External graphics card for laptops

Using one of the best external GPUs can boost your laptop performance, regardless of if you're trying to gain some frames in Apex Legends or make your Premiere Pro renders a little faster. A good GPU enclosure goes beyond being a box for your graphics card.

Ultraportable laptops are great when you need to put together a presentation for work, crunch some numbers or binge-watch your favorite Netflix shows. But graphically taxing games and support for VR headsets are out of reach. Or are they? If you have a laptop with a Thunderbolt 3 port or one of the new Thunderbolt 4 ports , there's a good chance that you can attach an external GPU eGPU , providing all the benefits of an Nvidia or AMD graphics card, without carrying around a bulky notebook. There are even a couple of external boxes that play nice with MacBooks, so Mac lovers can also know the joys of super-high-res PC gaming. To help you find the best eGPU, we put some of the most popular models through rigorous testing.

External graphics card for laptops

External graphics processing units eGPUs sound great. You can get desktop-quality graphics on a laptop, which means you only need one computer for portability and high-level gaming. But do they stand up against internal GPUs? Is it worth dropping a few hundred bucks on a dock? How much performance can you really expect? Unfortunately, expectations and realities may differ with external GPUs. In most cases, you'll see an external GPU hooked up to a dock. Using a dock is as a simple as installing the card, installing the drivers, rebooting, and installing any custom software. Of course, your experience will vary depending on your hardware. Once you have it set up, your computer routes graphics requests to the external GPU instead of the default one supplied with your computer.

Sounds great, right? Measuring Now, the Node Titan drops that weight to 7.

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Laptops, especially gaming laptops, are a study in compromises. Smaller machines are lighter and easier to travel with, but bigger, heavier boxes offer the dedicated graphics cards necessary for high-end gaming. An external graphics card let you have your cake no lie and eat it too. An external GPU or eGPU for short is a dedicated box that combines an open PCIe slot, a desktop-style power supply, and a full-sized graphics card that plugs into your laptop. When you do, you have gaming desktop power and connectivity without sacrificing those svelte modern laptop designs. This sort of thing has been attempted before, but recently there has been a rise in these products. The high data and video bandwidth in single-cable connections like USB 3.

External graphics card for laptops

Using one of the best external GPUs can boost your laptop performance, regardless of if you're trying to gain some frames in Apex Legends or make your Premiere Pro renders a little faster. A good GPU enclosure goes beyond being a box for your graphics card. Our picks come with enough power to feed hungry graphics cards without sacrificing efficiency, and they're cool and quiet, allowing you to game or create without distractions. The base model comes packed with an internal watt power supply and can fit up to a three-slot GPU. The more expensive Chroma model comes with a beautiful RGB underglow and boosts the power supply to W. Regardless of the model you choose, all you need is a single Thunderbolt 3 cable to hook up the enclosure. You'll need to bring your own graphics card, but you can fit nearly anything inside the Razer Core X outside of the RTX and In addition to plenty of room, the power supply is more than enough to handle even the most power-hungry graphics cards. Plus, the unit comes stock with a mm fan, adding a little more cooling potential.

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A University of Massachusetts study estimates the loss at around 10 to 15 percent. All this information should give you a good idea of what you're getting if you want to invest in an external GPU. The Node Pro weighed And that's on top of the already expensive GPU to go in the dock. There are even a couple of external boxes that play nice with MacBooks, so Mac lovers can also know the joys of super-high-res PC gaming. By extension, if you're using an older eGPU with a newer laptop that only has integrated graphics, it could be time to consider upgrading your GPU. And for that price, you get a rather bare-bones system that must then be augmented with a GPU. It's difficult to say exactly how much of a boost your external GPU will give or even how easy it'll be to get everything up and running. The Number one is the additional W power supply unit for the external GPU.

Ultraportable laptops are great when you need to put together a presentation for work, crunch some numbers or binge-watch your favorite Netflix shows. But graphically taxing games and support for VR headsets are out of reach.

For moments when you need maximum power from your external GPU, you can plug it in for optimal graphical output. Slide the long button on the top right toward the back of the box, and both sides fall away, opening like some techno-fauna. By extension, if you're using an older eGPU with a newer laptop that only has integrated graphics, it could be time to consider upgrading your GPU. Mostly because laptops just aren't set up to handle that much power. Or are they? However, do note that the RTX is so powerful that it completely saturates the poor Thunderbolt 3 connection to your laptop, so it won't be able to make full use of the RTX The front, top and right black plastic sides of the ROG XG Station 2 are stamped with thick lines meant to mimic circuitry gone wild. Read More. Ports: Despite its diminutive size, the Gaming Box comes with plenty of ports. The silver chrome avian logo gleams on the top front of the device. But size isn't the only change you'll see. Here are two eGPU docks for you to consider. Bear in mind that you can use an external GPU for your desktop, but they are much more common for laptops. Still, it's about as fast as you can realistically expect an eGPU enclosure to be today, which means it'll let you play any game at any setting with ease.