2011 17" MBP HD6770M + [email protected] (AKiTiO Thunder2) + OSX10.10 [Jafang]

[Jafang 10]

Hello!

Here is my take on eGPU. Sorry if it is in the wrong section.

Big thanks to Nando4 and others for all the information on this forum, also thanks to Brian from Akitio, I also like to thank my Dog, Pink Floyd for background music and all my neighbors in Toronto who didn't call the cops while I was cutting and making all kind of noises at 3am. Cheers.

Basically:

1) I cut the front part of the inner housing of the AKiTiO Thunder2 PCIe Box.

2) attached it back to back of my video card with a plate (it already had 2 screw mounting on the card)

3) Soldered 2 wires to the +/- of the power thingy from the back of the Akitio board.

4) not done yet but planning to 3D print a cover to, well cover the exposed front part but also to hold the AC adapter.

5) waiting for a 220w 12v Dell ac adapter.

My goal was to keep it small form factor, the idea was to be able to pick it up with one hand while holding the laptop in the other hand and biting on the coffee cup and also not dealing with too many lose wires or big power supplies.

Why Nvidia Quadro FX 5800?

Well because I purchased this card back in 2009 for $4k CAD for my dual xeon workstation (it was the world first ddr3 4g ram and world fastest card, no $hit) , but than this little thing I made many years ago suddenly grow brains and before I knew what hit me, he took over my castle and replaced this card with a gaming card and called this a junk and threw it at me, after suffering for couple of years, I learned about eGPU and decided to fight back the not so little anymore booger, well the good news is the lease is over next year and I am planning to return him. he will be 18 next year,

but until then, I will use this card for my 3D modeling on Maya and I don't care if it is a grandpa video card (as my son calling it) and yes I am planning to use this on my grandpa's MacBook Pro 17" late 2011 with 16g ram and SSD. It gets the job done.

Here are some pictures, I hope I can report back once all is configured on the MBP.

Question to the Exports:

I do have a Dell 330w - 19v x 18A. Is there a way to step down from 19v to 12v on the ac adapter? this video card maximum power consumption is 185w plus 10w for the Thunder, so the 220w Dell is okay, but I am planning to put a temperature reader on the box and a extra fan perhaps, so I was wondering if I could use the 330w instead for peace of mind.

Cheers.

[Dschijn 329]

Thanks for sharing your build. I am not aware of any small transformer and I did some research because I had the same idea. You you be good to go with a Dell DA-2