Corsair’s Bulldog PC kit will bring next-gen Skylake CPU to the living room - hendersonsomakingdon

Compact. Strong. Silent. If you were going to make i of those "Pick two" Triangle charts for living room PCs, I imagine it would have those three slots on IT.

Plainly put, air flow is one of the biggest challenges facing living room PCs. People want power, but they also neediness the thing to shut up—and small.

Which is why I'm intrigued by the unused Corsair English bulldog. Is it more than powerful than virtually of the other living way PCs we've seen? Sure. Is IT more upgradeable? Almost certainly.

But most of all, it's quiet.

Why this matters: PC vendors have been laboring mightily to chap the living room grocery, but near candidates up to directly possess been lacking somehow. This model seems configured not to disappoint. For the DIY herd, the Bulldog opens raised quiet performance non previously available.

4K in the living room

Let's get this out of the way: Contingent on what you programme to do with your living room Personal computer, Corsair's Bulldog may be overkill. Early along in my present, Corsair showed me a graph that positions the Bulldog between Steam Machines and desktop PCs in terms of power, so that should give you an approximation of its capabilities. This is a gaming machine, aimed to drive high-end performance in the parlor.

That positioning is a bit of a cheat Corsair's part. Sure, most Steam Machines are aimed at the "comfort crowd," only there are certainly powerful, upgradeable Steamer Machines too—Falcon Northwest's Tiki is an fantabulous example, equally is Origin's ridiculously overpowered Omega line. Corsair's Bulldog is merely one of the well-nig powerful living room PCs I've seen.

Merely damn is IT powerful. The model used in our demo was obstructed into a 4K TV, and its Titan X spit a bunch of top-shelf games (Project CARS, Witcher 3, Sumptuous Theft Auto V) in the locality of 30-60 frames per second. Countenance me reiterate: This is a living room PC. Playing high-end games. At 4K resolution. At 30-60 frames per second base. That's impressive.

Corsair's advantage is that the Bulldog is whisper-quiet, even at 4K load. And that's thanks to a ton of ventilation and some tradition-designed parts.

"Custom-designed parts?" you mightiness say. "But wait, I thought this thing was upgradeable!"

The Bulldog is an gripping piece of technical school. Basically what Barbary pirate has through with is split the divergence between "made-to-order, boutique PC design" and "DIY computer using stock parts." You buy the Bulldog as a $400 bundle containing the chassis, miniskirt-ITX motherboard, fusible CPU ice chest, and 600-watt power supplying.

Barbary pirate didn't reveal much about the motherboard except for two things that you should care about: It's DDR4 and it'll run Intel's upcoming Skylake CPU. Skylake is the Central processor beyond today's Broadwell chips and is supposed to bring epochal performance improvements when free later this year.

You then append your own CPU, repositing, Force, and (if you want) graphics card.

The Bulldog empty…

…And concentrated.

If you decide to toss in a graphics card, you'll plausibly want to direct advantage of same more custom piece of kit out—a liquid artwork card cooler.

Information technology's those two liquid state-cooled pieces that fix the English bulldog i of the—if not the—most quiet sitting room PCs I've seen. The Hydro Series liquid CPU cooler in particular is designed for the Bulldog—IT slots into the machine in such a way that it vents straight out the back of the vitrine, rather than blowing sulfurous air about inside and relying along another fans to pump it out.

This is the CPU cooler. You rear end realize IT in the bottom left of the icon viewing the Bulldog's internals. This board is a backup for the final Skylake-based unit.

Then there's the liquefiable GPU cooling. Corsair's internal benchmarks show liquid-cooled cards continual approximately 25 degrees Celsius cooler and pumping out (on average) well-nig five more frames per minute, because they can equal overclocked high. For illustration, playing Out-of-the-way Cry 4 at 4K on a standard Behemoth X gave Corsair 40 frames per second. Liquid-cooled and overclocked, they managed to get 45—while simultaneously running the card tank.

What does that mean for you? It way Corsair's English bulldog has the potential to equal more powerful than even something like Falcon Northwestern's Tiki in graphics execution (which liquid cools the Central processor but non the GPU) although a multi-scorecard apparatus like the much larger Origin Z leave still do better overall.

And it's besides—to retell one more time—quiet. Dissolved-cooled CPUs are somewhat public nowadays, but most multitude are relieve exploitation relatively loud fans on GPUs. That might non count in the office or whatever where people are willing to put up with the noise, but in a parlour environment, quiet is king.

Hither's what Barbary pirate's liquid-cooled GPU solution looks like.

Luckily Barbary pirate leave as wel be selling its GPU cooler separately as a DIY kit—plans are to support all current and upcoming AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, and you could use it in your loom PC if you sought. You won't have to purchase Bulldog, to take advantage of some of its tech.

One last thing—just in case you couldn't have guessed from the fact that you're already supply your ain components: The English bulldog is easily upgradeable, which is key to parlour PCs atomic number 3 far as I'm concerned. More or less of Valve's Steam Motorcar crop are designed more same gaming laptops than tug PCs—in other words, upgradeability sacrificed at the altar of "smaller is better." I differ. Personal computer ironware moves indeed quickly, I think it's cockamamy to lock chamber yourself into a Personal computer that bequeath only be honorable for a few years easy lay.

With the Bulldog, you throne swap exterior everything—CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, whatever. That's important. Sum in a few goodies alike come out of the closet-of-the-box 7.1 audio support and elbow room for 32GB of DDR4, and Bulldog has the potential to be one of the virtually potent living-room PCs on the market.

Oh, and did I mention the logo denatured?

Or you could buy the $400 chassis, motherboard, CPU cooler, and power supply and just toss in some low-final stage parts to constitute a media box. That's very well as well, because $400 for the parts is a pretty nice deal.

As for how it looks? Well, that's a matter of preference. I commode envision some people being inverted dispatch by the cerise-orange highlights along the machine, but I equivalent the look overall. It's certainly more gripping than "some other black boxwood," and I love the prolific ventilation.

Take hold

Alongside Bulldog, Corsair disclosed "Lapdog." Catch on? Obtain it?

Lapdog is Barbary pirate's newborn mouse/keyboard "control center," a.k.a. something that's a spot more high-end than stashing a crappy wireless keyboard and mouse behind your sofa. In point of fact, it's extremely similar to the Roccat epitome I sawing machine at E3 last year that…ne'er released. Somehow.

Basically, Lapdog fuses a mouse and keyboard into one large gimmick that sits on your lap, aided past a big buffer on the bottom. The prototype I proverb had a tenkeyless circuit card enclosed, only Barbary pirate says a glutted K70 variant is planned for launch.

The but similar product I acknowledge of on the market is Razer's Gun enclosure, although the mouse area on that is much smaller and it doesn't feature automatic keys.

Then again, Gun turret is wireless and runs on batteries. Lapdog requires you to cosmic string deuce USB cables across your living room. Barbary pirate says it debated a receiving set version, but finally felt gamers choose wired peripherals (true, although maybe not in the living elbow room) and this allows for three powered USB slots unofficially (a respectable stir if you'Ra using a headset).

You'll be fit to buy out just the Lapdog casing this crepuscle for $90 or buy it with a keyboard already embedded for $200. Bulldog is besides slated for a fall launch, which way it'll be in the nick of time for the Steam Machine onslaught.

The living-room warfare is starting to ignite up. Even for PCs, apparently.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/427760/corsairs-bulldog-kit-brings-intels-skylake-cpu-to-the-living-room.html

Posted by: hendersonsomakingdon.blogspot.com

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