Everyone Who Tried This Has FAILED – Khadas Mind Modular PC

I may be married to Yvonne, but it's Christine who's been on my mind for the last 10 years. A project Christine, that is. At CES 2014, Razer unveiled an idea that would completely change how we build computers. And I was amazed. Who wouldn't be? A modular, high-performance, mineral-oil-cooled chassis? Hardware upgrades as easy as plugging in a USB device? Maybe even easier? But Christine's promises were as empty as they were enticing, and every subsequent attempt we've seen at this kind of modularity has ultimately failed. Even from some very big names. Which makes it all the more surprising that a smaller manufacturer, Kadaz, who sponsored today's video, is making a big move into the space with an absolutely tiny modular computer called the Kadaz Mind Workstation. Their approach is both similar, but also different from what we've seen before. Remember Google's Project Ara, the phone that could be assembled from building blocks to help you get the perfect device for your needs? Or how about MotoMods? Those ones actually made it to market in the form of upgrade modules for your phone, like speakers, battery packs, and game pads, and they probably bear the most resemblance to what Kadaz is doing here. You start with a solid, core computing device, and then create an ecosystem of enhancements for those who need it. Let's take a closer look then at the Mind. We've seen small computers in the past, but I don't think we've ever seen something quite so svelte. This thing is small. Like, about three times the volume of my phone small. But they still managed to cram a 12-core Intel processor in here. It peaks at up to 55 watts, and is paired with 32 gigs of 5200 megatransfer per second LPDDR5, a one terabyte WDSN 740 NVMe SSD, and, believe it or not, a battery. It's only 5.55 watt hours, which, if you're familiar with laptops, you'll know isn't very big, but the idea isn't that you're gonna run this thing away from the wall for an extended period of time. Rather, it's so you can pop it into sleep mode, take it with you wherever you need to go, and then pick up right where you left off up to 25 hours later. It also doubles as a handy battery backup should you ever experience a power outage, giving you time to save your work and shut down safely. Along the rear of the device, we've got our IO, which some might find a little disappointing. Both USB-C ports support 65 watts of power delivery in, but only one of them runs at 10 gigabit per second, with the other stuck at USB 2.0 speeds. For displays, both the USB-C ports support DP Alt mode, and there's an HDMI 2.0 port as well. Then there's two USB-A 10 gig ports, all of which is pretty good, actually, for a miniature PC. So why the sad face? No ethernet, which is kind of a bummer on a workstation. However, speaking of bums, the real party is on the bottom. Watch this. You can pop this little tab off down here just like that for one of the easiest M.2 storage upgrade processes that I have ever seen, and right next to it is the MindLink high-speed connector. And the first MindLink must've been mine because the MindDock that plugs into it solves pretty much all of my complaints, adding two and a half gig networking, a metric whack of HDMI and USB ports, a three and a half millimeter combo jack, and an SD card reader. The dock also has a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello and a volume knob that kind of reminds me of the ones on Logitech keyboards. Oh, and they threw in speakers for good measure. Too bad the whole thing is let down by a proprietary interface. Buh is what I would normally say, except it's a little less proprietary than you might think. The MindLink connector is basically just a juiced up PCIe by eight Gen 5 connector with some thoughtful additions. First up, it's much more compact than a standard PCIe slot, and for another, it's much more robust. The slots that you see in a desktop PC are gonna be rated for dozens or at most hundreds of cycles, but Kedas expects people to use this interface potentially multiple times per day for years at a time. So their target was 10,000 cycles. So then I can do this, right? Wow, the magnets really help make it easy to abuse. Also, their connector allows future products to suck more juice or even blow it. I'm talking up to 200 Watts in either direction, much more than the 75 Watts that you'll get over a typical PCIe connector. Oh, and did we mention that it's hot pluggable? Yeah, I mean, it is a bit of a downer that this thing has no Thunderbolt 4 when the chip does support it, but if I was gonna plug a GPU into this thing, I would rather have the extra bandwidth, not to mention the lower latency