I returned the whole thing and bought a beefy gaming PC, which now has an absurd amount of power in it (a 1080 + 2x970... I had forgotten how much fun it is to continually upgrade a machine). For power on the go, I have a Razer Blade with a 1060 in it. It's a shame, because I prefer to develop on a Mac, but I need modern hardware ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I was considering getting the new MBP, but instead bought a used workstation. It has a Xeon E5-2670 (8 core/16 thread) and 32GB RAM, I stuck in an RX480 and now have a pretty good working and gaming machine for ~€800. Some games are still poorly optimised for multiple cores though (e.g. Arma 3), so single core performance is still the king for gaming.

There are now alternatives for those that need power on the go.[0] Well, for number crunching power on the go, anyway. Won't help for gaming and 3D modeling.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12610804

So, entirely irrelevant to the situation described by the parent poster?

Also, I was optimizing in part for cheapness. Truly great gaming cards cost $300 and up, and $400 total was about as much as I was willing to pay for an upgrade.

Waiting a year is way too much caution for me. I wouldn't pre-order anything, but once other people post it works I'd feel safe to proceed.

Intel initially announced that TB3 devices would be compatible with TB2 hosts, but it looks like they quietly dropped this feature. It's _really_ hard to find a reference on this though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5l3y0a/egpu_my_exper...

Some of us have already waited a year, nothing changed. It's been Akitio + PSU or nothing for quite a while now.

Made the jump to PC myself instead of hanging on in hope that something will come out with blessed support for Macs.

BootCamp is fine. Watch this review by Linus for more details: https://youtu.be/JirCwapScUs?t=5m54s

Apple's adapter has turned out not to work on Linux. It might not work with BootCamp either. Seems to require a special driver:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=189731

If the Apple adapter doesn't work, there are a bunch of others on Amazon, although they are a bit more expensive today. Prices will come down. But if you have a TB2 plug on your laptop, you probably have a Mac anyway.

Huh? The article is about a setup built using an AKiTiO PCIe box. You even mentioned that manufacturer as an alternative. I guess it's not officially "for eGPU use", but that's just a question of power, and a small SMPS brick is fine for that.

1 - https://youtu.be/vvAB3U5umug?t=187

$300 is affordable, and prices will come down further.

If you want MacOS support, only that BizonBOX /says/ it will work. But I betcha they all will. I certainly wouldn't be the guinea pig, though-- wait for other people to try it out and post their experiences.

The "much more powerful PSU" you speak of appears to be a Dell DA-2 laptop power supply, which isn't that powerful compared to say an 800w ATX PSU.

Tell me that this isn't an Akitio TB2 with holes drilled in the side: https://bizon-tech.com/us/bizonbox2-egpu.html

I've built a couple of these from Akitio and Sonnet enclosures (first one took ages to get working, otherwise it saved me from the huge disappointment of the most recent MBPr).

The BizonBox 3 does indeed come with a 200w laptop PSU. But that is plenty for a GTX1080 with a 180w TDP.

I don't know of any such adapter. Do they exist? The Apple one allows you to use TB2 devices with your new TB3 laptop, not the other way.

    As a bidirectional adapter, it can also connect new 
    Thunderbolt 3 devices to a Mac with a Thunderbolt or 
    Thunderbolt 2 port and macOS Sierra.

Also, all the features you mentioned are already available in form of docks, which one might already have.