I took a 3080 eGPU apart!!! - Aorus Gaming Box
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2021-05-05
·
1,959 words · ~9 min read
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- B-cam, how is this?
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Do I look cool? They're kind of two camps of things that are really dumb.
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Things that are only dumb, and things that are dumb but in an exceptionally cool way.
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And I think that this lands in the second camp right here.
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So, 'cause the AORUS RTX 3080 gaming box,
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and it is, well, it says the world's first water-cooled external graphics card,
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but they kind of already made one and we looked at it.
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But this is a new one with 3080 unit. We're going to look at it again.
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I'm pretty interested to see how well this performs because in the past, eGPUs were honestly kind of terrible
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for a lot of reasons. And I haven't looked at them in quite a long time.
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And maybe this has gotten better. Maybe it hasn't.
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We'll know in a couple of minutes. This is really heavy.
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I feel like eGPUs shouldn't be super heavy
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because like, you know, you kind of want to be able to take it places, but
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this one, I would not. So, here we go. It comes with-it says on the side of the box-
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a "free" carrying bag.
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Given this thing is super expensive, I would not call it free at all, but it is nice.
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- I would not call this travel size. Not so much because of the size.
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More so, because of the weight like if you're flying on a plane, you're not taking this.
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It's just, it's a no-go. Big no-go.
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Do they have strap for the bag? Okay.
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Pete, how is this?
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Do I look cool?
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Yeah, I would not.
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Well, anyway. Okay. Power adapter that we can't use.
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Another power adapter that we can't use. Hey, Jono.
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Can you get a power adapter that we're able to use? It came with ones for Europe and Asia.
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I would assume that this is, you know, pre-production and it will come with the correct power adapters.
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Anyway.
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Here it is. Comes a little Thunderbolt cable.
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And here's the star of the show.
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Okay, yeah. It's a black box. It actually does feel quite nice.
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Like the materials are really good here.
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All aluminum, I think. Anodized black. We have one USB in the front that looks really lonely.
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All right, around back, it's basically your normal GPU IO.
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I'm actually pretty disappointed by the IO back here. Normally, you got a pretty good, like,
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basically, Thunderbolt dock along with your eGPU. Whereas here you get two USB type As,
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Ethernet, and that's it aside from your display hubs.
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So, you have three display boards, two HDMIs.
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What's this? Oh, that's smart.
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Okay. So, very easy to clean dust filter on the side.
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Slides in and out just like that.
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Let's see if this have like two. Yes. Perfect.
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Oh, okay. Nevermind, nevermind. I thought for a second there that the holes
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on top weren't actually holes but they are.
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Okay. - There you go. Wait.
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- Oh, thank you. - Nice. - Here we go. So let's test this out. This is just running off of the XPS 15.
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It has a 1650 Ti. And I think it's a pretty reasonable situation
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that you would want to try and game on this. You have something like this little Thunderbolt dock
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right here that has everything you need to connect it to. A big whole display.
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And I don't think it's going to be a great time.
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Start game. We're playing Valheim because I am addicted to Valheim.
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That's, that's whole thing. Yeah, we're getting a solid 20 frames per second.
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I would say for this game it's like borderline.
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Oh. Yeah, no. - Those look chunky. - Yeah, we dropped to like 15 there.
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It's-this is not great. All right but yeah, either way we're looking at about
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under 30 FPS for sure right now, but yeah.
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All right. Let's quit here
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and attach our eGPU.
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Now, we're hopping back into Valheim with the good ol' 3080 attached.
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It is probably better. It's going to be way better. There's no way it's not way better.
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So, yes. I'm going to not look at that for a second. I just want to look something up.
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Let's just get a rough idea of what the FPS should be looking like.
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Okay. My math said 92 and we're looking
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at 80, oh, we just dropped to 40.
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Yeah, we're looking at more like 60 FPS, but it's-
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it's not very stable. I don't know if that's a problem with,
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like, the CPU not being super happy
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or the GPU. It's definitely, it's a way better experience.
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This is beyond playable. Like this is quite a great time,
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I do have to say, but yeah, the frames keep on dropping to like the 40s.
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I don't know why. Let me unplug this, I hope it doesn't spark.
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That's cool. You can't see it because I just unplugged your capture device.
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But now I'm looking at 35 FPS.
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So if you plan on buying, it's stupid. This is so stupid.
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If you just want to get eGPU and plug it into your laptop
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and use your laptop's display, this is really dumb. I gained like 10 FPS for $1,400.
