Liquid-cooled laptop chassis with support for desktop motherboard, CPU and graphics card appears on Kickstarter

Back in 2016, Acer showed off the Predator 21X with a 21-inch screen, mechanical keyboard, a 7th-gen Intel desktop CPU and two GTX 1080 GPUs in SLI. Its $9,000 price tag and 9 kg weight meant it wasn't much of a commercial success, but that probably wasn't Acer's intent to begin with. Now, Hong Kong-based UHPILCL (Ultra High Performance Integration Liquid Cooled Laptop) attempts to recreate something similar with modern-day hardware. As its name implies, the contraption crams an entire liquid cooling loop within a ~1.5-inch thick chassis. There are two versions: T1000 that weighs 4.8 kg and T1000 Super that weighs 5.2 kg.

Within it, you can fit a full ITX motherboard with desktop-grade CPUs from Intel/AMD like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Core Ultra 9 285K. That can be paired with a full GeForce RTX 5090 dGPU with 32 GB of VRAM, but that graphics card needs a T1000 Super. Because the UHPILCL uses desktop-grade parts, you get all the I/O and expansion options that come with it.

Of course, the parts, plus its liquid cooling mechanism, affect portability, but the company insists it is "easy to carry" in a laptop bag that can fit 17-inch laptops. The cooling loop uses distilled water, allowing the loop to be drained and refilled at will. Plus, if you forget the laptop's power cord, the company claims you can grab one from a nearby electric kettle/microwave and plug it in without consequence.

Ihe UHPILCL has one last trick up its sleeve. With a full-fledged desktop, you can also throw in a battery-powered laptop as backup. Both computers will share the same keyboard, USB ports, hard drive, screen and the likes. Exactly how this will be implemented remains to be seen. This is an opt-in feature and needs to be added manually. But, both PCs cannot be operational at the same time for the reasons stated above.

So far, the company hasn't revealed pricing information or fundraising goals on its Kickstarter page. One would be right to be sceptical because this does teeter on too-good-to-be-true territory. Nevertheless, if successful, it will undoubtedly one of the most envelope-pushing laptop designs we've seen in a while, especially in an era when OEMs are working overtime to shave an extra mm or two off their chassis thickness.