AMD Creates VR Gaming Rig of the Future with ‘Project Quantum’

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AMD recently unveiled a supercharged, small form factor PC at E3 this week, a futuristic-looking gaming rig that promises to easily deliver the 90 FPS required by VR headsets like the new Oculus Rift. They’re calling it ‘Project Quantum’, and is said could come to market “in the not-too-distant future.”

Revealed by AMD’s Marketing Director, Chris Hook, at the company’s “New Era of PC Gaming” presentation earlier this week, Project Quantum not only signifies a push by AMD to get PC gaming out of the office and into the living room, but is a showcase for their most leading edge technology.

“I challenged AMD’s engineering team. I said, ‘Look, give me all the performance that you get in a desktop tower PC, but put it in something small and compact and beautiful—something I can put in my living room … something that when I get those Oculus headsets that we’re delivering 90 FPS..'” – Chris Hook

project quantum with psu

Hook calls the near console-size computer “whisper quiet,” a direct result of the rig’s water-cooling system that resides in the bottom half of the device. A singular fan in the top half of Quantum cools the heated water as it’s drawn across a radiator, allowing for the heat to dissipate well away from the unnamed dual Fiji GPUs (4GB of HBM RAM), and an Intel Core i7-4790K which is likely just a placeholder until AMD’s Zen CPUs are released next year.

Its off-board power supply, a cumbersome-looking brick that may have to be hidden away if you want to keep up the device’s ‘Borg cube’ sci-fi vibe, reduces the system’s heat load even further. The prototype’s body is made of magnesium and black-painted aluminum, and is decorated with red LED’s to complete AMD’s vision of a 4K-playing, living room VR PC from the future.

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project quantum intel cpu

Devon Nekechuk and Victor Camardo of AMD spoke with PCWorld’s Gordon Mah Ung, telling him “Project Quantum is mostly a proof-of-concept from AMD.” Saying that Fiji’s use of HBM memory, stacked close to the GPU itself, means very tiny graphics cards can be built.”

AMD says they’ll be joining up with their “most elite partners” to bring Quantum to market in the not-too-distant future.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Druss

    This is a very nice custom designed mITX case with external PSU. The tech isn’t groundbreaking, as far as I can tell it’s just off the shelf components, but the implementation pretty is nice. Too bad AMD processors are not the best ATM, I really hope they can get back into the race in that market soon.

  • Stray Toaster

    If I have to buy a PC for VR, it will be something like this so that I can easily take it to different places.

  • Curtrock

    Who will be the 1st company to market, with a box dedicated to focusing on the needs of VR? OCU-BOX? STEAM-MACHINE? I guess Sony already has 1 (PS4) which gives them a seriously interesting advantage over Oculus & Valve.

    • Neuromute

      GearVR already did it first.

      Oculus might partner with mainstream oem manufacturers (such as Lenovo, Dell, HP etc).
      They might just slap on a label saying “this computer is Oculus ready” or something like that.