Razer Core X Chroma Aluminum External GPU Enclosure (eGPU): Compatible with Windows & MacOS Thunderbolt 3 Laptops, NVIDIA/AMD PCIe Support, 700W PSU, 4X USB 3.1, 1x Gbit Ethernet, Chroma RGB, Black

As a part time gamer and full time Mac user, I wanted to play some games to my monitor when I am at home. Firstly, works great with Vega 64 and VII from AMD. These are, as of this review, the most recent GPU cards that both the box and the OS support. Moreover, to game you really need to go bootcamp... games just don't run well on OS X (despite the ports). Being able to reboot my machine into windows without unplugging something was key to my workflow. Plugging in the GPU and connecting this to the system is a breeze. I HIGHLY recommend a longer cord (Zikko makes a 6.6 foot TB3 that works perfectly). The PROS: All of them. I have the non-chroma version because ... I'm not an RGB guy and I don't need all those ports as I already have a big TB3 hub (having multiple TB3s on the MBP makes this a simple set up). The CONS: The thing is heavy... with the longer cord though, you can retire this unit to a safe location. If you are using the Chroma version, you will not be able to do this as the hub is built into the box... just a word of warning. Also, because of how the fans are set up, your GPU fans and the enclosure fan blow toward each other. Make sure the back of this unit is WIDE open as in don't put the back up to a wall. This is the only way the hot air can go to escape. Overall, this is the best eGPU enclosure by far... the power is perfect... The fan issues are minor at best.

I don't know about you, but I shopped around and around and around for eGPU cases. I looked at all of the premium vendors for Apple supported devices, and honestly this is the nicest and most practical case out of all of them. Unlike most cases there are vents on 4 sides of the case. It has a 72mm fan pulling in air opposite of the Graphics card and pulling in more are for the PSU... which most cases lack. It comes with a 600w power supply unit. Most cases don't have that and cost much more... Why? I have no clue except they include extra Thunderbolt and USB ports. (Which in my case I don't need slowing down the graphics card's Pipeline Thunderbolt basically already took it to 80% regardless of speed) I know some people love RBG but I hate RGB and I am so glad this case does not factor extra RGB into the cost of the product because it is a waste of electricity and money. Its smooth and black and it hides very well on one of the shelves of my desk. (They don't have sides so air flow is not an issue) Honestly it works really well and at first I was surprised that the 72mm fan was keeping my card so cold that it did not cycle at all until I was in a game for at least a few minutes. Only down side is that the Thunderbolt cable included was a little short... I can make it work but it would have been nice to have a 3 foot cable if that was technically possible with Thunderbolt. Very happy with this purchase and I think Razer really proved they can also make products for the active professionals, not just gamers.

This works great out of the box and if you have a Windows laptop or NUC or something similar. The nightmares begin on day 1 however. Thunderbolt is to blame here... I spent a while trying to find the "right version" of the Thunderbolt drivers to get this working stably on my HP Spectre laptop. It ended up only really being fully stable when I disabling the internal dGPU video card and turning off power management on random stuff like the ethernet card! It really feels like incantations to get this to just not blue screen the laptop. Worse, it would "plague" it for the duration before it blue screens. I'd unplug the enclosure and then go to a coffee shop and find the laptop already blue screened and on the login screen hot in my backpack. If I didn't plug in for a while, no problems like that. When this works, it's actually REALLY good. The video card, I've used an RTX 2080, and Intel Arc 770, only runs at PCI-e 4x but that's plenty for playing games on that are powered by a laptop. Diablo 4, Dead by Daylight, Overwatch, even Cyberpunk, run ok on this. There's some stutters and dips in FPS, but those really can be mostly attributed to the laptop. PCI-e 4x is just not slow enough for this to matter to gaming. Also, I was running an external display. Running the internal laptop display means you have to copy the framebuffer back to the internal card and it's not variable... the 4 PCI-e lanes are split so 2 go to the card and 2 come back... and that severely limits the framerate, makes things feel laggy, and causes a lot of stuttering and slowdown. I ran CUDA workloads on this as well... and honestly didn't see too much difference with the same video card in a normal PC motherboard. There were times it "felt like" the models being uploaded to the card was running slower, but the actual processing times and numbers really didn't reflect measurable differences. Thunderbolt in general is just super unreliable. My HP Spectre, a few Intel NUCs, a Dell XPS, and some other hardware all have random issues with Thunderbolt docks, VGA passthrough, and all the issues with stability. It's great if you're in a pinch, but terrible if it's your only setup. I'd recommend this only if you want to sit at a desk with your laptop and game every now and then but otherwise have a primary gaming computer setup. I can also recommend using it with an Intel NUC where you're ok with the occasional crash/random reboot.

