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The best external graphics card enclosure
By Andrew Cunningham This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission. Read the full guide to external graphics card enclosures. For laptops or mini PCs with Thunderbolt 3 ports, adding an external graphics card (or eGPU) can be a good way to play high-end games, run professional 3D apps, and connect as many as half a dozen monitors. After researching nearly 30 Thunderbolt 3 eGPU enclosures and testing six, we think Akitio's Node Pro is the best box you can buy to put your graphics card in. The Akitio Node Pro is a bit slimmer than other eGPU enclosures and has an understated, all-metal design that looks better than most of the plain black boxes in this category (it looks especially at home next to Macs). You can open it and install or swap out graphics cards without any tools at all—on most enclosures you need at least a screwdriver to access the interior—its fan is relatively quiet, and it has a second Thunderbolt 3 port that you can use to connect other accessories. It can provide up to 60 W of power to a connected laptop, more than enough to keep most 13-inch notebooks charged while you use them. And it has a neat retractable handle you can use to carry it from place to place. The Razer Core X Chroma is bigger, boxier, and more expensive than the Node Pro, but it also includes a Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports for connecting accessories, and customizable RGB lights that can add a flashy, colorful touch to your gaming setup. It can also provide up to 100 W of power to a connected laptop, enough for some 15-inch laptops like Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro (though others exceed USB-C's 100 W charging limit). If you're looking for a Thunderbolt 3 graphics card enclosure that can double as a laptop dock, this is the one to get. The 550 W version of Sonnet's eGFX Breakaway Box (which also comes in a 650 W version) typically costs between $100 and $150 less than our other picks, money that you could put toward a more powerful graphics card. But its design is more utilitarian than that of our other picks, it's not as easy to open, and its fan is a bit noisier. These shortcomings are forgivable for the price, but most people will be better served by the Akitio Node Pro.
