If you’ve got a Thunderbolt 3 laptop with a rocking processor, but the GPU (or lack thereof) simply can’t handle triple-A games, we’ve found the deal for you. Amazon is selling the Razer Core X eGPU enclosure for $280. That’s the all-time low, and the best price yet in 2021. While you could find this enclosure for $300 in 2020, for most of this year the enclosure has been selling for its full $400 price tag, so this $120 discount is a smoking hot deal.
The Razer Core X is an aluminum enclosure that connects to your laptop over Thunderbolt 3. It’s packing a built-in 650W power supply to supply juice to the graphics card while also charging your laptop via Thunderbolt 3. Inside, you drop your GPU into a full PCIe x16 slot. Then you power up the enclosure, connect it to your laptop, and off you go. (You’ll need to BYO graphics card, of course.)
The Razer Core X works with Windows 10, as well as macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 or later. Windows machines can use Nvidia or AMD graphics cards, while Macs can only use AMD Radeon hardware since Apple doesn’t support GeForce GPUs. You also need to be sure that your laptop’s version of Thunderbolt 3 supports eGPUs. Many do, but you should check in your laptop’s manual or via online sites such as eGPU.io.
If you can’t spend money on a desktop PC or just don’t have the room for another computer in your life, an eGPU like the Core X lets you enjoy desktop gaming at home, while keeping your PC portable for those times you need to be on the go.
If you want to get a sense of what eGPU performance is like, check out our look at playing some of 2020’s biggest games with an external graphics card.