The itsy bitsy, teeny weeny Razer Blade Stealth is getting the latest Intel CPUs, and the Core dock is getting an upgrade, too.
The Razer Blade Stealth, on its own, isn’t exactly a fully-fledged gaming laptop.
It’s a tremendously well-built, lightweight, and stylish Ultrabook, but it’s still an Ultrabook. That means is doesn’t get a discrete GPU, and it’s kitted out with ultra-low voltage processors.
If you really want to game on your Blade Stealth – other than graphically-lightweight titles like Dota 2, League of Legends, or that Bithell game with the rectangles – then you’re going to need the Razer Core, their Thunderbolt-powered GPU dock. Oh, and a decent dedicated graphics card to go in it, of course.
But if you do have something like a GTX 1060 (or better) going spare, then the upgraded Razer Core v2 is going to be even better than its predecessor. Why? Because it now features a “world’s first dual Thunderbolt 3 internal controller design”.
This means that the PCI-e lanes for the graphics card are ring-fenced from the IO for other peripherals – network ports, USB ports – that you can connect to the Core, which will give you better external GPU performance.
And once you’ve got your newer, more powerful Core v2 dock, you’ll be able to pair it with an upgraded Razer Blade Stealth, which – from today – features the latest 8th generation Intel Coffee Lake processor architecture.
Specifically, that’s the Intel Core i7-8550U processor. This quad-core, eight thread CPU runs at a stock 1.8GHz (for up to 10 hours battery life in low-power use mode) with boost speeds up to 4GHz, for when you’re hooked up to your eGPU and thrashing some modern titles.
The upgraded Blade Stealth is available now, while the Core v2 will be “shipping soon”.