so yesterday I received my Gigabyte Gaming Box 580 egpu from amazon warehouse deals, for about $400. I was a little hesitant at firsts based on the many negative reviews, but I figured I had a 30 day window to return it if it did not work out.
I also picked up a 3 foot tb3 cable also from amazon. Model was Plugable Thunderbolt 3 Cable 40Gbps.
First the problem I encountered.
1) thing is very noisy, it's got 2 small case fans that are always on full blast. and one more small one in the PSU. (that was a deal killer, but I figured I would give it a chance)
2) Mojave would not always recognize the egpu, it was a constant plug and unplug, but once it worked, it worked. It just that if you had to reboot, well it might recognize the egpu or it might not.
There where people doing case mods, changing the fans to quieter ones, not really for me.
I then found the gigabyte had a firmware update, that took care of the 2 load case fans. problem is you need a windows PC with thunderbolt to get the firmware update. So I setup a boot camp on my mini hoping I would be able to update the firmware. It did not work. windows did not find the egpu, I then download ATI drivers, rebooted still not luck. Then I shut down unplug the monitor from the mini and plug it into the egpu. I reboot and windows recognizes the egpu and I'm able to update firmware.
I reboot into OSX, with the egpu plugged in, there is no boot selection screen, (this is fixed in the latest Catalina beta). so you have to use the bootcamp tools to tell it to boot into osx.
Long storey short, problem 1 solved noise is pretty much gone. enough where I do not notice it.
Then it would not recognize the egpu again, I plug and unplug. Did that about 10 times, till I give up and went back to a shorter 1.5 foot tb3 cable. It worked, and it worked every time, no plug and plug. It was the cable that was causing problem #2.
So now after 24 hours.
no freezes, no noise, temps when running Heaven around 70 degrees and frames are at about 45 fps
So far happy with the improvement.
I also picked up a 3 foot tb3 cable also from amazon. Model was Plugable Thunderbolt 3 Cable 40Gbps.
First the problem I encountered.
1) thing is very noisy, it's got 2 small case fans that are always on full blast. and one more small one in the PSU. (that was a deal killer, but I figured I would give it a chance)
2) Mojave would not always recognize the egpu, it was a constant plug and unplug, but once it worked, it worked. It just that if you had to reboot, well it might recognize the egpu or it might not.
There where people doing case mods, changing the fans to quieter ones, not really for me.
I then found the gigabyte had a firmware update, that took care of the 2 load case fans. problem is you need a windows PC with thunderbolt to get the firmware update. So I setup a boot camp on my mini hoping I would be able to update the firmware. It did not work. windows did not find the egpu, I then download ATI drivers, rebooted still not luck. Then I shut down unplug the monitor from the mini and plug it into the egpu. I reboot and windows recognizes the egpu and I'm able to update firmware.
I reboot into OSX, with the egpu plugged in, there is no boot selection screen, (this is fixed in the latest Catalina beta). so you have to use the bootcamp tools to tell it to boot into osx.
Long storey short, problem 1 solved noise is pretty much gone. enough where I do not notice it.
Then it would not recognize the egpu again, I plug and unplug. Did that about 10 times, till I give up and went back to a shorter 1.5 foot tb3 cable. It worked, and it worked every time, no plug and plug. It was the cable that was causing problem #2.
So now after 24 hours.
no freezes, no noise, temps when running Heaven around 70 degrees and frames are at about 45 fps
So far happy with the improvement.
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