 Thunderbolt, the wicked fast interface developed by Intel, which you can learn more about here, has always been based on PCI Express. Yes, the same PCI Express that you use to add internal expansion cards to a desktop computer. So to say that I've been amped about the idea of being able to staple a video card to a laptop for a long time would be an understatement. Well, it's finally a reality. Let's take a look then at the Razer Core. The Phoenix Autor is a full-sized, minimalistically designed keyboard complete with gold-plated Cherry MX Brown switches. Check out the link in the video description to learn more. Laptop CPUs have, for about three generations now, been available in quad-core variants that boast single-threaded performance that's fast enough for them to avoid being a gaming bottleneck, while being power efficient enough not to require a nuclear reactor strapped to the bottom of your computer to run for more than an hour or so. Laptop GPUs, or video cards, while they've made enormous strides, are a different story altogether. Relatively speaking, they are hot, either thermal throttling during real-world use or requiring large cooling systems, and they suck so much power that if you're running on battery, they not only drain it during operation, but in the case of very high-end ones, they can't even run at full capacity if they wanted to due to battery power delivery limits. Well, that's easy, Linus. Just buy a desktop. I mean, yeah, you could do that, but not everyone wants more than one computer, and lots of people actually prefer to use a laptop. And this problem of how to satisfy the people who value portability and battery life, and who also like PC gaming, is one that the industry has been trying to solve for a long time. Some of these solutions never made it to market. This really cool prototype from Gigabyte used proprietary connectors on high-end shielded cables to take a full PCI Express 16x interface to an outside box, while others did. Alienware designed a proprietary PCIe 4x cable and interface that was implemented on a couple of their gaming laptop models, and the MSI GS30 Shadow rocks a PCI Express 16x connector hidden by a dust cover on the back that plugs into a proprietary box that not only supports an expansion card, but also additional storage and I.O. Neat. But while they both addressed the heat, power, and upgradability issues that plague gaming notebooks, they introduced cost, compatibility, and usability ones, since PCI Express cannot be hot-plugged, requiring a full system shutdown whenever the user wanted to unplug it or plug it back in. Enough history lesson though. Let's take a closer look at the core, Razer's solution that promises to fix everything, including doing away with proprietary interfaces in favor of Thunderbolt 3 using a USB type-C connector. Man, these guys are good at industrial design. This thing could be in a cardboard box with holes punched in it for all the difference that would make to performance, but instead, Razer turned out what is in my opinion a shockingly attractive piece of high-tech art that I would be happy to have on my desk. It's constructed almost entirely from thick black anodized aluminum with two LED lighting zones on the bottom and on the inside by the left side mesh window that can be configured to any color and effect you want from within synapse. Even off if you care less about the flash and more about the dash. On the subject of speed, I couldn't actually believe how fast it was to get started with the core. A complete graphics card installation can be done in less than five minutes, even if you've never installed a graphics card before. Just open the lock at the back that doubles as a handle, pull it out, revealing a single PCI Express 16x physical slot and a customized 500 watt enhanced power supply, remove the back plate screw, slot in your new video card, plug in the power connectors, screw it in and bippity boppity boo. That is it. Thanks to ample headroom and the inclusion of two 6 plus 2 pin connectors, you can install almost any graphics card on the market, though it wouldn't be a terrible idea to consult Razer's compatibility list before making a purchase. For my part, I went ahead with a GTX 1080 Founders Edition that wasn't on the list, but worked just fine, though your mileage may vary. With the graphics card installed, we can take a look at the business end of things, the back. Here you'll find a standard PC power input, a USB type-c connector that is carrying Thunderbolt 3, four USB 3.0 ports and hallelujah, a gigabit ethernet port. Yay! Setup was actually pretty straightforward. You'll need the latest drivers for the video card you installed from AMD or Nvidia's website. You'll need Razer Synapse driver utility and in the case of the Blade 14, but not the Blade Stealth, you'll need the GPU switcher app that sits in the system tray. It's beta right now, but functionality wise it does what it's supposed to, allowing you to select which dedicated video card you want to use and even remembering