 External graphics cards. Dead or dormant? Stillborn or still relevant? Well, we've got two identically specced laptops and both of the top external graphics docs that are ready to battle it out, each armed with a top-of-the-line NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti. But will the identical specs yield identical results? For once! No. No they won't. The Be Quiet PureBase 600 features a versatile design, noise insulation, and optimization for different liquid-cooled radiator configurations. Learn more at the link below. First, we need to explain why we're using such OP graphics cards. The goal here was to expose any weaknesses or efficiency differences between these two, by eliminating the graphics card itself as a bottleneck, and also to make sure that both of them can keep even the power-hungriest cards safely fed. Each are equipped with plenty of power. The Razer Core sports a custom 500W power supply, while the Alienware graphics amplifier has a Huntkey 460W ATX power supply that was clearly made for a full system and repurposed for this. The Core's aluminum chassis feels solid, and opening it up to insert the graphics card only takes a couple of minutes, whereas the graphics amplifier, well, everything about that setup frankly felt a little janky. The build is all plastic, and although I had the right idea for opening it, I actually ended up having to consult the user manual because it felt like I was going to break it when it got stuck halfway. And there isn't even RGB lighting on this one, for crying out loud. And if you thought the poor ease of use for the amplifier was over, think again. The connectors on the proprietary cable that carries a PCI Express 3.0 X4 signal from the computer to the dock have these latches that can actually get caught if you're not careful when you're removing them. Not to mention that Alienware's solution requires a restart of the laptop whenever you connect or disconnect it, so that the internal dedicated graphics card can be activated or disabled. Razer, on the other hand, keeps up their strong performance in this area. Just plug in a Thunderbolt 3 cable into the Blade notebook of your choice. They don't officially support third-party laptops, but we'll discuss that more later. Install the Nvidia drivers and you're good to go. Every part of the process felt smoother and more polished on the Razer side. Though, if its performance can hold up, I suspect many will forgive the Alienware graphics amplifier for its lack of, uh, spit and shine, given that it retails for 200 bucks, a whopping $300 less than the core. Though in Razer's defense, with the purchase of a Blade laptop, you do get $100 off, so I guess it's only twice the cost of the graphics amplifier. Let's get to the test. Every game benchmark was run 10 times in a row to reward strong thermal performance, and we recorded both the average and the minimum frame rate that was maintained 97% of the time. We used identical drivers and settings and ASUS's 240Hz gaming display for both systems. Everything between them was equal, except for one thing. Gaming performance. For Rise of the Tomb Raider and For Honor, the Alienware pulled out a bit ahead of the core, while the core actually pulled slightly ahead in the all-important minimum FPS metric. But where things really got interesting was in Ghost Recon Wildlands and Deus Ex Mankind Divided, where the Alienware graphics amplifier showed that it has the potential to absolutely spank the core, delivering buttery visuals compared to the questionably playable performance on Razer's solution. And as a troubleshooting step, then, we tried comparing them using the built-in laptop display rather than an external monitor, but this changed nothing for Alienware and then generated even slightly lower performance for Razer due to the extra display signal data being carried back to the Blade's display, something that we actually tested more thoroughly in the Razer Core Deep Dive, which you can check out here. So what gives? Well, we could only think of two differences between these solutions that might affect performance. One, thermals, either the CPU in the laptop or the graphics card in the enclosure, and two, the connection to the graphics card. So to see if thermal throttling was the issue, we booted up Ida64 and monitored temperatures on our Blade while gaming. It got hot, but it was nowhere near overheating. Then, to rule out the laptop entirely, we gave our 7600HQ-equipped Blade Pro a shot, but it performed nearly identically within our margin of error. No dice. Let's move on to that connection, then. The theoretical bandwidth of the two should be equal. In GPUZ, both have the same number of PCIe lanes and the same reported 40 gigabit per second bandwidth. Is there some way that we could pin this on Thunderbolt 3? What if the gigabit ethernet controller on the Core is sucking up resources? We used Disable in Device Manager, and it was not very effective. So it was time to go spelunking deep into the depths of the specs, searching for a single difference between the two. And finally, we found one in the dark crevices of the Device Manager. On the Alienware amplifier, the GPU gets connected directly to the PCIe controller on the CPU, so the lanes that it gets are solely devoted to graphics. The Razer Core, on the other hand, gets connected through the motherboard chipset, meaning that the graphics card has to share its PCIe lanes and perhaps more importantly the DMI interface with things like networking, USB ports, and probably the biggest bandwidth sucker, storage. But can we prove once and for all that the lanes are causing the bottleneck? For a complete apples-to-apples comparison, we needed to be able to connect the Core to the Alienware 13, something Dell doesn't want you to do in spite of the 13th higher-end 4-lane implementation of the Thunderbolt 3 standard. Good news, though. It turns out that if you disable enough Alienware services, it will begrudgingly let you use a Razer Core. And in games, the Alienware 13 connected to the Core recorded results within our margin of error, proving then that the bottleneck wasn't in the laptop but in the connection itself. So final pros and cons list, then. Razer has some big advantages. Their simple setup and hot swap ability will definitely win over customers who value ease of use, and the excellent compatibility enabled by using a standard Thunderbolt 3 connection, in spite of advertising the Core as only working with their own blade-and-blade stealth, makes them the default winner for many. But if you're willing to look the other way on build quality a little bit, you're willing to shell out for a matching Alienware laptop, and you want the best, no-compromises performance out of your graphics dock, at a much lower price, the amplifier comes out way ahead. Fiverr is totally unique. It's this huge digital marketplace where freelancers, startups, and small businesses connect, and as Fiverr says, get stuff done. Whether you're in a startup or a small company and you need a logo or business planner, maybe you need an entire website developed for you, Fiverr has the talent pool that can get it done at a price that fits your budget. So check out some of the gigs that we'd use through our landing page at the link below, and the first 300 viewers who use code Linus will get 20% off Fiverr services. So join the hashtag EndureAsWeTrust movement on Fiverr and start getting it done today. So thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Also down there is our merch store where you can buy cool shirts like this one, as well as a link to our community forum, where you can discuss all kinds of great tech things like, could you run both of them in SLI on the Alienware 13? To which the answer is, unfortunately, no, we did try.