How does the whole external GPU setup work? Is that expensive/hard to do? Does it work as well as it would in a PC? Just seems like such a good idea; I feel like there’s gotta be some reason more people don’t do it.
@Teal
It works fine as long as you use a proper Thunderbolt cable. The cable that came with the adapter was trash, but an aftermarket cable fixed the issues. My compute workload is within 6% of desktop performance. Cost-wise, it only set me back $180 because I already had a PSU and the GPU from my desktop.
The reason more people don’t do it is that only higher-end laptops (like this one) have Thunderbolt 4 ports, which are required for eGPUs. Most budget laptops don’t support it, even the 4070 version of this laptop. I went with the 4080 specifically for eGPU compatibility.
Sweet, looks good. 
Wil said:
Sweet, looks good.
Thanks! I didn’t really know what to do with the eGPU, so it’s just sitting on the box the card arrived in. I might look into an IKEA shelf or something to rest it on that’s not cardboard.
Huh, didn’t know this was a thing. So it has a 4080 mobile, and you connect a 3080 desktop. Do both function at the same time? And is the 3080 that much faster?
Fin said:
Huh, didn’t know this was a thing. So it has a 4080 mobile, and you connect a 3080 desktop. Do both function at the same time? And is the 3080 that much faster?
They both work together and share the workload. The Nvidia driver adds an icon to the system tray showing which programs are running on which GPU. The 3080 and Laptop 4080 are roughly equal in performance, but the laptop card has 2GB more VRAM (mine is the 10GB 3080).
I use the extra card for AI workloads rather than boosting FPS in games, allowing me to train two models simultaneously. Eventually, I plan to replace both cards with 4090s when the 5000 series GPUs come out, and prices drop.