After being unveiled at CES last year as a concept, Razer’s compact Tomahawk gaming desktop is finally available for purchase to the tune of $2,399. The company had revealed its plans in December to commercialize the Tomahawk to the excitement of gaming fans who seek a compact and stylish desktop, and now you can be among the first to grab the company’s first gaming desktop PC.
Thanks to a similar sled design as Razer’s eGPU enclosures, accessing the Tomahawk’s internals as extremely simple and easy. No tools are required and you won’t have to deal with hinges or loose door panels, according to Razer, making this great for people who love to upgrade and tinker with their systems.
To make the Tomahawk compact and fit on your desk, Razer is utilizing Intel’s NUC Compute Element Card — the same card the chipmaker is using on its Mac Mini-sized NUC desktops — that’s powered by an eight-core Intel Core i9-9980HK processor. Inside, configurations include a 512GB solid-state drive alongside a 2TB HDD, 16GB of DDR4 memory, and Chroma RGB lighting.
Razer is making two versions of the Tomahawk available. The first version includes just the Intel NUC Element Card and retails for $2,399. Gamers who already have a graphics card or GPU can opt for this version to save money. However, if you need a high-end Nvidia graphics card, the upgraded $3,199 version adds in a GeForce RTX 3080.
Selecting the version with a GPU does command an $800 premium over the base option, but given the shortages of GPUs on the market right now, this isn’t too bad of a price to pay considering the markups that scalpers are asking for on the secondary market. For reference, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition card normally retails for $699, so you’re really just paying a $100 markup by getting the Tomahawk with a GPU bundle.
Still, if you’d rather select a different graphics card or have one of your own that you want to install, the base $2,399 version delivers plenty of flexibility. With the base version, you’re paying a premium to buy into Razer’s design ethos — the Tomahawk appears to be a sturdy, durable, and attractive desktop made from machined metal.
For reference, HP’s Omen desktop in a larger 30L size starts at just $1,019, though a configuration with an RTX 3070 graphics card and more modern 10th-gen CPU is priced at a little over $2,000.