PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 480,dram Gaming Station Graphic Cards THUNDERBOLT EGPU BOX

I installed a Radeon 5700XT and hooked it up to a new Mac Air and a Macbook Pro via the Thunderbolt 3 port and it works fantastic gaming on both Air and Pro laptops and getting 2k at 144 FPS no lie with an external GPU it will turn most anything system into a gaming rig. The only requirement is having a Thunderbolt 3 port available. I loaded up Steam and Origins and was very happy on the playability on the Mac's. A little hot but that the external case doing it's job of heat dissipation. No issues with the Mac's or the external GPU setup. Very happy. Now have a gaming dock anywhere. It does weight a bit and about the same size as a Shuttle ITX system. Or the size of a shoe box.

For the price-conscious eGPU shopper, this may very well work out for you. For reference, I paired this up with a Framework laptop for testing, and I used Linux as the OS of choice. Initial OS issues aside, this did a decent job. With a decent (don't waste money on a high end GPU) GPU, it can easily improve or outperform the onboard graphics present on many laptops. However, don't forget its one major limitation: data throughput. The PCIe port is only 4-lane, and Thunderbolt 3 is limited to the same. Don't tout Thunderbolt 4 when it comes to this kind of usage; In reality, Thunderbolt 4 is a poor performer when it comes to eGPUs because it doesn't increase throughput and also it holds back an entire data channel for other purposes, resulting in LESS bandwidth for your eGPU. That's a Thunderbolt design standard, not a fault of this device.Just pair this chassis with a decent GPU designed around an x4 PCIe slot. Once you do that, you'll get surprisingly good performance from this little case. Also remember not to unplug it without shutting down the laptop first. eGPU hotplug is not yet reliable, and that's on Windows. It's entirely non-existent on Linux.The cable that comes with it is short (1m), but this is somewhat by requirement. If you need a longer cable, spend the money for something well-made and don't go cheap. With the bandwidth this device uses, quality cables are critical. Also, don't plan to put this chassis distant from the laptop. You won't find a cable longer than 2m. If you do, it's a scam. Look up the specs for Thunderbolt 3 if you don't want to believe my word. A 2m length cable is the longest length supported, and that is backed up by testing and design requirements. Adding extenders to break that limit will only result in problems.The chassis is solid metal, but the design has some issues. You'll need to remove one or both side plates to install your GPU (and maybe a SATA drive for the adventurous; there is no mounting bracket but there is a port). The side panels are structural for this device, but the fittings aren't that solid. Yes, that means it does warp over time. There will be gaps that form, and it's not going to keep perfect appearance for long. However, it is stable enough to work without risk of it collapsing or warping too severely on its own.People complained about the 1Gb Ethernet port being glitchy. This may have been the case on previous drivers, and I've experienced them with the same chipset on other devices. However, the network here stayed connected and perfectly reliable over testing that lasted multiple weeks. Hopefully this means that a driver update has sorted out all of the issues.Overall: Let your need be your guide on this. It's a good, solid platform, but it's not without its limitations. Simply put, you're not going to get an equivalent to a high-end gaming workstation's performance.

would power only for about 1 second and click back up and repeat, also tried powering on the unit without a gpu, same result, forced my lappy into repair mode and the psu smelled a bit off.a real shame as this would be alot of fun to mod later on, the boards got a 2nd pwm fan header and with the extra space on the top, you could fit a smaller rad into this, could mount a sata ssd too to boot as theres also a sata port.backordered up to a month, returned and will look for another option.

Works well with MacBooks and Thunderbolt3 equipped ThinkPads.Please note that your laptop MUST have 4 PCIe Gen3 attached to Thunderbolt. Lookup this info on eGPU forums before buying!Do not buy, unless your laptop is good enough.Do not buy expensive gaming GPUs for it, as the bandwidth is not good enough to power the GPUs.Works best with AMD GPUs - most systems will support them. Make sure you know what you need to do to have nVidia cards work well.I suggest AMD RX 550 - 570(or equivalent nVidia) for this box. I downgraded from RX 5700XT to RX 570 - because Thunderbolt3 is the bottleneck.

Works great for macOS and usb works. Ethernet requires a driver from the power color website.Could not for the life of me get the USB ports to show up on windows 10 though. Spent probably 20 hours on it tweaking drivers etc with no luck. Reached out to powercolor and they offered nothing besides get a replacement. Got a replacement and it also doesn’t show up.After tons of research the board inside is flashed the same as the discontinued Mantiz Venus egpu. The difference is that the MV has driver support and is flashable to newer firmware that allows use of the ports on windows. Powercolor has no support for such a thing. Also the power supply and main pcie board are literally identical to the sonnet egpu. I had both at the time to check.I am extremely bummed because I was wanted to use the SATA port and usbs for a more seamless single cable experience. Sonnets website claims that they didn’t add the USB ports because of “issues”. Maybe these are those issues.So for macOS gaming on inferior amd cards this is the box. For windows you can technically get the cards to work just not the extra ports... which was my whole point in getting this over the sonnet one.

As for gaming performance, this thing is great. You get most of the performance of whatever GPU you put in it depending on how well your laptop supports it and what sort of resolution/frame rates you are expecting. The real problem with this device is the USB ports. They are awful. Forget plugging any peripherals in. You will get massive delays and jumpiness. As for any USB audio, you will get horrible interference. If you're alright with just using this for the GPU and ethernet port, 100% recommend, otherwise, not really.

It holds a GPU and has a very nice assortment of ports on it, giving me a 1 cable solution for my stuff. I must say however, that the feature rating of 5 stars for Thickness is on point. Don't get this if you're looking for something portable.