eGPU with a Server?

[marcoi]

Anyone setup an eGPU with Thunderbolt on a server?

I'm thinking of getting an eGPU setup that works off of thunderbolt interface and add a thunderbolt pcie card to my dell r720 (assuming i have a free PCIE slot - got to check). My idea is pass-through the thunderbolt card to a w10 VM and thus the eGPU. Card would be either 1080 or Vega 64 havent decided. The w10 VM is just used as a steam gaming system (I steam to lesser laptops or my cell phone to play some games). Currently i have the video card sitting on a e3 system which is just wasting 50-60 watts idling. Since my servers on already i should be able to cut down the power usage and hardware needs if i can get the eGPU working.

So thoughts or experiences?

 

[ecosse]

I thought about such a setup when the HP Omen shell was on sale over here in the UK but I never got around to it. I like the basic idea though - my use case was that I thought my server case might not be able to shift the heat but since I have a dedicated games machine it was more for kicks than anything. Are you able to switch off the eGPU once the VM is down without the server getting trippy - that is something I hadn't thought about/

 

[marcoi]

So far in my research, you can't just add thunderbolt to any server. Thunderbolt requires a motherboard port that supports it for you to be able to add a thunderbolt add on card. And as far as I know, my Dell r720 doesn't have that requirements.

Next I'm looking into adding the gpu inside the server, but I need to power it down and see if it has 1 enough space and 2 the correct riser card that supports gpu power.

So not as clean as an external gpu option.

 

[ecosse]

Fair enough I didn't really get past the stage of looking at the card + the external exclosure and deciding it was too much money.

I'm interested to see how you get on and the overall gaming experience.