More ports are always a good thing [19659005] The Core X Chroma comes with a 700W power supply, which makes it 50W more powerful than the one included with Razer Core cabinets more old It limits the power usage of the installed GPU to 500W, although none of the compatible GPUs are close to making the most of this allocation. Even so, the additional wattage is appreciated as it has four USB 3.1 ports on the back that can be used for peripherals such as a mouse and a keyboard.
7.5
Verge Score
Good Stuff
More power and USB accessory ports
The chroma lighting effect is underestimated
] The novelty of increasing the power of a laptop with a single cable does not age
Bad
The premium of $ 100 is barely justified
Thunderbolt 3 inherently GPU bottlenecks
More ports are ] always to something good, especially since most laptops ready for Thunderbolt 3 lack them. It also has an Ethernet connector to increase download speeds and minimize latency compared to games over Wi-Fi. All these additional ports and connections mean you can use the Core X Chroma as a dock, with your mouse, keyboard, external display and wired network connection plugged in, instead of having to make all those connections every time you sit down. on your desk.
The Razer multicolor LEDs also appear in the Core X Chroma. You will take full advantage of the effect if you already own other Razer products compatible with the system. Your Synapse software (which is not available in macOS) can synchronize lighting effects through the devices for a coordinated light show, or you can modify them individually to make them look different. However, I must admit that seeing the graphics card in low light through the side panel of the Core X Chroma looks good.
Our review unit was equipped with an RTX 2070, which we exchanged for a more powerful RTX 2080 ti. Open the cabinet is a task without tools and is simple to do: simply move a lever and pull it. So, it's like operating on a desktop motherboard (without all the other components getting in the way). Align the GPU with the PCIe slot, push it until you click on the latch and connect the required number of 6-pin or 8-pin PCIe power connectors to your GPU.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
I tried the Razer Core X Chroma with the lowest specification Razer Blade Blade – based on integrated graphics – just because of its appearance, the Blade Stealth is a gaming notebook, although it can not run the latest AAA titles without seriously compromising the resolution of the screen and the graphic quality, so it's the perfect test subject.
If you're using a MacBook, you'll need to use an external monitor to see the benefits
You can get away with the simple use of the Razer Blade screen to play games , although the cabinet allows the inserted graphic card to be output to multiple monitors . Things work differently for macOS laptops. According to the Razer documentation, the Razer Core X Chroma will not improve the performance of games on the screen of a MacBook laptop. You must connect an external monitor (or buy one, if you do not have a spare on hand) to see the benefits of using the eGPU cabinet. But if you're serious about games, you're probably not using a Mac anyway.
Returning to Blade Stealth, games like Prey and Rage 2 run perfectly, 60 frames per second consisting of the maximum configuration, although that is not the limit of what what this configuration is capable of doing. The Blade Stealth comes with a 1080p screen with a refresh rate of 60Hz by default, so, with the interest of seeing how the Core X Chroma is performed on a screen with a faster update speed, I also tried it with the Razer Blade 15 with a 144Hz screen.
The Razer Blade 15 has a dedicated graphics card, the RTX 2060, and before the eGPU cabinet could work, I had to download the Razer GPU application to force Windows 10 to recognize the RTU 2080 Ti as the Primary GPU As expected, those same games, as well as others like Apex Legends and Shadow of the Tomb Raider had a performance much higher than 60 frames per second. However, these games exceeded 100 frames per second, but none of them was about to take full advantage of its 144Hz refresh rate. The RTX 2080 Ti is currently the fastest gaming GPU, so the likely culprit for these lower than expected numbers is Thunderbolt 3.
It is the best low maintenance solution for a high maintenance problem
Able as it is When quickly moving data, Thunderbolt 3 puts a remarkable bottleneck in the bandwidth of a GPU. It supports four lanes over PCIe, which is significantly less than the 16 PCIe lanes supported on most desktop motherboards. (Some laptops have even less bandwidth in their Thunderbolt 3 ports, so you'll have to check your manufacturer's specifications to see exactly what your laptop is capable of). When playing on the screen of a laptop, the single cable is being pulled. double function: the computer must send the data to the GPU for processing and then receive the processed data to be displayed. Playing intensive games is a big workload, and, ultimately, even the most powerful graphics cards on the market will have a hard time showing really impressive frame rates. Despite this, I did not notice any problems in the game.
The perfect solution to bring the performance of desktop games to laptops may never exist. It's a moving target that's always improving, and as long as the eGPU cabinets are running against the limitations of Thunderbolt 3, it might be a while before something better appears.
Still, the Razer endpoint execution for the Core X Chroma is as good as it is today, and the novelty of greatly improving the performance of your lightweight, portable laptop with a single cable does not fade. It is the best low maintenance solution for a high maintenance problem.
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