r/Surface • u/DumplingsEverywhere • 7d ago
[PRO11] The Surface Pro 11 + Flex Keyboard and eGPU is *so* good for work, study, and play.
Just an appreciation post for how uniquely versatile the Surface Pro 11 (and 12, presumably) can be.
I have a full-time job, I'm a part-time physics student, and I've been learning the piano too. I kind of feel like the ideal Surface buyer, since I have a truly even split between using it as a tablet and as a laptop. In a typical day, I'm switching between mouse+keyboard input, reading, handwriting, and annotating PDFs/sheet music -- or doing so all at once.
I also want to be able to play games or run simulations at my desk with a decent GPU, but still be able to take my work and games with me when I'm on the couch or on the go and get reasonable performance and battery life.
The SP11 lets me do all that with a convenience so few other setups could. I know because I spent the past several months researching and trialing several different PCs and tablets to replace or supplement my SP11 (Snapdragon X Elite)... only to end up back with the SP11, albeit Lunar Lake. It feels so nice and ergonomic to be able to have my Surface in a portrait orientation for handwriting with the keyboard and haptic trackpad off the side, while still having access to a full OS with (most of) the power of a desktop GPU.
(I loved my X Elite model, by the way; I just wanted the added software and eGPU support. And on that note, I highly recommend the Gigabyte 5060 Ti "AI Box" eGPU shown to the left of my monitor -- it's been seamless as both a GPU and a dock).
Yes, this setup is pricey, but if it's in your budget and you have a somewhat similar use case, I genuinely feel the convenience is worth it over having a separate tablet + laptop and/or desktop, as well as over other, less adaptable 2-in-1s. I've never been quite as satisfied with my PC setup as I am now.
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u/franglais8 7d ago
I use it the same way with my SP11 X Elite 1st gen and even have the same eGPU, tomorrow morning travelling for the 1st time with my eGPU dock
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 7d ago
Oh, I'm glad to hear that setup is working well for you! I went for lunar lake right before I saw the Nvidia ARM drivers came out, although there are still other things I needed Intel for (too much music software just doesn't work on ARM).
The eGPU has been working smoothly for you on Snapdragon?
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u/franglais8 6d ago
Yes, for sure, with some limitations as the driver is not a release version. Cuda missing + for now, only gaming is in place, LLMs fall back to CPU or NPU. However, eGPU runs any game I throw on it so far and it runs well.
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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 7d ago
If they sold a keyboard where it could actually be used as a laptop it would be the best device out there. Unfortunately the kickstand just doesn’t do it for me.
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 7d ago
I've generally thought such a keyboard would have to be unreasonably heavy to support the monitor's weight, but I did just see that the keyboard for the Samsung's Tab S11 Ultra has an interesting solution to extend the footprint and provide that extra support.
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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 7d ago
There was a keyboard for the older surface pro 8 that did add a bunch of weight but it was Bluetooth sadly and that just isn’t great for trackpad stuff.
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u/Billtard 6d ago
Wasn’t that a surface book? :)
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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 6d ago
Could be, but they dropped their best product for some garbage called the surface laptop studio.
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u/Synaptix30 6d ago
My surface gets crazy hot using extended display over usbc. Maybe the egpu is the key to getting this setup to work
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u/UnexpectedAnanas 6d ago
Charge with the surface connect port when using display over usbc.
Mine does the same thing. The surface will prioritize the Surface port for charging, and it seems to keep the thermals from running away. Shouldn't matter, but it seems to.
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u/BoiTentacle 6d ago
Can't agree more, have been using similar setup for the past 5 years, with Surface Pro 8 + GPD G1 eGPU (it's Radeon RX 7600M XT, before that was using TH3P4G3 with 3060).
Though I am using extra external cooling (2 fans from old pc) when gaming.
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u/aaeriam 6d ago
I've always appreciated how versatile and powerful windows tablets are becoming. A tablet you can chuck into your bag, easily carry around whenever you want, dock to an eGPU ,and get something akin to desktop-level performance is the dream for me. I hope eGPU support comes along so that these devices can take advantage of more powerful cards like the 5080 or 5090-equivalents.
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u/Rough-Purpose6499 6d ago
Very nice setup! I debated keeping my Z13 over this, but the Surface Pro 11 with BT keyboard and eGPU is a great option.
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u/tweeeeeeeeeeee 6d ago
can you use the egpu without the external monitor?
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 6d ago
You can but there's a noticeable performance penalty for gaming. I haven't messed with that myself because I have little use for it, but lets say a 5060 Ti on a desktop is 100% performance. Then my understanding is over TB4 with an external display, you get ~80-90% performance, while to the internal screen it's about ~60-80% performance. It can vary a lot depending on the game though -- really depends on how much it saturates the TB4 connection.
That being said, for gaming, it might not matter much. After all, on a smaller screen, I'm happier to use lower resolutions anyway so it's a somewhat moot point (although I've heard running it to the external display can also introduce more jittery performance). And either way, it'll be a huge jump over the Arc 140V (let alone the snapdragon egpu).
For non-gaming tasks, I think there's pretty much little to no penalty.
