salut

This thing is freaking me out! This is what sounds I hear when: 1. I plug in the PSU (MacBook turned off): I hear a high frequent noise coming from Akitios board. 2. I turn on the MacBook: The high frequent noise shortly crashes an disappears and then a sound at the same very high frequency begins at a certain pitch and rises as if water was boiling inside. This goes on for half a minute and then it seems to stay at one frequency. 3. I run a demanding application (BF3 or Furmark): The lower buzzing sound starts an can be heard in the PSU as well as in the Akitio.

Ok thank you for the information. This means now with your ATX PSU you have no more problems? My concern is that I hear two different sounds. One high frequent is always there as soon as the PSU is plugged and the second buzzing sound is only when making stress test on fur mark. Do you think that both would vanish with a stronger PSU? Another guess would be that it need to solder the missing capacitors pointed out in the 75W-guide. Did you solder them? Thank you again for your help!

Hi people! I just wanted to share my gGPU setup with you and talk about the benefits and problems. I bought the Akitio along with a passive Palit GTX 750 TI because I didn't want my gGPU to make any noise nor to need any extra power supply. The Maxwell GTX 750 ti does all that since it only draws 60W and like this, I just needed to apply the guide (here) to pass up to 75 W through the PCIe port so that I could make the most compact setup possible (with a passive GPU). I even got to make it work under OS X and Windows stable, although on Windows I didn't activate optimus with the internal screen of my 13" rMBPr Late 2013. The setup works very stable in idle and whenever I really push it hard, I just put a little 6cm NB-Fan in Front of the GPU which it cools down to less than 60 degrees on 100 % load without any noise. My only problem now is, that there shouldn't be any noise, but yesterday the Akitio and its PSU startet to make a buzzing noise at full load which I am not sure if it is coming from the coils of the PSU or the Enclosure itself. Anyway my main problem is now that I then found that the Akitio makes a subtle but perceivable very high frequent noise as soon as the PSU is plugged (Akitio not activated) Now my question is, could someone who ownes a Akitio check, if you can hear this noise on any Akitio or if it is just mine that has a problem. Thank you very much in advance! Regards, salut

Hi Guys! After long time reading here in the forum I have finally bought my Akitio Thunder2 and I did even manage to solder the cables on the board so I can now supply up to 75 W to my Card. My question now is: Is it normal, that the fan from the enclosure is always on when the Akitio is plugged to ist PSU but NOT active (blue LEDs are OFF). I find this strange and wanted to know if someone could test that on its Akitio, since I believe most People don't even use that fan and therefore this never mattered in this forum. Thank you very much in advance for your help! Regards, salut

Sorry Tech Inferno Fan for my slow comprehension, but I what is the difference between the "slot" and "PCIe"? Which of the two Mods for the Akitio is easyer and more certain to work? Thank you in advance!

OK, my initial choice was the GTX 750 ti, but how would I make it work with the Akitio for example, since the 750 ti does not have a 6 pin power connector to my knowledge? Because from what I understand, the Mod allows me to supply 25 W through the PCIe port and another 100 W through a 6 pin power connector. I that correct or did I misunderstand something? So how would you power supply the GTX 750 ti? Regards, salut

Hi Guys! I'm still trying to find a eGPU solution to enhance the graphics power of my rMBP (Late 2013, 13", i5 2,4 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB). The Akitio Thunder2 is still the cheapest thunderbolt enclosure but it's problem is the power consumption limit of 25 Watts. Since I want a compact solution without a external PSU, I have searched for a GPU with less than 25 W of TDP, an I found the GT 730. My question now is, does anyone know, if the GT 730 2GB DDR5 would correctly work (CUDA, OpenCL, etc.) under OS X? What would I need to do besides installing the Web Drivers, or is it even supported by the Nvidia web drivers? Thank you very much in advance! Regard, salut

Ok, let us know how it came out!

From what I read in the Forum, the Akitio doesn't need it's own PSU when driven with the powered riser. So if your setup works with the riser and without Akitio's PSU that would be a sign for the riser working properly I think. Did you check that?

Ok, I'm a little confused. Above you said, the GTX 750 TI is not as good as the GTX 760. do you mean, it is better in terms of power efficiency or in computing performance? I don't really need the best card of all but one so that I can properly edit on FCP X and DaVinci with effects and so on.

