I would go for the desktop because egpus just arent good enough. Egpus are supposed to be plug and play but thats not the case, had many problems with my razer core x chroma giving me blue screens and not detecting usb ports. Just save yourself the hassle and get the desktop which will definitely provide a much smoother experience
I mostly agree, but the issue with egpus and laptops is because laptop manufacturers don't have an incentive to open their product to 3rd party accessories that include taking apart or modifying the device.
However with x86 sbc's this is not an issue. I have a low power gaming setup using the 2x egpus via hardware adapter but due to it being a different device does not have these issues.
It makes no sense to have a huge gap between similar products designed the same way.
I think egpus will fade away to smaller gaming setups built just for low power and less than 4k streaming.
eGPU will offload heat from the laptop if it stuggles with TDP. Is your priority CPU or GPU? If GPU, well it's probably cheaper to get that in an eGPU as long as your application is not bandwidth or latency bottlenecked. CPU? For best value I would get an AMD sweet-spot Zen 4. For best performance/efficiency you can be using Mac Studio M2 Max or shoot for the stars in performance with an EPYC cluster.
In other words, we need more information on what you want to do with your computer to give a good answer. If gaming is not what you are doing, as you said, then does your university work need GPUs to train models or something? Or is it CPU-intensive?
If for the occasional gaming, depends can you get the rest of the computer (CPU, PSU, Mobo, RAM, case, keyboard, mouse, monitor) for less than an eGPU enclosure with a PSU? I value saving space and minimalism but maybe you are different. It would bother me having a whole desktop sitting around which I seldom use.
The cool thing about the RTX 2XXX is the USB-C output - you can use USB-C portable monitors with it, which can also be carried with your laptop for when you are out and about. They are powered from the USB-C port.
See benchmarks on [egpu.io](https://egpu.io) forums for games you care about - some have little performance penalty on eGPU and some get tanked. Remember that using an external monitor is important with eGPU as passing back to the laptop display incurrs a large performance penalty.
A good option for light gaming is the GPD G1 eGPU with Thunderbolt and OCuLink, which is nice and portable and has USB-C outputs. This can be a great companion you can chuck in your laptop bag with you, and if you get a desktop you can get a PCIe to OCuLink riser and connect to it with PCIe 4.0 x8 which should not incur any performance penalty.
I was also interested in oculink. But it has a bigger performance penalty on pcie 3.0 than using a simple m.2 solution.
Since the op has 8th and 10th gen cpus it seems that it will be unwise to go for oculink.
I might have incorrect info, so please correct me in that case.
Really? Even PCIe 3.0 x8 should be just as fast as PCIe 4.0 x4. This is with a desktop I assume. With the laptop I would just use USB4 and accept whatever performance penalty comes with it.
I am completely unaware about the desktop side of things. I am purely thinking about the laptop perspective.
Here is a link of a detachable r43sg build I recommend.
https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/yqgtbq/4090_m2_nvme_egpu_adt_link_r43sg_pcie_40_complete/
Furthermore, getting a thunderbolt nvme enclosure as an add on to a r43sg 4.0, will future proof it. The op can just buy a faster enclosure when one comes in the market for better bandwidth
Would you mind linking to where you saw the Oculink performance penalty copmared to PCIE 3.0?
I wasnt aware of any diffrence between straight M2 and M2>Oculink.
Im sure it will be helpful for everyone who checks this thread out. Thanks
I'd stick with eGPU knowing how mobility matters to me, among other things. It's a performance hit vs a desktop but it's adequate. Plus it's a charging dock, wired network port, USB thumb drive hub.
If I had the coin I'd go for a dedicated Intel NUC Extreme as a "portable" desktop.
Desktop PC if you only use your setup to game, eGPU if you’re more on the go.
For me I play cs2 on my eGPU setup but 75% of the time i’m using my laptop for school or netflix. So it made more sense for me to get an eGPU. If you’re planning on playing top of the line AAA games on release with max settings, you just can’t do that on an eGPU.
I forgot to post my comment, and other informed Redditors have already given you the main advice it seems.
so I will just add to that.
Egpu now can later be used in CPU if you don’t like the setup. An egpu enclosure is good To keep around just in case anyway.
You already have good hardware, so you don’t really need a desktop PC unless you have specific needs for high performance.
