MVC

Yes, and the spots for C3 and C4 are on the board already. Save yourself $100 and make the mod yourself. What i would really like to know is what all the empty spots on the PCIE board are for. Two giant caps C12 and C13, a coil, some buck controllers, and a large power plug, all laid out but left off.

I soldered wires right to the PCB so I could connect a PSU right to the PCIE power lines going into GPU. I have been unable to tell a difference, certainly no night& day change.

How are you triggering PSU? Paperclip or switch? Did you mod Yosemite drivers? In Windows can you look under Display Adapters and see if it shows the eGPU?

So, both you and garytyler have same 2013 rMBP with 750m? And both at least occasionally get external output via ports on eGPU? That is better results than the 3 TB2 Macs I have for testing. I guess I am only really testing DP output...are you on a different port? 980 eGPU flash is a ways off. We are just finishing the cMP GTX980 EFI and sending out 2nd set of them. The eGPU version will be some time later. And I'm still hoping to improve the ones I have done.

Yeah, I have to admit that I don't fully understand how and why my mod works. There is a missing component that is hidden. Also, I have found in 10.10.1 it sometimes results in mouse cursor vanishing on left half of screen, but only at 60Hz.

w4vz, the CUDA drivers that load automatically are no good for Maxwell (6.5.36) But if you go right to CUDA archives, you can get 6.5.37 that DO work with 970.

I have to say that the software on this board stinks. Just wrote a long, technical post and the whole thing vanished when I hit "post".

Maybe Nestor should get in touch. Or maybe it's the Iris Pro causing issues. I have 3 GPUs running with my 2014 Mini. 2 of them have EFI and 1 is self init. I'll try regular PC cards tomorrow.

Got this pm: Hi MVC, I know I've made a lot of mess. Sorry...but I just want to fix my eGPU. I'll try to be methodical as you suggest. 1. Is it possible to install a GIGABYTE GTX 970 on a MacBook Pro late 2013? 2. This graphic card is supported by Sonnet Echo Express SE II? 3. If yes, can you kindly describe the correct way to install my GPU? I hope you would help me. Thank you. Gianni" Please try reading forum posts. Everything you need is here.

Yeah, nobody calls it that. "rMBP" if you want anyone to know what you are talking about. I have a rMBP 15" 2012 and it has had no issues with multiple Titans. Will try with my TB2 devices. If you actually got output on HDMI from the eGPU, good for you, and great news as most can't do that. I never tried past 3 boots so maybe I will try 4-5 and see if that does it. In all this I don't see how you are powering the Titans. Both PSU and how you trigger it is important.

You need to use science to your advantage. First and foremost, details. Does MBPr = rMBP? Never seen it that way before. 15"? Did you do all the kext mods? When it does work, does it work perfectly? How do the Titans show up in System Profiler? How are you powering them...etc, etc. When you say "external output, period" what do you mean? From rMBP or are you connecting an external display? Or do you mean, no output at all from rMBP?

For most PSUs, if the fan is spinning, it is on. So turn on switch and then connect paperclip to those pins. Absolutely CRITICAL that you connect right pins. Usually green and black I think. But seriously, make sure you are 100% certain, shorting wrong two pins could be bad.

No, it isn't. Please, PLEASE do some more reading before going any further. That is up there as #1 newbie "I didn't want to read too much" mistake. So much easier to do research then ask questions that have been answered 100 times before.

How are you triggering PSU? Please note that as tedious as typing is, when you write "I tried every combo of booting it up. " we don't actually know what it means. But identical performance in both OS makes me think you didn't trigger PSU. 2nd guess is tough, you don't mention if you have an external display hooked up and if not, what exactly does "it didn't work" mean? Computer doesn't boot at all? Computer boots but there is nothing in System Profiler/Device Manager about eGPU? Computer boots but there is nothing in System Profiler under TB? We need info to help.

Ok, time to put down the shotgun and be methodical. At the very least you should be able to see the GPU in System Profiler. Later today I am going to put up a link for modded kexts. They will be for 10.10.1 and latest Web Driver ONLY. I think it is likely that if someone can miss the note about powering the PSU then they might have buggered the kext mods. If newbies all used same modded kexts we could rule out that as an error point. I have 2 folders on my desktop. One is called "virgin" and one is called "eGPU modded" I start with a fully updated system with web drivers running then I drag the 3 kexts from S/L/E to both folders. This makes copies in both folders. Note that by so doing I have changed their ownership. Next I do the mods to the ones in modded folder. I drag them to kextdrop and install them. Then I run a "repair permissions." You will see the parts of the kexts get their permissions reset to being owned by system. Next I verify that my boot args are right. In terminal I run "nvram -p". A bunch of text shows up, boot args are in there. Make sure that the devmode and NVIDIA driver both appear. If they do, shutdown and connect eGPU. It is absolutely 1000% CRUCIAL that you verify that PSU for eGPU is on. Turning on switch is not enough. They don't "sense" that power is needed. Either PLEX switch or paperclip. Don't connect external monitor yet. Just boot using standard display connection. If you have done everything right it will appear in System Profiler. If rom revision says "Preset 1.0.0" they you probably aren't using web drivers. If it says "VBIOS 80.xx...." Then you are. For most TB2 macs you will not get display output from an NVIDIA card. You will be able to run CUDA apps like Octane and Resolve. Also OpenCL. If you see "NVIDIA chip model" then you have buggered it up somewhere. Note that if you re-install the web driver at any point it will overwrite the Nvdastartup kext. No problem, just drag the modded one from folder on desktop in kextdrop and install, then repair permissions. If everything gets messed up, no need for complete reinstall of OS. Just drag the virgin kexts into kextdrop and repair perms and reboot. Will get you back to square one. Once I get the modded kexts up and people follow instructions EXACTLY we will see greater successes. Googling stuff and running oddball fixes from the web will just make a mess of things.

