![]() ![]() After that, it’s just a matter of pulling out all those guts in one gesture, undoing a single screw that holds the card in place, switching out the card, and sliding the guts back in. Switching graphics cards is a simple matter of pulling back a handle hidden on the back, which in turn unlocks an interior mechanism that keeps the power supply and graphics card safe within the tanky chassis. The Core X removes several minutes from the process. Apple egpu razor pro#Back when I first showed off eGPUs not long after Apple announced support for them in macOS 10.13.4, I found myself frustrated by how long it took to switch from one card to another, thanks in part to an overly fussy system of four screws for keeping the card and chassis in place with the Akitio Node Pro enclosure. It’s hard to overstate how much I like this. The handle serves as both a grip and a lock. And now that it’s out of the box? Switching cards takes a matter of seconds. Barely 15 minutes passed from the second when I cut open the box to the moment when the Core X was powering an external monitor through my MacBook Pro, as it started working immediately after I slipped in an AMD Radeon RX580 and plugged it in through my MacBook Pro’s Thunderbolt 3 port. ![]() Razer’s own Core V2 could only deliver 65W. (The V2’s svelte form means it can only support a 500W power supply.) Even the high-end Sonnet eFX Breakaway Box’s 650W falls short in this regard, as it only charges at 87W. A couple of inches of desk space isn’t so essential that I could justify choosing it over this, especially as it pumps out 650 watts of power, supports massive three-slot PCIe cards, and even powers my MacBook at 100W. In fact, I find myself wondering why anyone would want to buy the V2 at this point. The Core V2 is basic, but it means business. The noise on its fan got louder as I played more graphically- intensive games, but never anywhere so loud as the fans screaming from my MacBook Pro without it. Apple egpu razor Pc#At 13 inches long, 6.3 inches high, and 2.36 inches wide, it’s a squat and hefty thing compared to the Core V2, but I could probably drop a PC tower on this 13.4-pound beast (when empty!) and it’d come out fine. Apple egpu razor free#Here, the only sign that it’s a Razer product is the tasteful silver logo embossed on the side grill, free of any eyebrow-raising green coloring. Otherwise, the Core X is an exercise in simplicity than Apple should appreciate. Gone too, are the four USB 3.0 ports-which are always welcomed with a port-strapped MacBook Pro-and the ethernet port, which means you’ll need a dongle on your MacBook Pro to stay connected to a landline. The graphics card we used had more ports than the Core X itself.Ĭompared to the Core V2, you lose some things with the Core X, such as the V2’s fancy “Chroma” lighting that, like the colors on a mood ring, adjusts to the games you’re playing. The Core X, by contrast, costs a measly $299. Razer already has an enclosure called the Core V2 on the market (which now works with Macs as well), but at $499, it was a pricey thing. (I went over the pros and cons of eGPUs in extensive detail last month.) And more importantly, it does it inexpensively. It sets out to do one thing-to temporarily make a laptop like a MacBook Pro into something with the graphical power of an iMac or better-and it does that job well. It’s also a rare example of constraint from Razer. The Core X is an impressive product for a company that’s too often known for style over substance (and sorry, PC Master Racers, I’m not talking about Apple). I realize this is a big claim, but it’s not without merit. In fact, after spending some time with it over the past few days, I feel comfortable in saying it’s even a better enclosure than the Sonnet Breakaway Boxes that Apple itself recommends. It’s a favored brand of the kind of gamers who lurk in the PC Master Race subreddit and make acidic quips about Apple, and for that matter, it caters to folks in love with resource-demanding PC games that often never get ported to the Mac.Īnd yet, for all that, the new Core X external graphics processing unit finds Apple and Razer as strangely accommodating bedfellows. Its designs-which tend to favor mutagen-green lines snaking though sturdy plates of black metal and plastic-look better suited to the Borg than to the drawing board of Jony Ive. Were I pressed to name a brand that pairs well with Apple products, Razer would be one of the last names to pass my lips. ![]()
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