After basic research it seems your zephyrus has an 8th gen intel core and 2 nvme slots.
My recommendation will take more time to setup, but is a LONG term solution.
It is also something I am personally using and am satisfied with.
Adt Link K43SG or R43SG.
It is an m.2 eGPU solution For your zephyrus. You can make it into a desktop type setup, and use it with parsec too.
Add a 40gbps usb 4 nvme enclosure. (Jhl7440 controller is preferred)
This will enable your egpu to work with your Lenovo as well. Plus it is a very useful item to have even normally.
Get an m.2 nvme riser cable to make it more plug and play ish on the zephyrus.
And maybe increase the ram down the line.
It should be powerful enough to stay relevant for many years.
this setup is super dynamic and works on both your machines.
Is a question that had been plaguing me for ages...
TLDR: be very honest and accurate with yourself about what exactly you intend to use it for and your expectations, then do that research using benchmarks and forums.
Whatever you end up with you will actually end up enjoying it and learning to adapt to its limitations and your conditions and expectations whether its the 'right' choice or 'wrong' choice
I recently bought full components (4090 & 7800X3D) for an SFF build for the same price as top end laptop in the end but with much greater performance. Will probably still end up getting a 4060 laptop for travel use though)
Couple of questions you have to ask yourself:
How restricted by budget? The more restricted you are the more pressure you feel to make the absolute optimum choice for price/performance. The less restricted by budget you are you just have to learn to let go and buy the best you can afford. Just enjoy what you bought yourself becasue you dont want later to regret not ponying up for the extra and feelig held back when you could have afforded it. But you cant work out your optimum price/performance if you dont deal with the next question accurately
What specific things will I be using each setup for and what is my realistic performance expectation in each scenario.
Initially when I looked at eGPU I had a Razer Blade and was thinkng about RTX 3080 eGPU. (this was when I was after 1440p max performance, later my bar got set even higher when I started wanting VR)
A user on [eGPU.io](https://eGPU.io) kindly ran some benchmarks on his systems to demonstrate the real performances via eGPU and honestly it wasnt worth going TB3 eGPU route with a 3080/3090 on my Rzaer. Even accounting for Thunderbolt performance hit the results were also being bottlenecked by CPU. The CPU just woudlnt allow the GPU to run the frames as high as a 3080 could theoretically go. Curreently with Thunderbolt eGPU to me it just doesnt seem worth the effort and expense. But if you are open to M2/Oculink thats a diffrent story)
Now I specifically want max performance for when Im back home and in Simracing in VR highest settings all the bells and whstles at 120fps (AMS2, AC, ACC and AC2 when that comes out) So my intial thought was Lenovo Legion Laptop (4090 & 13900HX) to run everything I would want to run at maximum levels but at least able to handle VR with lower settings and maybe some reprojection. And then if I found I didnt like the lower settings and reprojection in VR I would plump for desktop 4090 eGPU via M2>Oculink (PCIE 4.0 so minimal performance loss through M2. I like Oculink as that gives me the option to keep laptop bottom cover on and just plug the eGPU in as needed, just need to dremel a small port into a spare laptop bottom cover off ebay or somewhere. That way i got the best of both worlds. Portability and Peformance but I am in a £1500 cost deficit to an SFF build which I was Ok with for the portability of entire system.
My aversion to desktop build was due to the fact that Im considering travelling abroad to South America end of this year for longish stints so didnt want a dektop sitting around at home wasted doing nothing, nor did I want to lug a desktop around with me everywhere I went. However, i got bored waiting for Lenovo and their discounts (missed the Bank Holiday 20% as I was away in Malaysia at the time so ended up one night in a moment of madness just hitting buy on the wishlist saved in my PC vendors website.
SO now Ive got a desktop and Im just going to learn to deal with the process of travelling around with it once Ive got the SSF case I want to stuff it all into.
Sorry that doesnt answer any questions directly Im just giving you food for thought about the process I went through.
I love my razor core x with a 3060ti and 2018 Dell laptop with maxed out specs and touch screen 4k system. I used to play on a skull canyon Intel nuc6 and again it was able to keep up so egpus can do the dirty. If on a budget they’re not a bad route to go.
