Morv

This is bad. You're mixing different power sources. You would usually create a barrel plug, for example with this http://www.ebay.com/itm/1pc-5-5x2-5mm-2-5mm-CCTV-DC-Power-Male-Plug-Free-Solder-Terminal-Screw-Connector-/321901337464?hash=item4af2d09b78:g:DeYAAOSwYHxWKeLj (no soldering required, just stripping some cables and fixing them in that block), and power the Akitio with your 400W PSU too. The GTX 980 deal is fine I guess. The GTX 980 will be limited earlier by the TB1 bandwidth but overall you'll have way better performance. Also your CPU is not that bad, it's just "bad" if comparing it to current desktop Intel CPUs because especially the Sandy Bridge mobile i7 didn't have that high clocks even with turbo. And yes, there are only mobile CPUs built into the Mac Minis ;-) You've got one of the last real good ones, current Minis and the models succeeding yours only offer dual-core low voltage mobile CPUs... Anyway, the performance for The Division is ok now, it's actually pretty much the same with a GTX 970 but higher settings. The Division is also known to be relying on a good GPU rather than a good CPU.

Nice to know ;-) Have fun with your eGPU.

You're having two limitations. First one is the rather old mobile i7 quadcore. If you're comparing this to a desktop i5 or i7 you're losing, just by clocks of the CPUs and the lower performance of the mobile CPU itself. Second is the TB1 connection. Yes, there might be a lot of performance going lost, check https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/21.html. TB1 equals a x2 2.0 PCIe connection or x4 1.1 which is the first, gray bar in the diagrams. Considering you're playing at 1080p resolution you're having "only" 3/4 of the desktop. Now combine CPU and GPU and you may land at where you are. Still I think the performance is a bit too low. At least medium settings should be working. Are you having such performance problems with other recent titles? How are you powering the Akitio? You may mod the BIOS but the GTX 960 are pretty good overclockable by themselves, mainly the memory. Try MSI Afterburner before flashing. The memory of the GTX 960 I had could take up to additional ~400 MHz which gave quite some worthy FPS.

Ye @cogliostro, no one's talking about the powering or the barrel plug. I'll repeat myself but AMD cards are not stable together with the Akitio, that's why you should test a Nvidia card and see if your problems persist..

So, are you having the same problems with either GTX 480 or GTX 970? I had a GTX 480 in use for some months with the Akitio and then switched to the GTX 970, both work fine.

@Dschijn What I wrote was not supposed to imply that @cogliostro is using a powered riser but the issues are the same, driver's crashing due to PCIe link instability. @cogliostro Like I wrote get a Nvidia card, at least for testing purposes. If you're still having the same issues you're having different problems and you can send it back, you're from Germany, so you've got 14 days to do so. AMD cards are simply known to not work with the Akitio Thunder2. How you'd come to thinking I was advising you to use the Akitio PSU is a mystery to me though, I'm not even mentioning PSUs...

Ye, sounds like the issues I, and many others, had when using a powered riser with the Akitio. Getting rid of the riser solved that issue for Nvidia users. AMD cards though simply don't work reliable with the Akitio Thunder2, not even when put directly in the Akitio. If you want to have a stable system, get a Nvidia card or another Thunderbolt Adapter. @goalque might tell you more about the AMD issues, he tested them.

R9 390x and Akitio Thunder 2. There's your problem. Akitio Thunder2 doesn't work too well with AMD cards and the crashing is a common issue. Stick with Nvidia cards if you want to stick with the Akitio Thunder2. But just to be sure it's not you who is the issue: How are you powering the whole thing? ATX PSU with enough wattage? Barrel mod for the Akitio? Is it crashing in idle on desktop or under load (only)?

I'd buy this just for the sake of only having to put one cable into my Macbook and having nothing else laying openly outside. I now have to put 2 USB 3 cables(USB 3.0 HDD on the left port, USB 3.0 hub on the right port) and the Thunderbolt cable into my Macbook every time I take my Macbook with me. Currently it's not happening that often but will again soon. Further my Akitio case isn't modded so I can't close it because the graphics card would get too hot. The cables of my Dell DA-2 are also not covered up by some shrink tube or anything. If I wanted to achieve the one-cable-only solution without Razer Core or whatever will pop up in the near future, I'd have to buy a Thunderbolt 2 dock which would cost another 200€ and would also work but hey...it's another brick laying around on my table and I don't like that. I'm not in a hurry though, everything's working and that's the important thing. I'll just wait what Akitio comes up with, if they finally will some time.

http://techreport.com/news/29858/rumor-razer-core-graphics-dock-will-cost-500-and-ship-in-april Razer Core about to cost 500$. Akitio is still quiet although they had mentioned something to appear in mid February :<

If you've already got the Macbook simply try it. If you can enable the iGPU under Windows then you should be good to go for a Nvidia eGPU + Optimus for usage on the internal display. No need to already have the eGPU at this point.

