Mac Mini 2012: External GPU experiences?

There is some yes and no here. At least in the case of

2011 Minis, some of the new Thunderbolt->PCI-X card

boxes can nearly fully support any PCI-X video card,

if running Windows7 via Bootcamp. In OSX however,

a Thunderbolt aware driver for the video card is required.

So, this would also be true for the 2012 as it is an OSX

limitation and not hardware.

There are Thunderbolt->Express Card adapters (Sonnet

is main source). They seem to be limitied as to which

Express Cards are usable. Again, it seems to be a

driver issue.

So as yet, external GPUs seem to be accessible only via

these pricey Thunderbolt->PCI-X boxes with Windows

(using Bootcamp install) and not OSX.

I'm Interesting and have the same question too...If we put The For Mac GPU Card in TB>Pcie>Expansion Chasis Will it work in mac OSX? I plan to buy the mac mini and do it if this think actually work...

Dolruedate wrote:

I'm Interesting and have the same question too...If we put The For Mac GPU Card in TB>Pcie>Expansion Chasis Will it work in mac OSX? I plan to buy the mac mini and do it if this think actually work...

Unless the manufacturer specifically states the the

graphics card has a Thunderbolt Aware driver, it

will not work!!

I hope in near future it wil work... and apple customize age will begin..

You can make the drivers Thunderbolt-aware for the current nVidia drivers.

http://www.journaldulapin.com/2013/08/24/a-thunderbolt-gpu-on-a-mac-how-to/

I have a 2012 Mac Mini that I'll be using. Based on this blog post I have ordered the following:

Thunderbolt cable (bought from Newegg)

CoolerMaster Elite 130 mini ITX case (also from Newegg)

Corsair CX430M modular 80+ power supply (again from Newegg)

PNY GeForce GTX650 2GB (same)

Sonnet EchoPro Express Card to Thunderbolt adapter (cheapest at B&H, paid $135)

B-Plus PE4L-EC2C (bought from M-Factors Storage)

Hopefully everything will be here by the end of the week. I was too cheap to pay for expedited shipping at all those places. It's an expensive-enough proposition to buy all the hardware (total of $465). Maybe a year ago when I got the Mini I should have opted for a 21.5" iMac, but too late to worry about that. Cheaper than building a separate PC and shoehorning Mavericks onto it. I've done so-called Hackintoshes before, but they've always been weird in the Power Management department. Not waking on sleep, not fully using SpeedStep and so on. I think it's better just to have a Mac, and down the road if I want a faster GPU I can get one unlike a MacBook Pro or an iMac.

So once everything is here, I'll give it a go. I've already done the kext edits. I'm excited. 😀 It's too bad nobody made a native Thunderbolt chassis like the ViDock that would work - chassis exist but nobody wants to say that a video card will work. Plus they're way more expensive - $500 on up for just the enclosure, without the video card.

Hi DeerSteak. Just wondering if you had any success with this setup? I thinking of doing the same thing to get GPU video exeleration working with Premier and After Effects.

Thanks!

Update on this please??

Any update?

In general the accepted wisdom is that any PCIe card needs to have 'Thunderbolt aware' drivers to function properly via a Thunderbolt to PCIe expansion chassis. I am not 100% clear as to why it could be simply to enable 'plug and play' capability which in many cases will not really be an issue. (Just don't unplug it. 😉)

As other posts indicate no video drivers for the Mac have been made 'Thunderbolt aware', therefore historically it has been felt this is not a workable solution. However I did find the following articles which seem to suggest at least partial success. It maybe you need to use the built-in video for the boot screen and the main display but you might be able to use a second video card via a Thunderbolt chassis for an additional screen and/or for GPU acceleration e.g. CUDA support. It may also only be possible with a very limited number of video cards, the now also old GTX 780 Ti seems to be mentioned often.

It should be noted that for AMD video cards Apple are the sole source of OS X drivers and frankly the most polite term that can be ascribed to Apple's drivers is 'mediocre'. Apple also supply drivers for some Nvidia cards and again the same description would apply, however as noted in one of the below articles Nvidia also provide their own Mac drivers. (Nvidia describe these as 'web drivers' in that you have to download them from their website.) Nvidia's drivers do appear superior in many areas. I mention all this because Thunderbolt3 if/when Apple eventually support it will be even more suited to the concept of using an external i.e. Thunderbolt connected video card but it will be down to the drivers as to whether this works any better.

Here are the links…

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/MBP_ThunderBoltVideoCard.htm

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7987/running-an-nvidia-gtx-780-ti-over-thunderbolt -2

http://www.journaldulapin.com/2013/08/24/a-thunderbolt-gpu-on-a-mac-how-to/

http://www.journaldulapin.com/2014/12/04/a-nvidia-maxwell-card-with-thunderbolt- on-a-mac-running-yosemite/

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162652-diy-external-thunderbolt-gpu-turbo-cha rges-macbook-air-graphics-performance-by-7x

http://barefeats.com/tube21.html

and

https://bizon-tech.com/us/bizonbox2-egpu.html/

I list the last link separately because I have some doubts over that solution. For example they list support for Oculus Rift but of course that does not work in OS X even if you have a theoretically powerful enough video card. So do some research if you want to consider this one.