Cheap and Painless eGPU Thrills on a 2013 MacBook Pro

Re:Cheap and Painless eGPU Thrills on a 2013 MacBook Pro by ctvo on Monday January 02, 2017 @04:53PM (#13304867)

TB3 enclosures are also more expensive (and the affordable ones aren't readily available yet), have minimal performance gains[1] and have limited support on MacOS.

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

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Re:Cheap and Painless eGPU Thrills on a 2013 MacBook Pro by hendersoon on Monday January 02, 2017 @04:55PM (#13304887)

I would completely discount the performance difference, totally agree. TB2 is plenty of bandwidth for an eGPU.

$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.

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Re:Cheap and Painless eGPU Thrills on a 2013 MacBook Pro by rounce on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @05:12AM (#13308135)

Bizon box is just a pre-prepared Akitio TB2.

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Re:Cheap and Painless eGPU Thrills on a 2013 MacBook Pro by hendersoon on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @09:42AM (#13309408)

Except it isn't manufactured by Akitio, and isn't thunderbolt 2, and has a much more powerful PSU, and can fit an 11" video card, and... wait, how are they the same?

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Re:Cheap and Painless eGPU Thrills on a 2013 MacBook Pro by rounce on Wednesday January 04, 2017 @07:01AM (#13317527)

Up until the most recent version it was an Akitio PCIE-to-TB2 board, prior models used a modified Akitio case. There was also a max card size previously on BizonBox2 (because it's an AkitioTB2) which is why they give you the options to "Remove front panel" for "long GPUs", something they seem to have fixed in the latest version 3 by scaling up an almost 1:1 reproduction of the Akitio TB2 case internals (flanges, screwholes and mounting points are still in very similar locations from what I can see).

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).

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Re:Cheap and Painless eGPU Thrills on a 2013 MacBook Pro by hendersoon on Wednesday January 04, 2017 @02:27PM (#13321263)

The previous version of the BizonBox does look a great deal like a modded TB2 Akitio. But I wasn't talking about the TB2 BizonBox2!

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

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Re:Cheap and Painless eGPU Thrills on a 2013 MacBook Pro by rounce on Saturday January 07, 2017 @07:44AM (#13343871)

Yep, I'll have to take your word for it regarding the BB3, as I'm not too familiar with the BB3. Going forward I'd really like Bizon to make better quality/priced products and add more competition to the eGPU space. I'd love it if the general direction of 'everyman' PC gaming were eGPUs.

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