Razer revealed its Tomahawk Gaming Desktop at CES 2020, the company’s first foray into selling desktop PCs in addition to its line of laptops. Now, almost a year later, its PC with a modular, 10 liter eGPU-like design will finally ship — or at least begin preorders today — with prices starting at $2,400.
As ideas go, it’s pretty ingenious. It’s basically a pull-out circuit board with two PCI slots: one for a graphics card and one for an Intel NUC 9 Extreme Compute Element module which slides into a bay and has an Intel Core i9-9980HK processor, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and a 2TB hard drive. It can accommodate a GPU up to the size and power requirements of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (it uses a 750-watt power supply), which should cover most needs. You can opt for a GPU-free model; preconfigured ones will include the RTX 3080.
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Razer Tomahawk is the modular gaming desktop you’ve been…
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It’s built much like Razer’s Core eGPUs, out of matte black milled aluminum, with the same handle in the back to pull out the tray. On the back are four USB-A ports, two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and a 3.5mm analog/optical audio jack.
I do have a couple of reservations about it, though, including the module’s mobile-class processor and that upgrading anything on the Compute Element card — memory and SSD — may not be straightforward or cheap. I’ll know better once I have one in my hands.
