Refurb 2019 MacBook Pro 13 inch with eGPU - made the right choice

[christcc2]

Been reading these forums for a long time - used to frequent the Macnn forums back in the day when that site was active.

I've been on a 2012 MacBook Air - 11 inch i7/8GB/256GB for 7 years - I got it for portability and the i7 for longevity. I hang on to Macs for a long time and buy with specs for that purpose. At the time, I was out of daily video editing and returning to a corporate life in Marketing, so as long as I could run Photoshop and Illustrator on a daily basis and I was portable, but still able to dock and have access to my RAID and a large monitor at home, I was happy.

Fast forward to today - I'm still in corporate, but doing side work again, and doing more and more in After Effects and Premiere Pro since I left Final Cut Pro years ago and most of the projects I work on are with teams that are Adobe shops. I've run my Air to it's limit and it is choking after all of these years. It was time to move on. I had been back and forth for a month on what to get with my budget, and have another 5-7 year setup that would give me the flexibility that I needed. Here's where I landed - and it's been a dream come true especially with an eGPU for the extra GPU compute power when I need it:

- Refurb 13 inch MBP 1.7 i7/16GB/512GB Space Gray
- Sonnet 550W Breakaway enclosure with AMD RX 5600 XT 6GB (so I can upgrade my GPU every 2 years)
- Still have my Sonnet Thunderbolt 2 dock with two internal Samsung Evo SSDs, includes eSATA for my RAID, gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, etc.
- Mirrored RAID via eSATA for backup of in-progress video projects
- Drobo 5c 5 bay enclosure for protected long term backup
- 27 inch Dell connected to the eGPU via HDMI

It's been a drastic improvement - back to faster than real time renders and exports with the compute power of the 5600 XT - Premiere is fully using the AMD card during my exports.

Fortnite is smooth with high detail settings at 1080p with the 5600 XT.

I'm actually happy with the keyboard on the MBP - granted I'm docked 50% of the time with a wired Apple Magic Keyboard. But so far typing on the MBP keyboard is pretty quiet and I don't hate it at all compared to the 2012 Air keyboard.

Couldn't be happier.

 

[bill-p]

I had this setup previously (well, I guess I still do since nothing has gone away yet) and just recently got a 16" MacBook Pro.

All in all, the cost of the 13" MBP + eGPU enclosure + external GPU is close to the cost of the 16" MacBook Pro itself.

Won't comment on which one is better performance-wise, but only that... I'd say perhaps the 16" MacBook Pro is the more compact setup overall, and less prone to errors because I have had times where my niece bumped my desk by accident during renders and that caused... quite a bit of chaos.

Glad that you are happy with it, though. I think... overall, perhaps if the eGPU connection was less spotty, and if enclosures were not larger than a trash can Mac Pro (oh yeah, we have a trash can at home as well), then I'd have stuck with it for longer.

 

[christcc2]

I ended up getting a 2 meter active TB3 cable - it's a more solid click of a connection. No cables popping out. I'm getting better.

I have everything behind my monitor in an enclosed desk setup - I can take a picture later and add it to this thread.

The RX 5600 XT has almost 2X higher Metal score than the internal 5300M on the base model 16 MBP (43923 for the 5600 XT vs 24263 for the 5300M) - and I'm seeing the benefit of the higher compute with Premiere Pro. And I have the freedom to upgrade my GPU since it's in the enclosure. I went back and forth on the 16 inch MBP, but I much prefer having more portability, and so far I've got the headroom I'm looking for for a few years with this solution. Would I prefer 32GB of RAM? Yes, but for the level of work that I do, 16GB of RAM in Premiere and After Effects is fine for me - and more than I need for Illustrator and Photoshop - where I'm seeing the eGPU benefit immediately.

 

[bill-p]

Yeah, let's just say we have different workloads. Also I have the RX 5700 XT and the 5500M, for comparison. Scores may tell me the 5700 XT is up to 3X faster, but in real world performance, I think Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth is bottlenecking the 5700 XT pretty badly. In some workloads, I do see the 2X benefits of the 5700XT, but in some others, the 5500M is actually faster. That's with the eGPU connected to the 16". Basically, the 16" makes the eGPU kind of irrelevant for me except for very specific tasks. Such as gaming for instance.

But again, I'm not saying... the 16" is a better or worse performer. Just that I have both setups and I can see the benefits of both.

 

[christcc2]

Completely agree with what you're saying 100%. I was making workflow decisions, just like you have. I was also considering getting a Mini for the performance of it's higher TDP i7, but since I still need to take my Mac with me, I just couldn't pull the trigger even though eventually having 64GB of RAM was attractive to me. I'd love to have a Mac Pro again - but my days of having a dedicated edit bay are long gone.

 

[bill-p]

Yeah, it's definitely nice to be able to go mobile.

I think a part of the decision for me to get the 16" is actually due to the pandemic forcing me to stay at home now... so carting the 16" around isn't as monstrous as it could be.

If I was still as mobile as I was about 2 months back, then I'd probably just keep waiting for this mythical 14" beast.

On a side note, the keyboard of the 16" is nicer... (plus I actually hit the esc key more than 80 times a minute) but I don't think it's a significant thing compared to my 13" since my 13" still works just fine. The 2018 MacBook has been more reliable than 2015/2016/2017 to me.

 

[christcc2]

I'm still getting used to the feel of the keyboard. It has a "firm softness" that I like and dislike at the same time. I don't have the confidence yet to type at full speed like I do on my Magic Keyboard. Other than that, it's been a joy using this new setup. It's such a refreshing boost to my day.