Sachin10

I've added a new

It's great, we are sick and tired of troubleful eGPU...

It is great news but! I never had a single problem with my eGPU setup. It works flawlessly on Windows 8.1 and OS X.

My 13" rMBP i5 2.6GHz + GTX 970 has no problems to play high demanding games like Crysis 3, BF 4, Far Cry 4 and Call of Duty Advanced Warfare on Ultra settings at 1080p with +/- 60 fps. I just need to recude the anti-aliasing. Because Apple SSD's are expensive I'm using a portable USB 3.0 drive for my Steam library. For the enclosure I've chosen the Silverstone FT03 mini but that depends on personal taste.

In general a 13" will do fine.

That is true but I'm not happy about it's performance for photo and video editing.

If anyone could help me figure out why this is happening it would be greatly appreciated

I haven't even tried to use my e-GPU in Mac OS X. But I would like to have this functionality in the future to drive a 4K display that I don't have yet (Windows: 1080p gaming & Mac: 4K productivity).

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Some general information and experience about my system. My setup works very good under Windows without any crashes yet. Sometimes I just need to force shutdown the system because Optimus isn't working (when no external screen is connected) or because there isn't anything to see on both the internal and external screen. But after one or a few reboots everything is fine again.

The 13" interal screen is small so I like to game on my TV quite often. My e-GPU and laptop are located in my home office and I have a USB and HDMI cable running through the wall from my office to my living room TV. In the living room I have an USB hub to connect a keyboard, a mouse and my Sony PS3 controller. I have slightly better FPS with an external monitor/TV and this way I can game in my living room without any noise of the e-GPU.

@Sachin10 MacBook Pro 13" Mid 2012, 2.9 GHz Dual Core i7, 16GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and a 1TB SSD

Then you should probably follow a guide to force Bootcamp in UEFI mode. You can find it somewhere on this forum but I forgot where.

So when I install Windows for an eGPU I don't need to do anything out of the ordinary because it already does it?

That might be the case. But what Apple device are you using?

Out of curiosity what does installing Windows in UEFI Mode do and why do I need to do it?

To give a very simple explanation: UEFI (2005) is a more advanced BIOS (1975). So Windows can use more advanced functionality (like Thunderbolt) when you use UEFI mode. Apple Bootcamp always uses UEFI when you install Windows on modern Mac's.

Okay, well when you finish please do post the pictures, also what power supply are you using for this?

Sure. This is my current bill of materials.

Do you have any pictures of the completed build?

Not yet because the powered riser doesn't fit inside the case so I need to order another 90° riser and a converter cable to power my case fan from the PSU (or maybe I will modify a cable for this). But my wife is complaning about the bare components in our living room so I will try to finish it soon :-) It will hopefully also reduce the coil noise a bit.

@Sachin10 Can you post some photos of your Gigabyte GTX 970 Mini-ITX card in the Akitio Dock? I am curious to see how it fits compared to a normal card like the EVGA GTX 970.

I have changed my order to an EVGA GeForce GTX 970 Superclocked (04G-P4-1972-KR) because I will mount it inside a SilverStone FT03 Mini case.

The GPU does get power but the Akitio doesn't.

You could try to order another PCIe riser because that is not normal. Does you Akitio still works with it's own power supply when you don't connect the GPU?

I have the akitio thunder 2 and the gtx 970. It worked partly with my mac mini 2011 on os x 10.10.1. I used a powered pci riser and the power supply of the akitio (it wasn't working without the akitio psu). My psu for the gpu is a fortron 650 w.

I use this setup for video editing but not without problems. I kept geting kernel panic when rendering video causing my computer to reboot. And now it seems that the gpu has died. My computer rebooted and i smelled somthing burned in the eGPU. After that the gpu couldn't start.

What did i do wrong?

Do not use the Akitio PSU together with a powered riser.

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So, should I remove the akotio PSU? If I do so the akitio won't get any power.

Than there is something wrong because the powered riser should be enough to power both the Akitio and give +/- 75 Watt to the PCIe x16 slot.

