Scratch all that I just realised you MUST have thunderbolt interface for eGPU... I assumed usbC would work too... but seems that is not the case.. so I guess I have to go back to the drawing board on the best way to go about this.

Hey there,

So straight to the point I want to be able to play Half life Alyx, ideally with the complete Index setup (controllers and headset)
Last year.. or the year before... I went and splurged and built a gaming rig, I spent about $6000 including the Vive a GTX 1080 ti, a ridiculous 38" ultra wide 4k curved monitor (LG), 9th gen i7, 1tb 970 evo ssd, 64GB ram and all the other typical stuff...
I had 2 desires I wanted from the build, 1: to experience the current best of VR see what all the fuss was about and 2: I wanted to build a top end Hackintosh, so I followed the buying guide from tonymacosx online...
Unfortunatly after weeks and weeks of trying it turned out the motherboard I had purchased was 1 revision of a chipset that they assumed worked with mac os but it did not...
I enjoyed playing around with VR for a month, super hot and beat sabre were amazing... as were a lot of the other mini experiences but ultimately concluded that it was just not quiet ready/good enough yet and perhaps I would check it out in a couple of years.. then sold my gaming PC & VR.

Fast forward a couple of years and here we are and after watching a few Half life Alyx videos it really seems like it is the killer app VR has been waiting for.

So currently I only have a fairly average laptop that I use for work:

Dell inspiron, i5 9th gen (8265U), 8GB ram, 256gb ssd, integrated graphics (620 UHD).

Of Course what I want to know, is if I went and purchased a eGPU, throw another 8GB ram in my laptop, maybe a faster/bigger SSD..

Would I be able to play Half Life Alyx VR ?

What would I expect in general from this sort of setup ?

From my minimal research online, it seems that people are able to hook up an eGPU to a macbook air and be able to play top end games and "good" to "medium" graphic settings.
I would assume my laptop is as good as a macbook air...
Of course I am hoping that this is possible and reasonable because it would mean instead of having to go blow another $3-6k I could get away with - $2-3k (eGPU $600-1000) valve index ($1200-1800)
Thanks in advance for any info and/or advice.