Macbook Pro Late 2013 15 inc : Official Apple Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter and Apple Thunderbolt 2 cable.
Windows Bootcamp : Windows 10 Home on external SSD (USB) and the Windows 10 pro
Various Nvidia GPUs : EVGA Titan X (Maxwell), a very old Nvidia Quadro 4000, MSI RTX 2080 ti Gaming X Trio
USE CASE : using the machines at home to run Machine Learning models on GPU
The issue : About three weeks ago i purchased the enclosure from eBay. Set up windows 10 home via bootcamp, plugged everything in : using the Titan X Maxwell GPU : noticed that if the GPU was plugged in when everything is powered on at the start : Mac wouldn't boot..(fyi if the Quadro was plugged in to the egpu caddy the laptop would boot with no probs, option key into windows.. everything fine) so as per forum suggestions :
kept enclosure plugged in.. booted into bootcamp (DDU all previous drivers removed, turned off windows auto detect) ... DID NOT INSTALL RAZOR SOFTWARE ... checked on device manager and could see that the enclosure was detected and the gigabit ethernet was working (connected to the internet). Physically plugged in the GPU (Titan Maxwell) and after scan for hardware changes : another graphics device appears ! Which lets me install the nivida driver... and everything worked fine. GPU recognised, i could get my tensor flow code to run on the guy etc... happy days !
When things went horribly wrong :
Earlier this week i needed to swap out the Titan card and place in the MSI RTX 2080ti gaming x trio (TLDR the older workstation the 2080ti was in, the PSU couldn't supply enough amps when under full load and would cut out).
I purchased a Y splitter since even with two 8 pins connected Windows 10 home would not detect the card.
I tried various combinations with the Y-splitter but windows refused to detect the card.
Okay so a few people have had this issue... upto last Monday, the MacBook in windows 10 mode ... was still recognising the eGPU enclosure (ethernet port, USB ports etc).
then suddenly.. as i was unplugging/resetting the gpu into the enclose... the egPU stopped being recognised.. and I have not been able to get the mac to recognise the enclosure (with NO GPU attached at all).
I have tried SVC and PRAM resets for the mac. left everything unplugged for hours. etc... i even borrowed my neighbours mac to (pro 2016 model with Thunderbolt 3 connections) : to see if it recognised the enclosure : no joy nothing. but i am not sure if that is a good guide since Mac OS has bugs which means the eGPU isn't always recognised ?
I tried booting both macs from a Ubuntu usb stick.. and checking for thunderbolt devices ... i have a thunderbolt 2 gigabit adapter.. and both macs recognise that device (hence i assume i haven't blown the internal thunderbolt ports)... neither macs in Ubuntu recognise the egpu device.
I tried testing the new mac with bootcamp but my windows ssd didn't have the correct bootcamp drivers for the new mac.. and i had already tested my neighbours patience for borrowing their computer and didn't want to push it by asking for their login
so if you have been patient enough to read to this point.. Thank you !
.. do you think I have blown the eGPU case ?
Because the fan spins on, the lights go on, if i attach any gpu all the lights go an and fans spin up.
But ... no matter how many resets i have tried... even resintalling Windows bootcamp from SCRATCH.. and using Windows 10 Pro this time... the egpu enclosure is not recognised (the usb ports, the gigabit port... with or without a gpu).
I really hope i don't have a £240 dead paperweight now... with zero chance of getting it fixed. So... if anyone has any ideas i would be very grateful! Also... if razor support has an option for paid servicing (depending on cost) i would like to try that approach as well.