Radeon RX 470/480 eGPU in macOS AKiTiO Thunder2

[theitsage]

Due to the shorter board, the RX 480 without its reference cooler fits inside the AKiTiO like a glove. I'm currently hooking it up to a lowly 11" MBA lol. The Luxmark score is slightly higher than inside my Mac Pro thanks to the additional help of Intel HD 6000.

Updated: 9/21/16 blog post with complete RX 470/RX 480 eGPU build and benchmarks.

 

[VillasManzanill]

Do you Know if the Rx 480 works fine with Final Cut Pro x? Thanks! I'm thinking about upgrading my vid card for fcpx

Due to the shorter board, the RX 480 without its reference cooler fits inside the AKiTiO like a glove. I'm currently hooking it up to a lowly 11" MBA lol. The Luxmark score is slightly higher than inside my Mac Pro thanks to the additional help of Intel HD 6000.
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[lowendlinux]

Due to the shorter board, the RX 480 without its reference cooler fits inside the AKiTiO like a glove. I'm currently hooking it up to a lowly 11" MBA lol. The Luxmark score is slightly higher than inside my Mac Pro thanks to the additional help of Intel HD 6000.

Nice work!

 

[BillyBobBongo]

Due to the shorter board, the RX 480 without its reference cooler fits inside the AKiTiO like a glove. I'm currently hooking it up to a lowly 11" MBA lol. The Luxmark score is slightly higher than inside my Mac Pro thanks to the additional help of Intel HD 6000.

You're an absolute legend. Thanks for all that you're doing at the moment with your RX 480's!

 

[yurc]

Do you have 10 bit monitor/ACD to test 10 bit display capability output connected via RX480 displayport? Just curious.

 

[theitsage]

You're an absolute legend. Thanks for all that you're doing at the moment with your RX 480's!

My full plan is to stuff the AKiTiO board, RX 480/GTX 980 Ti, and an ATX PSU inside a mini ITX case. While I'm waiting for the case to arrive, I thought why don't I try the RX 480 board by itself inside the AKiTiO enclosure for fun and sure enough it fits. It's obviously not a very good cooling system the way it is. With just the heatsink, it reminds me of the GT7300 cards that came in 1,1 Mac Pro.

The mini ITX case has room for a slot optical drive which sparked an idea that I could build a base-station kinda dock for a Thunderbolt equipped Mac laptop. I can plug a single cable into the Thunderbolt port and instantly have access to a powerful GPU, optical drive, external hard drive, and ethernet connection. Also on its way is a Thunderbolt 2 dock with USB3, eSATA, Ethernet, and audio I/O ports. If all goes according to plan, I will have a working box by the end of the weekend.

Cougar QBX KAZE mini ITX Case
HighPoint RocketStor 6351A Thunderbolt 2 Dock

 

[cube]

I want an affordable enclosure that does now require a PSU hack.

 

[enc0re]

So what all did you have to do for the Mac to play with an eGPU?

1. Flash the RX480?
2. MacOS Sierra?
3. Special drivers?

This would have real potential for building a decent machine around a future Mac Mini.

 

[theitsage]

So what all did you have to do for the Mac to play with an eGPU?

1. Flash the RX480?
2. MacOS Sierra?
3. Special drivers?

This would have real potential for building a decent machine around a future Mac Mini.

1. No flashing at all. RX 480 is stock as can be.
2. MacOS Sierra.
3. No special drivers. Disable SIP then ran Goalque's script to automate eGPU.

The challenge is feeding the GPU with enough power.
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I want an affordable enclosure that does now require a PSU hack.

What are your thoughts on how we can build an affordable eGPU without PSU mods?

 

[cube]

If you don't want to mod, your only choice is basically an expensive Sonnet right now. I like Sonnet, but I think the price of this item is excessive.

 

[enc0re]

Razer Core and its coming competitors will be logical solution, once we have a Mac Mini (or whatever) with TB3. I for one am very interested in perhaps building a 'semi-Hackintosh' of such a configuration.

 

[cube]

That is not a solution. USB-C does not work for older Macs.

