We have news from Razer. At this year’s CES in Las Vegas, the US gaming expert announced its entry into the gaming PC segment for the first time. With their kick-off model “Tomahawk Gaming Desktop”, the Californians rely on the new NCU platform from Intel. A comparatively small housing should offer sufficient space for the hardware power. If you take a look at the Tomahawk, it quickly reminds you of the eGPU systems from Razer.
Razer relies on NUC Extreme from Intel
The case, which forms the basis of the Tomahawk N1, comes from Intel. It allows easy access to the installed hardware. Pulling out a slide is enough to access the individual components. Thanks to the real glass windows on the sides, you can always have a look inside the small Power PC. Optical similarities to Razer’s eGPU case cannot be denied. However, it’s still unclear whether they will also be similar in terms of size. However, since, unlike Core X, not only graphics cards, but an entire PC must find room, this is doubtful.
Small form factor thanks to matching mainboard
The small size of the Tomahawk is not made possible by a mainboard in Mini-ITX format. To be able to reach the small dimensions, Razer has sought support from Intel. Just in time for the CES, the industry leader in terms of processors also presented a novelty. The Intel NUC 9 Extreme (“Ghost Canyon”) offers enough space to build a powerful PC in a small space.
Possible components
In the Tomahawk, processors up to an 8-core Core i9-9980H processor can be installed. Furthermore, the NUC 9 Extreme from Intel offers enough space to make 64 GB RAM possible. The platform from Intel is a special PCIe plug-in card. This can be easily plugged onto a board attached to the case’s bottom. As a result, a communication between several graphic cards of the individual PCIe slots is possible.
The agony of choice
According to the company, the buyer will have different configuration options. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 represents the maximum in the graphics card. Those who prefer to use a graphics card from AMD are unfortunately out of place with the Tomahawk. Since all components can be easily exchanged, changing the GPU should not be a problem. In addition to the graphics card, you can also select work speakers and hard disk in the configuration.
Ports of the motherboard
The NUC 9 Extreme offers the user sufficient connection possibilities. According to Razer, two Thunderbolt 3 connections are available. These can be controlled via USB-C. Furthermore, the Tomahawk offers two Gigabit Ethernet connections. Furthermore, two HDMI 2.0a ports and six USB 3 ports are also available. These offer a transfer rate of fast 10 GBit/s.
Price and availability
Unfortunately, Razer still keeps a low profile when it comes to the details around the Tomahawk. Neither information on price nor on the various configuration options have been mentioned. What we do know, however, is that the Tomahawk should be on the market in the 1st half of 2020. Furthermore, Razer has already announced that new notebooks will be launched. These should be able to support Intel’s 10th generation processors and offer displays with an exceptionally high refresh rate (up to 300 Hertz).
