Very much a rumour, but there’s also this possibility:
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If anyone is interested, I wrote an article a few months ago about building a super-simple, hack-free TB2 build for use with older Macbooks. It’s not guaranteed to work with all configurations, and it’s only good for BootCamp, but now I don’t feel the need to upgrade for another year or more.
I’d imagine laptops, mostly. Most PC gaming I’ve done has been sitting on the couch with a laptop while also watching TV with my wife.
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The Akitio Node does the same thing as the Razer Core, for $299:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10828/akitio-introduces-node-thunderbolt-3-egfx-box-for-299
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Why are you using razer??? Alienware 13 R3 has a built in OLED Display, also dell alienware amplifier is way better than thunderbolt 3
You know, you could build a complete PC, with GTX1080, in a box that’s the same size as the Razor Core - And again, Linus has you covered: https://youtu.be/s2W0Lsf7hec
OLED truly is an awesome visual experience, but aren’t you concerned of what yours display will look like in just under a year?
I’ve been using AMOLED phones for years now and daily usage of Google maps burns in two bars (top and bottom) in under a year, almost unusable after 2.
I bought an upgrade, also AMOLED, because people claimed burnin was a thing of the past and I am typing this comment over those exact 2 burnt in bars…
Although I will SORELY miss OLEDs contrast and colours I can’t be dealing with this anymore. I own a Dell XPS 12 convertible with the screen ghosting issue that plagued the lineup. It gives me a very good indication of what will burn-in will look like on a PC monitor: (task bar with pinned / frequent apps, subtitle blur if you watch a lot of subbed content and your browser top bar complete with the address bar, icons and frequented tabs)
My honest, unbiased, 2cents. Take it how you will.
I was playing PS4’s new flagship game Horizon ZD on the old non pro version of the PS4 in 1080p and turned on HDR and it seems like an entirely different set of shaders were used. The realism provided by better shadows was much more than a bump in pixels per inch would have provided… Maybe it’s a quirk of the PS4 and how ruthless they have to be to get just a basic frame rate but I wonder if the focus on pixels is a brute force approach to a better experience. Google has improved the JPEG compression algorithm with “psychology” 
and maybe something like that will be incorporated into future shaders… Also putting more grunt into modelling characters expressions and lip sync’ing etc would be helpful more than more pixels IMO.
There’s been big improvements in the last couple of years, from what I understand. And phones (small displays) were the testbed. It is interesting that Apple won’t be using OLED until the upcoming iPhone 8 later this year, and given their… strictness… there might have been a reason for that.
That’s probably why there are literally zero OLED monitors you can buy for PC, yet. I hope that changes in the next 5 years though!
Certainly 2016 was the sweet spot to date for OLED in TVs, where the price got down to “reasonable” and the technology is getting to a mature place with all the bugs worked out.
That is a cool case, wish I could buy it even with infinite cash… but the whole point of this exercise is to decouple the GPU upgrade cycle from the system upgrade cycle. So you can plug a monster GPU into any system and transform it.
Connecting a GPU via a cutting-edge, external 5 gigabytes/sec Thunderbolt 3 connection is where the action is! That’s fascinating. Building a whole new PC system up is easy, it’s common, it’s just not … interesting.
This is pretty neat, I have to say. Pity my XPS13 doesn’t have a TB3 port. Though I see that there are cheapo Chinese alternatives (about $40US if you buy directly from China) that connect via mini pci express. My laptop appears to only have a PCIE 2.0 slot in it though, so that would likely cause some serious bottlenecks.
Having only a laptop.
With an external GPU you can get best of both worlds: an ultrabook that you can have with you at all times and the performances of a heavy rig when you want to play.
With your micro/miniITX you’d have to buy 2 computers with one being used only for gaming.
I didn’t even know that this type of thing even existed. It is a little high for my liking, but I will have to check out some thunderbolt GPUs for my crusty HP laptop!
There’s a company called EXP that makes a device called the “GDC beast” that breaks out expresscard, mini PCIe or M.2 slot into a fairly small, externally powered dock. I’m kinda hoping for a tbolt 3 version since those things are pretty cheap (50-70 usd) compared to most of these, but not hot swappable or as flexible as most of these other options. That would probably put this in the price range most people wouldn’t feel too terrible about.
Razer’s hardware is sweet, but at that price + a decent mainstream video card, I might as well get a desktop and stream things over.
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I totally forgot about this post but the new one that went up today had a link to it – funny timing, as I just read this article yesterday. You can spend that much on just one 1070 if you really want to, though the pricier cards might perform better. Still, might be a good sign of a real market emerging.
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I actually picked up the Blade Stealth + Core bundle at the end of last year when the Intel 7th gen Blade Stealth came out to replace my aging i5 2500K desktop and my cheapo commodity laptop and it’s been phenomenal. If you buy the bundle Razer knocks $100 off the price of the core, so it’s still pricey, but a little more manageable. I have an older GTX 980 in it that works like a champ when I’m at my gaming station, but I can disconnect it and have a nice light and portable laptop to take with me anywhere without feeling burdened down by the likes of a “gaming” laptop. It has some occasional hiccups, but overall the system is very stable and fills my needs perfectly. Plus what’s better than having one main computer for everything!?
I can understand why this would be desirable on laptops, and other AiO devices - but isn’t the GPU upgrade cycle already decoupled from the system upgrade cycle on PC?
I see this more as an interesting option for gamers who prefer laptops, over desktops.
Even integrated graphics are becoming quite capable at 1080p these days, so it’s really only of interest as 4k becomes more mainstream, or those with high refresh rate devices, at which point your bandwidth requirements start going way up.
Unfortunately, I don’t really see thunderbolt as a future-proof solution to these problems just yet. Once you compare the bandwidth of PCIe, the bandwidth of DisplayPort, and the bandwidth of thunderbolt itself; and just what displays these things can drive; you start to see that we’re already approaching limits of the tech - and new cables/standards are needed to drive the high-bandwidth displays that would drive you to consider these devices in the first place.
I very much think there’s a small niche for them to cut out with current-tech, and it appears that you are in it! So congratulations on your purchase, and I hope you and your son enjoy many hours of gaming fun 
I am not sure that applies; the display (except in loopback laptop mode) is driven directly by the video card so the bandwidth is all compressed data being sent to the video card – h.264 and h.265 video, 3D textures and 3D geometry, etc.
I must say that this new thing is extremely cool and useful for some people. I really hope these units will become more common and be future developed.
The GPU of the Skull Canyon NUC (Iris Pro Graphics 580) is not nearly as fast as the GPU of the PS4.
The Iris Pro Graphics 580 has 72 cores with 1000 MHz.
The PS4 has a GPU with 1152 cores with 800 MHz.
According to these specs, the PS4 is over 12 times faster than the Skull Canyon NUC. Although for some reason the Iris Pro Graphics 580 is able to get way more Gflops than it should have with its really low 72 cores.
The Skull Canyon NUC has 1152 Gflops.
The PS4 has 1840 Gflops.
The PS4 is 60% faster than the Skull Canyon NUC and it’s cheaper. Even the Xbox One (1.31 Gflops) is faster than the Skull Canyon NUC, although only by 14%.
Whatever math you are doing here, it has little to do with real world performance. Compare the battlefield 4 framerates. Same game running on both platforms.
And
Note that 1280x720 medium details, which is what the PS4 runs battlefield 4 at, is well below what the skull canyon was tested with
Dropping the resolution down to 1366×768 and setting the graphics to high details improved the FPS to 41/49.64/64 and dropping the details even further down to medium increased the frame-rate to 48/58.42/73.