Like every Razer item I've purchased, it's top notch quality products and the best bang for the buck. The Razer Core X eGPU seemed quite expensive at first but if you factor in power supply, control board, and quality; it's a great bargain. I've assembled every Win PC gaming rig that I've owned and use Macbook Pros for work. I recently upgraded to 2x BenQ 4K displays since the price was right and the WFH situation made it the right time... which is how I discovered the Razer Core X / eGPUs. My Macbook Pro (15" mid 2015) is "kind of" capable of running 2 4K monitors but noticed performance issues when the 4K resolution is scaled to 1440p. macOS shows a warning for this under display settings when changing the resolution. It's either 1080p or 4K where it doesn't bog down. Well, we all know 4K on a 27" monitor is going to make everything very tiny and the 1080p resolution is going to be in yo face but the picture quality is amazing. I prefer the 1440p with the better image quality reason I went 4K rather than native 1440p. 5K is just still super expensive. Some folks will probably be like why dual 4K?! I'm a software engineer so the extra real estate for the IDE / Text Editor on one screen and the rest on the other is what I've always preferred. The 1440p in high def makes the text look amazing. I know, I know... folks be like, you got a 4K for TEXT and 2 of them?! ... Yes, my eyes are not the same as they were over a decade ago when I started my software development career. Anyway, back to how I got here. The MBP was sluggish due to the GPU. My specific model is described to work with 1 5K external monitor. Makes sense, it's a 5 year old laptop GPU powering dual 4K. I needed to upgrade my GPU and researched some solutions. I was disappointed finding out there's no native macOS support for Thunderbolt 2 and eGPUs but I found purge-wrangler.sh. After following the basic instructions from the purge-wrangler github page, it was plug and play. I installed an AMD RX580... YES, an AMD... I have not purchased a desktop AMD card ever since the whole Bitcoin mining phase, people were forced to turn to NVIDIA cards. It all works great on my MBP. Also, I have this connected to a 4 port DisplayPort KVM for dual monitors. It works, make sure to buy the official Apple TB3 to TB2 since it's bidirectional and get a TB certified cable to plug into the adapter. # Pros - Quality packaging as always (stickers swag) 👏 - Quality product, paint, mesh, design, etc. 🙌 - Works with MBP (15" mid 2015, and a 13" MB Air 2012) TB2 (with install scripts) - Apple's limitation 🤦‍♂️ - macOS detected my monitors supported HDR and displayed an enable/disable checkbox in the display settings where as before it didn't 🤔 - Might have the highest wattage support compared to other competitors at the time of this review. Can support most high end GPUs but double check the dimensions and power requirements! 🥇 - The swivel / lock handle design - 👌 - It can play games with the RX580 but nowhere close to what my 1070Ti on the PC can do. I'm upgrading to a 5700XT since I got a Prime Day deal on it. - Can play fortnite, cs:go, left4dead, etc. I suggest a better card since the Razer X is designed for some serious gaming GPUs. The RX580 is an insult for what this eGPU enclosure can support. However, if you don't care about gaming in high/ultra settings, software & web development, CAD, video editing etc. then a RX580 paired with this enclosure is a great upgrade. # Cons - Leaving idle state, the fans spin quickly causing some fan noise. It's only like a second or two. Not that big of a deal. Might be the GPU + Enclosure combo. Will find out with the 5700XT swap. # Neutral - Ventilation - can be used as a mini space heater for the winter by playing games at ultra settings. Not sure how much the office will warm up during the summer. It's fall. - Some people complained theirs "didn't power on". You have to plug in a TB3 cable. Most people will assume they would see some kind of light or power when flipping the PSU switch. Wasn't the case and it left me scratching my head a bit. My situation with purge-wrangler had me connect the cable during script install. Razers instructions were to plug in the TB cable THEN flip the PSU switch. - Wish it came with a longer TB3 cable but they sell longer TB cables separately. That's how they can keep the price low b/c a 6.6 FT TB2 cable cost me $45 so be glad it came with one.

