. While not quite as fast, the MSRP is much better.sorten - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
A NUC in a full size tower case next? The term has lost any meaning.damianrobertjones - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Next Unit of Computing... Seems like a term that can be applied to whatever they see fit.If it were 'Small Ass Computer', SAC, then yeah, I'd get your point.
sorten - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Yeah, so maybe the term never had any meaning. But I consider Intel's many NUCs as prior art, and those all had a similar, very small form factor. Certainly didn't have dedicated GPUs.Deicidium369 - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
Agreed - to me even the Skull Canyon form factor isn't really what I consider to be NUC.Alistair - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
I just want an Xbox Series X with Windows. Would bebetter but $1000 USD instead (assuming double the Xbox price would be ok).Alistair - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
Call it the Surface MINIPC.Silver5urfer - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Look up at the SFF market, so many people build machines which are better than a console. A PC is always superior to Console and will be. Console is already outdated and non upgradeable. The perf is maxed out at sub 3700X, due to TBP and Clocks. And GPU is lower than a 3060Ti, it's a dead end.SFF PC, gets a 5600X and a 6700XT. Next year drop in ugprade with GPU even more perf. And a 5950X will run circles around the Xbox PC, whatever it is called. And one can even run compute workloads and etc on that.
Alistair - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
yeah and the Xbox is $600 CAD, and it has an 8 core CPU and GPU that in Canada if you want the 5600x and 3060 ti for example you've already spent $1000 CADhave you looked at the average mini itx motherboard like what the xbox uses? $300 CAD... SSD? $200 CAD at least, plus $100 for ram, and $100 for a case...
nobody cares about what you can build on PC, it is too expensive, the entire point of my comment that you seemed to miss, and if it was running Windows, it wouldn't be a console anymore either, but you didn't read my comment at all
Alistair - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
this Razer box is $4500 CAD, laughableDeicidium369 - Friday, December 11, 2020 - link
One would hope the quality control is better than the desktop drawer with many dead Razer peripherals like mice, keyboards and a headset.nico_mach - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
The storage systems on the new consoles arguably make them superior in some ways. Certainly they are superior dollar for dollar.I expect PCs to catch up quickly, and possibly Apple already has (though meaningless to most of us it is exciting).
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link
The onyl console that could potentially meet this is the PS5, and that is only theoretical sequential speeds over a very special compression format.on the whole, drives like the samsung 980 pro and the sabarent rocket plus will be faster IRL, especially since they are not tied to a locked down console.
Alistair - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Maybe Razer should ask Microsoft if they can use the Xbox chip for a PC, charge $1000 instead of $4500...hallstein - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
I’m sure we all congratulate Razer on what must be the most expensive PCIe backplane ever sold.Also, the article throws the word “NUC” around a lot, but this is not a NUC, in case anyone’s confused.
Spunjji - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
It does appear to be based on Intel's backplane for their Ghost Canyon 9-series NUC. I guess they had a few of those hanging around...AdditionalPylons - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
If it had Ryzen 4800H and ≥2.5 GbE I'd buy it instantly. For more compact (no discrete GPU) alternatives I am very much looking forward to CES in January with hopefully Zen 3 Cezanne-based versions of Asus PN50, Asrock Mars, Asrock Industrial 4x4 and Gigabyte Brix.lemurbutton - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Wait, they're trying to sell an i9-9980HK computer in 2021 for $2400? And it doesn't even come with a GPU?What are they thinking??
Spunjji - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
They probably got these from Intel for next-to-nothing, so what they're thinking is that if they can get even a couple of fanboys to buy these then they'll be rolling in fat margins.ingwe - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
It isn't a bad product, but it is a bad price. Ouch. I do really like the idea.flyingpants265 - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
What is a "modular PC"? All PCs are modular.ArcadeEngineer - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
My laptop with everything soldered in would choose to differIGTrading - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
I wouldn't touch any Intel-based NUC.When an AMD version launches, we'll likely be able to recommend it.
Heck, I might buy one myself, although it would be a bit overkill for me.
jtd871 - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Essentially DOA for enthusiasts who can roll their own. Looks like an overgrown DAN A4 or Sliger mITX case - except that the Razer can't accept standard parts and looks way larger physically based on the GPU shown for scale.Also, the dimensions listed do not match the appearance. No way this thing is 19.23 x 24.15 x 1.60 inches (HxWxD)! Please double-check and update.
Flunk - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
When I saw the photo here I thought it was a new version of Razer's external GPU enclosure.meacupla - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Is there a conversion error on the product dimensions?How can this thing be only 1.6in or 40mm deep?
That's literally the thickness of a double slot video card.
mrvco - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
I like the concept to a point, but we live in a world with a multitude of standard SFF mITX options. This thing has 'mom's credit card' written all over it.coconutboy - Friday, December 4, 2020 - link
Look at the shape of the Tomahawk, keeping in mind the vid card in particular.Dimensions: 19.23 x 24.15 x 1.60 inches (HxWxD)
Does that thing appear to be less than 2" in any direction? Nu-uh. And a 19 inch by 24 inch case ain't tiny either. Razer doesn't list dimensions on their website, but that info can't be accurate.
Didn't read all the comments, so maybe this was posted.
lorribot - Sunday, December 6, 2020 - link
It looks like they have basically dropped in an Intel NUC Compute Elements module which run to around $1900 so around $500 for the case, PSU, RAM and Storage then £800 for the graphics card.https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/products...
Spunjji - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
I doubt they're paying retail price, but damn those prices are steep. No thanks, Intel.Thayios - Friday, December 18, 2020 - link
Makes sense: this is what I just did with a new Mac Mini basically (Razer Chroma Core eGPU Enclosure). Why not throw it all into a slightly bigger box? The form factor would fit perfectly under my dual person desk in our home office whereas as standard ATX has zero chance of fitting anywhere here.Thayios - Friday, December 18, 2020 - link
(Mac Mini here as I wanted Mac OS)xaneo - Saturday, December 26, 2020 - link
Ugly.