In this guide, we present to you the best eGPU cards available now. We advise you to bookmark this page now, and revisit it before you make any purchase because we constantly update it with the lowest prices.

We’ve gathered some of the best external GPU enclosures and set them against each other to find out which of their kind would be worthy of your backpack, with only the greatest making it on to this list. Below, you’ll find the best eGPU s of 2020, all stacked into a neat little pile for your viewing pleasure.

Even with a Thunderbolt-3 connection (32GBPS), you’re going to experience stunted performance on the best eGPU compared to your desktop’s PCIE (126gbps) connection, but don’t let this dissuade you from getting a better card, as desktop graphics tend to be far more efficient and powerful than their mobile counterparts.

The best external GPU enclosures are capable of breathing new life into your laptop, but they aren’t the ultimate solution by a long run. Most modern laptops come outfitted with Thunderbolt 3 or USB Type-C to accommodate GPUs to some extent, but only about a handful of older machines, such as mobile workstations and premium gaming laptops, would support MPCI or Express-card slots that can be retrofitted to interface with an external GPU.

Tired of dealing with sub-optimal frame rates or needing to slide down a few frustrating resolutions on your expensive gaming laptop, just to be able to play that newest AAA title? Ever wondered what budget gaming on the go would be like if you could switch out mobile graphics the way you could with most desktop systems? If anything along these lines has crossed your mind at some time or the other, you might find what you’re looking for below.

An external graphics amplifier typically contains these elements: an enclosure for the best GPU itself, expanded I/O, ventilation for the card, and sometimes, a fan(s) for additional cooling, a standalone PCB for the external graphics card dock to interface with, and a power supply to deliver additional power to the card, if necessary. The external GPU enclosure will terminate in a single cable that will plug into your laptop. These pieces all come together to create a seamless piece of hardware offering an elegant solution to enhance your laptop’s graphical capabilities. Unfortunately, this comes at the price of a few headaches along the way.

A brief explanation saying that “an external GPU for a laptop is a box that plugs into your laptop, and you can put a graphics card in it” wouldn’t be wrong, but there’s so much more to it than that. The best external GPU enclosure itself is rather simple—usually, it is just some form of a box with ventilation. Some variants will offer expanded I/O for your laptop. Extra USB ports, HDMI/DisplayPort, SD card readers, Ethernet, and more may be on offer. These are intended to act as an aid, as most laptops only have a very small amount of I/O. This is especially true with laptops that offer USB Type-C ports, which we’ll be focusing on a lot more later in the article.

Given that you’re reading this article, it’s safe to assume that you’re interested in finding the best eGPU. You may be a laptop owner who is interested in getting more out of your laptop, or you’re on a desktop and are just curious. Regardless of what the case may be, external GPU graphics amplifiers are a really cool concept hindered only by a small market. Below, we’ll go over what they are.

Buyers Beware

If the concept of a single box with a single cable to make your laptop much faster sounds too good to be true, you’d be somewhat right. Between inconsistencies among the best external GPU enclosures, only one type of interface really is worth using, and driver issues, not to mention whether or not your laptop even supports the interface, form part of a lot of hoops to jump through before you can get right into picking what enclosure and card you want. That is, of course, unless you’re on a Razer Blade using a Razer Core or a few Alienware models using an Alienware Graphics Amplifier.

While we’ll go over it in more detail later, it’s worth mentioning now that USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 3 is the best—and, in some respects, the only way to go—when it comes to using an external graphics card dock. The Thunderbolt 3 interface supports data transfers of up to 40Gbps. This is nearly equivalent to PCI-E 3 4x speeds. Anything below this, and you’ll find that your card harshly underperforms. Your framerates will be much lower than they otherwise would be, and in some cases, you might even encounter frame skipping and stutters.

Next, you’re going to want to ensure that your laptop not only has USB Type-C but that it also has Thunderbolt 3 support, which uses the USB Type-C interface. If you have USB Type-C, it might only have SuperSpeed USB support, which is roughly equal to 10Gbps of bandwidth or 25% of that offered by the Thunderbolt 3. There are only a few laptops available with Thunderbolt 3 support as of now, but that should change going into the future.

With all of this said, we have a few tips for you to ensure that your experience is as pleasant as it can be.

Buyer’s Notes: