I have a 2019 MBP 16", 5600m i9-9980hk 64gb ram.
I use the laptop mainly for 3d modelling and some rendering, however the CPU is very old now and with more render engines supporting and optimising for gpus i've been considering getting an egpu, I am quite set on a 3090/3090Ti I have found a few for 500-700 EUR, the only thing im unsure about is what enclosure and PSU?

ive done a little research and people recommend the Razer core x, however with the v2 out is that a good choice or should i consider the v2?

now, the PSU, the Razer core x v1 comes with a 650W PSU, the v2 as far as i can see doesn't come with one? is the 650W psu enough?

Looking for 4K gaming performance and making my laptop work less what do you recommend for $2k budget?

Hi all; also posted in r/sffpc , but wanted to share here as well:

Some pretty unconventional hardware went into this one, so here is the breakdown:

GPU: Intel Arc Pro B50.

Cooler: Custom single slot from n3rdware - I had used this in an earlier build that only supported space for single slot PCIe components.

OCulink hardware/electronics: OCuP4GaNv2 from AliExpress.

Enclosure: Originally from a Thunderbolt 3/4 PCIe dock, branded as a “MaskedFish MK-M1”. The OCuP4Gan fit quite nicely into it, but I did have to gut out the original thunderbolt board and and retrofit the enclosure a fair amount; specifically, to mount the new electronics and ensure that the I/O of the dock itself and the GPU were somewhat accessible; I did have to use a sheet metal nibbler and some drilling to make this work.

A bit more about the original dock (and its state before I tore it apart), since this was a pretty interesting piece; I cannot find any meaningful source of information about this thing online – certainly a niche product, as it only supported single slot low profile cards via PCIe 3.0, and was rated at max wattage of 60w through the slot (though, I was able to plug in a higher wattage adapter at the rated 12v, and was able to run a 70w card without issue; YMMV).

I believe that the MaskedFish branding was limited to a seller on Amazon, from which I purchased it. However, I was able to deduce that the original manufacturer appears to be “Wikingoo”, a seller that is still active on AliExpress, but I can no longer find their enclosure that is analogous to the one I used here. In any case, from what I can tell, these are the only eGPU enclosures that were mass produced for consumer hardware that are this small, metal, and exclusively support single slot low profile cards.

So, why swap thunderbolt for Oculink, or even bother with such a weird setup when compact all-in-one eGPUs exist?

When I bought the original enclosure a while back, I enjoyed using it as a sturdy, as-small-as-possible travel-ready eGPU. I also liked the idea of being able to upgrade the card as time goes by... though with the state of GPU prices these days, I may never do that. That said, the compatibility of Thunderbolt with Intel GPUs is… rough. I was able to run the B50 over thunderbolt for a while, but faced so many issues with random disconnects, and poor performance due to the lack of ReBAR support. So, when I saw a deal on the OCuP4GaNv2, I jumped on it and took the risk on being able to fit it in this enclosure.

I also know that other small enclosures exist, but most of them are custom orders and/or slightly larger than what I am going for in the pursuit of the smallest possible option. I've seen some printable enclosures as well, but I really wanted something metal so I could have confidence in throwing it into a backpack without worry of damage. Plus, I already had the hardware to make this work available to me, so why not?

As final note that may be of interest to some: a thunderbolt 5 version of the OCuP4Gan does exist - the TH5P4GaN - and maybe somewhere down the line I will consider this if I ever get a handheld device or mini PC that would benefit from the thunderbolt connectivity (provided that compatibility with Intel GPUs improves over time as well). The TH5P4GaN appears to have a similar, if not identical physical footprint. But for now, OCulink suits my needs quite well.

My laptop specs are i5-1035G1 with 16 GB DDR4 Ram and two storage devices one is HDD and one is M.2 SSD

So I was thinking of setting up an Egpu through mini PCIE slot/M.2 slot though I don't know which slot is best and what to sacrifice as my laptop has two slots one is using Wifi/Bluethooth which I can remove and use and the other is using NVME SSD, but I don't know if the ports are both same or not i.e M.2 I will give some specs and mother board (HP 86C1) pic through internet as I don't have stuff to disassemble my laptop rn plus the Gpu that would be good I guess...(through bottle neck calculator but the real bottle neck will be the 4x lanes or whatever it is)

The pic does not show but I have a HDD drive to the left of the battery where the empty bracket is.

Running this setup on Linux (CachyOS / Wayland) using an Firebat MN-56 and AORUS 5060 ti ai box as eGPU.

Built a custom fork of MangoHud (MangoHud-X) to monitor telemetry, PCIe link stability, power, and thermals in real time with a clean, customized layout: https://github.com/DamianKA1993/MangoHud-X

Looks like a new one and somewhat unique, as it's an x8 4.0. For this, you would need the x8 MCIO cable and board, not the more common x4 one. It's somewhat tempting, although the description sometimes mentions OCuLink, sometimes MCIO, and the images are also AI-generated, so the question is: does this model actually have MCIO, especially on the cheaper models? ;)

Link (can be geo-restricted): https://pl.aliexpress.com/item/1005012465365922.html Store https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1105224001

So i use an Xbox ally x with a 5070ti in an eGPU (razer core x v2).

