Mini PC+GPU dock vs standard PC

phinix

phinix

phinix

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I'm wondering if this is worth to build.
Right now I have ITX pc with 9070XT in NR200.
I dont play games so often like in the past, so was thinking if it would be worth to buy some good mini PC for every day use, then add gpu dock and keep that disconnected in a cupboard, just to plug it in when I would like to play games.
Performance wise - how are those gpu docks? Are they good? I guess there will be some drop but shouldnt be huge, right?
 
They are just fine, I have a couple I use with Handhelds but seems a waste of time when you have a 9070 in an ITX build, what are you really saving?

Your cheapest option would be a miniforums DEG 1 or 2 you could put your 9070XT in and connect with occulink which is the best interface for GPU performance.

performance drop is game dependant, generally not too bad.
 
sandys said:
They are just fine, I have a couple I use with Handhelds but seems a waste of time when you have a 9070 in an ITX build, what are you really saving?

Your cheapest option would be a miniforums DEG 1 or 2 you could put your 9070XT in and connect with occulink which is the best interface for GPU performance.

performance drop is game dependant, generally not too bad.
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I was thinking I could simply reduce amount of hardware running all the time I use my pc. GPU basically.
In average in last couple of months I played a game once for few hours. Using pc for 6 hours a day, but gpu being used once a month. I dont know.. maybe just looking for some change ;)
Plus, I like minimalism :)

I was an anthusiast of minimalistic PCs, was so happy when ITX become standard, then ssd came in, but since then they do not do anything in that direcion. I can get SFF PSU, but look at rest of it - GPUs - pcbs are smaller, like itx size small, but then you have a radiator with size of fridge;) why technologically they cannot create better cooling, more power efficient cards. Years and years and max we can do is itx build, sff psu and ssds instead of regular 3.5 hdds. wooooow... :rolleyes:
 
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Fair enough, there are companies like minisforum and khadas doing good stuff with mini PCs but really if it is just casual, you could ditch your GPU and give Nvidia a monthly sub for a 5080 over the cloud when you fancy it and just have something really small like a mind 2 or whatever they are launching this month. Or be ultra minimalist and ditch the PC altogether for an app on the TV, tablet or phone.

But sufficed to say when you are not using the 9070XT it doesn't use fans and does really use any power.

I'll also add, I use a 9070XT In a eGPU dock on my handheld and it has great performance even though my handhelds have a terrible interface via Thunderbolt and only hit ~27-30Gbps of the potential 40Gbps and games still run great.

A 3dmark compare when I tested my eGPU on my desktop, it was about 12% loss, should be noted as there was a GPU in desktop already, 9070xt was only on 8x lanes, the desktop TB implementation gave about 32Gbps which is decent.

Occulink would be better as it would hit 64Gbps no overhead.

Desktop

www.3dmark.com

Result

www.3dmark.com www.3dmark.com

and on one of my handhelds

www.3dmark.com

Result

www.3dmark.com www.3dmark.com
 
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sandys said:
Fair enough, there are companies like minisforum and khadas doing good stuff with mini PCs but really if it is just casual, you could ditch your GPU and give Nvidia a monthly sub for a 5080 over the cloud when you fancy it and just have something really small like a mind 2 or whatever they are launching this month. Or be ultra minimalist and ditch the PC altogether for an app on the TV, tablet or phone.

But sufficed to say when you are not using the 9070XT it doesn't use fans and does really use any power.

I'll also add, I use a 9070XT In a eGPU dock on my handheld and it has great performance even though my handhelds have a terrible interface via Thunderbolt and only hit ~27-30Gbps of the potential 40Gbps and games still run great.

A 3dmark compare when I tested my eGPU on my desktop, it was about 12% loss, should be noted as there was a GPU in desktop already, 9070xt was only on 8x lanes, the desktop TB implementation gave about 32Gbps which is decent.

Occulink would be better as it would hit 64Gbps no overhead.

Desktop

www.3dmark.com

Result

www.3dmark.com www.3dmark.com

and on one of my handhelds

www.3dmark.com

Result

www.3dmark.com www.3dmark.com
Click to expand...

Hmmm.. I may look into Nvidia Geforce now.
I play 4K, so would need highest option, but still - £200 annual cost, would be £600 for 3 years - I buy new gpu every 3 years for around same amount.
 
You don't have to sub for the whole year just when you want to play.

It is fine with 4K120 is you have a good enough internet connection.
 
phinix said:
Hmmm.. I may look into Nvidia Geforce now.
I play 4K, so would need highest option, but still - £200 annual cost, would be £600 for 3 years - I buy new gpu every 3 years for around same amount.
Click to expand...

£200 is a lot for a few hours a month. It’s like £10 per hour give or take. That said, moving to a Miniform system and dock isn’t going to be exactly cheap, but you can at least recover some of money when you upgrade that way.
 
