E-Gpu For Skull Canyon NUC

[Shyam_7]

I bought a skullcanyon which has an i7-6770k 32gb ddr4 ram and 960gb ssd m.2 I wonder if I can use an egpu using NVidia gtx 1080 or titanx which one should I get? and what other stuff do I need to do it. new to egpus.

 

[k1114]

NUC6i7KYK You've got thunderbolt 3 so can use an adapter for that. If you go with a commercial solutions, the only current one is the razor core which is $500. Other diy adapters maybe cheaper. If you are going with a top end gpu like those, I'd suggest tb3 so you can at least get pcie 3.0 x4 to lessen the bottleneck.

 

[Shyam_7]

Can you give me a list of the supplies I would need for this?

I've heard of the razer core i'm not very interested in it though. I want the 1080 for some games like bf1 and rendering.

 

[k1114]

Honestly I don't know of any tb3 without being multiple hundreds of dollars which is just a waste of money. You could buy a desktop for the price of an adapter+psu. Then a regular gpu in a pcie x16 isn't bottlenecked from the bandwidth.

 

[Shyam_7]

I've heard of some Egpus made by MSI what are they is it a good option?

 

[Shyam_7]

Can you Explain me about this stuff a bit more and give me the best option to take please?

 

[k1114]

I guess I'll start from the top. All egpus are just an adapter to pcie x16 and a psu to power a desktop gpu. There is nothing else needed for you. The adapter goes to any port that uses pcie protocols: m.2, mpcie, expresscard, thunderbolt, or a proprietary connection. You'll need to know what port your pc has but yours has tb3 so that's easy. The monitor plugs into the egpu and only a few laptops can use optimus to use the internal monitor. Commercial products will be an enclosure with psu in them but will be more expensive since there's more business operational costs. There are cheaper diy solutions and most just buy an adapter+psu since it's cheaper and forgo the enclosure.

There are multiple commercial products that have been demoed but so far only razer has released one that isn't proprietary and uses tb3. There have been even more in the past that have never went to production so I don't care to talk about them until a release date is said. The other tb3 ones were supposed to come out this year but it doesn't look like it'll happen. I suspect they are facing the same issue as egpus in the past: cost and small market size making it unreasonable to manufacture. Egpus have gotten a bit of news with the release of tb3 because it has a bandwidth of up to pcie 3.0 x4 which isn't too bad of a bottleneck, only 5% less performance on gtx980 pcie scaling tests. Expresscard and mpcie has been used in the past but being limited to pcie 2.0 x1 dropped performance of the card almost in half. But those adapters are cheap like $30 and even a gpu at half the performance is better than what many laptops have.

The msi gaming dock and gaming dock mini I think you are referring to only works on the MSI GS30 and GS32 laptops as it uses a proprietary connection. They have no other egpus and those aren't even sold separately, only with the laptops. The gaming dock is bigger than a mitx pc so it doesn't even make sense to get it. What makes you not interested in the razer core?

Right now tb3 costs a lot though no matter what you do and doesn't make sense cost wise. You can get better performance by not spending money an egpu adapter and just getting a desktop. The nuc wouldn't be used so then just sell that and put that towards the desktop for better results. You can even make a small mitx pc with a full size gpu. The smallest and best value cases I know of are the rvz02, ml08, or node 202 which use stx psus and need low profile or aio cpu coolers. But personally I'd go a bit bigger for a lower cost normal air cooler and atx psu.

 

[Shyam_7]

Razer Core Runs Via Thunderbolt so do I control my GPU Via thunderbolt or by software if that is yes I will buy it.

 

[k1114]

Tb is a port, that doesn't make sense. Any egpu runs off an external port. The e in egpu does stand for external. It's not different than plugging it in pcie as any egpu has to run off of a port that uses pcie protocols.