Completed Revoccases RCC-NUC1 | NUC Dedicated Graphics Enclosure

REVOCCASES

Shrink Ray Wielder
Original poster
REVOCCASES
Silver Supporter
Apr 2, 2020
2,057
3,331
www.revoccases.com
all set up and running like a charm: stable 60FPS on high/ultra 1080p for most games. R9 NANO keeps comfortably cool and quiet at around 75C during gaming.

Can't stop laughing how small this is ?

 

REVOCCASES

Shrink Ray Wielder
Original poster
REVOCCASES
Silver Supporter
Apr 2, 2020
2,057
3,331
www.revoccases.com
For everyone interested: RCC-NUC1 is available BTO as complete set with all you need to get started

Now you can even use the internal PSU to power your NUC and having a completely brickless setup!

Further changes:
  • bending radii now match with the NUC
  • front power button removed
  • rear cutout for 12mm power button (eGPU mode) /or/ DC out to NUC (NUC mode)

Build option A: Brickless NUC GPU Booster





Build option B: Standalone eGPU


 
Last edited:

Runamok81

Runner of Moks
Jul 27, 2015
445
621
troywitthoeft.com
I've posted at a few other places, but I'd like to post here as well. Is it possible for us to have a PCIe 4.0 NUC and eGPU? It seems like we are just lacking a 4.0 version of an M.2 to PCIe adapter, but there is some evidence that you can run PCIe 4.0 over 3.0 cables as long as the cable quality and shielding is good enough, a la 3M. Anybody know of a known test with Tiger Lake NUC eGPU over PCIe 4.0? Anybody crazy enough to test it? 😄
 

REVOCCASES

Shrink Ray Wielder
Original poster
REVOCCASES
Silver Supporter
Apr 2, 2020
2,057
3,331
www.revoccases.com
I've posted at a few other places, but I'd like to post here as well. Is it possible for us to have a PCIe 4.0 NUC and eGPU? It seems like we are just lacking a 4.0 version of an M.2 to PCIe adapter, but there is some evidence that you can run PCIe 4.0 over 3.0 cables as long as the cable quality and shielding is good enough, a la 3M. Anybody know of a known test with Tiger Lake NUC eGPU over PCIe 4.0? Anybody crazy enough to test it? 😄

Yeah, I just replied to the other thread. :)

In theory I think it could work but unfortunately I have no hardware to test it. You could have a look to the eGPU.io forum to see if someone got it working with the ADT M2 riser cables.
 

Runamok81

Runner of Moks
Jul 27, 2015
445
621
troywitthoeft.com
Yeah, I just replied to the other thread. :)

In theory I think it could work but unfortunately I have no hardware to test it. You could have a look to the eGPU.io forum to see if someone got it working with the ADT M2 riser cables.

I checked eGPU.io forum as well, and nothing. I don't think anyone has tested this yet! Honestly, the ADT-Link R43SG looks like it could carry a 4.0 signal. It might fit the bill.

 

REVOCCASES

Shrink Ray Wielder
Original poster
REVOCCASES
Silver Supporter
Apr 2, 2020
2,057
3,331
www.revoccases.com
I checked eGPU.io forum as well, and nothing. I don't think anyone has tested this yet! Honestly, the ADT-Link R43SG looks like it could carry a 4.0 signal. It might fit the bill.


I also have that one. They use the same cables like on all other of their risers. The PCB there only adds functions like automatically powering the GPU together with your notebook / PC on and off but it has no influence concerning PCIe speeds.

I mean if I had a PCIe 4.0 capable motherboard and GPU I could just hook that up to the M2 slot and see what happens. If one day the RTX3XXX cards are available for normal prices I can try it out. 😅
 

Runamok81

Runner of Moks
Jul 27, 2015
445
621
troywitthoeft.com
I mean if I had a PCIe 4.0 capable motherboard and GPU I could just hook that up to the M2 slot and see what happens. If one day the RTX3XXX cards are available for normal prices I can try it out. 😅

Got it. We just need all the ingredients: Mobo, Adapter, GPU. Mini PCs with PCIe 4.0 x4 slots are available. Examples include the Gigabyte BRIX Pro BSi7-1165G7 and the ASRock NUC 1100 series. Intel has yet to release the Tiger Lake NUC 11s with PCIe 4.0, but I understand they are just around the corner. So the first ingredient we have. As for the second, we have to experiment. We've got some some possible M.2 adapters to try over 4.0. It's the third ingredient that is rare. Good luck finding any PCIe 4.0 GPUs in stock, anywhere. Guess, I need to keep shopping for one.
 
  • Like
Reactions: REVOCCASES

REVOCCASES

Shrink Ray Wielder
Original poster
REVOCCASES
Silver Supporter
Apr 2, 2020
2,057
3,331
www.revoccases.com
just for the science, here some pictures how common PCIe 3.0 riser cables look like inside:


this one uses 0.2mm diameter tin plated wires, each shielded by some kind of polymer coating and covered by rubber for protection



this one uses 0.2mm oxygen free solid copper wires and is fully wrapped by a metal-mesh-cloth for EMI shielding



the 3M one is definitely the most advanced: 0.25mm tin or silver plated wires, each one shielded/isolated and additionally shielding by an aluminum foil layer around the whole cable. Using better shielding and thicker wires may explain why this one works just fine with PCIe 4.0 and the others might have some issues with higher bandwidth.