 

[William_si]

That is not a solution. USB-C does not work for older Macs.

It could - There is nothing stopping TB3 on PCIe 2.0 or in an original Mac Pro - Yes, the speed is a limitation but that's about it. TB2 can be adapted to TB3 and vice versa by similar loss.

 

[cube]

It could - There is nothing stopping TB3 on PCIe 2.0 or in an original Mac Pro - Yes, the speed is a limitation but that's about it. TB2 can be adapted to TB3 and vice versa by similar loss.

There's a USB-C to TB2 adapter, but not the reverse.

 

[Draeconis]

It could - There is nothing stopping TB3 on PCIe 2.0 or in an original Mac Pro

Yes there is, the X58 chipset doesn't support it.

Ironically the original machine that demoed Thunderbolt (then called LightPeak) which was a joint venture between Apple and Intel was on a prototype Mac Pro board. But no classic Mac Pro ever arrived with this feature, presumably because Apple wanted TB to channel video as well, and the classic style form factor wouldn't allow that.
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There's a USB-C to TB2 adapter, but not the reverse.

Think you have that the wrong way round.

 

[cube]

Think you have that the wrong way round.

No. Finally it became available so that I can use the USB-C port in my PC for something.

 

[knowhate]

.

 

[William_si]

chipset

Yea... it does. It's just the Intel controller that needs to play nicely (which it would) and the licensing (which does not). Ultimately TB ends up on 4 PCIe lanes - often even from the chipset and not the CPU - and a DP signal (which is standard wise optional).


Type C USB with TB3 is an alternate mode so not originally supported (afaik), the implementation has a standard though (obviously).

 

[theitsage]

This is coming together better than I anticipated. I soldered 2 molex connectors to barrel plugs to power both the AKiTiO Thunder2 and HighPoint RocketStor Thunderbolt dock. All components are getting power from the ATX PSU now.

The HighPoint RocketStor Thunderbolt dock gets daisy-chained into AKiTiO Thunder2. I also plugged a laptop hard drive and optical drive from a salvage MBP using SATA and slimline SATA to USB adapters.

Next step is mounting everything inside the mini ITX case.

 

[killawat]

looks good. Salute from the Macbook Pro subforum. lol

 

[Synchro3]

Due to the shorter board, the RX 480 without its reference cooler fits inside the AKiTiO like a glove. I'm currently hooking it up to a lowly 11" MBA lol. The Luxmark score is slightly higher than inside my Mac Pro thanks to the additional help of Intel HD 6000.
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How do you power the RX 480 card? Afaik the Akitio provides only 25 Watt on the PCI-E-Slot. And as far as I can see you are using the original Akitio PSU.

 

[killawat]

How do you power the RX 480 card? Afaik the Akitio provides only 25 Watt on the PCI-E-Slot. And as far as I can see you are using the original Akitio PSU.

In the last image in the OP you can see the original Akitio PSU and the separate PSU plugged into the GPU directly, but later he post imgs of the barrel mod so he now powers everything included the Akitio over ATX PSU.

 

[theitsage]

The AKiTiO comes with a 60W power supply which reserves 30W for the Thunderbolt board and the rest for the PCIe slot. I read on Techinferno forum that as long as you can supply the DC plug with more juice, the PCIe slot will be able to pull in more power (not more than 120W total). As of right now, the RX 480 gets probably 45W from the slot and the rest from a dual molex to 6-pin connector.

 

[VillasManzanill]

does the rx 480 works with final cut pro x as of right now with the latest beta build?
thanks!

The AKiTiO comes with a 60W power supply which reserves 30W for the Thunderbolt board and the rest for the PCIe slot. I read on Techinferno forum that as long as you can supply the DC plug with more juice, the PCIe slot will be able to pull in more power (not more than 120W total). As of right now, the RX 480 gets probably 45W from the slot and the rest from a dual molex to 6-pin connector.

 

[theitsage]

does the rx 480 works with final cut pro x as of right now with the latest beta build?
thanks!

I don't have Final Cut Pro to test unfortunately.