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Comment by danielhooper | Hacker News Reader

There is a missing product in the market right now. These high-end GPUs are all designed to fit into decade old computer cases. The pcb and chips are tiny and thin, you should be able to throw the actual guts of a GPU like a frisbee. GPU manufacturers should be designing external GPUs, instead of consumers having to purchase enclosures and power supplies for GPUs still designed to go into pc cases.

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The current modularity is important, because the market thrives on it. TB3 enclosures are expensive; to duplicate that cost across every graphics card sold would be expensive.

Yes, it'd be smaller. But the increase in cost would not be worth it for the current niche market. Until TB3 penetration across regular consumers (as compared to the techie niche) goes up, there's no point in making slick consumer-market pre-builts.

Modularity is a fast horse. The current state of external GPUs is like phone blocks, and I'm waiting for the iPhone. A gpu enclosure with power costs about $300 USD. An Nvidia 1060 6gb gpu also costs about $300 USD. From my perspective I don't understand why I wouldn't just cough up a bit more money and build an entire pc. An Ncase M1 pc case is practically just as portable as any of these gpu enclosures.

It's a product people don't know they want. Currently, the fast horses are fast enough. When enough people are using "fast horses" where cars would be more appropriate and where volume pricing would favor cars, we'll see cars on the market.

The market just isn't ready for the car. And you mention wanting an iPhone. The problem is that you'll more than likely get a Newton MessagePad.

edit: also, I've come to the same conclusion wrt PC cases. I'm considering building a "portable desktop" that I can take with me, that mirrors video over a network connection. Then I can use a laptop to interface with it.

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