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Tun the AMD installation script:

And run the AMD installation script:

To configure your available GPU's, run:

Next, let the script generate the necessary files:

$ sudo egpu-switcher setup

Now you should be good to go. Connect the monitor to the eGPU and reboot your machine.

• hot plugging is not possible, you'll always need to connect your eGPU and do a reboot
• I'm using Blender and even with the latest Mesa drivers (20.3.1), OpenCL rendering with Cycles is not an option (I may try Nvidia with CUDA in the future)

Let the script generate the necessary files:

$ sudo egpu-switcher setup

Then to configure your available GPU's, run:

Now you should be good to go. Connect the monitor to the eGPU and make the switch:

$ sudo egpu-switcher switch egpu

Reboot your machine.

• hot plugging is not possible, you'll always need to connect your eGPU and do a reboot
• I'm using Blender and even with the latest Mesa drivers (20.3.1), OpenCL rendering with Cycles is not an option (I may try Nvidia with CUDA in the future) (look below to see how to make it work)

UPDATE 24 Jan 2021

I managed to make Cycles GPU rendering work in Blender by installing the proprietary drivers from AMD. It takes some courage to install them, but it works flawlessly. Here is how I did it.

AMD only supports a few distros, and only specific versions at that. Luckily, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is one of them, but it won't install on elementary OS Hera. A simple trick is to change the contents of the release file, but be careful here.

First, make a backup of the original file:

sudo cp /usr/lib/os-release /usr/lib/os-release-original

Replace the contents of /usr/lib/os-release with the following:

NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 18.04 LTS"
VERSION_ID="18.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=bionic
UBUNTU_CODENAME=bionic

Tun the AMD installation script:

./amdgpu-install --opencl=legacy,pal --headless --no-dkms

When it's done, revert the contents of /usr/lib/os-release and do a reboot.

Now you can use GPU rendering in Blender:

To give you an idea about the speed boost of CPU vs GPU rendering, I rendered the default cube in a new document with default settings (128 samples) and these are the results:

• CPU: 26s (64 x 64 px tile size, 8 threads)
• GPU: 11s (1920 x 1080 px tile size)

• hot plugging is not possible, you'll always need to connect your eGPU and do a reboot
• I'm using Blender and even with the latest Mesa drivers, OpenCL rendering with Cycles is not an option (I may try Nvidia with CUDA in the future)

For me, this is a massive leap forward. I'm coming from the iGPU (Intel UHD 620) and it feels like I have a new computer. The speed is amazing.

• hot plugging is not possible, you'll always need to connect your eGPU and do a reboot
• I'm using Blender and even with the latest Mesa drivers (20.3.1), OpenCL rendering with Cycles is not an option (I may try Nvidia with CUDA in the future)

For me, this is a massive leap forward. I'm coming from the iGPU (Intel UHD 620) and it feels like I have a new computer. The speed is amazing.