EXTERNAL GPU ENCLOSURE REVIEW PC

Sapphire is aligned with AMD, of course, yet there's no reason why GeForces cannot be used in the GearBox. Internal limits of 266mm (l) and 125mm (h) preclude premium GPUs outfitted with monster coolers - Radeon VII, we're looking at you - or triple-slot designs, while a 300W ceiling TDP is sensible. Bear in mind you cannot just throw any graphics card you like into the GearBox.

Installation of a Sapphire Radeon RX 580 Nitro+ is a cinch, and you can expect to have a fully-operational box within five minutes of popping the cover. That horizontal lighting strip is piercingly bright, overly so in our opinion, which is made worse by the fact that it can't be manually turned off. None switch off at low loads, resulting in a steady hum when the GearBox is idling, rising to a noticeable thrum when gaming - more on that later. Incidentally, it is the same unit as present in the Razer Core v2.Īll told, there are four fans in the unit - dual 120mm Sapphire-branded spinners that are most likely used on its range of premium graphics cards, as well as a couple of 40mm fans present in the Enhance supply. What's left is the GearBox's barebones comprising an Enhance ENH-2350 500W PSU plumbed out with dual 8-pin connectors for the graphics card and the usual 24-pin and 8-pin EPS for the motherboard. Up pops the cover, while removing a further two from the rear clears the fans to enable unfettered access to the interior. Getting inside is as easy as removing eight Allen screws via a supplied key. Secondly, for those wanting gaming thrills and spills on a bigger canvas, the installed graphics card outputs to a standalone monitor via its own selection of I/O ports. Firstly, the add-in graphics can be run on the host computer's own screen via the USB-C cable. Sold as barebones units, these boxes are used in one of two ways. That's fine for a keyboard and mouse, to turn your Ultrabook or MacBook into a fully-fledged desktop, though we note rivals such as Razer offer four ports and a second Thunderbolt controller for GPU priority. There's 100W of charging capability, too, handy for reinvigorating an Ultrabook without the need for its own dedicated charger.Įxtending the usefulness, GearBox includes a Gigabit Ethernet port and dual USB 3.0. The smallest connector, USB-C, is the most important, as it ferries the 40Gbps bandwidth - four lanes of PCIe Gen3, eight lanes of DisplayPort 1.2 - meaning it's good for quickly shifting the contents of the framebuffer. Given the weight of the unit, which spirals to over 3kg with a decent graphics card in situ, the aluminium cover sensibly doubles duties as a carry handle - the intervening space between chassis and cover is just large enough to get your fingers into - and it's useful as a breathing space for the twin cooling fans located inside.Ĭonnectivity resides around back. The solitary button switches the unit on/off and activates the strip of horizontal lighting across the front. The colour-matching mesh on the GPU side offers a modicum of ventilation as well as an opaque view of the installed card. Measuring 300mm (l) x 138mm (w) x 204mm (h), Sapphire uses a single piece of anodised aluminium to surround the metal chassis. Rather, pleasing aesthetics, value for money, and ease of use are the main selling points.Īnd it's a looker. Who needs cloud rendering when you can readily access a high-end card's potential via a single cable?Įxternal GPU boxes have been done before, many times, so Sapphire isn't reinventing the wheel with its enclosure dubbed GearBox.

Perfect, you might say, for Ultrabooks, MacBooks, and NUC-style PCs. Plugged into any computer toting such a port, they promise to turbocharge gaming performance, bringing it up towards full-on desktop levels. GPUs are here to stay it is the method of pixel delivery that may change.īridging this gap between add-in card and cloud computing are external GPU boxes that connect via high-speed Thunderbolt 3 riding over USB-C. Google's Stadia promises low-latency game streaming at 4K60 HDR, while Microsoft isn't far behind with its cloud-streamed approach currently known as Project xCloud. The interesting part is the wrinkle that cloud-based rendering may have on future buying choices. Connected to the desktop computer via a discrete PCIe card or integrated into gaming laptops, the fundamental design remains the same as five years' ago. On the one hand, Nvidia, AMD and Intel are all busy designing architectures that will power the GPUs of tomorrow.

EXTERNAL GPU ENCLOSURE REVIEW PC

We're approaching an interesting time in PC graphics.

External gpu enclosure review