Thank you! That's a good point if the GTX 750 causes more problems. Do you mean in terms of drivers and CUDA and so on? I just can't spend to much money and at the same time I want a rather stable system, so I thought since the GTX 760 ist natively supported (is that even true?) I thought it would be the best choice. Do you know any other alternative which would be a better "bang-for-the-buck"? P.S.: Does anyone know why in the "Buyer's Guide December 2014" from tonymacx86 under "native GPUs" you only find the GT 740 and the GTX 760, but in November there was also the GTX 770? Does it mean the GTX 770 is not more natively supported?

Hi Guys! I'm new to this forum and very interested in building my own eGPU for my Macbook Pro Retina (13 inch, Late 2013, 8 GB RAM, i5 2.4 GHz, 256 GB SSD). From what I read here in this forum, the most affordable solution is by using the Akitio Thunder2 PCIe enclosure, and it seems to work rather well. I also got a good insight in the different issues you have to face, but some questions did still remain unanswered. I want to use the eGPU predominantly for video editing with FCP X or Davinci Resolve. Which Card? How is the compability of the different Cards under OS X? I see many people here use the Akitio with the GTX 970 which is as far as I know not officially supported OS X. How risky is it then to buy a card that is not officially supported, and can you even make every thing work like OpenCL, CUDA and thing like that? How big is the actual performance gain when using a more powerful card like the GTX 760 compared to the GTC 750 TI, since the bottleneck is the Thunderbolt connection which only makes 20 GB/s? Do you think the GTX 750 TI or GTX 760 would be a good choice? What card would you suggest for my editing purposes? Power Supply: The last big question is the power supply in the Akitio: Officially it is meant to deliver a max. power of 25W to the PCIe port, but it seems that it can drive a GTX 750 ti without Riser. Does anybody know if this is stable or which damage could exactly be caused? I'm not an electrician, but if it can deliver the power, what could happen to it? Then, if you use a card like the GTX 760, which has it's own 8pin (or 6pin?) power supply, has anyone measured how much it still draws at max. from the PCIe slot, or does anyone know any limit for sure? Because, in theory you wouldn't need a PCIe-Riser neither, an you could plug the card directly into the PCIe slot. Thank you very much in advance!

Hi Guys! I'm new to this forum and very interested in building my own eGPU for my Macbook Pro Retina (13 inch, Late 2013, 8 GB RAM, i5 2.4 GHz, 256 GB SSD). From what I read here in this forum, the most affordable solution is by using the Akitio Thunder2 PCIe enclosure, and it seems to work rather well. I also got a good insight in the different issues you have to face, but some questions did still remain unanswered. I want to use the eGPU predominantly for video editing with FCP X or Davinci Resolve. Which Card? How is the compability of the different Cards under OS X? I see many people here use the Akitio with the GTX 970 which is as far as I know not officially supported OS X. How risky is it then to buy a card that is not officially supported, and can you even make every thing work like OpenCL, CUDA and thing like that? How big is the actual performance gain when using a more powerful card like the GTX 760 compared to the GTC 750 TI, since the bottleneck is the Thunderbolt connection which only makes 20 GB/s? Do you think the GTX 750 TI or GTX 760 would be a good choice? What card would you suggest for my editing purposes? Power Supply: The last big question is the power supply in the Akitio: Officially it is meant to deliver a max. power of 25W to the PCIe port, but it seems that it can drive a GTX 750 ti without Riser. Does anybody know if this is stable or which damage could exactly be caused? I'm not an electrician, but if it can deliver the power, what could happen to it? Then, if you use a card like the GTX 760, which has it's own 8pin (or 6pin?) power supply, has anyone measured how much it still draws at max. from the PCIe slot, or does anyone know any limit for sure? Because, in theory you wouldn't need a PCIe-Riser neither, an you could plug the card directly into the PCIe slot. Thank you very much in advance!

Hi John! I'm new here and I am also wondering if the GTX 750 ti can driven without a powered PCIe-Riser. From what I heard of being concerns, there is at first the problem of the GPU-Card getting hot an melting cables inside the case or something else, an the second is, that it draws to much power from the board so it can be damaged. Can you tell us about your experiences? Did you experience any performance drops while rendering for a longer time, or does it even smell when the card is at max. power? How hot does it get? Thank you in advance for your help!