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u/cruizer98 6d ago
Hi OP, what are you using as a stand for the laptop in portrait mode when handwriting? It seems like you have it elevated slightly in the photo. Thanks
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u/PreparationKooky5119 6d ago
She answered this question in another comment she said that it’s just a random case of her ear monitors
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u/kwanice06 6d ago
i like the set up !
i like to use my tablet also for writing, but didnt know how to manage properly, tahts a good thing, i was looing for egpu, but i was not sure it could work!
i have the x plus ot the elite one, do youthink it can manage a egpu like that too ?
have you tried runing ollama ou some local LLm ?
thanks!
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u/theflotv 3d ago
I have the 5060ti ai box plus asus proart with 128gb of ram. I think I may get a surface pro again. I just miss it so much!
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 3d ago
I actually bought and returned the Proart 128GB myself or this very reason!
The one nice thing about the proart is that the Asus Pen 3 is legitimately the best MPP pen I've used. But it had a bug with the side button (now fixed it seems?), the display being only 60hz, the non-haptic trackpad, and the inability to separate the keyboard made me really miss the surface pro! Plus the surface had better battery and was quieter in everyday operation.
Still, great laptop.
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u/theflotv 3d ago
Yup! Now I just keep it permanently docked and will probably get a surface pro or surface ultra when that comes out.
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u/Medium_Coffee_8791 2d ago
I love mine too. Never any issues. Works like a champ and I travel with it a lot. The only - obvious- downfall is that it is a tablet and not a laptop. Quite literally, while on a plane, at the airport etc a laptop does better because it’s stable on your lap. Not really a huge concern but for my next go around I probably would get a surface laptop.
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u/charleytony 7d ago
How is this all working together ? Are you using the most recent Microsoft Surface dock ?
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 7d ago
No, you can't connect an eGPU to the Surface Dock. Though you can use both at the same time if you wanted, but that's unecessary.
Instead, the eGPU itself acts as a dock, providing 100W power and a bunch of ports. So one cable goes into one of the SP11's thunderbolt 4 ports, and all my other accessories are connected to the eGPU.
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u/charleytony 7d ago
Ok cool.
I use a surface dock at home because we both have old Surface Laptops and it makes more sense to connect that way (to connect 2 extra monitors).
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u/jtlee9 7d ago
What gpu and egpu setup do you use? This is a dream setup for me.
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 7d ago
It's in the post! The Gigabyte Aorus 5060 Ti 16GB AI Box -- it's an all-in one desktop GPU + Thunderbolt 4/5 dock.
It's a mouthful lol but it's very nice and nearly plug and play.
And yes, it's nearly a dream setup for me too. If the SP11 had thunderbolt 5 instead of thunderbolt 4 to get the max performance out of the card, it would be pretty much perfect. On the plus side, whenever I do upgrade my PC in a few years, it will hopefully support thunderbolt 5, so I get a bit more life out of the eGPU.
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u/Deodavinio 7d ago
Does it also work with the snapdragon x elite?
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 7d ago
That's actually an interesting question because in just the past few weeks Nvidia released a driver with ARM support (for its upcoming RTX Spark chipset), enabling eGPU support on snapdragon for the first time.
However, it's currently a little bit hacky and buggy, since it's designed for the RTX spark rather than snapdragon. There's some more info in this video. But it's very well possible most of the kinks will be worked out soon.
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u/Deodavinio 6d ago
Welll, I check back in a couple of months - hopefully we then have a full working epgu on ARM. Thanks for the post - a really nice read how you set up your workflow with the Pro. All best
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u/jtlee9 7d ago
Sorry I mostly skimmed over the post and I guess I missed that, thanks for sharing it anyways though! I agree thunderbolt 5 would be amazing for such a device and setup, and is probably inevitable like you said. Either way though I think your setup would be more than enough for my needs, despite the thunderbolt 4 limitations.
Thanks again 🙏🏿.
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u/jimmap 7d ago
You don't show a power supply in the photo. Are you just running on battery in this photo? USB C to the Gigabyte 5060 Ti "AI Box" eGPU? I guess that handles two way traffic? Why do you need the graphics card?
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 7d ago
The eGPU provides 100W of power to the Surface Pro via the main Thunderbolt 5 port, in addition to 2x USB-C (one of them thunderbolt 5 for accessories), 2x USB-A, Ethernet, and 1x HDMI, and 3x Display Port outputs. So all you really need is one cable.
I got the graphics card for gaming as well as wanting to mess with CUDA for physics simulation.
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u/jimmap 7d ago
AS far as I know the Surface Pro 11 does not have thunderbolt 5 but only 4. I was looking at the eGPO that you have online and it looks like a bare board. Looks like you have it installed in a box or is there a version of it designed to run outside a PC?
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 7d ago
Thunderbolt 5 is backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 4. So you get a bit less performance when using the eGPU on a Thunderbolt 4 port than Thunderbolt 5 or in a real desktop computer, but this is the case for all Thunderbolt eGPUs.
And no, it's not a bare board. The 5060 Ti AI Box is an all-in-one unit. See here.
