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  • piroroadkill - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Why is still so big? I don't really get the point of it, when a DAN A4 SFX is smaller, and can take a full PC. Also, the cost is still astronomical. I don't get it.
  • 69369369 - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Niche product = high price.
  • Valantar - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Unfortunately, stacking a GPU and an off-the-shelf (i.e. easily replaceable should it fail) ATX PSU makes for an unwieldy package, as their dimensions don't exactly match up. Using SFX-L PSUs alleviates this somewhat, but only to a tiny degree. FlexATX is kind of an option, but brings with it hellish small-diameter cooling fans. Also, they maximize space for GPUs to not exclude people wanting to stick gargantuan triple-fan coolers in there. The result is a poorly space-optimized design with plenty of air inside. I believe part of the price comes from Intel's TB3 controllers, but also from manufacturing a niche product. It's a bit of a catch-22 - they're too expensive to catch on, but won't catch on until they become cheaper.

    IMO, these things are rather meaningless. I'd rather take a small, portable box with a GTX 1050 or RX 560 to go with a thin-and-light laptop. I don't see many people moving GPUs from their desktops to these boxes. But maybe that's just me. Give it a high-quality 120W power brick and limit it to <100W GPUs, and you could make a compact yet attractive (and quite powerful) box.
  • Devo2007 - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Exactly! Something like a Geforce 1060 6GB in a more compact eGPU enclosure would go very nicely with my Dell XPS 13. Decent gaming machine when at home without sacrificing the portability of the machine on the go.
  • Manch - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Cant you get an XPS with a 1060?
  • koaschten - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    I don't think you can substitute a mobil 1060 with a desktop 1060 in an eGPU case one for one performance wise...
  • Manch - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Mobile 1060 vs DT1060 in an EGPU is a wash performance wise. Which is why I asked. I know the XPS 15 you can get a 1060. Dunno about the XPS 13
  • Manch - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Oh wait Alienware has the 1060, XPS don't. My bad
  • WinterCharm - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Yeah, but cooling is totally different and there's a 20% performance gap between the mobile part and the desktop card.
  • kaidenshi - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    As others have said, that 20% performance gap between mobile and desktop is mostly negated by the performance loss of running a desktop GPU via TB3. If you're going chip for chip (1060 vs 1060 or 1050 vs 1050) it's a wash. You only gain a marginal edge over the laptop's GPU if your eGPU setup has a 1080Ti or a Titan, at which point you may as well just buy a desktop PC to put it in and stop gaming on your laptop.
  • nevcairiel - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    The concept of keeping both the GPU and the PSU user-replaceable is really limiting their design choices. If they were to build something with a NVIDIA Max-Q module and a custom PSU, it could be tiny, but of course you can't pick your GPU as easily then.
  • ionuts - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    There are other options - namely the Gigabyte gaming box that comes with an mITX-sized GPU that is user replaceable.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    To get a small size they really need to move to an external power brick. There're a few 300W+ bricks around for 18.6" luggable gaming laptops that'd be a reasonable fit in in terms of power delivered; but they end up significantly more expensive than a commodity ATX unit because of much lower volume.

    A more compact design could be had by putting the PSU and card inline instead of back to back; but combined with support for oversized cards that ends up creating a really long enclosure. Something like 18x5x3"
  • Manch - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Dual slim line PS? They could create custom FF PS but that would increase costs too much.
  • nevcairiel - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    The way I see it, using a big external power brick doesn't really save size, it just moves it. Now you have two bricks, one for power and one for the graphics.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Yes it does, putting the PSU behind the card takes up 3 or 4 PSUs worth of space because of the empty area between the PSU and the box.
  • peterfares - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    Then put the PSU in line with the card, opposite side of the video outputs.
  • WinterCharm - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    This approach is better, as you can buy the damn thing and upgrade it as needed in the future.
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Could've used an off-the-shelf server power supply that's thin and long.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    40mm fans at 9000 RPM are obscenely loud and no go's in consumer hardware. Something like that might be an option in a 100-150W model; but that restricts you to mid range GPUs and precludes powering the laptop through the same cable.
  • WinterCharm - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Why on earth they didn't use an SFX power supply, I have no fucking idea. They're also commercially available off the shelf, and much smaller than an ATX PSU.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    this is the cheap scale down model, and ATX PSUs are cheaper even if they grossly add to the clownshoe volume problem.

    It uses 14.44L of volume to hold a 3.16L max GPU, vs their $500 model being only 7.78L for 1.87L of card (still bigger than almost all oversized cards).
  • Manch - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    $299 isn't horrible TBF. It is a niche product though but I see the use case. Have a decent laptop that's not a plastic behemoth for when you're on the go and a EGPU & monitor for gaming when home. Not everyone can afford multiple computers, want multiple, etc. If I was still in the barracks, and going on trips a lot, this would be awesome. I may get one for when I retire my current laptop to wife duties. Then she can play her Oculus without hogging my machine.
  • Reflex - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    Just finished building out my DAN A4 last weekend. That is *such* a nice and sharp looking case. Mine now has a Ryzen 2700X/32GB/GTX1080/960EVO and it flies. Temps seem just fine too despite the horsepower.

