Turn Your Laptop into a Gaming RIG! meet the eX Core™

[Mike Lucey]

Hi Guys,

As always I'm on the lookout for ways to beef up the graphics capabilities of my laptop. In the past, I have mentioned a number of Kickstarter projects that looked promising at first but didn't come to fruition.

Today I came across eX Core, a very compact, upgradeable and portable GPU solution that is being pitched at a reasonable price.

eX Core 2.jpg

eX Core 4.gif

I'd like to hear your comments on whether you feel the eX Core might be the way to go?

[ntxdave]

Curious about price and amount of memory,

[Mike Lucey]

$388 and 4GB Dave

[juju]

It looks like they used Indigo Renderer for the rendering time comparison on that BMW.

I skimmed over the page linked, so forgive me if the information was provided there somewhere, but: This probably requires TB3 connector for the amount of data transfer?

[Mike Lucey]

Yes JuJu, appears to be the only current option is TB3. Here is the spec,

Box Content
eX Core™ NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 w/4GB
Thunderbolt™ 3 (USB-C™) Cable
HDMI High-Speed Cable
Compact 90W USB-C power adapter
exklim® Welcome Manual
exklim® Carrying Case

Specifications
eX Core™ Size (5.9’’x4.1’’x0.8’’) | Weight 1.57 lbs. / 0.71 kg.
2x Intel® Thunderbolt 3 Ports
1x HDMI 2.0b audio and video output Port
USB-C DC-IN Port
Compact 90W USB-C power adapter w/Power Share Charge-Laptop up to 60w

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
GPU Clock 1680MHz
NVIDIA CUDA® Cores 640
VRAM 4GB GDDR5 128-bit | 7000 MHz
Memory Bandwidth (112GB/s)
NVIDIA GPU Boost 3.0
VR READY
NVIDIA Ansel
NVIDIA GameStream -Ready
Microsoft DirectX 12.1
Vulkan API
OpenGL 4.5

[kaas]

The 1050 would be a deal breaker for me. It depends on what you want to run and its better than nothing but more sooner than later I'm afraid the need for more power will rise again. Also, it has not enough power to do even low end vr which would be a nice option.

Edit; a nice list of eGPU enclosures can be found at https://egpu.io/external-gpu-buyers-guide-2018/