System specs
Huawei Matebook Pro
- 13.9" screen
- 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8550U processor
- Nvidia GeForce MX150 with 2GB GDDR5
- Windows 10
- 16 GB LPDDR3 2133 MHz
eGPU hardware
- Zotac AMP BOX
- GTX 1080 from Aorus Gaming Box
- 0,5m passive TB3 cable
Hardware pictures
Installation steps
Plug and play
Benchmarks
Unigine Superposition (4k external, 1080 internal, 1080 external):
Unigine Valley: (1080 Ultra/No AA: internal, external)
3DMark Time Spy: (external)
Comments
I was looking replacement for Aorus Gaming Box, which PSU did blow up (but GPU was still working), and ended up buying this one. It is slightly smaller than Razer Core X which I initially thought of buying, it's also shorter and cheaper than Razer Core V2 which was also one of my candidates.
It's able to keep Matebook Pro battery level at 100%, so I guess it can delivery at least 60 watts over the TB3 cable. PSU has fan, but it does not make any noise, so box is nice and quiet unlike the Aorus Gaming Box.
The box can house max card length of 228mm and I'm considering trying out 2070 RTX series, e.g ZOTAC GeForce GAMING RTX 2070 Mini or MSI GeForce RTX 2070 8GB Ventus should fit well in box.
Performance vice beats the build-in MX150 x 5-20 times depending on GPU use case (CUDA calculation/ rendering)
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
Nice! I haven't even seen any of these enclosures on sale.... where did you find it?
Yeah, this is a rare one - I couldn't also find that much information about the box, except couple of Youtube videos 🙂 I bought it from Amazon.de https://www.amazon.de/Zotac-AMP-Box-Thunderbolt-External-schwarz-grau/dp/B079QLVWRD/. 400eur with shipping.
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
Very nice build! I did not realize how compact the AMP Box is. Would you be able to provide additional details on the power supply?
Wunderschön!! 😀 How about cpu thermal? Is there any improvement with or without AMP box? It’ll be great if you can run 3Dmark like firestrike or timespy if you have it, sorry I’m a gamer 
Razer Blade 15 2018, i7 8750H 16gb ddr4 2666mhz 1tb 970Evo
Razer Blade Stealth 12,5 2016 i7 7500U 8gb ddr3 1866mhz 500gb 970Evo
MacBook Pro 13 mid 2012 i5 3210M 12gb ddr3 1600mhz 500GB HDD
Razer Core V2 rtx 2070 Black 2040mhz Boost clock
Previous setting: rtx 2080ti Asus Turbo, rtx 2080 xc gaming, rtx 2080 Fe, Zotac Mini 1080ti, Evga 1080 FTW2 gaming.
Dual Monitor Predator XB241YU 165Hz 1440p, LG l24UD58 60Hz 4K
Portable Monitor Magedok 1440p HDR 60Hz usbA/C monitor
Very nice build! I did not realize how compact the AMP Box is. Would you be able to provide additional details on the power supply?
Box has internal power supply, basis on product id (251-09100-7800F) it's build by Zotac. There is no mention of PD in specs, but I guess it's at least 60 watts. PSU has one ~90mm fan, interestingly facing downwards under the box.
- 450W power supply
- Up to 250W (2 x 8-pin PCI-E power cable)
http://hkftp.zotac.com/External/ExternalBox/AMP-BOX/Brochure/AMP_BOX_Brochure.pdf
https://imgur.com/a/KHCvGtS
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
That 2-lane TB3 port is seriously gimping those internal display benchmarks. It's really a shame they couldn't have used 2-lane for the MX150 and gave 4-lane to the TB3 port. (Samsung did this with their Notebook 9 15" with the MX150).
LG Gram 17 | Sonnet Breakaway Box 550 | Asus Strix RTX 2070 OC Edition | Win 10 Pro 1903 + Fedora 31 Dual Boot
Build Link
That 2-lane TB3 port is seriously gimping those internal display benchmarks. It's really a shame they couldn't have used 2-lane for the MX150 and gave 4-lane to the TB3 port. (Samsung did this with their Notebook 9 15" with the MX150).
Yeah, but it's not big issue for me, since I usually do gaming using external displays; projector and VR headset... so far this setup has been more than sufficient for my use.
Samsung Notebook 9 looks nice, but I really like Huawei's choice of 3:2 aspect ratio and spacious MS precision touch pad.. I have had several (MSI) gaming laptops, but they all come with crappy ELAN touch pad, and then the wider 16:9 screen is not super good for productivity tasks. Huawei finally got almost everything right.. as all purpose ultrabook 😉
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
Hey hi!
I have a similar build with razer core X + zotac rtx 2080 amp extreme and I am wondering if you experience sudden freezes in idling mode?
I had some freezes recently like laptop completely freezes and only can be forced shutdown.
Matebook X Pro i7-8550U + Zotac RTX 2080 AMP EXTREME + Razer Core X
Hey hi!
