I bought a new Dell U2720Q monitor but the onboard graphics on my 13 inch 2013 MacBook Pro (Catalina) was not powerful enough to drive it at 3840x2160@60Hz. I had been using the Apple Thunderbolt Display prior to this and I really liked how through a single Thunderbolt cable it connected the display, ethernet, and USB devices. I didn't want to buy a new laptop as this one is still powerful enough for my needs of programming and not gaming.
As such, my parameters for an enclosure were that:
- Small form factor. A lot of enclosures such as the Sonnet Breakaway Box and Razer Core X are very large.
- This isn't for gaming so I didn't need a beefy video card or an enclosure with a really high wattage power supply.
- Thunderbolt 3. While my current laptop is Thunderbolt 2 I recognize I won't have it for more than 2-3 more years and will eventually have a Thunderbolt 3 computer.
- Ethernet and USB ports on the enclosure were a plus but not a hard requirement. The idea of having as many of my peripherals working over one cable is nice.
Given my size requirement of having a small form factor, the only choices for an enclosure I could find are the PowerColor Mini Pro, VisionTek Mini eGFX, and the Sonnet Breakaway Puck.
As far as I can tell, the PowerColor Mini and the VisionTek Mini are the same chassis as they look identical and both have 1Gbit ethernet and two USBs on the front. The board inside of the VisionTek does have dual Thunderbolt controllers so that the GPU and the peripherals aren't competing with each other.
The Sonnet Breakaway Puck was my first choice as it comes with a video card (AMD Radeon RX560) and is only about $300. Unfortunately, it was sold out when I was doing this build but as of 2020-07-25 it appears to be be back in stock
For the GPU, you just need to make sure you buy one that fits into the enclosure of your choice if you buy an enclosure that doesn't come with a GPU. The VisionTek Mini supports cards with a length up to 175mm.
Below are the parts I ended up going with:
- VisionTek Mini eGFX
- VisionTek Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB (I had a credit on Dell.com so this was basically free, could have bought something less powerful).
- Apple Thunderbolt 3 (Male) to Thunderbolt 1/2 (Female) Adapter
- Apple Thunderbolt 2 Cable
A lot of people use NVIDIA GPUs but I've read mixed reviews about using NVIDIA with macOS due to Apple not wanting to ship NVIDIA's proprietary drivers (I can't blame them). I've always been somewhat of an AMD/ATI fan so the choice was easy for me and macOS having their drivers was another plus. If you choose NVIDIA you'll have to also install their drivers.
This is where things get tricky. Apple's Thunderbolt 2 laptops don't support eGPUs out of the box. You have two choices for getting an eGPU to work: booting from a modified EFI via USB or disabling SIP and modifying system files.
Both of these options have their own drawbacks. Booting from the modified EFI isn't convenient because you need to remember to do so everytime you reboot your laptop. Disabling SIP leaves your system vulnerable to malicious binaries modifying your system files but is very convenient as it gives you a plug-and-play experience.
Below are links to both of the approaches:
- EFI: automate-eGPU EFI
- SIP-disabling: PurgeWrangler.sh
https://egpu.io is the best website I found on the matter. I especially like their user submitted list of builds so you can see what people have specifically done for your model laptop.