Dragonfly 25 Prototype

The world of laptops is a much more difficult world to do extreme hardware modding or crazy builds, but something I'd always wanted to try was an external graphics card (EGPU). This is made possible with the introduction of the Thunderbolt protocol, which uses up to 4x PCIe lanes. This is enough bandwidth to run a graphics card off off. The main issue with most EGPUs is that they are not portable devices. Most are as large, if not larger than a comparable small form factor / medium form factor PC. This is okay for an EGPU that just sits at home, but my friend Lavie Ohana, who commissioned this build, would often have to travel with the extra performance that the EGPU offered. Out of that came my prototype for the Dragonfly 25 EGPU.

Using her Framework 13 laptop with a 13th generation i7 and an external RTX 4060, this beast outperforms multiple full size desktops that I have built, and it manages to fit into a 2.5L volume and charge the laptop while it is plugged into the EGPU.

The build is made possible due to the existence of the EXP TH3P4G3 from Aliexpress, which adapts the Thunderbolt 3 interface to the PCIe interface that the GPU needs. This build is so compact that I wasn't able to close the case with the electrical connectors, thus I had to solder one set of the cables to the TH3P4G3 to make it fit.

The panels were designed small enough that they could be 3d printed in the build volume of a Prusa i3 mk3. For the prototype, this was sufficient to test if all the components could fit and be cooled in such a small volume. The final revision of the project will feature metal panels for a more sturdy and premium feel.