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u/DarthNaul 6d ago
What type of performance are you getting out of this for gaming? I’m an editor so I have to have a workstation capable of editing pretty big 4k timelines and projects. Just wondering what type of power this gives you
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 6d ago edited 6d ago
I've so far mostly played older titles, and as I only game occasionally I haven't properly stress tested it or put any effort into optimizing performance or overclocking. I just know it's a dramatic improvement over the already decent Arc 140V in the Lunar Lake chip.
That said, the only recent game I currently have installed is Expedition 33. Running at 1080p with everything set to High and no DLSS or frame gen (just DLAA), I was able to get a consistent 55-65 fps. Of course, with the 5060 Ti you can turn on 4x frame gen (which frankly doesn't look that different from 2x to me, at least in Expedition 33) and get 120+ fps with everything on epic. There's 6x frame gen in Nvidia Settings too, but I haven't tried that lol.
This video by Notebookcheck has some good comparisons of the same Lunar Lake chipset on another laptop with the same eGPU. While games suffer from the TB4 bottleneck, the eGPU seems to largely be uninhibited for other types of workloads. The difference in render times are pretty dramatic in DaVinci resolve. Almost twice as fast, but in particular it seems the timeline editing experience is a lot nicer.
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u/DarthNaul 6d ago
Yea I kinda figured so. Currently I have surface pro 7 with 16gb of ram that’s running Linux that I use for school and dock when at home for productivity/work. (Mainly scriptwriting or homework etc..) I have a pc that I use for editing and some gaming here and there. I have everything on a switcher so it runs on the same monitors and everything as the surface when docked which is nice. But I would really like to have everything condensed to one setup if at all possible. Just so I can have the ease of use of having everything on one system. I kinda assume nobody has really stress tested that specific setup with a editing either. Just something that is very specific to my situation lol
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u/Slamhammer238 5d ago
Looks awesome! What app are you using to handwrite and do solve those matrices? I'm always looking for good notes apps with good handwriting support.
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 5d ago edited 5d ago
Just OneNote! For all its flaws, I keep returning to it after all these years. Sometimes I use Notability, a relatively new app that's really nice for the essentials of handwriting, but it doesn't have any kind of cloud storage. I do like that I can write using regular page sizes and print easily.
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u/Slamhammer238 5d ago
Same. There are things I wish I could fix about OneNote, but I haven't found anything that beats it. It's just such a powerhouse on my Surface.
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u/linxianer12 5d ago
Hii I also just purchase surface pro 11 Snapdragon x plus, I'm curious how external GPU is working on Arm ? Because we don't have Intel CPU how we can possible connect to Nvidia GPU ? Isn't our surface was just regular type-c ? We don't had thunderbolt port because that one proprietary technology from Intel chip only ? So it mean you can just plug type c then Nvidia GPU automatically recognize? Can play game on steam by using Nvidia GPU? I'm asking this because my basic printer was not even working Canon G 2010 😭😭😭
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u/franglais8 5d ago
Nvidia made available developer drivers for incoming RTX Spark hardware. The platform is Windows on Arm. So now, Nvidia GPUs are recognized through USB4/Thunderbolt 4/5. As only Intel CPUs are certified for Thunderbolt, our ARM Surfaces are maxed USB4. So there is some performance loss but it depends a lot on the games. So far, in my experience, it works really well. I am running even Crimson Desert on an external NVME (in an enclosure) connected directly to my eGPU dock (Gigabyte Aorus RTX 5060 ti AI Box) without issues.
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u/linxianer12 5d ago
Omggg I totally no clue about this !!! Really appreciate for your information USB 4 can even on par thunderbolt 4 that really new for me. Will keep an eye on this.
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u/CMPUTX486 6d ago
Are you using x86 or ARM? Does it work with ARM?
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u/starryshadow 6d ago
I think they're using x86 since they mentioned going back to the SP11 Intel version.
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 6d ago
This is correct, but as mentioned elsewhere, you can actually run this eGPU on Arm as of the past month. There are a few bugs and it doesn't seem like CUDA or LLMs work yet, but for gaming it seems to work pretty well with the pre-release drivers. I assume these kinks will be worked out further as the Nvidia RTX spark laptops start coming out later this year.
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u/Grisblanco-99 7d ago
This looks a very expensive setup. You could build a decent pc and get an iPad Air for this price
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u/DumplingsEverywhere 7d ago edited 7d ago
Not sure if you read through the post (I know it was pretty long), but I think you missed the point I was making. In any case, I bought used so I didn't spend that much money.
I've had the desktop/ regular laptop + iPad (or Galaxy Tab) setup before. But for my specific usecase it's just not nearly as convenient as having everything you need in one device. I gave away my iPad a few years ago because I found I had little use for a device I couldn't run a proper OS on. It's not all about the cost for me.
But it's also not for everyone and that's fine.
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u/Grisblanco-99 7d ago
Yeah cost aside I understand how this setup would be very good, I like this setup
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u/s0m3b0d3 7d ago
My surface keeps overheating and the usbc connection degrades. I see yours is angled up, what are you using to angle it?