I’d like to put together an eGPU for my surface pro. It seems like you just buy the chassis and add a GPU. Is this true? Can you use any GPU?
I’d like to put together an eGPU for my surface pro. It seems like you just buy the chassis and add a GPU. Is this true? Can you use any GPU?
eGPUs have all but disappeared. 90% of the models available in 2019 are no longer available with no models to replace them. Even bigger companies like razer and coolermaster seemed to silently discontinue them and simply let the product webpages break down. I think power requirements of the last years of GPUs have also made them less practical and people aren’t going to pay 500€ for an enclosure when that is simply approaching the cost of the rest of the PC.
There are even fewer thunderbolt4 but thunderbolt3 has a bit of latency results in slight performance loss, so finding an old model enclosure with thunderbolt3 might be your best chance of getting it. Different storefronts sometimes still have a few in stock you can buy.
??? The success of the Mini PC formfactor has caused a big resurgence of egpu products. Now they are sold as empty pcie slots with a thunderbolt or occulink port. You provide your own GPU and power supply.
Here’s a new product from last month:
https://youtu.be/o-csSxd3TJo
Wait, what? If power requirements are going up, then I’d say that there’s more pressure for an eGPU, if anything. Laptops are limited in heat dissipation compared to desktops.
I can understand someone saying “you’re better off using a desktop for gaming with powerful GPUs, if you can deal with not moving it around”. But I wouldn’t expect that power-hungry GPUs would make internal GPUs in laptops more desirable.
kagis
This is the first hit I get for “2025 egpu”
https://rog.asus.com/articles/product-news/2025-rog-xg-mobile-leads-new-era-of-egpus-with-thunderbolt-5/
I think that there are still new ones coming out.
There are plenty of chassis available if you go looking. Some haven’t been updated to newer models but remain available.
A chassis is fairly simple - its basically a bit of mother board with pcie and a thunderbolt 3+ connection. Thunderbolt 3 remains powerful enough for most uses, and ones with dedicated PSU will work with newer cards. I think the lack of new products reflects the lack of needing to change the products at the moment.
I haven’t seen much about thunderbolt 4 reducing the overhead. It might do, but there are fundamental constraints in these devices as this is basically converting pcie to thunderbolt and transferring over a distance - thats not going to ever match a direct pcie connection into a motherboard no matter how fast Thunderbolt 4 or 5 are. Thunderbolt 3 may not be the main bottleneck.
The Razer Core X is still available for example. And there are loads of smaller companies woth offerings.
I think just the highest end cards would be out of reach for the popular existing chassis but there is not going to be much market for pairing cards costing 1000s with a laptop when you are far better getting a desktop. So there may not be the market to make lots of new thunderbolt 4 chassis with PSUs.