I actually went to move us out of the next segment which is a crazy thing Brad
knows all about this cuz I builders corner mostly these our builders corner
yeah and we I want to talk about a Seuss's avalon which is some kind of
weird proprietary mini case thing yeah so this was actually cool enough that I
had memorial day off and I woke up and read this and said man this is cool I'm
actually going to take off my holiday and write about this it's basically it's
a concept you see at this point but what they're doing is more tightly
integrating motherboard design with case designed to make it look basically like
a their concept looks like like a hi-fi stereo system right and the the whole
idea is to make it one sleeker more elegant looking to uh enables some new
functionality because you're more tightly integrating motherboard design
with the case and everything as opposed to just having everything be hey here's
this case here's the motherboard here's you know all the traditional stuff work
but so it's it's modular right like I was gathering your article and it's
basically razors project christine concept from years ago except with asus
being an actual OEM and creative and apart aside from the motherboard and the
case itself which obviously need tight integration to hit what they're looking
at everything else I mean the whole their whole thing is this is still the
open PC you can still swap out your processor you can still swap out your
graphics card you can still swap in you know storage whatever you want the trick
being that they get rid of a lot of cables by introducing a new pcie-based
edge connector they call it which looks like a pci slot and you basically just
push your parts into it but it's weird because I mean sort of have you still
have a motherboard plane and then you have an l-shaped connector yeah plus
interest and then what goes into that connector um well the whole idea is like
it's modular you can add whatever you want so like in their concept PC it has
the motherboard at the top and one of the cool things that has all these
different pins and connectors right in the front of the pc because i have the
motherboard come right up to the front example of integrate anymore but then
they have like in their custom pc they have a daughter card come down that has
all kinds of a storage capabilities hot-swap storage in the front in the
back they have interchangeable input/output you know shields so that
basically the IO shields are different so you can plug those in and out so if
like you're a streamer you can get one with you know multiple display port
connections or whatever if you're a high-end audio person gets up with funky
audio you know all the different connections I like the one it was like a
four vr your multiple USB ports it was a thing that has like 15 15 USB
connections in the back and honestly okay even for VR this is overkill why is
you can never have too many USB ports fan I don't know for VR it's nuts like
it was like it was like 12 USB like normal USB connectors and then three
USBC connectors or something on the on a horizontal row how is that viar-toe i
guess i mean just because it's so like you need to for the oculus and I think
to two more for the vibe if I remember correctly maybe 14 okay that's somebody
in market and going this is VR or just like a normal person that has needs a
lot of USB ports so I'm looking at the the photos on your on your article bread
and did they talk about airflow or like you know like there's no room for like
custom water cooling or anything I mean um well there is a little bit of gap at
the top uh so you could theoretically install these custom water coolers what
they're doing is they're again integrating it all together they have
built like giant heat sinks into the side of the case and stuff like that so
that the case itself that's kind of like a heat sink they partition off the
graphics card into its own Department come compartment not department to the
its own compartment so it's blowing air out the side through those eat sinks and
stuff like that the picture that ice also made it look like there is a
proprietary power supply that's the thing that kind of bugged me it look
like there's a well supply with an edge connector on it this whole concept again
they're putting it out there as a concept is you can do it all today with
parts that are available today but they need this new edge connector so it's a
little bit different project christine where razors project christine was like
here's these crazy modules need to swap in and out etc and this they're saying
you do so much more you just gotta rethink
how we're connecting the things i'll say this project christine looked a hell of
a lot cooler than then this thing does yeah don't take this 80s high five like
just looks like a like a bad like it looks like bad i mean it reminds me when
the xbox one debuted it was just like looks like a VHS player from the 80s
like you're these a hot swappable drive bays in the front is that what those are
yeah I think so yeah yeah you can just pop them in and out well III talked to
