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Review on Mantiz MZ-03 Saturn Pro II EGPU - Thunderbolt 3 External GPU with SATA3 2.5 SSD/HDD, SD, USB 3.0, Gigabit LAN, Dual TB3 Chip - MacOS/Windows Compatible by Donald Vargas

Revainrating 2 out of 5

Lots of technical issues

To be honest I don't think the Thunderbolt/EGPU technology is really where it should be and it certainly has some nuances and oddities, but I have a working setup now with another product and I don't have the same problems as with this one. I had problems with this product from the start. The case design is interesting and good in a way (looks cool, side panel is easy to remove), but you have to put the graphics card on the side right away. Because of the way the graphics card is inserted into the PCIe slots, it is very difficult to insert it sideways instead of having multiple angles. When I first tried to install my RTX 2060, I missed it. I'm not the only one who came across this in the reviews, but I ended up installing and running it. I hooked it up to my computer and it really was "plug and play". The GPU worked right away. Now it's worth mentioning about this product: it also has USB-A slots and that's one of the reasons it attracted me. The price is really good for this feature. However, I had very strange problems with my USB devices. The first problem I had was my mouse and keyboard started freezing on the desktop. Luckily this never happened in games, but I moved them directly to my laptop's USB ports and the problem was fixed. Another issue I've encountered is crashes. My laptop randomly crashed while playing. I never had a crash until I started using this product. I tried reinstalling drivers etc and nothing worked. Finally, sometimes the device just stopped being recognized. I did not ask for a refund or try to get another one. Maybe I just had a bad device, but I switched to another vendor (albeit a more expensive one) and didn't have any of the issues mentioned here. I think the product is great and has good features for the price (including a SATA connector which most don't have) but tread carefully and be on the lookout for these issues. Edit: Update 4/13/2020: I'm currently having very similar issues with another product of mine. So while I'm still giving 2 stars because USB ports really don't make sense, I don't think it's fair to say "other products don't have this problem". They do. It just seems like the industry as a whole hasn't quite figured out how eGPU cases work perfectly.

Pros
  • Decent performance
Cons
  • Other