I have a similar build with razer core X + zotac rtx 2080 amp extreme and I am wondering if you experience sudden freezes in idling mode?
I had some freezes recently like laptop completely freezes and only can be forced shutdown.
I can't recall issues with idling.. I have such a short cable to eGPU so I usually right away unplug after the usage, so I have it idling rarely.. 🙂 Does it occur by the time that computer goes to power saving state and starts shutting down the display or when?
I remember having lots of trouble with Aorus Gaming Box when it was plugged in.. I ended up having black screen and unresponsive computer and had to force power down the computer. But with this box, even the plugging in the box works surprisingly smoothly. It could be the box itself, or maybe I had the NVidia drivers updated at some point.
Have you tried disabling MX150 from device manager, I remember reading about it and trying that with Aorus Gaming Box issues?
Would be nice get some benchmarks of your setup, I've been daydreaming of RTX cards a bit 🙂
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
Wunderschön!! 😀 How about cpu thermal? Is there any improvement with or without AMP box? It’ll be great if you can run 3Dmark like firestrike or timespy if you have it, sorry I’m a gamer
Does 3DMark benchmark differ a lot from what Unigine does? I've done quite a bit of CPU+GPU intensive flight sim gaming (AeroFly2 wth Ultra detail) with VR, and CPU usage is around 50% and GPU 75-100%.. giving frames quite steadily at rate of 90 FPS to headset.. so I think the setup performs pretty well with heavy gaming..
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
Hey hi!
I have a similar build with razer core X + zotac rtx 2080 amp extreme and I am wondering if you experience sudden freezes in idling mode?
I had some freezes recently like laptop completely freezes and only can be forced shutdown.I can't recall issues with idling.. I have such a short cable to eGPU so I usually right away unplug after the usage, so I have it idling rarely.. 🙂 Does it occur by the time that computer goes to power saving state and starts shutting down the display or when?
I remember having lots of trouble with Aorus Gaming Box when it was plugged in.. I ended up having black screen and unresponsive computer and had to force power down the computer. But with this box, even the plugging in the box works surprisingly smoothly. It could be the box itself, or maybe I had the NVidia drivers updated at some point.
Have you tried disabling MX150 from device manager, I remember reading about it and trying that with Aorus Gaming Box issues?
Would be nice get some benchmarks of your setup, I've been daydreaming of RTX cards a bit 🙂
Thanks for replying! By idle mode, I meant not gaming or under any heavy usage. I use an external display and sometimes the entire display will just freeze at a frame and everything becomes unresponsive. My laptop on the hand just shows a black screen and nothing I could do besides pressing the power button. Hmm and I did disable the MX150.
I will do some benchmark and post here maybe! Other than this problem I am enjoying it. There is some bottlenecking with the i7-8550U but I can get 40ish fps in 4k with almost all games at high-ultra.
Matebook X Pro i7-8550U + Zotac RTX 2080 AMP EXTREME + Razer Core X
Thanks for replying! By idle mode, I meant not gaming or under any heavy usage. I use an external display and sometimes the entire display will just freeze at a frame and everything becomes unresponsive. My laptop on the hand just shows a black screen and nothing I could do besides pressing the power button. Hmm and I did disable the MX150.
I will do some benchmark and post here maybe! Other than this problem I am enjoying it. There is some bottlenecking with the i7-8550U but I can get 40ish fps in 4k with almost all games at high-ultra.
Strange, it could be anything.. I would recommend try running Matebook manager and check at least that all the drivers & BIOS are up to date.. have you checked Windows Event logs, usually there's something that points to malfunctioning thing/driver?
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
Wunderschön!! 😀 How about cpu thermal? Is there any improvement with or without AMP box? It’ll be great if you can run 3Dmark like firestrike or timespy if you have it, sorry I’m a gamer
Does 3DMark benchmark differ a lot from what Unigine does? I've done quite a bit of CPU+GPU intensive flight sim gaming (AeroFly2 wth Ultra detail) with VR, and CPU usage is around 50% and GPU 75-100%.. giving frames quite steadily at rate of 90 FPS to headset.. so I think the setup performs pretty well with heavy gaming..
Unigine mostly measure gpu performance and may be vary due resolution and other setting in benchmark, 3Dmark measure both physical (cpu) and graphics (gpu) performance you can see bottleneck on egpu setting or cpu throttling better on this.
Razer Blade 15 2018, i7 8750H 16gb ddr4 2666mhz 1tb 970Evo
Razer Blade Stealth 12,5 2016 i7 7500U 8gb ddr3 1866mhz 500gb 970Evo
MacBook Pro 13 mid 2012 i5 3210M 12gb ddr3 1600mhz 500GB HDD
Razer Core V2 rtx 2070 Black 2040mhz Boost clock
Previous setting: rtx 2080ti Asus Turbo, rtx 2080 xc gaming, rtx 2080 Fe, Zotac Mini 1080ti, Evga 1080 FTW2 gaming.
