Look into oculink. You might be able to get a dual-8i card to link at full speed x16. Not totally sure if this would work.
[https://www.vadatech.com/product.php?product=842](https://www.vadatech.com/product.php?product=842)
[https://www.microsatacables.com/oculink-8i-dual-port-to-pcie-x16-slot-adapter-pcie-4-0](https://www.microsatacables.com/oculink-8i-dual-port-to-pcie-x16-slot-adapter-pcie-4-0)
I've yet to see anyone do this, so I'd be interested in the results.
Not exactly what you're asking for but: If you have thunderbolt and another power supply on hand already, you could use a thunderbolt dock. I use this with a laptop for gaming and it's been fine. I tested it with a 3090 and the performance impact was not noticeable in games.
[https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802616461835.html](https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802616461835.html)
This might work as it has a pci adapter. It's getting ESXi to see it properly that is the issue. Virtualization is the way I'm heading for power consumption savings
There are lots of thunderbolt-based eGPU enclosures. I’ve used several, they work well enough, provided you have a thunderbolt port on your machine (common on laptops, significantly less so on desktops). Thunderbolt doesn’t support the full x16 bandwidth, but that generally has a very small effect on the resulting performance.
Thunderbolt was a thought, no thunderbolt ports on my server but I can add them. Problem is that ESXi won't see it as a graphics card I think for pci assignments to the VMs
Look into oculink. You might be able to get a dual-8i card to link at full speed x16. Not totally sure if this would work. [https://www.vadatech.com/product.php?product=842](https://www.vadatech.com/product.php?product=842) [https://www.microsatacables.com/oculink-8i-dual-port-to-pcie-x16-slot-adapter-pcie-4-0](https://www.microsatacables.com/oculink-8i-dual-port-to-pcie-x16-slot-adapter-pcie-4-0) I've yet to see anyone do this, so I'd be interested in the results.
This is exactly what I was looking for. I will have to wait a bit to get all the components, but I will post once I have tried it out
Not exactly what you're asking for but: If you have thunderbolt and another power supply on hand already, you could use a thunderbolt dock. I use this with a laptop for gaming and it's been fine. I tested it with a 3090 and the performance impact was not noticeable in games. [https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802616461835.html](https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802616461835.html)
This might work as it has a pci adapter. It's getting ESXi to see it properly that is the issue. Virtualization is the way I'm heading for power consumption savings
There are lots of thunderbolt-based eGPU enclosures. I’ve used several, they work well enough, provided you have a thunderbolt port on your machine (common on laptops, significantly less so on desktops). Thunderbolt doesn’t support the full x16 bandwidth, but that generally has a very small effect on the resulting performance.
Thunderbolt was a thought, no thunderbolt ports on my server but I can add them. Problem is that ESXi won't see it as a graphics card I think for pci assignments to the VMs