The best graphics cards for an external GPU enclosure

Yokozuna , 8 months ago

So I really prefer horizontal mother board cases like the one in the picture, anyone know of some nice ones? It’s about time I got a new one.

Cort , 8 months ago

Cooler master haf xb

Diy PC cuboid g - I have this one and love it. I just wish it had room for full ATX mobo.

Fractal node 605

forum.level1techs.com/t/…/79101

mtchristo , 8 months ago

Shame they cost as much as the mid-range cards themselves. A Chinese knock off would be welcome

helenslunch , 8 months ago

Can someone explain why you would use something like this?

Presumably it’s because you don’t have a desktop, but wouldn’t virtually any desktop-class card be heavily bottlenecked by a mobile CPU?

DerisionConsulting , 8 months ago

Sometimes you can get laptops with decent CPUs, but they only have onboard graphics
Sometimes you buy a system that physically can’t house the GPU you want, but the board/PSU is proprietary, so you can’t just change the tower/case.
Sometimes there are GPU heavy tasks that don’t really rely on CPU that much, and you are using a laptop.

But the vast majority of the time, sticking a new card in your desktop is the way to go.

Pyr_Pressure , 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

What about for the purposes of heat?

Wouldn’t it be beneficial to keep heavy duty gpus out of your PC just to keep the heat away from your other components?

DerisionConsulting , 8 months ago

Case design has come a long way, and I personally haven’t had an issue with case-temp since overclocking things in the early 2000’s,

But, if the desktop was built in a thin mini-ITX case, I could see case-temp being an issue, but I think you would most likely also being running into “can’t physically fit into the system” issue.

ultratiem , 8 months ago

Case design has come a long way

LOL, you can’t be serious. PC case design has largely been unchanged for the past 25 years! Same industrial metal cases. Giant ass cases because x64 like heat and power. Fat cables.

I have an old NAS from 2012 and it’s about as remarkably boring as a case from 2022.

All they did was add grills and screw holes to mount giant ass fans and a coolant block. The entire PC industry largely remains unchanged.

ultratiem , 8 months ago

The whole point of this is to not have to buy a beefy notebook. You could connect a base anything and game. Most games bottleneck around the GPU, not CPU. In fact, most OSes leverage the GPU even for basic UI and desktop drawing.

And as others have said, it keeps the heat down so fans often don’t have to spin up much.

It’s a middle ground.

baconisaveg , 8 months ago

Marketing it to the gaming segment sells more units, but realistically these are great for full GPU loads like rendering or machine learning.

alessandro OP , 8 months ago

Laptops, or if you have multiple mid-range PC across the house (media center in living room, study PC in your room or working PC in your studio for convert video/3d render): you can move your portable GPU without reassembly.

Nowadays GPU are also kind of mobile AI, so you’re not just moving gaming graphics but also a little offline chat/drawGPT, video converter etc.

helenslunch , 8 months ago

Hmm, that’s a good reason except I’ve only ever seen these marketed at gamers…

ultratiem , 8 months ago

They became super popular with Apple fanboys because before they made the transition to Apple Silicon, they were effectively giant, expensive paper weights. In fact, the onboard Intel Iris GPU couldn’t even draw Launchpad’s animations without stutter when connected to a 4K display. This was a $2k machine with 1% GPU power. Literally. I think they were on par with Chrome Books.

The saving grace was the connectivity speed. Thunderbolt 3. Which meant you could eke out 60% of the card you’re using provided it was faster than the lane could handle.

The article is just ad bait, because it’s a pretty simple graph to calculate and graphic card makers have the industry (as is much of every sector) so price fixed that there are no “secret” finds anymore.