This review is over the purchase and support of the Core X Chrome with extra USB and Ethernet. I want that to be clear because the GPU portion of the equipment is excellent. The additional $100 for USB and Ethernet is atrocious! It's a totally useless purchase and complete waste of money. I'll add, that RAZER support is either incompetent or uncaring. The technical capability of the GPU enclosure can't compensate for the distaste and feeling of being cheated in the transaction. I purchased the eGPU for use with a GeForce 2080 GPU. I had a new XPS 13" laptop with Thunderbolt 3 with the required channels to support full speed GPU use. The device and GPU were immediately detected by the laptop and configuration and the required drivers began to install under Windows 10. I was almost immediately able to play games with the included GPU at high resolution and performance. The negative part of the transaction came in attempting to get the USB devices and Ethernet to work. Ethernet would randomly "reset" and disconnect. Only resolution was to reset the connection in network troubleshooting which would re-establish the connection for about 5-10 minutes. Updates of drivers were unable to get a resolution. Additionally, no USB devices other than keyboard were detected on the USB ports. And that would periodically disconnect and force a complete reboot. Fearing an incompatibility I tried a second laptop a Lenovo X1 Carbon 7th gen. I had the exact same symptoms. I reached out to RAZER Support and after a few days they determined that RMA was the correct solution. After several days they determined that they could not reproduce the issue and that it was fixed. They returned the device to me and I immediately had the same issue upon the devices arrival at my house. This process has completely eroded my faith in the brand. I paid $100 more for a feature set that is not usable, Ethernet and USB. If you are considering a eGPU I would consider another vendor. There are cheaper options. If you want to stay with RAZER, DO NOT get the version with USB/Ethernet. The eGPU seems to work and quite well but paying $100 for broken feature should be illegal, but it's not. So I'm just warning the next buyer.

The usb-c/Thunderbolt 3 cable you use to connect the Razer Core X to your compatible laptop MUST be able to deliver at least 60W of power and deliver data transmission speeds of 40Gbps. Razer provides a very short version of this cable with the Razer Core X. Be aware that the Apple Thunderbolt 3/USB-C Cable does not work for this function. I tried to use the one that comes with the Apple MBP 16 and it didn't work. The Razer Core X will not actually turn on unless a compatible video card is installed, Razer Core X power switch is on, and the right USB-C/TB3 cable is in place plugged in to your computer. If it is, then it will light up as soon as your connected compatible laptop computer turns on. It works great and the installation process on my 4 year old Razer Blade 17 laptop was almost immediate as it recognized it and asked me to follow through on installing the necessary drivers for both the video card and the Razer Core X. This device works as advertised. 2022 update. I originally ran an ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 2060 Advanced Overclocked 6G in this unit. The card worked great, but was starting to feel underpowered in certain high object count situations. I have since upgraded it to an EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra Gaming, 24GB GDDR6X, iCX3 Technology. The Razer website lists the 3090 as compatible with the Razer Core X Chroma. This GPU card requires 350W to work and needs 3 GPU PCIe connections. Doing the math, the card would require a minimum 116.6667W per PCIe connector to function. The Razer Core X Chroma feeds 500W to the GPU but only has 2 PCIe connectors. With 250W to one connection, and 125W and 125W via a splitter to the 2nd and 3rd, this card turns on, works, and is recognized by the now 6 year old Razer Blade 17. However the card does throw a decent amount of heat so I wouldn't run it without AC on a hot day and I would let the fans on the eGPU run for about a minute or two after the laptop is shutdown before I shut the Core X Chroma off. Finally as I learned more about performance bottlenecks, I found that in retrospect this card is overkill for this rig setup because of the data bottleneck through the Thunderbolt 3 cable. A GPU in a PC tower has a much faster data rate than Thunderbolt 3 can provide. So generally if you play games in FHD (1920X1080) with the settings turned up then a rig set up with an eGPU will work for you. It also means you will never be running the card at its full potential. If you want to be able to play at higher resolutions, you will want the GPU card in the PC tower wired into the motherboard. Don't use an eGPU. So the moral of the story is do your homework. I would recommend anyone looking at GPUs for a Razer Core X Chroma to look at GPUs that only require 2 GPU PCIe's first and read the reviews. They'll use less power, and may get you the same FHD performance for less.