one vendor yesterday and he was dissing it he's like yeah that's they want you
all this work all the engineering so they could basically make a square PC
which can already make today so what did they exceed oh and I guess I guess my
problem with this this concept because i like i like the idea in theory but the
same problem that project christine had like who is this actually for there are
not that many people i know that that want to build a pc and can't actually
build a pc like that's a pretty easy process these days because how much
documentation is online and so and because of because of the proprietary
nature you're expecting it to cost more anyway and by the time you paid the
premium to buy all these parts that are proprietary you probably could have just
bought a similarly performing pc that was pre-built yeah what I just for me oh
go ahead bread I think a big part of the problem they would have to overcome for
this to even start to have success is there's a reason why you know the
standard it's a box it's a motherboard put your stuff in it has existed for so
long is because it works so well and there's no vendor lock-in everybody's
right you know able to make whatever they want case makers and make whatever
case they want motherboard makers can make whatever motherboards they want
they just send standard sizes whereas something like this you need two more
tightly integrate the motherboard in the case and all that jazz and it just feels
like they're saying it's open it's a you know anybody could make stuff like it
it's still a DIY pc but it feels like it takes it like it feels like this would
benefit like a sous more than it would benefit someone like EVGA who only makes
motherboards or whatever yeah well I think it constrains the visual aspects
of it to you know it's like hey if you have to
to always have these pieces but there but they can't look different i mean
that's part of the reason why you want a custom case as well as you know you want
it to look the way you want it to yeah not just performance and fit into
varying spaces and bright and all sorts of stuff that you can't really do with
this thing that kills me though is you just if you actually bought it say they
actually get this thing out this year you go and buy this thing in five years
there's a good chance they probably would have given up if nobody buys it
and you go to upgrade your machine you could probably upgrade zero you can't
you can't swap the motherboard the power supply nothing you pretty much you're
locked into a box you just throw away that's like that little uh whatever they
call it acer revo that little machine yeah but that has a little like Lego
blocks that you build it up yeah they talked about a big deal last year and I
it actually did bring it out but from what I can tell they haven't add any
extra new blocks to it or anything so you're basically just stuck with what
you bought with the begin with with the promise of a modular pc but nothing
actually swap out right because there's no standards and right but you know it's
interesting thing about those little mini computers they're sort of just you
throw them away anyway well yeah he's gonna say cuz like that's the whole
thing about living room pcs like you can't upgrade most those steam machines
either so I mean I mean you can the high end ones but like that the alienware one
and stuff like that the one gender supposed to mirror county exactly the
ones are you know like a small size are are mostly just throw away right micro
towers are that's I mean that's kind of the funny thing is like you know people
are squeezing like there's a machine back behind this has got a tight necks
and a has wooly it's the size of an xbox and you can swap the motherboard you can
swap every single thing in there all industry standard parts so why do all
this you know proprietary stuff that you just have to do I think it's cool that
you're thinking ahead and thinking of new things though I mean it's cool
little bit i mean they said we're putting this out we're looking to see
what people think about it one and i would like it if building a pc was less
of like building a bomb it feels like you know there's always out that there's
always that point where you're like putting ram into a new motherboard for
the first time and like the mother boards creaking you're like oh noes it's
too much pressure like a snap it and that pops in your like I'm good alright
cool like this is then this is not the day where I burn out a PC before i post
it it's yeah pretty rude so something yeah absolutely but like but
like I get see you know it would be nice if if building pc was a little more like
Hannah slot these things together it all works i'll have to worry about it i can
do this like 10 minutes yes all those easy connections yeah but i mean cuz
like i love uh prisons like on the audio side I love XLR connectors is like plug
them in there three prong they snap into place and like that to me is a very
simple solution anybody can do that as opposed like running speaker wire we're
like wrapping it up and you need like cut it to length and then wrap it on you
