Looking to upgrade your Thunderbolt 3 enabled Mac? We highly recommend Razer Core X, if you do a lot of video editing. However, Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box is also an excellent pick since it’s lighter and doesn’t make too much sound. Other than that, the two eGPUs don’t have that much of a difference.
Continue reading if you want to know what kind of tests and categories, we tested the two eGPUs to arrive at these conclusions!
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Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 650
Razer Core X
| Sound | Portability | Capacity | Performance |
At Mobile Reviews Eh!, we do tests and use the products in our everyday lives for days even weeks before doing an actual review. For this eGPU comparison, we bought the Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 650 and Razer Core X and used the same graphics card, an 8GB Radeon RX VEGA 56 on a MacBook Pro from 2017 that came with a 4GB Radeon Pro 560.
Halfway through our official testing, we swapped the cards between the two eGPUs and ran the same tests. To eliminate the differences in our cards, even though they are of the same make and model.
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Sound
The Razer Core X is louder than the Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box when the box is idling and when under loads. When both units are under loads, the sound difference is smaller. But the Razer Core X is still louder by 2-5 DBʼs. We will note that the Sonnet box will sound louder because the differences between idle and load is over 10DBʼs, so it is very noticeable when it spools up.
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Portability
The Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box is easy to move because it only weighs 7lbs, whereas the Razer Core X is 12lbs. The enclosure on the Razer Core X is heavy. The extra length and extra weight get annoying to move around so if youʼre treating the Razer Core X as a desktop and keeping it one place, then this wonʼt be an issue. For us, weʼve been lugging the eGFX Breakaway Box between our home and office and its the right size.
Another downside for the Razer Core X when it comes to portability is that the sled where the GPU sits in slides around a bit so when you move it around it feels like itʼs
going to fall out. But thatʼs a good thing when it comes to card swapping as youʼre not peeling and prying the cover off like the Sonnet box.
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Capacity
Both boxes fit our RX Vega 56ʼs without any issue. However, if youʼre going all out on a GPU and plan on getting one thatʼs a 3-fer, than Razer Core X is going to be your only choice between these two eGPU boxes.
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Performance
We ran the test from Unigen Valley and captured the FPS for each pass. During this test, we didnʼt notice much of a difference between the eGPUʼs. Both were better than the stock MacBook Pro, but neither offered much difference between each other.
The only numerical benchmark we could run that would test the GPUʼs was LuxMark whose scores didnʼt provide much insight in terms of differences. Both devices had scores of around 26,600, whereas the stock GPU clocked in about 5000. It was at this moment that we thought there wouldnʼt much difference in the performance of the units, but we were wrong.
When it comes to using both boxes with Final Cut Pro X, the Razer Core X performed most consistently before and after the card swaps. When adding a 50ʼs TV filter onto a 4GB 4K video clip took between 8 and 9.5 minutes whereas the Sonnet took between 8.75 minutes to 13 minutes.
As a side note, the render took over 15 minutes to do without the eGPU so if youʼre working in render heavy environments, youʼre going to save close to 50% of your time. But the eGPU does not affect video exports or imports.
We will note that thumbnail generation using the eGPUʼs is noticeably quicker, so if you end up doing a lot of side to side-scrolling, the eGPU is going to improve your video editing quality of life.
When it comes to games, we did two tests, one with a little known game called Starcraft 2 and a newer game called Subnautica. We choose these games because we’re in the process of replaying them because current games blow.When it came to Starcraft 2 with the graphics setting put on Ultra, every card was able to produce FPS between 18-22 without any issue.
Subnautica was a bit different story. For the base GPU as the game was hard to play at 7 FPS. Both eGPUʼs put out numbers between 18-22 FPS.
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So this is our Sonnet eGFX Breakaway 650 vs Razer Core X – eGPU Comparison! Have any questions? Leave them below! Definitely SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel to stay on top of all the new things we review!
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