Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor

Re:Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor by mikeyouse on Friday July 13, 2018 @02:11AM (#17520850)

Ha, I just did that this week. I have a late 2011 MBP and I noticed it was dragging a bit so I upgraded it from 8gb ram to 16gb and bought a 500gb SSD to replace the factory HDD. The next day I decided I wanted more space for my pictures so I bought the little enclosure and swapped out my CDROM and just reused the factory 1TB HDD. Like $220 later and it feels like a brand new machine.

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Re:Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor by kayoone on Friday July 13, 2018 @10:32AM (#17523256)

you were using a 7 year old Laptop with a HDD in 2018 ? Some people don't seem to have any hardware requirements at all.. While i could tolerate a CPU from 2011, using it without an SSD feels so slow today, it's barely usable tbh. I switched to SSDs in 2009 in all my machines and never looked back, despite the price at the time.

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Re:Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor by mikeyouse on Friday July 13, 2018 @11:22AM (#17523679)

Yeah I don't have a good excuse for waiting except it was my wife's primary computer for the last few years while she completed grad school and I didn't use it much to notice how much slower it seemed as compared to a modern SSD-based machine. Definitely wish I had done it earlier now.

It was an old work machine that I got to take with me when I left that job so it was far overspecced for casual use.. though it feels so much better now.

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Re:Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor by haldean on Friday July 13, 2018 @12:55PM (#17524597)

Not everyone can afford a new MacBook when their old one works fine, no matter how much HN shames them for it.

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Re:Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor by rootusrootus on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:02AM (#17522140)

I did pretty much the same thing on my late 2011 MBP. And then the graphics went tits up. Argh!

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Re:Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor by rajnp on Friday July 13, 2018 @03:35AM (#17521134)

Did the same thing for my 2012 MBP.

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Re:Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor by mch82 on Friday July 13, 2018 @03:39AM (#17521151)

Any chance you've got a link to reliable instructions?

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Re:Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor by gargravarr on Friday July 13, 2018 @04:24AM (#17521340)

iFixit are great for this:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+...

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Re:Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor by mikeyouse on Friday July 13, 2018 @11:20AM (#17523658)

Yep, I used their instructions for the hard drive replacement and then again for the CDROM swap out. I used to build my own machines so I was pretty confident going in, on my scale the HDD was about a 3 difficulty but the CDROM was maybe a 6.. you need to disconnect several tiny connectors to clear enough space which always makes me nervous about breaking one but it went fine in the end.

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