Meet Christine

[Don Carlos]

Tucked away in a shrouded corner of Razer's booth at CES 2014 lies Project Christine, a stackable, customizable PC that looks unlike any gaming machine you've ever seen.

The idea behind Project Christine is simple: Remove the hassle and expense of constantly upgrading a computer by making each of its crucial parts modular and self-contained. Instead of opening a tower and slotting more memory or a new graphics card into your computer, Project Christine allows users to simply snap a new module containing any desired upgrades on to their current configuration. As a result, Project Christine should have a far longer lifespan than conventional computers, as modules containing your desired upgrades can simply be swapped in as necessary.

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/01/07/meet- ... gaming-pc/

[obsidian]

Desktops are already modular by design. Need a new GPU, pop one in.

The only advantage with this is if there was some kind of parallel computing benefit similar to blade servers, where if you need more performance you can snap in additional processors which can work in parallel with existing processors. But since gaming and home computing doesn't benefit very much from parallel computing, I don't see this working.

[seremtan]

wow, you're just full of statements of the bleeding obvious that somehow miss the point today, aren't you?

[Eraser]

Won't work. You know why, because by the time you actually need a hardware upgrade, new interfaces are developed with faster bus speeds and everything, and you'll need to upgrade more than just a single component.

Just try and think of the times that you've been able to upgrade your CPU (significantly) without swapping in a new mobo? Probably never.

Also, with Razer being the only one doing this, new components are probably going to cost a fortune.

That phonebloks concept is going to run into the same problems.

[Don Carlos]

Turns out the mobo I have can take AMDs latest and greatest chip and it's 4 years old

Who knew?

[bitWISE]

Isn't this how that crazy expensive BMW designed case was supposed to work? And looked?

[vesp]

concept art. boring.
concept. questionable (Eraser's mobo point)
underwhelming
meh...

Even if it is somehow robust enough to handle architecture changes etc, it will still have a limited lifecycle where at some point a full overhaul will be needed. So... the same as a normal PC?

It's possible they are going after the angle of making upgrading easier/less daunting to anyone (non-techy) who is scared to unscrew their PC case, but in my experience anyone with an interest in upgrading components will quickly realise how easy it actually is and just get on with it. Anyway, if that's the case then price comes into play again unless other manufacturers produce their own modules (not sure how likely that is).

[Pext]

arf; why do they keep designing pc cases as if they were intended for 15 year olds.

[hannieB]

Looks like the Project Christine is a good one.

[andyman]

this is why i'm waiting to upgrade my rig.