like that's a huge pain the ass and and that's sort of where we are with pcs
nowadays is like this horrible like hey I'm a slot all these things together
hope it works no but that's the the whole the whole part of it is like then
you can get I I don't want what speaker wired you get that's not the right
speaker wire you need the GTX speaker wire oh you don't have the green
sleeving you need a green sleeve double shielding I got my shielding on this how
much how big is you gauge yeah so i don't know i mean that's that's sort of
the appeal of the pcs you got absolutely person i just think that that it would
be nice for especially people that would never build a pc normally this would be
a cool thing if it actually became a standard and people were willing to work
with it yes don't think it's going to I think it's cool that thinking ahead I
think it's cool i mean even if the whole you know let's tightly integrate it all
doesn't come together if you know five years from now these easy slot and play
edge connectors are you know what standard that'd be sweet yeah i agree
yeah experimentation and thinking yeah it's really i mean i will say i'm going
to bring up something probably few people have ever heard of and that is
btx the btx form factor that is like ancient history so intel itself which by
the way birth ATX and most of the motherboard form factors they tried to
kill it with btx and there was a rebellion in the industry because like
everybody's like we're not going to throw away our cases for this stupid btx
and intel tried with all its mike to get everybody to build btx they got big OEMs
dell and HP gateway who is surrounded they built btx cases everybody else flip
the finger at them and we're still using basically the exact same form factor
from like 1992 which is kind of crazy everything so what you're saying is we
Apple to build one of these because our carrier this is you know the Thunderbolt
port all over again it won't it won't catch on for 10 years but ten years from
now Apple does it will be using the and they'll do it right you know this is you
know this asus box is probably about as proprietary as an apple machine because
you get you can't go out and buy a power supply for a mac mac tower something you
can't go don't you pop out of an apple is ram in CP sometimes some sometimes I
can't again I over now I can't buy a nice trashcan case well even like the
trash can you forget about the GPUs only he can swap out is the CPU maybe if
you're lucky if they give you the bios wonder that's it I mean that's I mean
yeah this isn't that bad but like in a mac tower like the mac pro you have the
great big towers you couldn't do jack with those things you know the
everything was so it's pretty close yeah I and you know that's sort of like every
PC person the world recoils like oh my god I want to build it I want I want
control over it and that that is a problem with with this whole Avalon
concept I think so if i can add LED light strips to the inside a last
question bread before we move on is is this something that that you'll be able
to get your hands on are they sending these out i mean or just just hate gangs
out there computex a lot of it's real but uh in this particular case they're
saying hey you know we're putting this out there we're looking to see what
people think it's not gonna be available for sale anytime soon it's more testing
the waters putting it out there you know you said lon fighting conversation yeah
over there it's under there ROG brand right so they so might it might make an
appearance at e3 i would say uh about all those OEMs tend to have a booth
there so sorry I'm one I mean then what do you guys think of this cuz you know
copy text which is an awesome pc show you see just insane awesomely modded
computers but it really has turned into that we're gonna make something show it
off get all the free headlines and then we're net and that's a great you'll
never say i totally disagree with you yeah i think this one case this one
completed is something that they're putting it out there as a concept okay i
think that CES yeah it's gonna say cos way worse
than that so mrs. wright's after the holiday season and where they're just
like we're just gonna make this crazy crap up just you know hopefully get some
and that's where my coffees tanks like you're seeing stuff like backpack pcs I
mean that I have no doubt some version of that will very well make it on the
market computex like is where they're showing off stuff you're gonna be able
to get yeah I agree cuz CES is just like whatever dumb thing somebody thought
about in a basement somewhere yeah you basically run through the show floor
naked throwing thousand-dollar bills you get your headlines and they know you but
our bills I would give me that that's how pc world gets the CCS coverage it
gets you know everybody around naked everybody has surprised minds I just no
one will actually pay me that price i would do it wouldn't you i mean like you
know i'm just bet you know just kind of adds vegas nobody would even look twice
yeah i know nobody all right or san francis there's a naked dude with
thousand-dollar bills