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It's going to be way better. There's no way it's not way better.
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So what do we even do from here, Jono?
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Actually before that, I want to see just how dumb this is
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or if it's not dumb. So, here I have, I just thought-it's kind of heavy-
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this also has a 3080 in it. And this whole thing will cost you $2,300.
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This laptop plus this eGPU costs you about $3,400.
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So, you could pretty easily buy this desktop
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and a really good laptop, like an XPS 13 or an HP Spectre x360 13 like one of those.
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And you know, an awesome desktop, awesome laptop
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instead of good laptop,
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eGPU that makes for a kind of bad desktop experience.
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So, let's see how this thing goes. Okay. Yeah.
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All right, we're getting like easy 100 DPS to a 100 FPS,
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but it's going up to like 140.
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Yeah. This is pretty consistent 110, 120.
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So, that's a massive performance hit
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for having a little eGPU here where it was what, like 40 to 80 FPS.
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Whereas now, we're running like 90 to 120.
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I just don't know why you would want this but I am excited to take it apart in a couple seconds.
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If you want eGPU, you should just buy a cheaper laptop
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and buy a full-blown desktop.
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That's my advice. So, that's that test done. Let's take it apart.
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8:07
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8:11
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8:15
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All right, let's get into this thing. Oh, yeah.
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Well, at the top we have a radiator. It looks like a nice ole 120-feels really hot actually.
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I have no clue how this comes apart. I'm just taking off screws until it pops out.
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There we go. Oh, this is your lodging for PCIe Thunderbolt
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that kind of stuff. It looks like power comes in here.
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It goes through some filtering. It's also a really cramped airflow design.
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Like you, I don't know if you can tell
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but like on this side, you're only going to be sucking in air right here.
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Would I recommend water-cooling your 3080? - Yeah.
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- If you have a 3080 in a desktop, I might recommend water-cooling it.
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If you have, like, a not super great cooler like installed
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but pretty much all of them are really, really good. So, I personally don't think you need
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to water-cool them most of the time. So, yeah. Other side here, again.
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Not much airflow to these fans. We have this nice little fan here that-
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oh, that's probably cooling the power supply a bit.
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Yeah. Let's keep on going deeper. This is the fun part, Jono.
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I want to get a good look at the actual GPU. (upbeat music)
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- Okay. Power supply is totally closed. That's great 'cause I won't kill myself
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if I accidentally touch it. (upbeat music)
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This is the GPU. This is the power supply. And over here, we have the-what's it called-
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the PCIe Thunderbolt dock chummy.
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They have super non-standard power connectors on the GPU.
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I as-wait, this is so weird. I assumed that they just had like a normal everyday GPU
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in here, but it's some weird custom board.
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Yeah. And it looks like from the power supply, they have a normal 8-pin.
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Yeah. Two normal 8-pins that go to these super weird ass connectors attached to the GPU.
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So like you could take this adapter and I guess toss it
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in your desktop, but it will be a pretty difficult time.
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Oh, have we freed it?
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Aha! There's the GPU. So, if you wanted to put this in your desktop,
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I guess you could. The cooling solution actually looks pretty good.
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So, what we've got here is your good old pump
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and then, some heat pipes that go across your VRMs,
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and that attaches to the same pole plate that your pump is on.
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So, you know, you get nice- I'm guessing these are fairly well cool.
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We also have what is probably one of the gnarliest-looking
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heat pipe bends that I've ever seen. Like I'm sure it's fine. These are massive heat pipes
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and it's not going to really affect performance but like,
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it has- I don't know what to call this
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but it looks kind of gross. Yeah. For a radiator, we have just a standard 240
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with two of these kind of funky looking fans.
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I'm sure that they work great. I just feel the power supply-it's 550 Watts-
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that's more than enough for this current. I think 3080s, if you really push them hard,
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might consume like 300 watts. But that's like pretty extreme.
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As for this little board thingy,
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it's really weird. Yeah, I don't know if you can see but there are only pins up to right here.
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The rest of this slot has just nothing in it.
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I'm really surprised that it isn't just a standard Gigabyte card that they chucked in here and worked around it.
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But instead it's like totally custom.
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But anyway, this thing is super weird and super cool and super not something that you should buy.
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So, yeah. I hope you guys liked this video, and now know, if you didn't before,
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why buying an eGPU is super-duper dumb.
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Sorry, Gigabyte, but that's how she goes.
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eGPUs, you can't really win. So, yeah. Hope you guys have a great ol' day.
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And, so long.