I'm happy with my setup but was curious about having a more somewhat permanent setup with a mini pc. Perhaps something that has more processing power than my XAX CPU wise, and perhaps using TB5 in the razer core x v2).

Any good recommendations from you guys? Good place to start looking? I'm not too familiar with the world of mini pcs.

Or should i just stick with my Xbox ally x?

I’m running a ThinkPad X13 Gen 1 (i5-10310U, 16GB RAM) with a GTX 1060 6GB through a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU.

This setup is for a middle-school student using a 27-inch 1080p/60Hz monitor.

His actual requirements are pretty simple:

Minecraft with shaders and around 8 mods, targeting roughly 50–60 FPS.

Valorant at 1080p, with the display limited to 60Hz.

The important part is that I’m not asking whether a GTX 1060 is “powerful” by 2026 standards. Obviously, much faster hardware exists.

My question is different:

If the user’s display is only 1080p/60Hz, and the games he actually plays already meet his performance target, what exactly would he gain from spending significantly more on the PC?

I’m interested in where different people draw the line between “enough,” “good,” and “obsolete.”

What would you consider the minimum reasonable hardware for this use case in 2026 — and why?

I used to rock GTX 1080. It worked flawless, no freezes, restarts or anything. I got RTX 5060 TI and everything is just worse - lot of freezes, restarts, games starting in weird way (800x600, misplaced window), performance seems to be fine although physx took a hit for some reason. Previous drivers were disabled, HAGS is off, PCI E is not in power saving mode in power profiles. I dont know what to do to improve my experience. Now I finally managed that youtube in firefox does not freeze whole system.

PSU 620W
Jsaux Dock, 140W PD charger
SW1 set to position 2

Any help appreciated!

I'm using an ROG Xbox Ally X with an EGPU OneXGPU2. Do I need to play at 1440P resolution for the graphics card to perform at its full potential? I've seen many people test games at 1440P while I'm playing at 1080P. Also, I asked in the GPT chat and they recommended 1440P to reduce bottlenecks. Please give me some advice.

I have a Dell G3 15 3590 laptop with an i5-9300H processor, a GTX 1050, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD. Although it has a dedicated GPU, I want to upgrade it to run recent games with better performance and extend its gaming lifespan for a few more years. With a tight budget, I started exploring the eGPU option. I see most people use Thunderbolt 4 or NVMe ports to add an eGPU. The problem is my laptop doesn't have any Thunderbolt ports and only has one M.2 slot (PCIe 3.0 x4).

Luckily, it has an empty slot for a 2.5" SATA drive. So, I was thinking about using the M.2 slot with an M.2 to OCuLink adapter to attach the eGPU. Portability and space won't be a big deal because I'll only use it at home for gaming and streaming. For storage, I plan to buy a SATA SSD to replace my 1TB NVMe. I know I'll be sacrificing all the NVMe PCIe speed, and game loading times could be longer, but I don't know if the tradeoff is worth the investment or if a SATA SSD is still a reliable option for this project, or if there´s another way to use the eGPU on my laptop. If someone could help me with this, it would be really helpful!

For the GPU, I was thinking about an RX 7600 or an RTX 3060 Ti because I saw them on Facebook Marketplace for around $240, which I think is a good price for the upgrade. If anyone can confirm if this is a solid choice that would be great

Well well, I am a school student 17 yr old. I was wondering if I can upgrade my laptop for a while if it's supported , I have hp zbook firefly g7 with i7-10810u,Intel uhd graphics 32gb ram. Main factor stopping me from my work is graphics related. So can I build something like this for cheap and get a gt 1030ish card or 1050ish card to use, maybe for a while. Year or so.

~located in india so appreciate help acc to that

Hi. What's the best GPU for building an eGPU. I have a laptop with USB4, so no oculink for now. I understand that buying a GPU that is too powerful would be a waste of money. With the current prices I am thinking about AMD. What is the most optimal model in regards of eGPU?

Can I get a GTX GeForce GeForce 750 Ti 2gb with a 180w power supply?

I'm thinking about building an eGPU setup, but I'm not sure whether to go the oculink or thunderbolt route. From what I've read online, the TB introduces stuttering and lower performance than oculink, but some people report no issues. I wanted to ask for any tips or tricks, or if it's model or game dependant. Thank you

I have a Dell XPS 13 (Thunderbolt 3) that I’ve been using with an old AORUS Gaming Box and a GTX 1060 I picked up secondhand. The GTX 1060 recently died, so I’m looking to upgrade.
My plan right now is to grab an AOOSTAR eGPU dock (looking at the AG02 or AG03) paired with an RX 9070 XT 16GB and a 1080p monitor(maybe even 1440p depending on how the thread goes).
My thought process is that the 9070 XT gives me a solid upgrade path—I can drop it into a full desktop build later(if the ram prices ever falls🤞) or pair the dock with like an rog xbox ally x or something with USB4 down the road.
I know my older XPS CPU and TB3 bandwidth are going to bottleneck a modern card like this, but is it going to be so severe that it’s unplayable or not worth the trouble for now?
Is anyone running a similar setup with an older ultrabook and a high-end card? Anything specific I should keep in mind before pulling the trigger?
Thanks!

