For as much as the internal PSU bloats the volume of the larger enclosure I'd think they'd be better off with a giant external laptop style brick instead. Dell's got a 330W one, even if that's the largest size available the only thing they'd be giving up would be charging the laptop at the same time. Save the 400W internal PSU for overclocking for boxes big enough to hold a full length card; with only room for a 9" card anyone going for maximum OC won't be using this enclosure anyway.
I on the other hand much prefer internal PSUs. External bricks are annoying to deal with, especially when used in an office where there are multiple desks next to each other.
The U series through the 7th gen, even the i7's, were pretty weak. The 8th gen U-series changes everything...the 8th gen i5 is around 30% faster, on average, in games than even the previous 7th gen i7's.
I've been pretty disappointed with the U series since Haswell. The improvements have been marginal and completely disproportional compared to every other series.
Can someone explain this to me (from Zotac's page): 'Thunderbolt 3 offers up to 40 Gbps bandwidth, 3x more than USB 3.1 Gen2', and then there's an image showing Thunderbolt at 40Gbps and USB 3.1 at 10Gbps. What I'm wondering is: 10 x 3 = 40 ?
Anyway, looking forward to the Mini's price. If it's under $150, that would be worthwhile news.
So they've bought out a box to put your graphics card in, how quaint, except it doesnt fit the standard large size card people would want to fit it with, but yet the box with its PSU is the size of several graphics cards put together and when adding the measurements onto a SFF setup means we might as well provide space for an ATX box anyway (or at least mATX).
I get the smaller one might be of use to multi monitor seeking laptop users but otherwise come on, whats the point of this monstrosity if it wont accommodate the kind of cards the market segment for cards actually use.
I'm not sure what's not clear to you. The Mini can help add a card up to a GeForce 1060 to a laptop. That's certainly a card that a lot of people buy (more people than buy higher end cards, I'd say), and would be a good upgrade for most laptops.
I think the problem with lots of these eGPU boxes is that they're still not suitably small enough. The problem with many of them is really inefficient internal layouts and overall volumes. The AmpBox is larger than the Dan A4-SFX case that's popular for very miniaturized portable PCs, yet the Dan A4-SFX includes the entire PC, motherboard, RAM, CPU, CPU cooler, HDDs/SSDs, power supply, and graphics card; yet the AmpBox only has a small logic board for the I/O and GPU, space for the GPU, and the internal PSU.
The AmpBox Mini on the other hand is pretty small, and the caveat of only supporting PCI-e bus-powered GPUs is actually OK, IMO. 1050Ti is plenty OK with most anemic M-series CPUs and will give acceptable performance (50 ~ 60FPS) on most titles at 1080p with high textures and Anisotrophic Filtering, no AA (or SFAA), with most other extra graphics settings off or on lowest settings (shadows, advanced lighting, particle effects, water effects/reflections, etc).
The AmpBox Mini actually looks pretty interesting, but I'm not sure how it compares in size to the mini GTX 1070 Gigabyte Aorous box.
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DanNeely - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
For as much as the internal PSU bloats the volume of the larger enclosure I'd think they'd be better off with a giant external laptop style brick instead. Dell's got a 330W one, even if that's the largest size available the only thing they'd be giving up would be charging the laptop at the same time. Save the 400W internal PSU for overclocking for boxes big enough to hold a full length card; with only room for a 9" card anyone going for maximum OC won't be using this enclosure anyway.peterfares - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
I on the other hand much prefer internal PSUs. External bricks are annoying to deal with, especially when used in an office where there are multiple desks next to each other.Meaker10 - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
A mobile i5 is enough to drive a Titan v in most games at higher resolutions so I'm not sure where the comment of mediocre cpus is coming from.Samus - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
Well, not an i5 "I" but certainly an i5 "M"The U series through the 7th gen, even the i7's, were pretty weak. The 8th gen U-series changes everything...the 8th gen i5 is around 30% faster, on average, in games than even the previous 7th gen i7's.
I've been pretty disappointed with the U series since Haswell. The improvements have been marginal and completely disproportional compared to every other series.
ajp_anton - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
Interestingly, the AMP Box Mini can fit a GPU longer than the box itself.Kylinblue - Saturday, December 23, 2017 - link
Bunch of typo at the mini's dimensionsET - Sunday, December 24, 2017 - link
Can someone explain this to me (from Zotac's page): 'Thunderbolt 3 offers up to 40 Gbps bandwidth, 3x more than USB 3.1 Gen2', and then there's an image showing Thunderbolt at 40Gbps and USB 3.1 at 10Gbps. What I'm wondering is: 10 x 3 = 40 ?Anyway, looking forward to the Mini's price. If it's under $150, that would be worthwhile news.
GreenMeters - Sunday, December 24, 2017 - link
10 x 3 would correspond to a statement such as "3x the speed". "3x more" means you have to add the 3x to the base, 10 + (3 x 10) = 40.StrangerGuy - Monday, December 25, 2017 - link
Saw "GPU length = 22.8 cm" and stopped caring.MadAd - Monday, December 25, 2017 - link
So they've bought out a box to put your graphics card in, how quaint, except it doesnt fit the standard large size card people would want to fit it with, but yet the box with its PSU is the size of several graphics cards put together and when adding the measurements onto a SFF setup means we might as well provide space for an ATX box anyway (or at least mATX).I get the smaller one might be of use to multi monitor seeking laptop users but otherwise come on, whats the point of this monstrosity if it wont accommodate the kind of cards the market segment for cards actually use.
ET - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
I'm not sure what's not clear to you. The Mini can help add a card up to a GeForce 1060 to a laptop. That's certainly a card that a lot of people buy (more people than buy higher end cards, I'd say), and would be a good upgrade for most laptops.JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, December 27, 2017 - link
I think the problem with lots of these eGPU boxes is that they're still not suitably small enough. The problem with many of them is really inefficient internal layouts and overall volumes. The AmpBox is larger than the Dan A4-SFX case that's popular for very miniaturized portable PCs, yet the Dan A4-SFX includes the entire PC, motherboard, RAM, CPU, CPU cooler, HDDs/SSDs, power supply, and graphics card; yet the AmpBox only has a small logic board for the I/O and GPU, space for the GPU, and the internal PSU.The AmpBox Mini on the other hand is pretty small, and the caveat of only supporting PCI-e bus-powered GPUs is actually OK, IMO. 1050Ti is plenty OK with most anemic M-series CPUs and will give acceptable performance (50 ~ 60FPS) on most titles at 1080p with high textures and Anisotrophic Filtering, no AA (or SFAA), with most other extra graphics settings off or on lowest settings (shadows, advanced lighting, particle effects, water effects/reflections, etc).
The AmpBox Mini actually looks pretty interesting, but I'm not sure how it compares in size to the mini GTX 1070 Gigabyte Aorous box.