What is "Graphics enabler" doing in there? That is hackintosh tech and isn't going to help you. You can't shotgun this, it just has to be done right once. And what is this about: ": kext-dev-mode allowing invalid signature -67030 0xFFFFFFFFFFFEFA2A for kext "/System/Library/Extensions/NVDAGM100HalWeb.kext" Did you modify the drivers more than the guide? No reason for that kext to have a bad signature.

I agree that the Title should include Nvidia and in fact someone has already fixed it. HOWEVER.....as far as "false assumptions" go, toss in these: "according to my information, 2014 Mac mini only allows one Nvidia, and not able to detect an external monitor" Who else has tried? I never saw any posts other than mine, though I haven't looked in awhile. 2014 Mini can see 2 or 3 Nvidia at least. I tried 3 and they all showed up, even when not using an EFI. The external monitor part is right, for OS X, but rest is poppycock. "The number of AMD cards that Mac can support is more likely greater than number of Nvidia cards" I see no reason to believe this, whatsoever. Any evidence? Links? I've got 13 Akitio boxes here but don't have 13 power supplies. "By the way, the three previous Mac Pro generations have been with AMD GPU." Mac Pro 4,1 shipped with GT120 as standard card, Nvidia. Apple later sold a Quadro 4000 for Mac, also from Nvidia. (they sold on Apple.com) My hope was to gather actual facts here. I will try harder to include only facts that I have seen myself, and not post things "I have been told" or "according to my information" if others will. My goal with this thread was to find which TB2 Macs can output to external display on Nvidia cards. I have tried with 2014 Mini, 2014 rMBP (iGPU only) and 2013 nMP. All 3 have had this issue. I think it is rather important to save some folks a lot of frustration and bother. Would also be nice to figure out exactly what changed that made these TB2 Macs harder to deal with. We can get the info by comparing facts.

Hmm, whilst testing EFIs for Mac Edition GTX980 I had one that actually worked on 2014 Mini for boot screens and display. Now I need to dig through my old roms and see if I can find it. Would be first nMP with working 980 if it works. And what's that in the box over there? Oh yeah, a Titan-Z, maybe I'll try writing one for that.....

Excellent, so we DO have a TB2 Mac with display output in OS X. And the winner is a 2014 MBP (non-retina?) I have tested on a 2014 rMBP and it had the "no display in OS X" issue so this may be narrowing things down. Does yours have dGPU or just iGPU?

Wow, so a 2014 MBA is TB1? AT this point I wonder what the other 2 @ TB2 Macs with TB2 were that got display output, as at this time it is appearing that TB2 killed eGPU display output in OS X. Will be very important thing to clarify. johndshea, can you verify that your machine is TB1?

Yes, the Nvidia drivers are only REQUIRED for Maxwell cards and Titan Black and 780Ti. All the rest of previous Nvidia cards have drivers in OS and don't REQUIRE web drivers, per se. Could you correct title of this thread? A 2011 MBA is a very different story from a 2014 one. You are one of very few people with a TB2 Mac having no trouble getting external displays running and the title of this thread is hiding the value of your success.

Hey Guys, I have read this thread through twice, is the gist of it that with 980 connected the rMBP won't boot at all to any OS? I mean from something like this: "I have this problem as well! I connect all cables and turn on the eGPU, then the Macbook5 seconds after. Sometimes it boots on the first try, but mostly it requires a few attempts. It doesn't bother me that much, cause once it is up and running it is completely stable! However, it would be nice with some sort of solution." It is unclear which OS is the problem or if you are saying that NEITHER OS will boot, but sometimes Windows will etc.

OK, I haven't had coffee yet today. To sum this up, you can get displays connected to rMBP to work, but connecting to eGPU will show eGPU in System Profiler but ANY display connected to eGPU will remain black while ANY display connected to rMBP works. Is that what you are experiencing?

http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/7910-diy-egpu-macbook-experiences-20.html Glad that fixed it.

nMP is here. As I expected, I can only enable external display via eGPU in OS X by using one of our custom eEFI roms. Regular card or card with standard Mac EFI never shows display. Either way CUDA works but Apple has done something with most TB2 Macs that disables external display via eGPU. Currently I can only enable a single display this way, but am hopeful to enable more. Next: testing with 4K at 60Hz. I have a feeling that about to discover something interesting.