You still have a huge performance boost if you run Parallels on the external display so that it's accelerated by the eGPU, I tested this out of curiosity some months ago -> https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/8664-parallels-desktop-uses-limited-egpu/

Also take note that you can not close the enclosure of the Akitio with that specific GTX 960, it's too tall. I had that model before buying a GTX 970.

@Dschijn I think you didn't understand him. He wants to use the Thunderbolt connection as an input so the eGPU would connect directly to the internal display. I don't know what kind of miracles he's thinking about but that's what Optimus is doing...

@davide445 Comparing the two shown devices you should've noticed that the one that you showed isn't looking the same as the one in the latest video. If it's really the Thunder3 shown in the video I'd be disappointed. I thought about an enhanced device similar to the ones Razer and Asus are going to launch but the one in the video would most likely be a simple upgrade to TB3 and a color change. Especially as Akitio was asking us what we'd like to see in the next product. Still, maybe they're going to launch a TB3 Thunder Box for simple PCIe expansions and a dedicated eGPU Thunder box. That'd be nice. Waiting for the release it is, I guess.

@code9523: It would be a great eGPU solution crippled from x4 3.0 to x1 2.0 as your only way of connecting is either ExpressCard or mPCIe. I don't think it's worth the effort but that's your decision. Taking into account that it's not sure if it's even possible to create an adapter.

Can you just switch those 2 cables please? Put the mini-DisplayPort in the second lower port and the Thunderbolt cable in the first upper port. Test again and report please.

That white cable is a mini-DisplayPort cable and not a Thunderbolt cable. The black cable is a Thunderbolt cable but it should be put in the first Thunderbolt port where the white cable is put in if you ask me. First port = connection to a device(=Mac Mini in your case), second port = daisy chain.

That's not the successor of the Akitio Thunder2 PCIe Box, that thing still has to be released. This thing is only for HDD/SSD usage as you named it by RAID storage enclosure. So your further thoughts are irrelevant. Wait for the proper Thunder3 PCIe Box or whatever they're going to name it.

I don't see how a Nvidia dGPU is supposed to be necessary for switchable eGPU graphics. They've got nothing to do with each other. The activated Intel iGPU is important. Therefore if one is solely interested in having a eGPU-at-home-able light but still powerful notebook he'd search for a notebook with Intel i7 CPU and no discrete graphics at all. Besides that, Nvidia has implemented beta support for upcoming Thunderbolt 3 eGPUs " Gaming TechnologyBeta support on GeForce GTX GPUs for external graphics over Thunderbolt 3 " in their latest driver version 361.75 WHQL.

You have to disable System Integration Protection (SIP). Simply do what is written in the second line. Boot into recovery mode, open a terminal and run "csrutil disable". Needs to stay disabled after the installation, too.

You can use this App -> https://github.com/Eun/DisableMonitor Was using this already some time ago. Besides disabling displays it also allows you to change the displays resolution, all for free

No, most probably not. The guy is telling at about 3:10 that the enclosure is using 2 cables and you can choose how many lanes are being used by the eGPU, x2 with 1 connection or x4 with 2 connections. It's a bit strange because 1x TB3 is already x4 3.0 but maybe they need further stuff for USB, ethernet, etc.? Razer doesn't seem to need multiple cables so I'm also quite a bit confused about it. Apart from this, I honestly hope Akitio will bring up something for us, too. Simply because they were somewhat cooperative and nice to us, giving information, reducing price for this forum etc., in a time where eGPU was not an official thing and kind of suppressed by Intel. If the feature set of an Akitio enclosure would be about the same as the Razer one I'd rather buy that than something made by any other company just to say "Thank you".

The only interesting part he's saying is that the notebook is a modified Asus Zenbook of the UX series and it's got an i7 6700HQ instead of the usual U-CPUs put in the Zenbooks. The rest of what he's saying is the usual stuff. Usual GPU you can put in there, PSU inside, blablabla. If that notebook would make it to production it would give a perfect eGPU notebook. You'd still have a small device but a powerful CPU and battery time would still be acceptable I guess.

Yup, and it also provides 4 USB 3 and an ethernet port, which is even better because you then really only need to plug the Thunderbolt cable into the device. Unlike now where I have to plug in the Thunderbolt cable, my USB HDD and my USB 3 hub each in one of the 2 USB 3 ports provided by the Macbook which can get kind of annoying. We're awaiting great times regarding eGPU I guess