I am quite convinced Apple would have loved to throw in a Radeon GPU in their mac pro, but the limiting factor is the drivers themselves.
You can effectively use eGPU docks for other PCIe devices, like 10GBe cards or NVMe enclosures. Its a waste of space though.
FWIW, I have a razer chroma X and I cant even fit modern GPUs into it anyway.
Support has always been somewhere in between the hacking required to get a hackintosh to work and the “it just works” of native Mac stuff. Usually just requires a specific sequence of keyboard presses, clicks, or events to get it working
Nowadays, I'm only using it for my linux based desktop and I'm thinking of getting rid of the egpu enclosure.
the support eventually improved and was dropped with apple silicon.
On Macs at least, Thunderbolt is extremely dependable. I don’t have as much experience with it on other platforms, but I’ve never personally experienced a problem using external SSDs on my Intel NUC with TB3 support.
You spend $150+GPU+PSU cost, tether your laptop to a wall outlet, and add size and weight to your “portable” kit.
That doesn’t compete all that well with just buying a higher end laptop or waiting a few years to buy the next generation of laptop. If you’re willing to go through all that expense and compromise of portability you’re probably willing to have a separate desktop system and reap the benefits of having a second more fully modular system.
It reminds me of that Voyager III concept car where you could detach a small car from the rear minivan section. Cool idea for an auto show, but why not just own a second vehicle?
anyone who uses a 2nd monitor is also “tethering” themselves to a desk, not sure that is a strong argument.
Futher, cpu speed increases have kind of plateaued, while GPUs have not.
Finally, most laptops max out around ~150-200watts of available power. While that $3000 Alienware laptop may have a 4080, its not a real desktop gpu, which in an egpu enclosure can pull 450 watts.
Finally, a goid egpu box is also a dock, one cable into the laptop, plug and go.
Update (I can't reply to the reply because of HN's "posting too fast" bullshit): Thanks for the reply. I thought a TB port would have to be one of the modules, and none is listed. But I guess TB ports are built-in, based on this: https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptops-are-now-thunderbol...
Framework laptops with 11th gen Intel boards seem to unofficially support it, and 12th-gen and beyond boards are officially thunderbolt certified. This applies to all four ports on the Framework 13.
Source: https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptops-are-now-thunderbol...
If you're seeing something otherwise let me know, though!
https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1225cru/how_d...
But, the takeaway is, you wouldn't see a "thunderbolt" port separate from a USB-C port; the physical interface doesn't differ, just how the data is marshalled along the wire.
A case might be nice if you prefer not to have a bare GPU on your desktop and if you want to slow down the dust buildup. SFX power supply units appear to run you about $100 for something like 650W. The power delivery is limited to 60W (in terms of how much power it'll deliver to charge a laptop), which is sufficient for many laptops but probably not all of them (I think the last generation of Intel MacBook Pros might want more than 60W).
