News SilverStone debuts Thunderbolt external graphics card case

Using Thunderbolt this case can add desktop graphics power to a laptop.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2013/06/06/silverstone-external-graphics-card-case-deb/1

 

Funny, was only a month or 2 ago me and Si_the -Dude were discussing building a custom alienware themed case like this to go with his monster m18x (the external card would have been a titan). Then he went and sold it and ruined the chance to make it /hmph

 

Is it just the pictures or does it really look almost as big as some cases ?

 

How will it bypass the inbuilt GPU of the Laptop?

If, as I would have thought, it's via special software profiles for each game, then I can't see it going mainstream.

 

Surely it will just use the same driver laptops use now - as many currently switch between Intel and discreet GPU's...

Looks good - shame more laptops dont have thunderbolt though

 

Very interesting indeed, really looking forward to seeing how these perform.

 

looks like a great product
but i'm guessing there would be other bottle necks in a laptop (memory,cpu
so i'm guessing it would be good for someone with a descent laptop, still good though.

 

I can see a lot of potential problems, but if Thunderbolt really does become part of every laptop, this will be awesome! I can't wait to see it develop!

 

I hope this becomes mainstream, I think things like this are the future of computing. The only real drawback I see is that not enough laptops will be able to support it fully and the thing looks pretty big atm.

 

Please, oh please make this work!

 

This is a great idea. I could use my standard day to day laptop for work etc, come home of an evening plug in the thunderbolt connector and spend an evening gaming

 

Awesome to make an ordinarily dedicated GPU sociable for any system that has Thunderbolt, very awesome, this should be extremely popular & will let people do mini-ITX tiny systems with a good sound card, love it & will be right on board for SFF awesomeness, this suddenly makes it cheaper with not having to buy new GPU for every system, can imagine it making more sales for AMD & NVidia too with it opening up a bigger audience.

Bravo to Silverstone.

Would make the project I've got on pause seem extra ridiculous if I didn't make it modular so could easily just lose the top half & change the mobo to have a better CPU, so glad I went modular.

 

Can we get some more info on the SFX PSU? would be interesting to find out how much juice its got.

 

Looks like a fantastic idea in practice, but it's cost would put me off, I'm looking for a new Laptop anyway, but the cost of a new laptop that has Thunderbolt. plus this would cost more than a gaming laptop.

Sam

 

More companies should be doing this, the technology is there! Having a small laptop with integrated graphics, plugging into a 'dock' at home with an external graphics card would be ideal!

I have a HP 2740p with integrated graphics, and built an "eGPU" enclosure which plugs into the ExpressCard slot (PCIe X1..) and by installing the nvidia optimus drivers, it is now a hot swappable external graphics card that displays on the laptop screen!! Google 'eGPU' and there is a massive thread on how to build it yourself right now The main bottleneck with my system is the 'PCIe X1' speed.. Thunderbolt should at least be 4 times faster (don't quote me) and should not be much of a bottleneck!

 

PCIE2.0 is around 8gb
PCIE3.0 is 15gb
Thunderbolt is 10gb.

defiantly enough speed.

 

If this has a reasonable price and can perform anything like having an internal graphics card, then this could easily kill desktop computing. Who wouldn't want a laptop for use anywhere in the house and then just keep one of these on ur desk for when you want to game, brilliant idea, truly.

 

Will this use Thunderbolt 1 or 2?

 

The one that comes preinstalled can deliver 450W. SFX is a standard though so you could swap it out for another model - not that they come much more powerful than 450W.

While 450W may not sound much, remember it only has to power a graphics card and the interface circuitry.

 

Can't wait to see these become popular items on desks around the world. It'll boost PC game sales more which is always good for us.

But --- roughly what performance hit would there be for using a laptop as the paired device (say compared to a quad-core desktop with thunderbolt)? Because the laptop CPU would once again become the bottleneck in gaming. Would they struggle even with this amount of GPU power available? See "don't be fooled by laptop cpus" article.