About the Razer Core X. Recommend Pros: - Well thought out. Open the case, pop in your video card, close the case - Quiet - Modern Mac “plug and play” - Not just another ugly black box, but it is a black box. (Just not ugly) - Will not scratch your desk - Repairable/upgradable components (like power supply) - 650 watt power supply can feed most video cards AND power your laptop Cons: - Performance improvements from an eGPU are best for gaming. - The thumb screw for anchoring your video card to the chassis needed a screw driver (thumb is too big) - Metal to metal grounding (for static control) is limited by heavy ‘baked enamel’ finish - Big, but that is also good because it allows full sized cards and better cooling - Not a dock - Power and signal cables on video cards can have one scratching their head if the connectors don’t match. Not Razer’s fault. I was using a MacBook Pro 15-inch (Late 2016) and experienced no issues with the Razer. Add your video card and you are done. I wanted to write a balanced review but it was tough, as you can see by my weak list of “Cons.” I wanted to see if adding an eGPU would improve my video export times. I did see some improvements with DaVinci Resolve but I seldom use that software. Unfortunately, sending tasks to the eGPU and back to the CPU is enough overhead that it wasn’t worth the complexity for me. However, gamers just want the video signal to go through the eGPU to a monitor; for that it is great. Since I don’t game I returned my unit but I was really impressed with everything about the Razer Core X. I seriously considered keeping it just in case I decide to game when I retire but decided technology would march on in 18-months. Recommend - for gaming

This is for the Razer Core X (not Chroma): this external GPU enclosure looks and works great and is really easy to open up and access any components – which is good because the provided case fan and power supply fan are always running and not so quiet. It’s not terribly loud but the constant fan noise is pretty disappointing when you're accustomed to the silence of your laptop (like my 2019 16" MacBook Pro) during most everyday tasks. The Razer's PSU fan even runs when your connected computer is asleep! However, it's not too difficult to replace both the case fan and the power supply unit (PSU) and make this thing silent, at least when you're not cranking up the graphics processing. If you search online (egpu.io), you'll find that some folks have used a Noctua 120mm 3-pin fan for the case fan but these only come in some odd, brown and white colors that stand out and look odd in the black Razer Core X. (There's a more expensive, all black Noctua 120mm but it only comes in a 4-pin PWM variety.) I ended up using the Be Quiet! Silent Wings 3 120mm, BL064 for the case fan (around $20) which comes in black and blends right in. It works great, moves plenty of air and runs perfectly silently. As for the power supply, most everybody recommends the Corsair SF600 SFX as it has a power plug orientation which fits in the Razer Core X appropriately. This alone will cost about half as much as the Razer Core X – so yeah, an expensive upgrade.. You'll find it's much smaller in size than the stock PSU but you need only use some adhesive velcro tape to secure it in place. It does have a slightly lower wattage at 600W but it won't affect your ability to run any high-powered graphics cards and charge your laptop via the Thunderbolt card. Anyway, with the case fan replaced and the PSU replaced, the Razer Core X runs completely silent when you're not doing any demanding tasks. The question is, why doesn't Razer use these or similar components to begin with?? Also, I wish they'd provide a slightly longer Thunderbolt cable, like 24”. For anyone who's interested, yes, I was also able to get the Razer Core X to work under Windows and Boot Camp on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro – and with an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT. On the Mac side, just plug it in and it works. It looks like Parallels will even make use of it. However, getting an AMD card to work under Boot Camp is not straight forward at all. You'll have to go through some serious hassle to get the drivers installed and some rigamarole every time you boot into Windows. (See egpu.io and bootcampdrivers.com for help.) Apparently Nvidia cards will just work under Boot Camp, but then those aren't supported on the macOS side at all.