What do you think of my plug-and-play eGPU plan?

[Yixian]

I have a 2014 MacBook Air with Thunderbolt 2, and I'm a bit tired of waiting for decent GPUs to come to Apple portables and have basically accepted that day won't come.

Now it seems eGPUs are actually an option under Bootcamp, which is the only environment I'd ever game in anyway.

What do you guys think of this set up, do you think it would work ok and have decent performance?

AKiTiO Thunder2 PCIe Box
EVGA GTX 960 2GB GDDR5
Corsair 550w PSU
Pci Express 16x To 16x Powered Pci-e Riser Cable Adapter Extension
2m Original Apple Thunderbolt Cable

Can anyone see any problems?

 

[yjchua95]

I have a 2014 MacBook Air with Thunderbolt 2, and I'm a bit tired of waiting for decent GPUs to come to Apple portables and have basically accepted that day won't come.

Now it seems eGPUs are actually an option under Bootcamp, which is the only environment I'd ever game in anyway.

What do you guys think of this set up, do you think it would work ok and have decent performance?

AKiTiO Thunder2 PCIe Box
Gigabyte GTX 960 2GB GDDR5
Corsair 550w PSU

Can anyone see any problems?

As long as you're running Windows 8.1 in UEFI, then it's as easy as plug and play.

 

[Yixian]

As long as you're running Windows 8.1 in UEFI, then it's as easy as plug and play.

Awesome! I've updated a few more items as I understand a 960M will need a powered riser and that if you get an EVGA branded GPU it will mean you don't have to fiddle with the times you power things on.

I wonder how future proof this setup will be, as Skylake will presumably have Thunderbolt 3.. But then I suppose this Thunderbolt 2 setup will still deliver much better performance for the next few years of GPUs without getting too bottlenecked?

Plus I don't even want to imagine how much Thunderbolt 3 PCI chassis will cost at first.

For those interested the total cost of this setup would be about £370.

 

[yjchua95]

Awesome! I've updated a few more items as I understand a 960M will need a powered riser and that if you get an EVGA branded GPU it will mean you don't have to fiddle with the times you power things on.

I wonder how future proof this setup will be, as Skylake will presumably have Thunderbolt 3.. But then I suppose this Thunderbolt 2 setup will still deliver much better performance for the next few years of GPUs without getting too bottlenecked?

Plus I don't even want to imagine how much Thunderbolt 3 PCI chassis will cost at first.

For those interested the total cost of this setup would be about £370.

My personal setup is a Sonnet IIID, GTX 780 Ti and a Corsair RM 450 and it's pretty fast. On my 15" rMBP, the card benchmarks at 85-90% of its full performance (i.e. when connected natively to my gaming rig).

 

[Yixian]

My personal setup is a Sonnet IIID, GTX 780 Ti and a Corsair RM 450 and it's pretty fast. On my 15" rMBP, the card benchmarks at 85-90% of its full performance (i.e. when connected natively to my gaming rig).

Sounds great.

I just hope that we won't require a new setup with Thunderbolt 3 to run new games at high settings for at least 3-4 years.

 

[ooans]

You probably will be able to do some good gaming for many years to come.

Sure Thunderbolt 3 is likely coming with Skylake, but who knows how long it will take for someone to release a decently priced PCI-E chassis for it.

 

[Yixian]

Oh and does anyone happen to know if a 960M will fit inside the Thunder2 chassis? I know a 970M won't.

 

[Yixian]

Just discovered I actually only have Thunderbolt 1... Is this going to be too big of a bottleneck?

 

[yjchua95]

Just discovered I actually only have Thunderbolt 1... Is this going to be too big of a bottleneck?

In that case, you would be saturating the bandwidth with just a GTX 680 series. Anything above the GTX 700 series wouldn't mean much on your system.