PowerColor Devil Box Redux

[HardOCP News]

The crew at Overclockers Club are taking another look at the PowerColor Devil Box. This time around they wanted to see what kind of performance they could get when pairing the Devil box up with an Intel NUC NUC6i7KYK.

My initial reactions to how the Devil Box improved gaming performance have not changed much after the change in baseline hardware. I found that even with a device such as Intel's high performance NUC as the backbone of your system, you still can really game at almost full speed just by using a device like PowerColor's Devil Box to fill your gaming needs.

 

[zkostik]

I just can't understand the appear or purpose of such a system. Maybe for a laptop that you carry and don't need gfx on the go and then game at home but with NUC (especially for that price)? That's not even [H], more like dumb. Might as well build a MiniITX system, will cost less and be more powerful... Razer btw has a similar enclosure which is smaller and looks nicer, although costs even more.

 

[Findecanor]

That could be interesting, but I can't read it.
HardOCP blocks my browser using the Privacy Badger plugin, despite it blocking only Google - which Privacy Badger blocks because Google does not respect that I do not want them to track me. If now, HardOCP thinks that it has such high standards with their ads, then should really fix this.

 

[commissioneranthony]

I just can't understand the appear or purpose of such a system. Maybe for a laptop that you carry and don't need gfx on the go and then game at home but with NUC (especially for that price)? That's not even [H], more like dumb. Might as well build a MiniITX system, will cost less and be more powerful... Razer btw has a similar enclosure which is smaller and looks nicer, although costs even more.

egpu solutions can make computing easier for people who have to be mobile, (for office & meeting work, moving about), yet have to do demanding work (cad, rendering, design work, video editing). The key aspect of these tb3 egpu systems is the ability to put laptop to sleep and hotswap. before that was simply not possible thru gpu proprietary dock. This can make working between home and office a lot easier. Hell, I can now carry around a lesser performing laptop because of these docks.

Yeah, sure, I could carry around an ITX machine in my backpack, and bring it back and forth from home to office. but what happens when someone wants to see my work when in between places? Yeah. have fun. You'll need a monitor.
hence laptop.

 

[zkostik]

egpu solutions can make computing easier for people who have to be mobile, (for office & meeting work, moving about), yet have to do demanding work (cad, rendering, design work, video editing). The key aspect of these tb3 egpu systems is the ability to put laptop to sleep and hotswap. before that was simply not possible thru gpu proprietary dock. This can make working between home and office a lot easier. Hell, I can now carry around a lesser performing laptop because of these docks.

Yeah, sure, I could carry around an ITX machine in my backpack, and bring it back and forth from home to office. but what happens when someone wants to see my work when in between places? Yeah. have fun. You'll need a monitor.
hence laptop.

Well, you kind of just reiterated what I said. If you need to be mobile you just have a laptop and NUC here is not a mobile. Even the lightest quad core laptops are will well over 4lbs, so isn't really ultraportable. Sure you can connect this box but it hardly make it a mobile by a long run. So my point kind of stands. So far I've only seem use in these with attaching some fast periphery to laptop or some other TB enabled computer such as Mac Mini but with a much smaller enclosure. With PC you can simply get an ultra small factor machine that has one upgrade slot or laptop MXM slot for graphics. Will cost a lot less too. The purpose of mounting a high end desktop gpu to a small computer or ultrabook that have poor cooling and generally gimped hardware just doesn't make sense other than saying "Yes, I did it!".

 

[Verdi]

Well, you kind of just reiterated what I said. If you need to be mobile you just have a laptop and NUC here is not a mobile. Even the lightest quad core laptops are will well over 4lbs, so isn't really ultraportable. Sure you can connect this box but it hardly make it a mobile by a long run. So my point kind of stands. So far I've only seem use in these with attaching some fast periphery to laptop or some other TB enabled computer such as Mac Mini but with a much smaller enclosure. With PC you can simply get an ultra small factor machine that has one upgrade slot or laptop MXM slot for graphics. Will cost a lot less too. The purpose of mounting a high end desktop gpu to a small computer or ultrabook that have poor cooling and generally gimped hardware just doesn't make sense other than saying "Yes, I did it!".

I agree that it doesnt make sense for a NUC, but i makes a lot of sense for notebooks. Take that XPS 15, which is often tested with this kinda of system, has a powerful i7 that will last many years, but a a pitful GTX 960m that soon will be bellow minimum specs for most games. So no need to change the laptop when the GPU is no longer good enough.

Current prices are absurd though.