ba10s118

Windows 7 or Windows 8.1? What is it?

Is the AKiTiO showing up on OSX in the device manager?

Few things I can see in your picture:

- please attach the power supply to your MB

- can you plug into the upper TB port closer to the MagSafe?!

- can test with a DVI attached display?

If you are running Windows 7, I guess you need to start reading this: http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/2123-diy-egpu-setup-1-30-a.html

Sorry - I copyed of the link you showed me, IT IS 8.1

Yes it's showing up in system information in OSX.

Just tried what you told.

plugged in power supply

Moved the TB to the other port.

Tried to attach a DVI cable.

I still get no signal to either macbook or screen.

I notice that my GPU fan is spinning very loudly, as they would do if you're in bios and had not booted yet.

hm… could please read this guide, just to make sure you are not missing anything? http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/10061-basic-egpu-hardware-guide-macs.html

Edit: Are you using a desktop PC PSU? If yes, which one? Did you apply the paper clip mod?

Checked - and should work fine.

Tried:

My system just boots to a black screen / my system hangs or BSODs while booting up to Win7

Poweroff your eGPU. Boot Win7. Standby (not hibernate) your system, poweron your eGPU, resume your system.

However did nothing, can't see the device in device manager.

yes - I've not recieved my da-2 yet, so I'm using a cx430m psu (Molex to dc barrel + paper clip trick Green/black) .

Here's a pic of the setup.http://puu.sh/i0btV/416458689d.jpg

Hi W4vz - Is there a chance you could give me a hint why my setup boots to black screen in win 8.1 bootcamp?

I've made the dc barrel to molex mod, powered the GPU via the same psu. However still I get a black screen after booting to to windows.

@ba10s118:

- start your MB

- hold the Alt Key until you reach the boot selection menu

- power on the AKiTiO (not before the boot menu)

- boot into Windows

- look into the device manager

I'm doing that now, even with a gtx 660ti , dc barrel power mod.

Still black screen on boot - on both screen and macbook

@ba10s118:

- start your MB

- hold the Alt Key until you reach the boot selection menu

- power on the AKiTiO (not before the boot menu)

- boot into Windows

- look into the device manager

I will reply back sunday - going to bed now, and wedding tomorrow

I received my Akitio, and I had a gt430 lying around, which I'm trying to run of the stock psu.

Currently I've not had any luck booting windows 8.1 up with screen on the gt430 or the macbook.

Any advice so far ?

I am using a GTX 970 directly slotted into the AKiTiO. Powering the card with the 6-Pin PCIe plugs and the AKiTiO with a barrel plug. All from one power supply. No additional (hardware) modifications necessary to make it work!

Sweet - Less I have to destroy! haha!

The tape is only necessary if you use a powered riser and the AKiTiO PSU.

So if you only use the barrel plug you don't need to tape the pins. If you would tape them, the card wouldn't work as it would miss 75W of power on the slot.

Makes more sence ! What about the pcb mod ?

Is it still required to solder cable between the mainboards and use the tape to disable some pins ? Or can you just use a DC barrel ?

It's a close call… I mean… it could fit. Because the PCIe 8-Pin is facing the backside and not the top it could really fit. But especially AMD cards need good cooling and you are forced to improve the cooling of the AKiTiO.

Yeah exactly - one big 120 mm hole in the side would be needed, with increased airflow in the back

A possibly new graphics card for the Akitio ?

The AMD Saphire R9 285 ITX!

Check out the review here!

I like that the blower design, front and back, not out to the sides.

And the way the 8pin molex is positioned.

However I am afraid that it might go to the limits of height ?

How come that my eGPU setup becomes unstable when I remove my powered riser then?

Everytime I've tried to run without it, I get random crashes and black screens both in Windows and games.

A high amount of those riser being sold on ebay, are of such a poor quality that it can effect if it will boot or not, and some might be soldered wrongly or just bad. ( So I've been told )

A simple DC barrel does the trick much cheaper.

I can and will post the pic.

I do have what I claimed to have.

So if I do....who will be the asshole then?

You're an angry little fella' aren't you ?

I just assumed if one had this big hardware-porn collection, one would automatically share the images with us

Now temper down - take a cold shower!

I have 12 Akitios

At least a dozen Macs

I have probably 100+ GPUs

Just to be "THAT kind of an asshole"

Pic or it didn't happen

So what's the purpose of an eGPU for you? In my opinion it perfectly fits the purpose: Have a gaming capable machine at home and unplug the graphics power if you need your book on the road.

eGPU purpose to me isn't to have a most compact graphics solution. That's just a nice side effect that came up with the Akitio Thunder2 or other compact cases that are delivered with Thunderbolt adapters.

I see we have different views on the topic - I travel a lot, and often live for short periods (1 month or so ) on different hospitals, for me eGPU compact enough to keep in the akitio case is the perfect solution, as it will fit perfect in a laptop bag. But If you just want a dock when you come home every day, they will it definitely fit your needs.

Here's another attempt at an all-in-one enclosure using a Sonnet Echo SEL + ATX PSU + ITX case + GTX970: eGPU externe Grafikkarte Thunderbolt 2 Gaming Mac Laptop GTX 970 in Nordrhein-Westfalen - Bergisch Gladbach | Grafikkarte gebraucht kaufen | eBay Kleinanzeigen . It's now for auction on ebay-DE currently at 223 euro.

Looks to fit well - however IMHO it Kinda looses it's purpose, as for the money spent, you could build a gamer pc in that size.