Dual Monitor Predator XB241YU 165Hz 1440p, LG l24UD58 60Hz 4K
Portable Monitor Magedok 1440p HDR 60Hz usbA/C monitor
Thanks for replying! By idle mode, I meant not gaming or under any heavy usage. I use an external display and sometimes the entire display will just freeze at a frame and everything becomes unresponsive. My laptop on the hand just shows a black screen and nothing I could do besides pressing the power button. Hmm and I did disable the MX150.
I will do some benchmark and post here maybe! Other than this problem I am enjoying it. There is some bottlenecking with the i7-8550U but I can get 40ish fps in 4k with almost all games at high-ultra.
Strange, it could be anything.. I would recommend try running Matebook manager and check at least that all the drivers & BIOS are up to date.. have you checked Windows Event logs, usually there's something that points to malfunctioning thing/driver?
I just updated my windows to 1809 and seems like the freezes have stopped for now. Anyways I did some benchmarks on superposition and got 7973 for 4k and 10867 for 1080p high, both on external monitor
Matebook X Pro i7-8550U + Zotac RTX 2080 AMP EXTREME + Razer Core X
I just updated my windows to 1809 and seems like the freezes have stopped for now. Anyways I did some benchmarks on superposition and got 7973 for 4k and 10867 for 1080p high, both on external monitor
Good that you got it working with Windows update.. I'm still on v1803 of Windows 10.
Interesting numbers on 1080P, 1080GTX vs 2080RTX results are almost identical.. the thunderbolt connection becomes bottleneck and just can't deliver data faster rate on 1080P resolution... I think on desktop 2080RTX should give ~17000 on 1080P. Because of eGPU setup, -40% is lost vs desktop setup on 1080P. With eGPU 1080GTX the drop seems to be reported here in forums -30% for 1080P resolution. Maybe somebody can correct my numberings, if they don't seem accurate 🙂
4K then looks a lot better, 2080RTX being ~20% faster than 1080GTX as it should.
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
Unigine mostly measure gpu performance and may be vary due resolution and other setting in benchmark, 3Dmark measure both physical (cpu) and graphics (gpu) performance you can see bottleneck on egpu setting or cpu throttling better on this.
Added the 3Dmark results. I didn't notice the Matebook CPU fan starting to spin any faster, while it was running the benchmark.. 🙂 Maybe with something longer running would cause eventually throttling down of CPU- because of thermals.
So, of course, it's theoretically possible, that game can put load on CPU so much that it starts affecting the communication with eGPU.. I'm just not sure, if it's valid use case, as most of heavy calculations can be offloaded to the GPU nowadays (e.g using PhysX and Cuda).
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
Small Update
I recently "upgraded" to RTX 2070 Gaming Box.. as I wanted to try out some new stuff in Turing GPUs and
also this box is more petite.
Graphics benchmarks are close to GTX 1080 as expected. There's a huge 1,5x (vs Pascal cards) leap in CUDA Integer calculation performance (IOPs) as in Turing architecture it can go parallel with Float calculations. Floats are a bit down than 1080, I guess it's because 2070 has less CUDA cores.
Also dreaming a bit of Matebook Pro 2019 as it should have 4x lanes now.
HP Spectre x360 15" (Windows 10) /
Intel NUC8i3BEH (Xubuntu 18.04) with AORUS RTX 2070 Gaming box
Hi,
Thanks for posting up all your findings, including your latest update. I have the i7 Matebook as well, and recently bought an Aorus 1070 Gaming Box. It was working okay for a bit, but now is exhibiting very odd behaviour. I previously had periodic connectivity issues where I had to power cycle it almost every time before it would connect and actually register the GPU as connected, and now it appears to not register the GPU at all. I can connect the box, I hear the fan spool up, and it powers USB peripherals, but no GPU is registered. I am on latest drivers, latest thunderbolt firmware, etc.
I am going to try a full driver reinstall, but I wondered if you could elaborate on the issues you had with your Aorus box. How did you know your PSU was shot? I suspect mine might be the culprit as it seems to be the weak point with the Aorus boxes. Given the issues I am having, I suspect it over an actual GPU failure.
If I can't get it working, I'm thinking about switching enclosures to the Razer Core X (preserving the 1070 from the Aorus box).
Any insights would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
Pending: Add my system information and expected eGPU configuration to my signature to give context to my posts
Anyone interested, I recently ran a bunch of benchmarks with my Matebook X Pro 2018. Has everyone's held up? I feel like this thing is giving it all shes got lol
Pending: Add my system information and expected eGPU configuration to my signature to give context to my posts
Hello,
i also have a matebook x pro, i7. Unfortunately I have difficulties to run Razer Core X with any graphics card.
Thunderbolt control Center does not detect new Thunderbolt devices. The laptop is charged by the Core X but nothing more.
I have tested Core X with an AMD GPU on a Macbook before - no problems.
To test it I started Ubuntu Live USB and connected core X, it is recognized, but I can't install drivers for GPU via Live USB.
Pending: Add my system information and expected eGPU configuration to my signature to give context to my posts