[cmcconomy]

i had a nuc with an eGPU, connected via a simple usb/thunderbolt connection, and I recall it was a nightmare to setup

[arp242]

I use a eGPU via USB4/Thunderbolt (I think it's the same? Not entirely clear). Works out of the box on Linux. No real setup needed. Main downside is that removing it tends to make the system somewhat unstable and lock up (sometimes hours later) after a kernel "oops". I need to look into that because it's probably a relatively minor Linux kernel issue. But minus that: it works great.

[monkmartinez]

I have read that thunderbolt and oculink are very different in this regard. Whereas thunderbolt devices can be plugged in at anytime, the oculink needs to be plugged at boot time. This seemingly innocuous detail is the catalyst as to the reason why oculink is better performing. It comes down to PCIe vs Thunderbolt in general.

[arcfour]

While PCIe as a standard allows for hot swapping I would be quite surprised to learn that any motherboard or GPU supported it. At least in the consumer space

[irusensei]

AFAIK oculink is pretty much pure pci-e wiring while thunderbolt has a whole protocol much like USB that adds some overhead.

[benoau]

I used an eGPU with a 2013 MBP for gaming, it was great when my other machine shat itself.

The other machine was also a NUC the "Skull Canyon" and it was much more finicky about using the eGPU.

[coredog64]

Same for my wife's old Mac Mini. Finally gave up on it and bought her a new M4 Pro

[dylan604]

I just bought an external thunderbolt eGPU box (even thought it'll never support a GPU with its mini form factor) to host a blackmagic 4k display card. Luckily, I'm still on the last gen i9 CPU so it worked right out of the box once I found the slightly older software. I've read people have issues getting it to work on the M* series chips though.