Had Razer played it safe by sticking with Intel instead of jumping to AMD, the Blade 14 would have more than likely supported PCIe 4.0, Thunderbolt 4, and the Razer Core series X series of eGPU docking stations.
We love the new Razer Blade 14. The model was announced mere weeks ago and it's already widely available to the delight of fans everywhere. Its AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU in particular can perform up to spec without significant throttling which is always our top concern with high-power ultrathin laptops (see our XPS 15 Core i9 review).
The 7 nm AMD Zen 3 CPU, however, entails one caveat: no Thunderbolt support. The Blade 14 is therefore Razer's only modern Blade laptop to not support external GPU docking stations including Razer's own Core X series. Other manufacturers like Asus tip-toed around this problem by introducing a proprietary eGPU connector as found on the ROG X13 Flow. Such proprietary solutions don't last long, however, as exemplified by the Dell Alienware external graphics dock and the now-dead MSI GS30 Shadow series.
The AMD-powered Blade 14 wouldn't have been missing Thunderbolt support had it been designed from the ground up around Intel's 10 nm 10th gen or 11th gen platforms similar to all other current Blade models. We suspect that Razer weighed its options and had discovered that they could attract more eyes and sales by supporting AMD instead of the "safer" Intel approach. The drawback, of course, is the loss of Thunderbolt for the users who care about the feature. The Blade 14 is a bit of an oddball in its family as a result, but that is perhaps exactly what Razer had wanted to make it stand out from the crowd.
After graduating with a B.S. in environmental hydrodynamics from the University of California, I studied reactor physics to become licensed by the U.S. NRC to operate nuclear reactors. There's a striking level of appreciation you gain for everyday consumer electronics after working with modern nuclear reactivity systems astonishingly powered by computers from the 80s. When I'm not managing day-to-day activities and US review articles on Notebookcheck, you can catch me following the eSports scene and the latest gaming news.
Should Razer release an Intel 11th gen Tiger Lake-H version of the Blade 14? - Notebookcheck.net
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