Clik here to view.
It’s been a year and a half since I wrote my article on building a hassle-free Thunderbolt 2 eGPU for my late-2013 15” Macbook Pro. In all this time—with the caveat that I was exclusively using an external monitor through Bootcamp—I’ve had essentially zero issues with the setup. Booting would occasionally require one or two attempts to hear the Mac chime, but once you were in, performance was flawless. The GTX 1050 Ti was quite an excellent little card.
However, my power requirements recently changed. When the Oculus Rift went on sale for $350, I just couldn’t resist picking one up. VR was new to me and I wasn’t sure if this was something that would stick, but my first experience with Beat Saber and The Climb left me in awe. This was, very clearly, a new category of human experience that was being offered for just a few hundred bucks! Unfortunately, latecy was now an issue with some of the higher-caliber games such as Batman: Arkham VR, and 60–90fps was essentially a hard requirement for VR immersion. Together with the fact that many newer titles were starting to see poor performance even at lower settings and resolutions, I decided to explore upgrade options.
Until recently, I had my eye on the single-fan EVGA GTX 1060 SC to eventually replace my 1050 Ti, since the dimensions were very similar. But in doing this round of research, I was surprised to discover that Gigabyte offered an actual, full-fledged GTX 1080 in almost the same form factor! Though slightly too tall to fit, the card was just the right length for my AKiTiO case, meaning that I could simply take the top off and pop it in without having to do any metal-bending.
Continue Reading...