8th gen laptop and eGPU combo. Asking for insights

Theorica · February 1, 2021

Here we are. It is 2021 and hardware prices have gone through the roof. Try and squeeze more time and life out of an older purchase? Or simply wait for better times?

My daughter has a Lenovo Yoga 730 2-in-1 with an i7 8550U (4 cores, 8 threads) and 16GB ram. It came with the gtx1050 option. It has TB3 as well. It's still a decent laptop for her creative uses but she's just beginning to become more interested in gaming. Light gaming to be clear.

A fairly bad time for this to happen as we all know. But there is some good news to this. I do have an RTX 2060 KO Ultra doing absolutely nothing. I also have a cheapo 1080p 144Hz TN panel that is also doing nothing.

I'm wondering if picking up something like a Razer Core X for less than $400CAD would be a decent way of both giving her the means to play some light gaming with her friends while keeping the money spent to a minimum until things are somewhat back to normal. She's more interested in a new desktop than me getting her another laptop, just so you know. And I agree with her. But not now.

I've seen other threads here with this processor paired with 1070 based eGPU's. Those threads are old though and rules are rules. So a new thread it is. I would expect the 2060 to probably perform about the same? I think?? I hope?

I don't expect to get the full performance out of the 2060 but if anyone has any experience with a similar processor and a 2060 or even 10 series over TB3, your shared experiences or other insights would be greatly appreciated..

I don't want to throw money away and would rather wait if this config is even remotely terrible.

Cheers!