The KFA cards look the same to me... o_O

@ba10s118: That wires look so overkill

Haha Well - better safe than sorry All cables will be sleeved as well

It's longer and taller. I can see they've got this unusually high heat pipe near the PCIe power connector. This card will also be problematic in fitting the outer AKiTiO cover over it.

It's strange why GALAX made their "ITX" lower performing GTX960 bigger than their higher performing ITX GTX970.

Exactly - you would expect that a larger TDP footprint would require larger cooler and case.

On another note!

My project has started out by soldering some heavy duty cable for the 12v rail.

http://puu.sh/hUqoe/7aedbb624f.jpg

http://puu.sh/hUqqB/ad9b462e66.jpg

I will start a building thread as soon as all the parts are here.

Quote

Please read about GTX970 card sizing at [URL]http://forum.techinferno.com/enclosures-adapters/7205-us%24189-akitio-thunder2-pcie-box-16gbps-tb2.html#post98210[/URL] . The GTX960 cards using the base board. So that single-fan ITX cards you've shortlisted will fit the AKiTiO chassis but be too tall to allow the outer cover to slide over it.

Consider that link has are some other twin fan cards listed there that are shorter vertically but longer horizontally so the outer cover can be made to fit. eg: Galax, Zotac.

I understand Galax/KFA2 is one of the cheaper options in Europe.

There's been a great mini Galax GTX970 eGPU implementation by Dschijn at [URL]http://forum.techinferno.com/implementation-guides-apple/9821-2014-15-macbook-pro-iris-gtx970%4016gbps-tb2-akitio-thunder2-win8-1-%5Bdschijn-2%5D.html[/URL]

Quote

Standard Graphics Card Dimensions:
Length	179 mm
Height	111.2 mm
Width	38.6 mm

Quote

Standard Graphics Card Dimensions:
Length	193 mm
Height	124.3 mm
Width	41.5 mm

Check out the bandwidth performance hit when trying different PCIe speeds with a 7970 from anadtech.

I have ordered the parts for my own eGPU (finally) and have now read this thread and am starting to change my mind.

Currently I have a CX430M PSU on its way which I would use with a custom molex to power the AKiTiO and a 970 (1 8 pin) but it seems like this DA-2 is a better option.

If I understand correctly, all I need to do is cancel the PSU order and instead get the DA-2 and two PCIe splitters?

Would this work with the rest of my setup? It sounds like others here are ending up with a 6 pin connector for the card where mine needs an 8 pin, if that makes any difference.

You can use the DA-2, just make sure that you have some soldering skills, as you will have to add a DC barrel to the main-power source of the akitio of the DA-2. You cannot you the original power adapter ( or it would not be wise to do so, due to ground loop ), so get all the power from the same source.

Do as I'm planning to do, solder a DC barrel on the 12v rail.

Thanks for the tip guys!

I can't believe I didn't realise I only had TB1... Will that significantly bottleneck me?

The tb2 will run at 16gbps due to the way pci-e is built - which is equivalent to PCIe 2 x4 (or PCIe 3 x2) = 2GB/s , TB1 would be theoretical half that speed.

Check out anadtech's article about the PCI-e impact on the bandwidth.

Finally if we take one further step to PCIe 3 x2 (2GB/sec), we see performance continue to drop on a game-by-game basis. Crysis, Metro, Civilization V, and Battlefield 3 still hold rather steady, having lost less than 5% of their performance versus PCIe 3 x16, but DiRT 3 continues to fall, while Total War: Shogun and Portal 2 begin to buckle. At these speeds DiRT3 is only 72% of its original performance, while Shogun and Portal 2 are at 81% and 92% respectively.

As you can see - It seems like the bandwidth needed for something of the scale of a HD7970 requires at least 16Gbps, and if you decrease that by using TB1 you would theoretical see a way higher deduction in FPS.

Bare in mind - this is just the results for these games, other games showed minimum significance, but lets assume worst case scenario.

Hi CD8 - I'm faily new here aswell, but I can tell you what I've been told so far.

Consider using the case, a DC barrel, a 6pin molex to dual 6 pin molex and a DA-2 dell charger instead.

Check how I'm planning to do.

http://forum.techinferno.com/enclosures-adapters/9426-220w-dell-da-2-ac-adapter-discussion-5.html#post133386

If you use the DC-barrel - you don't need the pci-e riser, and you can use the case.

I know that the Galaxy 960 and 970 will fit inside the case, and instead you could drill some airholes.

I've bought a Atikio (Hopefully receiving it tomorrow) and I will be using a MBPr 13" 2014 with bootcamp win 8.1.

But consider if your CPU will become a bottleneck towards your gtx960, and maybe a gtx 750ti might fit it more realistically ?

EDIT ! Haha you beat me Dschijn

Yes you can combine the 3 black to one and the 3 yellow into on cable each. Just be careful! The cables can be too thin to carry all the load. I combined e.g. all 3 yellow wires into 3 wires with one solder point for all together. From that 3 wires I made 2x6-Pin & Molex & barrel plug. Same for the black wires.

Figured i would use some 2.5mm cable rated to 12v 30 A.

I want to do this to extend, but also to get an outlet for dc barrel, and that way getting an even distribution of the load to the dc barrel in the 6pin molex, (instead of ect. the main load being on pin 1 and 4). If you know what i mean

yeah.. I made a shitty drawing of my idea.

They are two 6pin pcie splitters where one has been modified on one of the splits to have a 4pin molex instead to power the akitio.

Do not solder yellow with black. Always black with black and yellow with yellow or you will create a short circuit.

Yes I know - Not a complete moron But IF I'm allowed to combine the 3 yellow and by that extend the length of the splitter ( and the same for the black ).