Sonnet introduces two higher-powered Thunderbolt 3 eGPU Breakaway boxes for Intel Macs

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in General Discussion edited December 2020
The Sonnet eGPU Breakaway Box 750 and 750ex are Thunderbolt 3 eGPU expansion systems with the biggest available power supply on the market at 750W.

Sonnet introduces a pair of Thunderbolt 3 eGPU cases
Sonnet introduces a pair of Thunderbolt 3 eGPU cases


The Sonnet eGPU Breakaway Boxes are built to be future proof with a 750W power supply, which is often the limiting factor when upgrading a GPU. Sonnet offers two variants of the breakaway boxes, the 750 and 750ex.

The eGPU Breakaway Box 750 includes:
  • Two 8-pin (6+2 pin) auxiliary power connectors
  • 750W power supply; supports cards requiring up to 375W of continuous power plus an additional 100W peak power
  • Provides 100W of upstream power for charging
  • AMD approved for the air-cooled editions of the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64, Radeon Pro WX 8200, and WX 9100
  • Designed to also support overclocked NVIDIA cards with high peak power requirements
Sonnet has a list of compatible GPU cards you can see here. The list spans 21 pages from manufacturers like AMD and NVIDIA.

The eGPU Breakaway Box 750ex includes all of the same features as the standard model with an added USB and Ethernet hub. The integrated hub has four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A ports and one Gigabit Ethernet Port. The 750ex has an additional Thunderbolt 3 controller to manage the integrated hub.





Sonnet claims that the Breakaway Boxes will be the coolest and quietest eGPU systems available. A large variable-speed temperature-controlled fan keeps the installed cards cool during even the most intense operations without producing a lot of noise.

The Sonnet eGPU Breakaway Box 750 and 750ex are compatible with any Intel Mac or Windows machine with Thunderbolt 3 ports. Users can utilize the single-cable connection to their Mac to immediately take advantage of whatever GPU cards are installed in the Breakaway Box. Users can even chain up to four eGPU Breakaway Boxes together to take advantage of more GPU cards at once.

The Sonnet eGPU Breakaway Box 750 is $299.99 and the Sonnet eGPU Breakaway Box 750ex is $349.99.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,093member
    Considering Apple's M1 offering and the cloud of uncertainty with eGPU's running on Apple silicon, these eGPU's are a solution looking for a problem.
  • Reply 2 of 7
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    sflocal said:
    Considering Apple's M1 offering and the cloud of uncertainty with eGPU's running on Apple silicon, these eGPU's are a solution looking for a problem.
    There's a lot of Intel Macs still out there, and Apple aren't the computer manufacturer that offers Thunderbolt.
    edited December 2020
  • Reply 3 of 7
    MplsPMplsP Posts: 3,924member
    750watts - good lord! This seems like we're heading back to the days of super computers that require a dedicated cooling system to get rid of all the heat they produce. (For reference, your average 15A circuit can supply 1800 watts total. and generally should only run 80% of that continuously, or 1440 watts. That means this supply alone would be taking about half of the power for an entire circuit.

    The M1 chip is looking better every day!
  • Reply 4 of 7
    NaiyasNaiyas Posts: 107member
    MplsP said:
    750watts - good lord! This seems like we're heading back to the days of super computers that require a dedicated cooling system to get rid of all the heat they produce. (For reference, your average 15A circuit can supply 1800 watts total. and generally should only run 80% of that continuously, or 1440 watts. That means this supply alone would be taking about half of the power for an entire circuit.

    The M1 chip is looking better every day!
    Pretty sure that’s country dependent. Here the average circuit (for sockets) is 30-32A @ 240V, so around 7-7.5kW per circuit. Older installations had a 30A fuse but there were fewer sockets provided way back. All modern installations typically have 32A MCBs on a final ring circuit. So in summary, no issue over here for the total circuit power cap, but I do agree that 750W is a bit of a beast for power consumption!
  • Reply 5 of 7
    MplsPMplsP Posts: 3,924member
    Naiyas said:
    MplsP said:
    750watts - good lord! This seems like we're heading back to the days of super computers that require a dedicated cooling system to get rid of all the heat they produce. (For reference, your average 15A circuit can supply 1800 watts total. and generally should only run 80% of that continuously, or 1440 watts. That means this supply alone would be taking about half of the power for an entire circuit.

    The M1 chip is looking better every day!
    Pretty sure that’s country dependent. Here the average circuit (for sockets) is 30-32A @ 240V, so around 7-7.5kW per circuit. Older installations had a 30A fuse but there were fewer sockets provided way back. All modern installations typically have 32A MCBs on a final ring circuit. So in summary, no issue over here for the total circuit power cap, but I do agree that 750W is a bit of a beast for power consumption!
    Are you talking the main service to a residence or the individual circuits within the residence (kitchen, bathroom, etc?) 7 kw is a TON of power for an individual circuit and 30A requires 10 gauge wire (5.25 mm^2 or 2.6 mm diameter) which would get really expensive to wire.
  • Reply 6 of 7
    NaiyasNaiyas Posts: 107member
    MplsP said:
    Are you talking the main service to a residence or the individual circuits within the residence (kitchen, bathroom, etc?) 7 kw is a TON of power for an individual circuit and 30A requires 10 gauge wire (5.25 mm^2 or 2.6 mm diameter) which would get really expensive to wire.
    First off, its probably pertinent to clarify that I'm currently UK based so there is a clear voltage differential to account for.

    My main service to residence fuse is rated 80A @ 240V before it gets to my meter. It was originally 65A but it had to be upgraded a while back. It can go as high as 100A but this is not often done on domestic supplies. Circuits are generally split according to their use case. So a cooker circuit will only go to a cooker, appliances circuit will supply low power appliances, and a socket circuit could run across several rooms or floors. A socket circuit "size" is usually limited by a combination of run length and number of sockets.

    Regarding gauge of wire, the lighting circuits will typically be 1 or 1.5mm whereas most of the other circuits will be 2.5mm. If higher gauge is needed because of the end appliance (e.g. cooker, electric shower, etc.) then 4, or 6mm is usually used based on planned power draw.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    MplsP said:
    750watts - good lord! This seems like we're heading back to the days of super computers that require a dedicated cooling system to get rid of all the heat they produce. (For reference, your average 15A circuit can supply 1800 watts total. and generally should only run 80% of that continuously, or 1440 watts. That means this supply alone would be taking about half of the power for an entire circuit.

    The M1 chip is looking better every day!
    The system would only use as much power as the components used. The 2019 Mac Pro has a 1.4kW power supply but maxes out under 1kW. Single GPUs go up to about 360W:

    https://www.tomshardware.com/features/graphics-card-power-consumption-tested

    The GPUs mentioned in the article are 14nm models.

    The 5nm M1 is about 1/4 the speed of these GPUs but uses 1/20 the power. Other mobile GPUs are like this too, the Nvidia 3060 is about the same speed as these but uses 1/4 the power. Cryptocurrency miners have been buying gaming laptops for efficient computing.
    If M2 is scaled up to 4x the GPU power, it should still use significantly lower power than these, at least 1/5 the power.

    Hopefully Apple will scale the 16" MBPs to 10TFLOPs. That would pretty much negate the need for eGPUs. Extra power can always be useful but it wouldn't be needed in most cases with the IGP being that fast.
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