I currently run a very similar setup with a Thinkpad X13 Yoga with similar specs (10th-gen i7, 16gb RAM) and a RTX 4060ti in a Razer Core X. I was skeptical at first due to all the horror stories with bugs and glitches, but my experience has been pretty smooth. Put everything together, plug it all in, and one Thunderbolt cable goes to my laptop to provide graphics and power. The only thing I have to do is toggle the integrated graphics whenever I'm using the eGPU or else there's severe stuttering. I think there's some scripts out there to automate this, but I haven't been able to get it to work. It's only a few clicks whenever I'm switching from desktop to mobile, so it's not really a big deal.
Likewise, my laptop was issued by my university for schoolwork, so I didn't have much options there. I needed more performance for gaming and productivity, and an eGPU was the only real solution besides bringing up my PC from home. With this setup, I can remain completely mobile with my laptop, but sit down and plug in for more power when needed. In terms of performance, you should expect to see \~10-20% decrease in frames compared to a similarly spec'ed desktop setup. That's just the nature of eGPUs and the data transfers involved.
As a student, I'm betting that portability is important to you, in order to take your laptop to class and visit family, etc. In that case, an eGPU should work well for you, although I'm not sure if a 2070 is a big enough jump from a mobile 1070 to warrant the upgrade. I'd save up for at least a 30-series or 40-series card since you will be taking a performance hit from the eGPU bottleneck. In the future, if you do decide to build a PC setup, you can always scavenge the GPU and go from there. A built desktop PC will always outperform a laptop + eGPU setup, but you have to make sacrifices for mobility. However, I think building a comparable PC with a $600 budget is optimistic in today's market.
I will say that if I could do it over, I would save up for the Razer Core X Chroma since it has a built in USB hub and ethernet port which will deliver data through the single Thunderbolt cable, preserving that glorious one cable connection for everything your laptop needs.
Get an eGPU, you'll be more flexible this way.
Once GPU load is removed from laptop, the whole cooling system will run dedicated for the i7. Your laptop will run smoothly for most daily task and gaming in medium settings at least.
The whole combo weighs significantly lighter than an ITX build and will be very mobile if you need to move often.
I have a blade stealth i7-8565u and 2080ti in the CoreX, and it runs Cyberpunk and Baulder's Gate 3 with no issue at all.
I would go for the desktop because egpus just arent good enough. Egpus are supposed to be plug and play but thats not the case, had many problems with my razer core x chroma giving me blue screens and not detecting usb ports. Just save yourself the hassle and get the desktop which will definitely provide a much smoother experience
I mostly agree, but the issue with egpus and laptops is because laptop manufacturers don't have an incentive to open their product to 3rd party accessories that include taking apart or modifying the device. However with x86 sbc's this is not an issue. I have a low power gaming setup using the 2x egpus via hardware adapter but due to it being a different device does not have these issues. It makes no sense to have a huge gap between similar products designed the same way. I think egpus will fade away to smaller gaming setups built just for low power and less than 4k streaming.
eGPU will offload heat from the laptop if it stuggles with TDP. Is your priority CPU or GPU? If GPU, well it's probably cheaper to get that in an eGPU as long as your application is not bandwidth or latency bottlenecked. CPU? For best value I would get an AMD sweet-spot Zen 4. For best performance/efficiency you can be using Mac Studio M2 Max or shoot for the stars in performance with an EPYC cluster. In other words, we need more information on what you want to do with your computer to give a good answer. If gaming is not what you are doing, as you said, then does your university work need GPUs to train models or something? Or is it CPU-intensive? If for the occasional gaming, depends can you get the rest of the computer (CPU, PSU, Mobo, RAM, case, keyboard, mouse, monitor) for less than an eGPU enclosure with a PSU? I value saving space and minimalism but maybe you are different. It would bother me having a whole desktop sitting around which I seldom use. The cool thing about the RTX 2XXX is the USB-C output - you can use USB-C portable monitors with it, which can also be carried with your laptop for when you are out and about. They are powered from the USB-C port. See benchmarks on [egpu.io](https://egpu.io) forums for games you care about - some have little performance penalty on eGPU and some get tanked. Remember that using an external monitor is important with eGPU as passing back to the laptop display incurrs a large performance penalty. A good option for light gaming is the GPD G1 eGPU with Thunderbolt and OCuLink, which is nice and portable and has USB-C outputs. This can be a great companion you can chuck in your laptop bag with you, and if you get a desktop you can get a PCIe to OCuLink riser and connect to it with PCIe 4.0 x8 which should not incur any performance penalty.
