Aorus eGPU with Intel NUC - Card not detected

Hello,

First of all, I’m new here so thank you for having me !

I bought an Intel NUC (NUC10i5FNK3) to use with my Aorus 3080 external GPU, which is currently hooked up to my HP laptop via Thunderbolt.
I have been trying for quite a bit to get these 2 working, but no matter what I try the external GPU is almost instantly disconnected from the nvidia container when the display HDMI cable is plugged into the NUC, and when I plug the HDMI cable into the Aorus box, the whole PC freezes after a few seconds, requiring a restart.
The following things have been tried to no avail:

  • Updating the NUC BIOS and drivers (Thunderbolt, Intel integrated graphics, nVidia, chipset, I/O etc.)
  • Windows updates up to date
  • Tried both legacy and current Thunderbolt drivers
  • NUC is in High Performance mode
  • Tried disabling the various sleep options in the BIOS
  • Disabled virtualisation
  • Undervolted the CPU
  • Different Thunderbolt cables
  • Different HDMI cables
  • Different displays
  • Re-installing Windows
  • DDU with internet switched off, re-installing drivers manually
  • Installed drivers via Windows update only
  • Made sure Thunderbolt is the preferred display output
  • Booting from Thunderbolt option enabled / disabled
  • Plugging in with NUC turned off / turned on
  • Unplugging Thunderbolt cable right after freeze, plugging back in

The NUC is paired with a Toshiba NVME SSD and 8GB DDR4 RAM. On its own, it works perfectly and I have encountered no freezes or crashes, or any issues with it. The eGPU box is also working fine, when it’s hooked up to my laptop it is recognised straight away and I have had no crashes.
The laptop however does already have a dedicated 1650ti graphics card, could that be why the process is so much easier there ?

Would appreciate any suggestions on how I might be able to fix this issue.

Thanks a lot !

As a fellow NUC/eGPU user, I’m sorry to say that each NUC and each bios update is a gamble and I have had broken thunderbolt for months at a time. It did become much better after the first year or so after release on the NUC8 however. Not sure how long the NUC10 has been out. I previously had a NUC7 which was never stable though. I ended up breaking the thunderbolt port from all the unplugging and (unwisely) got the NUC8 to replace it.

Afaik, the best you can do is complain to Intel.

Have you updated the TBT firmware?

Can you try a Linux distro to see if it’s detected there?

One more: Download HDMI Firmware Update Tool for NUC10i3FN, NUC10i5FN, NUC10i7FN
Might be irrelevant, but…

Everything: Downloads for Intel® NUC 10 Performance kit - NUC10i5FNK

Lastly, there is a newer release of the Management Engine firmware, but the process is slightly tedious and possibly risky.
https://www.win-raid.com/t596f39-Intel-Converged-Security-Management-Engine-Drivers-Firmware-and-Tools.html

The on included with the latest BIOS for your model is 14.0.47.1558 and the newer one is 14.0.48.1605.

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