So for the need of always maxing out the possibilities I was looking for a way to bump up the graphics for the iMac I have. I've been playing a lot of PC games these days and my Playstation and Xbox are eating some serious dust.
At the moment I'm reaching almost 60FPS on high settings with every game that I'm playing (e.g. PUBG, NieR:Automata, Prey..) but here's the catch; I'm playing on a 720p resolution. The good thing is, it ain't that bad looking and because the settings are cranked up around the higher settings, at 60FPS it's a joy to play these games. Since it's impossible to change the graphics cards inside these iMac's, I've been looking for other ways to bump up the graphics these bad boys could possibly be showing on the incredible 4k display.
I read a lot about eGPU's, that stands for external Graphics Processing Unit. Basically it's an external graphics card you can hook up to your mac / pc or laptop with a Thunderbolt connection. I found out eGPU's exists from way back, but now with Thunderbolt 3 it's a serious choice if you want some high-end gaming on a system that doesn't allow you to put a high-end graphics card inside.
Take a look at the Thunderbolt 3 equipped enclosures:
Most of this enclosures are just that, you have to buy a graphics cards separate and just slide it in. Unfortunately these enclosures are pretty big and bulky, not something I want sitting on my clean desk. Than the Auros Gaming Box became available, it's the smallest enclosure available and comes with a GTX1070 already inside!
Let's have a look at this small but strong box, also compared to some to competition below:
There are some minor issues though running such graphics cards external, you will get a small performance drop (around 10-20%) if you compare the same card running on a system internal due the Thunderbolt 3 connection. Also MacOS doesn't officially support eGPU's until High Sierra is out for retail.
Nevertheless this is something I can see sitting at my desk to feed me the GPU power I need. I'm still thinking about it because it comes with a hefty price tag. I'll keep you updated if I buy one and of course give you some benches when I do!