This works great for my setup.

Guess you need a molex to 3 pin fan adapter or SATA to 3 pin fan adapter.

Yes that is probably correct :-)

A SWEX for the case fan? I don't get it… I directly attached the the fan to the PSU. And the PSU is working as soon as I switch it on because I use sth like the paperclip trick.

The power plug for the case ventilator doesn't fit in the PSU. But maybe I can find another solution for that.

I am using two riser:

- a 90° PCB riser

- a flexible riser molex powered

I will also need to buy a 90° riser because the powered riser doesn't fit in my SilverStone FT03 mini case. And a SWEX to make the case fan work.

OSX or Windows?

Only tried Windows at this moment. But now I'm looking to solve the problem that no USB flash drive or USB external hard drive is working under Windows 8.1. My 0,5TB SSD is mainly for OS X so I need to move my Steam & Origin library. I'm downloading >700MB updates so I hope this will fix it.

Update: Windows is missing the driver for the USB Flash Drive. No problem for mouse, keyboard, gamepad, ... but USB Flash or USB External drives don't work anymore. Reinstalled Bootcamp drivers and update Windows but that doens't change my problem. That why I hate Microsoft so much. Things stop working for no reason...

Today my videocard finally arrived! Half an hour later I got it working on my TV. It took me 20 min. to realize that I needed the latest NVIDIA drivers (the ones indicated on the different guides don't work anymore). HDMI output to my TV works out of the box including sound but I haven't been able to use only the integrated display (only tried once).

The next steps are building my setup inside my Mini-ITX enclosure en getting Optimus working.

Gratitude to all the members of the eGPU community for helping me build such a great setup! :-)

ASUS GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini

That's a very nice little graphics card but my EVGA card is already on its way to me.

Windows 8 Bootcamp

Have you installed Windows 8 using UEFI mode? You can check it by following the steps on this website. On this forum you can find how to install using UEFI mode if that is not the case.

OcUK GeForce GTX 970 "NVIDIA 970 Cooler Edition"

It is a nice looking card but it wouldn't fit in my small case.

This is according to me the most elegant solution for my small desk in our living room so I have ordered all those components:

* Silverstone Fortress FT03-MINI (Afuture: € 111,40 + € 5,95 shipping costs - a small and beautiful aluminium mini-ITX case)

* Silverstone SFX 450W Bronze (Afuture: € 76,90 - 300W should be enough but I might build a PC with this hardware)

* EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked 04G-P4-1972-KR (Afuture: € 365,40 - blower style design so the hot air is pushed out of the case)

* Akitio Thunder 2 PCIe Box (MacWay: € 260,60 incl. shipping)

* Powered riser 16x to 16x HQ Powered (eBay evercase: £ 13,90 = € 17,60)

* Paperclip trick

* 500 GB S-ATA drive (for my Steam library)

* S-ATA to USB adapter

Total cost: € 837,85 = $ 1.038,13

It turned out quite expensive but the components are a lot cheaper for people living in the US. I changed my previous order to replace the Gigabyte GV-N970IXOC-4GD by the EVGA solution with a blower style design. Now I have to wait a week (or more) to receive everything.

Here is a good news, Gigabyte just built a Mini-ITX GTX 970 that's only 12cm wide

Gigabyte Builds First Mini-ITX GTX 970 Graphics Card

The Mini-ITX variant of a GTX 970 looks very nice so I ordered one :-) I have no idea when it will ship.

This is only the second GPU that I bought because my last computers have been a 12" PowerBook G4, 17" iMac G5, 15" MacBook Pro C2D and currently a 13" Retina MacBook Pro i5. My previous build was from 2002 and I used a NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440

Some cards are fine with the 25W from AC-adapter to the slot, some cards require the full 75W (therefore a powered riser is needed).

Thanks for the explanation.

Hi All,

I make this tutorial on how to build a Molex to Barrel, I'm not an expert but I hope it works!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4T1DADdKJI

Thanks.

Very interesting video! But why do we need one? I heard that the Akitio can be powered by a PCIe riser.