Skip to main content

Razer’s modular Tomahawk desktop ships with Nvidia’s powerful RTX 3080

 

After having made a name for itself among gamers with sleek laptop designs that are as powerful as they are beautiful, Razer is now entering the gaming desktop space. The company previewed its Tomahawk modular gaming desktop earlier this year at CES, and it is finally available to Razer fans who want a gaming rig that comes with Razer’s signature and minimalist aesthetics, along with a few key features that help set this PC apart from others.

Recommended Videos

At a glance, the Tomahawk bears a striking resemblance to the company’s earlier external GPU enclosures, like the Razer Core and Core X Chroma. Despite its compact size, this modular desktop is built for performance and Razer is clearly targeting PC tinkerers and builders with its toolless sled design, which provides access to the system’s internals with a clever pull-out handle.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

“Its compact form boasts serious specs, yet remains modular enough to meet the ever-raising bar of high-end PC performance,” the company said during a presentation. Razer says the Tomahawk is designed around Intel’s latest Next Unit of Computing (NUC) PC design. Highlights of this design include being able to easily access the SSD to upgrade storage, a toolless design that lets you upgrade your system’s build at will, and the ability to support full-size desktop graphics — all in a diminutive 10L form factor. For comparison, Alienware’s Aurora gaming desktop comes in at a volume of 33.8L, or more than three times the size of the Tomahawk.

Razer’s attention to detail is present on the Tomahawk. The desktop supports Razer’s Chroma lighting underneath, and the company’s glowing green logo adorns the front side. LED lighting seems to be very tastefully done and not garish, like on some of the more gaming-forward rigs we’ve seen in the past.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The top and side panels feature perforated holes to aid in thermal regulation. Air is pulled in through the perforated sides, and two fans help drive hot air out the top, “away from mission-critical components,” the company said.

A handle is found on the rear, but unlike some of Lenovo’s Legion desktops, this is not a carry handle to make it easy to tote this compact rig to LAN parties. Instead, pulling on the handle allows you to access the Tomahawk’s sled, which gives you access to the GPU and other system components. All the ports are also rear-mounted — including USB-A and Thunderbolt 3 ports — which could make the ports harder to access but gives the Tomahawk a cleaner overall design.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Razer claims the Tomahawk can accommodate a card up to 320mm long and 140mm high in a full 16X PCIE Gen 3 slot. The Tomahawk ships with either an empty GPU slot, so that you can use your own graphics card, or you can configure it with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition card. And with a 750W SFX PSU, this system can handle the latest GPUs on the market today.

For performance, you’ll have access to two PCIE NVME slots for storage, alongside a 2TB HDD. In addition to gamers, Razer is also targeting professional creators with this system. If you buy into Razer’s design aesthetics and the company’s vision for a high-end PC, you’ll have to fork out at least $2,399 to get the Tomahawk. For that price, you’re getting a 9th-Gen Intel Core i9-9980HK CPU, 512GB SSD and 2TB hard drive, 16GB of RAM, and Wi-Fi 6 support. Unfortunately, even at this pricey configuration, you’re not getting a GPU with the unit. If you want a version that ships with a graphics card, the $3,199 configuration comes with an RTX 3080.

Chuong Nguyen
Silicon Valley-based technology reporter and Giants baseball fan who splits his time between Northern California and Southern…
Nvidia’s new GPUs show up in prebuilts, but the RTX 5090 is missing
iBUYPOWER RTX for AI PCs side view of pre-built on sale hero

Nvidia's upcoming RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti just appeared in several iBUYPOWER gaming PCs. This is the first U.S. retailer to list Nvidia's RTX 50-series in prebuilt systems. The listings are interesting, with performance figures that really don't add up. Still, the biggest question is: Where's the GPU that's bound to beat all the current best graphics cards? Yes, we're talking about RTX 5090.

The listings have already been taken down, but they were preserved by VideoCardz. A total of five systems were listed by iBUYPOWER, but they all contained the same two GPUs -- either the RTX 5080 or the RTX 5070 Ti. Both cards are said to come with 16GB of memory, and we expect them to be announced on January 6 during the CES 2025 keynote held by Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang.

Read more
Nvidia warns gamers of an incoming GPU shortage
The RTX 4090 sitting alongside the Fractal Terra case.

Get ready for yet another GPU shortage, as Nvidia has warned about potential shortages in the current quarter. Although the company’s third-quarter revenue saw a healthy growth, in its recent earnings call, company Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said that the fourth-quarter revenue is expected to decline sequentially due to supply constraints.

The anticipated GPU shortage could potentially stem from a strategic shift in production to prepare for the next-generation RTX 50-series “Blackwell” GPUs, slated for release in 2025. This supply transition, coupled with surging gaming and professional use-case demand, seems to have left the company in a tight spot. Nvidia acknowledged its struggle to maintain stock for both gamers and enterprise customers, emphasizing its ongoing efforts to expand manufacturing capacity.

Read more
The RTX 5090 will reportedly require 600 watts of power
The back of the Nvidia RTX 4080 Super graphics card.

Rumors have been circulating about the RTX 5090 for a while, but we're finally getting a clearer picture of how Nvidia's flagship RTX 50-series GPU is shaping up. Well-known hardware leaker Kopite7kimi is claiming the RTX 5090, which seems destined to earn a spot among the best graphics cards, will come with an obscene power requirement of 600 watts.

The leaker shared specs for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 on X (formerly Twitter). We've seen vague claims from Kopite7kimi in the past concerning RTX 50-series graphics cards, but this is the first time the leaker has shared full specs. According to the leak, the RTX 5090 will require 600W of power and come with a staggering 32GB of GDDR7 memory across a 512-bit bus.

Read more