Razer has a long history of announcing odd products at any given CES. Some of those products win prestigious awards such as Best of Show. A few of them also never see the light of day. This year, the company has two major announcements: a wristband computer called "Razer Nabu" and a modular computer concept called "Project Christine". The last one feels more like their April 1st announcements.
First: the wristband. The Razer Nabu (isn't it ironic that the god of wisdom and writing is a homonym of JarJar's home planet) is said to be somewhere between a Nike+ FuelBand and a smartwatch. Track the number of steps you take, calories you burned, floors you climbed by stairs, distance you traveled, hours you slept, and do some stuff with location data. They can sense one another, if someone nearby is also wearing theirs, and optionally share information. It is also expected to connect to Razer Comms at some point. It is unclear how many of these applications can be done directly with the device and how many require an Android or iOS smartphone nearby.
Razer is currently accepting requests from developers looking to purchase the device for $49 USD. That may or may not be the final consumer price for whenever it makes a real launch.
The other product is a little less, concrete.
Project Christine reminds me of that period where the tech world went nuts over the thought that Apple would design a modular Mac Pro. The thought is that you could swap modules in and out for upgrading purposes with peace of mind that you never need to open anything. Everything is external connections to black boxes. Razer seems to have taken that idea and run with it. Suffices to say, I am highly skeptical. I can think of about a dozen complications ranging from bandwidth to inventory to relative need compared to other solutions.
Sure, it looks cool, but just think about it (if it ends up being a legitimate project rather than a CES talking point). Are you really going to have Razer versions of every possible upgrade SKU? Would you really save anything over a custom solution or paying someone to do the technical work?
Interesting thought experiment, if nothing else, but I would be fairly shocked if we even see this mentioned again more than 8 months from now.
PC Perspective's CES 2014 coverage is sponsored by AMD.
Follow all of our coverage of the show at https://pcper.com/ces!
I would love for them to do
I would love for them to do this so that the modding community could take it apart and learn how to do diy versions of this.
I could see that having some
I could see that having some positive outcomes.
I love it. Mineral cooling
I love it. Mineral cooling and silent are music to my ears. Razer would be “Appleizing” hard core gaming units. Plug and play. My multi CPU, multi GPU system is not only for gaming but for rendering, and that is another segment I’m convinced Razer could tap into. I also like the tree style – and the color scheme makes it look like a Naim stereo. Only one question remains to see if it is viable – price.
I might add, I started out “green” and it took a long while to understand the hardware /software requirements in the rendering segment.
In addition, the custom loop water cooling industry is made up of a lot of small players that have limited quality control, resulting in poorly made threads, bolts that break easily, nickel covered copper blocks that peel, poor instructions, incompatibility between products, radiators that require flushing before mounting, warrantyies that expire when mounting water blocks, or changing pump heads, very poor distribution, lack of products in stock, etc etc.
It means that Razer, if they can pull it off, would become a system integrator, which I suspect will be challenging to a lot of players in the water cooling PC “cottage” industry.
Very Cool idea but i doubt
Very Cool idea but i doubt we’ll ever see anything like it and I don’t see how this would be any cheaper than say buying a system from someone like ibuypower or cyberpower also where would the radiators go the mockup shows quad sli. Mineral oil cooling isn’t magic you still have to transfer that heat to the air some how. I think what’s more likely is that it will continue to get easier to build a gaming desktop and that more resources like pcpartpicker that help you pick compatible components with come about.