Gadgetory

Linus tech tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by NCI XCOM your source for great technology selection and service along with course our memory and Western Digital guys we are here with the hypothetical future of the desktop gaming PC this is an undisclosed thing that Razer has just unveiled here at CES 2014 they're calling it project Christine and to even gaze upon it would make anyone who is not a true disciple of the all-mighty gaben wither and die oh god I left this is it guys this is the modular gaming PC concept it's not a real product at all there are engineering samples that probably don't even look anything like this that are somewhat working but this is and and the end product might not look anything like this but this is a concept for what could be the truly easy to upgrade fully modular silent yet powerful pcs so to start with you have this base station here so it's one single piece of aluminum and I mean these guys are such masters of industrial design I mean I the only comparison that I've ever really made in the past is to someone like Apple they're kind of like the Apple of PC to me which we absolutely need and it is a thing of beauty so it starts with the base station that then all down the front and all down the back it has these modules that can be modularly unexpected right I know I'm throwing you guys for a loop here that's the most unexpected thing about this video that can be modularly added and subtracted to the middle tower so you can see on the back we've got a completely proprietary interface although razer hasn't said that they're a hundred percent clear about whether they would make it an open standard for others to create upgrade modules or not maybe there'd be a certification process but for now it's fully custom and completely proprietary interface as well as to quick disconnect fitting so why would you need to quick disconnect fittings and why is it so quiet well because it is fully mineral oil cooled so every one of these modules on the back we've actually got GPU one GPU to GPU three CPU memory as well as rear i/o on here is mineral oil cooled so the idea is that you would be able to simply upgrade from single graphics to sli by buying one of these modules and plugging it into the back so you might say okay Linus that's absolutely insane that space-age we must be years away from that and you know what the reality is we probably are but they are potentially working on it depending on how much demand there is for this technology so for those of you who are you know excited about it please do post comments on the video and let them know that you love this and you want to see it and for those of you who think it's crazy go ahead and do that too but I would ask you if they already somewhat have it working and this is without actually being close to a finished product is it that crazy it uses PCI Express for communication between the different modules and between all the different parts in some form wouldn't necessarily work with exactly the technology we have today as a finished product no not necessarily but it's an evolution of what the PC can be I mean you look at what a high-end gaming PC is now for someone like me I can upgrade a graphics card in probably about 45 seconds if I only have one hand to use but not everyone's like that not everyone wants to open up their PC I mean I've I I've encountered professional gamers who need advice about what antivirus to run or like how do how to install a memory module so not everyone's like that and that doesn't mean that you're not an enthusiast and you're not a gamer it just means you're not necessarily a hardware guy so this the idea is that it would completely eliminate that uncertainty you would just you would buy a new PSU and water cooling module you would plug it into the bottom and you'd have a silent powerful new module that should be forward compatible with everything else in it so the idea is that we'd be able to have these systems last Oh an entire sort of pci-express generation rather than being tied down to a system that's only upgradable within a single CPU socket cycle or something like that like it's all very again it's very space-age I haven't even talked about the front yet either so I'm going to go ahead and turn this baby back yeah I'm actually turning the table it's not motorized we're not quite that advanced although the PC is so there's a blu-ray reader and writer here there's also a control module here that is you know very much a work in progress but it has some cool video playback you know you could probably have a touchscreen on there control your fans and all kinds of stuff like that we've got a couple SSDs front i/o front audio and then I don't know maybe this is a speaker I don't know it can be anything it can be what you want it to be but one thing is for certain and that is that it is modular that is the concept obviously it's not a finished product I cannot stress that enough it is easy to upgrade in fact I mean this could open up completely new business models such as you could have a subscription-based PC without being tied into something like a cloud gaming solution where latency might be a problem for you you could just say okay I'm going to pay 30 bucks a month and rather than leasing something that I don't own maybe I just have a subscription so you guys can keep 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 whether it's razor or someone else if it is an open standard I mean the sky's the limit maybe you just send me the new module I pop it in I send the old one back and it's off to the races and then the last thing is that silence and power is key and mineral oil cooling in a consumer-grade desktop machine is something that I'm sure you don't have to be a hardware enthusiast to kind of geek out over thank you very much for checking out our showcase of project Fiona did I say Fiona because I meant Christine Fiona was the edge tablet and it's funny that I made that little Freudian slip there because project Fiona was much like this and that they showed off a completely crazy thing and then they got such great feedback that they made it so this is kind of the same idea guys thank you for checking out this video don't miss any of our content from CES 2014 remember our trip to the show is powered by NCI XCOM your source for great technology selection and service as well as course our memory and Western Digital big thanks to those guys because we wouldn't even be here without them