OCuLink is a bit better for bandwidth, USB4/TB4 can struggle a bit especially with faster GPUs, in my experience you may have to mess about a bit to get drivers and stability nailed down - especially power saving settings can cause issues.
 
Rroff said:
OCuLink is a bit better for bandwidth, USB4/TB4 can struggle a bit especially with faster GPUs, in my experience you may have to mess about a bit to get drivers and stability nailed down - especially power saving settings can cause issues.
Click to expand...

Tunneling thunderbolt over PCIe with an Nvidia card can be problematic on some motherboards. Occulink with an AMD platform is pretty much plug and play.
 
jigger said:
Tunneling thunderbolt over PCIe with an Nvidia card can be problematic on some motherboards. Occulink with an AMD platform is pretty much plug and play.
Click to expand...

PCI-e over USB4/TB4 is problematic with both nVidia and AMD and only provides up to ~30gbs of useable PCI-e bandwidth to the GPU, OCuLink can provide up to 64gbs with the right setup but I've not played with it enough to know the ins and out of driver maturity and stability.
 
Rroff said:
PCI-e over USB4/TB4 is problematic with both nVidia and AMD and only provides up to ~30gbs of useable PCI-e bandwidth to the GPU, OCuLink can provide up to 64gbs with the right setup but I've not played with it enough to know the ins and out of driver maturity and stability.
Click to expand...

I’m not talking about bandwidth I’m talking about functionality. Thunderbolt is particularly tricky with a Nvidia card as you seem to have been finding out.
 
jigger said:
I’m not talking about bandwidth I’m talking about functionality. Thunderbolt is particularly tricky with a Nvidia card as you seem to have been finding out.
Click to expand...

No different nVidia or AMD both have complications on USB4/TB4 - I've a couple of different setups including the Razor Core X Chroma I've tried multiple cards in.

EDIT: But for me bandwidth is one of the bigger considerations as anything which hits it hard you see a ~20% performance hit Vs desktop PCI-e with USB4/TB4.
 
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Rroff said:
No different nVidia or AMD both have complications on USB4/TB4 - I've a couple of different setups including the Razor Core X Chroma I've tried multiple cards in.
Click to expand...

No, Nvidia have been far more problematic. You should try Intel Arc, or OCuLink
 
jigger said:
No, Nvidia have been far more problematic. You should try Intel Arc, or OCuLink
Click to expand...

Can't speak for OCuLink, it seems to work better but I don't have extensive experience, eGPU over USB4/TB4 is lacking in maturity regardless of what GPU you use with lots of potential driver and config issues.
 
jigger said:
I’m not talking about bandwidth I’m talking about functionality. Thunderbolt is particularly tricky with a Nvidia card as you seem to have been finding out.
Click to expand...

Yup that was my experience, It works a lot better with AMD cards for gaming, very much plug and play, no stability issues at all been running some for a few years even though my gaming preference is Nvidia in my desktop.

Nvidia is fine once you have done all the little driver hacks though, but you have to do it on all machines that might use it. I have some Nvidia ones for compute purposes, tends to be good for that, bandwidth doesn't tend to be a problem once things have loaded in to VRAM.

Not found many games that don't work but the ones that don't work well are terrible in weird places, like the menu system in F1 goes about 5fps and everything is laggy as crap but in the game it is fine, so they must be doing something odd raping the PCIe bus.

Occulink is just like having an internal card, far superior even if the bandwidth can't match an actual internal card, it doesn't have the USB/TB latency and overheads, it's a real shame more machines don't have this.
 
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sandys said:
Yup that was my experience, It works a lot better with AMD cards for gaming, very much plug and play, no stability issues at all been running some for a few years even though my gaming preference is Nvidia in my desktop.

Nvidia is fine once you have done all the little driver hacks though, but you have to do it on all machines that might use it. I have some Nvidia ones for compute purposes, tends to be good for that, bandwidth doesn't tend to be a problem once things have loaded in to VRAM.

Not found many games that don't work but the ones that don't work well are terrible in weird places, like the menu system in F1 goes about 5fps and everything is laggy as crap but in the game it is fine, so they must be doing something odd raping the PCIe bus.

Occulink is just like having an internal card, far superior even if the bandwidth can't match an actual internal card, it doesn't have the USB/TB latency and heads, it's a real shame more machines don't have this.
Click to expand...

Is that OCuLink or USB4/TB4?
 
There are a couple of miniPCs like Beelink and Khadas that break out a PCIe5 x8 socket for eGPUs this is perfect but of course the question is why, you may as well have a desktop, though in the OPs niche case, it would work exactly how he wants with no loss.

Beelinks will take any GPU whereas Khadas is proprietary but at least their eGPU is compatible with other machines via TB.
 
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