your preference through a system reboot, or you can just leave it on auto mode. But how much of a performance boost can you expect? How well does a video card operate over this rinky-dink little cable? The short answer is, well, I guess it depends on what graphics card you put into it, and the long answer is much more complicated and actually looks like, I'm sorry, it's going to end up in a separate video. But in the meantime, here are some numbers with a GTX 1080 as a point of comparison against the 970M that I use in my Blade 14. Let's talk about the usability a bit though. Notably absent from the core is a power switch. Instead, it simply detects when the device that it's plugged into turns on and powers up alongside it. This is the first thing that stood out to me as a potential area for improvement for the next generation. It would be nice to be able to power up just the USB hub and ethernet port to use the core as a more basic dock. Which is something I actually wouldn't desire if it weren't for complaint number two. The core is not very quiet and surprisingly, it doesn't seem to be the video card's fault. I mean, it's certainly quieter under full gaming load than a Blade 14 under full gaming load using its DGPU, but the enclosures fans are significantly louder at idle than a Blade 14 at idle, making light productivity applications kind of frustrating. Number three is both praise for the core and a huge complaint about the Blade 14 2016. I assumed the core would require an external display connected to the back of it to work, but it actually doesn't, which is awesome. You can use the power of your external video card to drive that 3200 by 1800 onboard display. Sick. Unfortunately, the type-c connector is on the right on this laptop, meaning that the cable can get in the way of using the mouse, and this is made worse by the pathetically short cable that Razer includes in the box. And there are other niggles at the moment as well, mostly to do with transitioning between your IGPU, DGPU, and what I'm going to call eGPU, the one in here. The switcher app can be hard to dismiss sometimes. I plugged in while the computer was asleep and my trackpad buttons weren't working until a reboot once, running Fire Strike back-to-back on DGPU, then eGPU yields a massive improvement in scores, but going the other way resulted in a black screen after the first segment of the second test. Until I rebooted the system, I was able to repeat that several times, and there were a few little things like that. But with that said, my experience using it now, and we're still a bit early by the way, gives me a lot of hope. Performance improvements are real. Thermals look great. And while at CES 2016, I managed to force a hard reset on the demo system by pulling the plug while running a 3D application, impressively, six months later, with Heaven running, not only does the system not fully lock up, but after a little while, oh, no, it did crash that time. I've seen this work though. After a little while, Heaven actually managed to get back up and running, albeit slowly, on the iGPU. A lot of progress has been made. And while eSports titles will probably be fine with the Blade 14's built-in graphics for years to come, making the future-proofness argument for spending this kind of money a moot point, for a gamer who wants to play the latest AAA titles and, heaven forbid, VR games on his or her notebook, the Core looks on the surface like a superbly elegant, albeit expensive, solution. But, as I alluded to before, there are a lot of deeper questions that I've found myself asking about this product during my time with it. So many, in fact, that I'm going to set aside a significant chunk of time before the Core is available to you guys to buy, to attempt to answer them all. Speaking of answers, you were probably asking yourself, wow, where did Linus get that sexy pink skin for his razor blade? To which the answer is, of course, from dbrand. dbrand is your source for awesome vinyl skins for your phone, tablet, console, controllers, and more. They're affordable and they ship worldwide, but the best thing about dbrand is the configurator. On their site, you pick your device, you pick all your colors, and you can actually mix and match colors, which I personally think looks freaking awesome, but your mileage may vary with that. You get to preview what it's going to look like, you place your order, and boom, their robots pack it and ship it to you. And if there's anything wrong, their customer service robots are ace. So go ahead and check out the link in the video description and start skinning your devices today. So thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button, or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured at Amazon in the video description. Also linked in the description is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join. Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next, so click that button in the top right corner to check out our latest video over on Channel Superfun.