Can Acer Nitro 5 AN515-58-78EN with thunderbolt 4 support external GPU?

ChrisKaizer32

I have this Nitro 5 AN515-58-78EN and it says it has a Thunderbolt 4. Can I connect an external GPU on this laptop?

This laptop only has an RTX 3050 4 GB GPU, which is not good. But It has an i7 12700h CPU.

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/693236/can-acer-nitro-5-an515-58-78en-with-thunderbolt-4-support-external-gpu

Yes, the eGPU can connect perfectly to the TBT4 of this laptop, that is what the modern and top eGPU enclosures and GPUs are made and work best with. But read on as the new PCIe4x4 is a better option and alternative, read the below and go to that link. Good luck and hope this helps you out.

Thunderbolt and external PCIe Devices

Thunderbolt has been the dominant interface for attaching graphics cards and other PCIe devices to laptops for over ten years now. Created by Intel with collaboration with Apple, it is a brilliant all-in-one solution to providing data and power to host devices. However, it is a proprietary connection that requires both software and hardware to properly interface between a host and external devices, and is limited by 4 lanes of PCIe Gen 3.0 bandwidth and protocol overhead. This can restrict performance in bandwidth-demanding applications, and compatibility issues between devices is not uncommon. Furthermore, Thunderbolt devices tend to me more expensive than their non-proprietary counterparts, due to the specific technology the interface requires.

M.2 – the ugly alternative

Adding an external graphics card without having a Thunderbolt port available has been achieved through a variety of internal ports that run off of PCIe lanes, the most effective of which being the M.2 port. Designed with the intention of being occupied by an NVMe SSD, the M.2 port contains up to 4 PCIe lanes, and is often routed directly to the CPU instead of through a PCH. However, until recently there has only been awkward, fixed-cable eGPU solutions available to the consumer market for adapting an M.2 Port such as the ADT-Link R43SG 4.0 / K43SG, often resulting in needing to have the bottom panel of a device entirely removed to be utilized.

With the introduction of PCIe Generation 4.0, 4 PCIe lanes essentially doubled in bandwidth. This removed the bottleneck of the previous generation, and along with a non-proprietary connection in the form of OCuLink, the market has provided a cost-effective and high-performance option for adding an eGPU to an existing M.2 Port.