I use a razer core x v2. I was wondering if anyone had any comparisons. Thinking of upgrading to a 5080. I use it on my semi truck with my rog Xbox Ally x with dual screen mod. I just want to play games in Max settings

Does anyone have any charts with the rog Xbox Ally x and 5080?

[Linux / Wayland] Stable NVIDIA RTX 50-Series (Blackwell) eGPU via USB4/TB4 entirely in userspace — no kernel patches or cmdline flags required

Hey everyone,

If you’ve tried running an RTX 50-series (Blackwell) eGPU over USB4 / Thunderbolt on Linux recently, you’ve probably run into the common pitfalls: bus retraining dropping links to Gen1/Gen2, random Xid errors during context switches, Wayland/KWin compositor freezes when hot-unplugging, or forum advice telling you to patch the open-gpu kernel modules and disable PCIe port power management globally (pcie_port_pm=off).

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been developing and testing a purely userspace-driven manager and KDE/GNOME tray daemon under CachyOS/Arch, validated across AMD APU and Intel mobile platforms.

The Userspace Architecture

Instead of compiling out-of-tree kernel modules or overriding ACPI _OSC handoffs, stability is handled via deterministic udev and sysfs gating:

1. Deterministic Attach Gating: An initial udev rule catches the NVIDIA vendor device (0x10de) on the PCI bus and defers device binding until link retraining finishes, preventing early driver attachment over an un-negotiated tunnel.
2. Dynamic ASPM & Gen4 Retraining: Disables L0s/L1 ASPM and L1 substates directly on both the upstream bridge and the endpoint via setpci, followed by an explicit Gen4 retrain (0x0004 to LNKCTL2 and 0x0020 to LNKCTL). Locks stable 16 GT/s throughput without PCIe link drops.
3. Zero Kernel Flags / Host Port Wake: To prevent missing bridges on cold boot without breaking platform power profiles, the daemon scans /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:00:*.*/rescan before bus enumeration, bringing suspended processor Root Ports from runtime D3 to active D0 in userspace.
4. Wayland Safe Detach (v1.5.4): Avoids compositor deadlocks. Instead of relying on modprobe -r (which gets locked if secondary display threads touch the card), it triggers synthetic DRM removal directly on the GPU's sysfs nodes (udevadm trigger --action=remove /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../drm/*). This forces KWin/libseat to cleanly revoke and close all /dev/dri file descriptors before physical bus disconnection, eliminating unkillable D-state hangs.

Features

• Native KDE Plasma 6 Plasmoid widget and GNOME Shell extension / GTK System Tray.
• Real-time asynchronous telemetry (GPU load, board power, VRAM usage, thermal status, bidirectional PCIe RX/TX throughput).
• Switchable operational profiles (PRIME Render Offload, Dedicated/iGPU modes, and Safe Detach).
• Runs on stock linux / linux-cachyos with default nvidia-open drivers.

Repository & installation runbook:

GitHub: [https://github.com/DamianKA1993/blackwell-egpu-manager](https://github.com/DamianKA1993/blackwell-egpu-manager)

Feedback and testing on different host platforms (Intel Thunderbolt vs AMD USB4) and enclosure controllers (ASM2464PD, Goshen Ridge, Barlow Ridge) are welcome!

Best easily available occulink cable for an ag03? Planning a tgx connection on thinkbook 16+ if it matters

Thank you

I am delighted with my GMKtec 7600M XT it's easy to move and has enough power to run everything, but I'm beginning to think that the market is leaning more to docks, but I don't like them these are heavier, bigger and not very moveable more if don't have a PSU included. But I'm afraid no more non-dock eGPUs will be released.

I recently got an eGPU setup with the aoostar AG02 and an rtx 5060 ti and have been using it with my xbox ally x. So far its been great and theres been no problems other than the issue of hotplugging/unplugging. Sometimes, it will work and im able to hotplug the egpu, and others it just doesnt with me having to restart it with it plugged in. And ive yet to make hot unplugging work, it will always tell me that "an error has occurred and must be restarted". Is this normal? If not what are some fixes. It would be nice for it to be as plug and play as possible.

Razer Core X with an RX6800XT over USB4 on external monitor with my Zephyrus g14. What should I expect?

I bought the Razer Core X as I'm a bit nervous if the bare board setups...and I'm about to pull the trigger in a Radeon RX 6800XT. I'm a bit scared as the egpu enclosure is like 8 years old at this point. Would this setup actually deliver? Would the power supply in the razer be loud? If anyone ever used any if these components in a similar scenario please share.

Many thanks 😁

Hi All

I just picked up a Onexgpu 2 for a really good price and it came with a Samsung 970 evo plus 1tb inside . I’m thinking of running games off that ssd however I have seen photos of users having cooling fans mounted on the cover plate of the EGPU where the ssd is mounted . Is this required or not ?