(source)
 

REVOCCASES

Shrink Ray Wielder
Original poster
REVOCCASES
Silver Supporter
Apr 2, 2020
2,057
3,331
www.revoccases.com
Great news for all eGPU DIY-lers and the RCC-NUC1 Project!

I got an Intel NUC11 PRO KIT (NUC11TNK) to check if there are any performance benefits with the PCIe Gen 4 M.2 Slot and although I do not have a PCIe 4.0 GPU I can confirm, it works really well!

But first things first: why is the new NUC11TNK Series interesting? Because we get a lot of new features:
  • M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 Slot
  • M.2 SATA Slot plus ZIF SATA (IIRC you can even run them in RAID)
  • Thunderbolt 4.0
  • official 12VDC - 24VDC operating voltage support
  • much snappier CPU and faster WiFi


I am also glad that INTEL kept the dimensions, so the NUC11 is still compatible with the RCC-NUC1 eGPU enclosure! Besides, the mate finish of the new NUCs matches much better with the NUC1 case. Thank you INTEL...

Hooking up the GPU via the M.2 to PCIe riser cable is the same as previously. I had big hopes that I would see some minor GPU performance gains over the last NUC series and I wasn't disapointed...

But first a short look at the BIOS settings and another surprise: PCI-E graphic cards seem to be kinda officially supported!



After setting up a fresh Win10 installation I ran a few benchmarks with my R9 Nano. Here are the results:

Test 1: monitor plugged in to the iGPU (NUC) HDMI port:



Test 2: monitor plugged in to the eGPU (R9 NANO) HDMI port:



Almost the same results! Usually the performance of an eGPU setup can suffer pretty much when connecting your monitor via the iGPU but there seems to be enough bandwidth now so that this doesn't matter any more. Nice.

To compare the performance gain I ran the same benchmark again with my previous NUC8i7 (monitor connected directly to the R9 Nano)

yeah well, a whopping 1000 points less!



Edit: I am not yet sure where the performance difference comes from. The R9 only supports PCIe Gen 3 but somehow it seems to benefit from running it in the NUC11 instead of the NUC8. I don't think the CPU performance is the limiting factor because in both NUCs the CPU is not really stressed during the GPU focused benchmark. This still needs some further investigation... anyways, the NUC11 is definitely an improvement over the NUC8.

A few beauty shots with the NUC11TNK:



 
Last edited:

smitty2k1

King of Cable Management
Dec 3, 2016
967
492
That's really cool, thanks for your continued support of this stuff. You make super cool products I hope they are selling well!
 

REVOCCASES

Shrink Ray Wielder
Original poster
REVOCCASES
Silver Supporter
Apr 2, 2020
2,057
3,331
www.revoccases.com
That's really cool, thanks for your continued support of this stuff. You make super cool products I hope they are selling well!

Thanks.

Actually I haven't sold a single one of those. Just send out a few free prototypes some time ago. 😅

Anyways, I'm doing most of my projects mainly just for the fun.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rfarmer

benanders

What's an ITX?
New User
Mar 4, 2021
1
0
Thanks.

Actually I haven't sold a single one of those. Just send out a few free prototypes some time ago. 😅

Anyways, I'm doing most of my projects mainly just for the fun.
Could this be used with a Quadro P2000 / P2200 GPU and a NUC 10 / 11 to make a supercharged PLEX Pass server for heavy-duty hardware-accelerated transcoding?
Could the chassis height be stretched a bit to allow the length of that GPU?
Would a Quadro card even be compatible with such an approach (given Nvidia seems to withhold approval/support for everything under a P4000)?
 

Runamok81

Runner of Moks
Jul 27, 2015
445
621
troywitthoeft.com
To compare the performance gain I ran the same benchmark again with my previous NUC8i7 (monitor connected directly to the R9 Nano)

yeah well, a whopping 1000 points less!



Edit: I am not yet sure where the performance difference comes from. The R9 only supports PCIe Gen 3 but somehow it seems to benefit from running it in the NUC11 instead of the NUC8. I don't think the CPU performance is the limiting factor because in both NUCs the CPU is not really stressed during the GPU focused benchmark. This still needs some further investigation... anyways, the NUC11 is definitely an improvement over the NUC8.

Ah, that is interesting! They've relieved a bottleneck somewhere. In most eGPU setups, we need to connect monitor to the video card in order to avoid a performance hit. So, on a Tiger Canyon NUC11 Pro, we can connect to the mobo video out and not suffer a performance drop? Very nice. Ergonomically, that opens up some options as well.

Sidenote ... Would you ever consider a console style version of this? Will happily fund, purchase and test that! It would be the perfect replacement for Little Mac 4.2L. Smaller and more powerful!