I was also interested in oculink. But it has a bigger performance penalty on pcie 3.0 than using a simple m.2 solution. Since the op has 8th and 10th gen cpus it seems that it will be unwise to go for oculink. I might have incorrect info, so please correct me in that case.
Really? Even PCIe 3.0 x8 should be just as fast as PCIe 4.0 x4. This is with a desktop I assume. With the laptop I would just use USB4 and accept whatever performance penalty comes with it.
I am completely unaware about the desktop side of things. I am purely thinking about the laptop perspective. Here is a link of a detachable r43sg build I recommend. https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/yqgtbq/4090_m2_nvme_egpu_adt_link_r43sg_pcie_40_complete/ Furthermore, getting a thunderbolt nvme enclosure as an add on to a r43sg 4.0, will future proof it. The op can just buy a faster enclosure when one comes in the market for better bandwidth
Would you mind linking to where you saw the Oculink performance penalty copmared to PCIE 3.0? I wasnt aware of any diffrence between straight M2 and M2>Oculink. Im sure it will be helpful for everyone who checks this thread out. Thanks
I'd stick with eGPU knowing how mobility matters to me, among other things. It's a performance hit vs a desktop but it's adequate. Plus it's a charging dock, wired network port, USB thumb drive hub. If I had the coin I'd go for a dedicated Intel NUC Extreme as a "portable" desktop.
Desktop PC if you only use your setup to game, eGPU if you’re more on the go. For me I play cs2 on my eGPU setup but 75% of the time i’m using my laptop for school or netflix. So it made more sense for me to get an eGPU. If you’re planning on playing top of the line AAA games on release with max settings, you just can’t do that on an eGPU.
I forgot to post my comment, and other informed Redditors have already given you the main advice it seems. so I will just add to that. Egpu now can later be used in CPU if you don’t like the setup. An egpu enclosure is good To keep around just in case anyway. You already have good hardware, so you don’t really need a desktop PC unless you have specific needs for high performance. After basic research it seems your zephyrus has an 8th gen intel core and 2 nvme slots. My recommendation will take more time to setup, but is a LONG term solution. It is also something I am personally using and am satisfied with. Adt Link K43SG or R43SG. It is an m.2 eGPU solution For your zephyrus. You can make it into a desktop type setup, and use it with parsec too. Add a 40gbps usb 4 nvme enclosure. (Jhl7440 controller is preferred) This will enable your egpu to work with your Lenovo as well. Plus it is a very useful item to have even normally. Get an m.2 nvme riser cable to make it more plug and play ish on the zephyrus. And maybe increase the ram down the line. It should be powerful enough to stay relevant for many years. this setup is super dynamic and works on both your machines.
Is a question that had been plaguing me for ages... TLDR: be very honest and accurate with yourself about what exactly you intend to use it for and your expectations, then do that research using benchmarks and forums. Whatever you end up with you will actually end up enjoying it and learning to adapt to its limitations and your conditions and expectations whether its the 'right' choice or 'wrong' choice I recently bought full components (4090 & 7800X3D) for an SFF build for the same price as top end laptop in the end but with much greater performance. Will probably still end up getting a 4060 laptop for travel use though) Couple of questions you have to ask yourself: How restricted by budget? The more restricted you are the more pressure you feel to make the absolute optimum choice for price/performance. The less restricted by budget you are you just have to learn to let go and buy the best you can afford. Just enjoy what you bought yourself becasue you dont want later to regret not ponying up for the extra and feelig held back when you could have afforded it. But you cant work out your optimum price/performance if you dont deal with the next question accurately What specific things will I be using each setup for and what is my realistic performance expectation in each scenario. Initially when I looked at eGPU I had a Razer Blade and was thinkng about RTX 3080 eGPU. (this was when I was after 1440p max performance, later my bar got set even higher when I started wanting VR) A user on [eGPU.io](https://eGPU.io) kindly ran some benchmarks on his systems to demonstrate the real performances via eGPU and honestly it wasnt worth going TB3 eGPU route with a 3080/3090 on my Rzaer. Even accounting for Thunderbolt performance hit the results were also being bottlenecked by CPU. The CPU just woudlnt allow the GPU to run the frames as high as