of the MindLink anyway. Of course, they envision an ecosystem with more than just GPU enclosures. They are working on that in addition to their dock, but also a studio style display and this two-in-one tablet thing. I'm not sure about that last one, but the Mind graphics is kind of a no-brainer and we've asked them to publish their pinout, which could make this interface and significant upgrade over Oculink where eight lanes is possible, but four is the norm, not to mention easier for the community to embrace than XG Mobile, which is also by eight PCIe and hot pluggable, but completely closed and very expensive. Speaking of, I did a video about hot plug PCIe some years ago, and it turns out that despite having been part of the standards, making a hot swap PCI express device, it's pretty difficult and ripping a card out of a running system can cause anything from weird behavior to a full-on crash or even hardware damage. So how is Kadaz doing it? The answer, unfortunately, is substantially more complex than we can get into, but here's at least a rough rundown. When your PC boots up, the system takes note of all the components installed and allocates memory to properly serve all of those devices. No device, no memory allocated. Since this is all done by the UEFI BIOS before booting into Windows, a board or operating system that is not prepared to dynamically allocate new memory regions to new devices is, well, it's not gonna be pretty. There's also the hardware side of things. While your GPU might have all the pins to fit in a 16X slot, not all of those pins may be used. And if the pins don't connect correctly or in the right order, it can cause a short or an initialization error that can damage the hardware or data. So clearly, this requires many precautions. So for this reason, even if Kadaz did publish their pinout, hot swappability of homebrew accessories would be very difficult. But with their own gear, Kadaz managed to nail it. Let's see it in action. Let's start with the mind with two displays connected to it. There, those two, perfect. Oh crap, the peripherals are connected to the dock. Well, you know what, fine. You guys saw the two displays light up. Let's go ahead and connect the other two. See how long this takes. Come on, hot plug PCIe, you can do it. I saw a flicker. I saw action A, there we go. Not too bad. Why don't you put on crab rave? Cause it's got speakers in it and stuff. That's the max volume, which honestly isn't very loud, but to their credit, they don't distort at that level. So you'll have devices that'll go way louder than that, but they sound like garbage past 60, 70, 80%. Whereas these sound good all the way up to a hundred. Considering how little it's doing right now, CPU temperatures are a little on the high side at 56 degrees on the package. But to its credit, it's also quite quiet. So it seems like they haven't really ramped up the cooling system. Now let's see how it games. Unfortunately, Kedas' eGPU dock is not out yet, but some enterprising individuals are using that super easy storage upgrade slot to put an M.2 to Oculink adapter in it, then running an Oculink eGPU like this one from GPD, which, I mean, should work, but we don't have one of those. You know what? That is a surprisingly wide soundstage. Seriously though, the graphics performance is terrible. Yeah, we're getting 60 FPS, but oh my God, look at it. We're at minimum, boys. Oh, okay, medium is not happening. Maybe we'll fare better in Cyberpunk. Realistic. It works. Of course, this is not the point of a device like this. The point of a device like this is the cool interface, which by the way, contains more than PCIe. Also, DisplayPort and USB, and let's check just how hot pluggable is it. Oh, right, I don't have a keyboard and mouse. One second, one second. No, no, I got this, I got this. Whoa, wait for it. That is very hot pluggable. I'm actually amazed. Check this out. Boom, we're on the dock. I think Windows is gonna have it. Give it a sec, give it a sec. I believe, whoa, look at that. Undeniably, very cool. Sponsorship aside then, this is far and away the most refined attempt at a modular ecosystem that I have ever seen, but it comes at a price. I understand that quality engineering costs money, but the Kodas Mind isn't cheap. So all that remains is to see how the market will respond. If this looks like a solution for you, check out the link in the video description to get a Kodas Mind of your own. And using the links in the description below, put in coupon code LTTMIND to get $100 off a Kodas Mind. If you guys enjoyed this video, why don't you check out our video on the Razer Tomahawk, a modular Nook-style concept that was co-produced with Intel a few years back.