    Super happy with it.
  • repoman27 - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    As mentioned in other comments, 650W ATX PSU + room for a full length GPU with triple-slot cooler and enough height for taller cards with clearance for the power cables = Core X size. The Razer Core v2 uses a semi-custom, 500W 1U PSU from Enhance and only fits double-slot cards to keep the size in check: https://egpu.io/razer-core-v2-review-think-inside-...

    As for the cost, it's not at all unreasonable if you consider buying the components separately. The custom enclosure with cooling fan and LED bling is probably not much different than a mini-ITX case which costs about $50. A decent 650W ATX PSU runs $50-$60. Basic Thunderbolt 3 add-in cards from Gigabyte, ASRock and ASUS that only have the Intel Alpine Ridge and TI USB Type-C port controllers go for $60-$70. AFAIK, Razer designs their own boards for their eGPU enclosures and doesn't just use a reference design or source from an ODM. Considering this box also supports USB PD up to 100W and most likely requires a microcontroller and custom firmware, we're probably closer to $80-$100 territory. A passive 0.5m Thunderbolt 3 40Gbps 3A cable (most likely what is packed in the box) will cost you $20. If you want an active cable (>1m) or one with an e-marker that can actually support 5A power delivery (>60W), be prepared to spend closer to $40.

    The total for that pile of parts comes to somewhere between $200-$250. And these are street prices from Amazon, Newegg, B&H and Monoprice for commodity components from low-margin OEMs. I wouldn't expect the introductory MSRP for a relatively niche product from Razer to be anywhere near that, especially considering where their competition is at.
  • wolrah - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    Relatedly, what I don't get is why everyone feels the need to bother with a case at all. Why hasn't someone created a TB3 dock in a standard motherboard format like Mini-ITX? Make it have a standard I/O panel, standard ATX power connectors inside (with optional support for external bricks for ultra-compact builds), and a standard PCIe slot, then from there people can do whatever their cases of choice allow them to do.

    I could see a market for four total variants. One for full PCIe cards, one for MXM, and then in each of those cases having one variant that just connects to a GPU and that's it and another that's more of a proper dock with additional USB ports, ethernet, etc.
  • TEAMSWITCHER - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link

    What we really need is for someone to fix the heat problem on high frequency colossally scaled integrated circuits. (I wanted to say Large Scale Integrated Circuits, but we called them that back in the 1990's and I didn't want so sound old... Doh!!!)

    Apple's 12" MacBook always had a certain appeal in that it was a completely fan-less design. So is the entry level Surface Pro, but you can't buy it with more than 4GB of RAM and larger SSD. I like the idea of not having ANY fans ... if there are no fans you can't have fan noise.

    This is where Apple's A-Series processors might perform very well. They have better GPU implementations than what you find on a Y-Series core processor. Someone (maybe Apple) needs to solve this VERY SOLVABLE problem. Optical processors still seem a long way off.
  • Manch - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    You in the wrong article?
  • TEAMSWITCHER - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    Why do we need external GPU's for laptops? Because the silicon inside the laptop get's too hot, uses too much power, and the tiny fans that are required to dissipate the heat generate too much noise.

    These external GPU's are a highly compromised solution to the problem.
  • Manch - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    What? No. You're way off in left field. The whole idea is to have a laptop that's portable with decent battery life vs one of those plastic behemoths that cant last 2hrs. When you are home, you can enjoy an expanded experience. Thermals will ALWAYS be a limit in a laptop vs a DT. Cant get around that. Will performance improve? Yes, of course. Will performance improve for DT cards that are too power hungry for a laptop? Yes of course.
  • The_Assimilator - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link

    So many clueless people in these comments.

    If you want a god damn tiny PC, you build one and don't post stupid s**t about this product.

    If you have an ultrathin notebook with awesome specs except for GFX, you buy this product and stick a GTX 1080 Ti in it. Then when you come home from work, you connect your ultrabook to it with the single Thunderbolt cable and start playing your games at maximum fidelity.

    The only thing holding these enclosures back now, IMO, is the limited bandwidth.Thunderbolt needs to be capable of at least PCIe 3.0 x8 in order to be really viable, and I'm not seeing that happen anytime soon.
  • milkod2001 - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link

    $299 is the price many would not spend on GPU itself and this empty box cost exactly that much. What a joke. Should be $99 max.
  • zodiacfml - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link

    Still pricey. I could build a mini-itx for the same size and cost.

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