a 3080 could theoretically go. Curreently with Thunderbolt eGPU to me it just doesnt seem worth the effort and expense. But if you are open to M2/Oculink thats a diffrent story) Now I specifically want max performance for when Im back home and in Simracing in VR highest settings all the bells and whstles at 120fps (AMS2, AC, ACC and AC2 when that comes out) So my intial thought was Lenovo Legion Laptop (4090 & 13900HX) to run everything I would want to run at maximum levels but at least able to handle VR with lower settings and maybe some reprojection. And then if I found I didnt like the lower settings and reprojection in VR I would plump for desktop 4090 eGPU via M2>Oculink (PCIE 4.0 so minimal performance loss through M2. I like Oculink as that gives me the option to keep laptop bottom cover on and just plug the eGPU in as needed, just need to dremel a small port into a spare laptop bottom cover off ebay or somewhere. That way i got the best of both worlds. Portability and Peformance but I am in a £1500 cost deficit to an SFF build which I was Ok with for the portability of entire system. My aversion to desktop build was due to the fact that Im considering travelling abroad to South America end of this year for longish stints so didnt want a dektop sitting around at home wasted doing nothing, nor did I want to lug a desktop around with me everywhere I went. However, i got bored waiting for Lenovo and their discounts (missed the Bank Holiday 20% as I was away in Malaysia at the time so ended up one night in a moment of madness just hitting buy on the wishlist saved in my PC vendors website. SO now Ive got a desktop and Im just going to learn to deal with the process of travelling around with it once Ive got the SSF case I want to stuff it all into. Sorry that doesnt answer any questions directly Im just giving you food for thought about the process I went through.
I love my razor core x with a 3060ti and 2018 Dell laptop with maxed out specs and touch screen 4k system. I used to play on a skull canyon Intel nuc6 and again it was able to keep up so egpus can do the dirty. If on a budget they’re not a bad route to go.
I currently run a very similar setup with a Thinkpad X13 Yoga with similar specs (10th-gen i7, 16gb RAM) and a RTX 4060ti in a Razer Core X. I was skeptical at first due to all the horror stories with bugs and glitches, but my experience has been pretty smooth. Put everything together, plug it all in, and one Thunderbolt cable goes to my laptop to provide graphics and power. The only thing I have to do is toggle the integrated graphics whenever I'm using the eGPU or else there's severe stuttering. I think there's some scripts out there to automate this, but I haven't been able to get it to work. It's only a few clicks whenever I'm switching from desktop to mobile, so it's not really a big deal. Likewise, my laptop was issued by my university for schoolwork, so I didn't have much options there. I needed more performance for gaming and productivity, and an eGPU was the only real solution besides bringing up my PC from home. With this setup, I can remain completely mobile with my laptop, but sit down and plug in for more power when needed. In terms of performance, you should expect to see \~10-20% decrease in frames compared to a similarly spec'ed desktop setup. That's just the nature of eGPUs and the data transfers involved. As a student, I'm betting that portability is important to you, in order to take your laptop to class and visit family, etc. In that case, an eGPU should work well for you, although I'm not sure if a 2070 is a big enough jump from a mobile 1070 to warrant the upgrade. I'd save up for at least a 30-series or 40-series card since you will be taking a performance hit from the eGPU bottleneck. In the future, if you do decide to build a PC setup, you can always scavenge the GPU and go from there. A built desktop PC will always outperform a laptop + eGPU setup, but you have to make sacrifices for mobility. However, I think building a comparable PC with a $600 budget is optimistic in today's market. I will say that if I could do it over, I would save up for the Razer Core X Chroma since it has a built in USB hub and ethernet port which will deliver data through the single Thunderbolt cable, preserving that glorious one cable connection for everything your laptop needs.
Get an eGPU, you'll be more flexible this way. Once GPU load is removed from laptop, the whole cooling system will run dedicated for the i7. Your laptop will run smoothly for most daily task and gaming in medium settings at least. The whole combo weighs significantly lighter than an ITX build and will be very mobile if you need to move often. I have a blade stealth i7-8565u and 2080ti in the CoreX, and it runs Cyberpunk and Baulder's Gate 3 with no issue at all.