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System:
2014 Mac mini
i7 Dual-core
16 GB Ram
Intel Iris
27" Dell 2560x1440 monitor
MacOS 11.1 (No boot camp)
eGPU:
Whats left of an Akitio Thunder 2, Sapphire Rx Vega 56 PULSE 8GB, everything wired to a Corsair CX550F RGB PSU. Â Its not pretty.
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Installation:
Disabled SIP and Authenticated-Root, Booted into 11.1, ran purge-wrangler, rebooted with egpu hooked up, display attached to mac mini HDMI. Â Shutdown, rebooted with display hooked directly to egpu on HDMI. Â Up and running.
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Benchmarks:
Games barley ran before. Â The intel iGPU is not for gaming. Â Elder Scrolls online ran at about 40fps with everything off @720p. Â Far Lone sails was crazy choppy. Â
With the eGPU hooked up, running ESO at 2048 with everything on High, getting 51-66 fps (60hz monitor) Â I feel there is some cpu bottlenecking, but it does run much better than expected for a dual-core. Â Very playable. Â Far: Lone Sails runs everything on high. Â The RGB PSU is cool somehow. Â It needs some cleanup and a case for eGPU. Â It's an older GPU, it does have some coil whine, but not intolerable. Â Fans don't spin too much on the Vega, it dumps a lot of heat out the top of it.Â
6th Gen X1 Carbon + MSI Air Boost Vega 56 +Sonnet Breakaway 550 on Pop! OS Linux
2014 Mac Mini [4th,2C,U] + RX Vega 56 @ 16Gbps-TB2 (AKiTiO Thunder2) + macOS 11.1 [build link]
Thanks for this post! I wanted to give this a try. I'm stuck with a Late 2014 mac mini, but mine is a dual-core i5 processor. I think I will follow your instructions here to add a eGPU. But everywhere I look, there are no other eGPUs I could connect to it other than the RX Vega 56. But I can't find the RX Vega 56 available for purchase anywhere haha
To do: Create my signature with system and expected eGPU configuration information to give context to my posts. I have no builds.
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