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Comment by Oculus | Hacker News Reader

Wow that's a pretty cool idea. The only issue I see going forward is whether or not the target market can afford the machine. The biggest pro of customizing a PC is the price for performance. I'm able to save quite a bit of $$$ by building my own machine. If the people who don't know how to customize their own machine are price insensitive they might as well go for something that requires no effort from them (e.g. Apple products, high end Dell/HP). If they are in fact price sensitive, I imagine a modular machine such as this would probably be out of their price point given that every part is specifically for this one type of PC.

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The greatest advantage would be partially insulating the owner from platform changes, though that depends on how Razer implements the generic backplane in the tower.

For example, lately Intel has been changing CPU sockets and interface chipsets like I change my underwear. Upgrading the processor requires upgrading the motherboard, which may trigger a cascade upgrade of other parts. With this system, it may be possible to upgrade the CPU module (with all bridge chipsets included) without having to touch any other parts.

Also, you are no longer limited by what a motherboard vendor chooses to put on their board. No worrying about number of RAM slots, number of USB headers, how many of each type of PCIe slot they decide to include.

How well it works, and whether it justifies the price, remains to be seen.

>> Oculus: "[...] whether or not the target market can afford the machine."

> vonmoltke: "[...] though that depends on how Razer implements the generic backplane in the tower." [...] "Upgrading the processor requires upgrading the motherboard, which may trigger a cascade upgrade of other parts."

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The above are the two big items in my mind. Another potentially minor (or major) issue is how the seals for liquid cooling are made, their durability and reliability. I am assuming that the pump is located in the backplane and a quick connect/disconnect type connection is used for liquid connections.

It sure looks cool. It looks like Razer's designers and/or engineers really liked the look of Thermaltake's Level 10 and wanted to take it in a different direction. It could also be that these are OEM'ed from the same manufacturer.

It might be a better strategy to keep the module prices as low as possible and depend on frequent upgrades. I wouldn't mind committing to buying a new CPU/RAM module every year for a few years if the price was right.

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