The Razer Core looks like the graphics card enclosure weve been waiting for. Sharepoint 2013 Enterprise Trial more. Razer hit CES hard this year with an aggressively priced, aggressively specced 9. But theyre a gaming company, so it makes sense theyd have something to along with the new Blade Stealth laptop, and boy do they a graphics card dock that can handle any dual slot GPU, feed it up to 3. W of juice, and pump its data to a laptop over USB Type C at 4. Even better its potentially compatible with any laptop that has a Type C Thunderbolt port. Heres a little CES story for you in January 2. A graphics card enclosure with Thunderbolt 3s 40 Gbs bandwidth, open to any laptop with the right port Yep, were excited. I crowded into the corner of a hotel suite with now Vice Motherboard editor Matthew Braga to look at a prototype graphics card dock, which promised something exciting and novel it would use the new Thunderbolt connector and its amazing 1. I dont remember which company was making it, but I do remember that we never saw it again, and it definitely never came to market in the US. Thunderbolt on PCs didnt take off, and slapping a graphics card into a dock is only a half solution. Theres driver, BIOS, and software work that needs to be done to make a laptop and external graphics card work together in harmony. A year ago, at CES 2. Alienware Dock Software' title='Alienware Dock Software' />The announcement that Amazon is bidding 13. Whole Foods grocery chain is a very big deal and many believe its the first step in building. Welcome to IGNs Daily Deals, your source for the best deals on the stuff you actually want to buy. If you buy something through this post, IGN may get a. Alienwares Graphics Amplifier has been described as the Holy Grail of mobile gaming. I think thats going too far. The Holy Grail of laptop gaming. Maximize productivity when the job brings you back to the office with the Rugged Tablet Desk Dock from Dell. It offers large monitor or dual display support with. Upgrade your computer networking system on eBay. Browse computers, laptops, printers, keyboards more. Top brands include Apple, Lenovo, Microsoft Dell. Buy Alienware Graphics Amplifier 9R7XN Everything Else Amazon. FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases. I saw some graphics card docks from Alienware and MSI. These actually worked They were real products. The technology was proprietary, and expensive. I said they wouldnt be successful unless they were compatible with more systems, because Im a genius geniuses can point out very obvious things, right Finally, the Razer Core does it right. Its a handsome box, with some subtle LED lighting, and a black metal chassis. Introducing Dells new wireless docking solution for laptops, ultrabooks and 2in1s. Alienware-1.jpg' alt='Alienware Dock Software' title='Alienware Dock Software' />Pulling a handle in the back slides out the graphics card tray for easy installation. Inside theres a 5. GPU that will fit up to 1. Four USB 3 ports can provide power and pass through data to a connected laptop, and it has an Ethernet port for good measure. But whats really exciting is the Thunderbolt 3 connector it uses, in the form of USB Type C. Thunderbolt 3 supports up to 4. Gbs of bandwidth, and theres absolutely nothing proprietary about the design. B B King King Of The Blues. The dream is tantalizingly close a single graphics card enclosure that could work with a wide range of laptops and turn any portable into a real gaming champion. Could it be Could such a thing be real Its not quite guaranteed yet, but its looking promising. There are no special graphics drivers required to make the system workyoull just be using the normal AMD or Nvidia drivers for the GPU you place in the enclosure. The one catch is the laptop BIOS. According to Razer, the laptop BIOS will need to properly support Intel graphics switching, so the system can recognize and utilize the dedicated GPU when plugged in, and operate on the integrated GPU when unplugged. Right now, the system only works with the Blade Stealth, but once the Core is released, nothing should prevent Dell or Lenovo or Asus or anyone else from supporting the hardware, too. With the Blade Stealth, Razer promises itll be hot swappable. You can plug or unplug without restarting the system. If you have a game running, itll crash in the graphics hand off, but normal Windows operation will transfer over just fine. They also claimed that during their testing, theyve seen no signs of performance loss or latencyThunderbolts bandwidth is more than enough to handle graphics processing and a couple peripherals plugged in, too. For truly demanding games, a low power U series Intel CPU will be a bottleneck when paired with a dedicated GPU. And its too early to say if other laptop makers will support the Core, or if it could work with laptops that already have dedicated GPUs like, say, an Nvidia 9. M. But if an external graphics card dock will ever work, its probably going to be this one. Razer hasnt finalized price or release date for the Core yet, and would only say its coming out in the first half of this year.