Note that there are variants of the Dell Latitude 5580 with Tunderbolt 3, and there are Dell Latitude 5580 variants without Thunderbolt 3. If your particular laptop model does not possess a Thunderbolt 3 controller, you can forget about external GPU... ;-)

elgonzo‭ thanks,

I did recognize a port (an opening) with a small painting of a thunder near it (though maybe it's Thunderbolt 1 or 2, it isn't clear to me how to distinguish from a Google search).

deleted user, as far as i can tell from the spec sheet for the laptop, the Tunderbolt option for the Dell Latitude 5580 is a Thunderbolt 3 controller. (https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/latitude-15-5580-laptop/late5580_om_pub/port-and-connector-specifications?guid=guid-540bdb3a-05b6-45b7-955b-63049ddc14d5&lang=en-us)

Do not trust the printed symbol on the laptop shell alone. Check in the BIOS of your laptop whether TB is or can be enabled. Also check your Windows system settings whether a Tunderbolt controller device is installed (and whether the listed controller is really a TB3 controller). If there is no such device listed in the system settings, try installing the TB drivers offered by Dell and see whether the driver installation succeeds. (Or, if you have some other Thunderbolt device at hand, see whether your laptop can recognize and access that Thunderbolt device). (1/2)

(2/2) I would not trust Dell to not f*ck up, and print the thunder symbol on all Dell Latitude 5580 cases regardless of whether a particular model has a TB3 controller inside or not.

How would you like it if you were to buy an external GPU, and then only afterwards figure out that your laptop does not possess a TB3 controller? Your pretty external GPU would quickly turn into a fancy doorstop. So, put in the effort first and early and verify whether your laptop really has a TB3 controller before going to spend dosh on an eGPU. Or be prepared to potentially end up with one rather expensive doorstop... ;-P

That said, if you are going to purchase the eGPU from a local retail shop, you could try taking the laptop to the store and just try it out with the choosen eGPU before making the purchase...

Hi elgonzo‭

I checked the BIOS and indeed found a section about Thunderbolt (just Thunderbolt, not version 3, and it contains a few options and some data about security) and I also tried to install these Dell-Intel drivers for Thunderbolt and the installation was successful. Maybe you'd like to opine about this?

deleted user looks good. As said previously, the TB controller built into the Dell Latitude 5580 is a TB 3 controller, and if neither the BIOS or the drivers explicitly specify any other TB version i would go with what the spec sheet says.

You can also distinguish between TB 1, 2 and 3 by looking at the TB port(s) of your laptop. A TB 3 port looks exactly like a USB C port. The old TB 1/2 ports do not look like USB C. Check the images on the Wikipedia page for Thunderbolt showing the different ports.

And then there is the Tunderbolt Control Center that is part of the driver package you downloaded. It has the ability to show the TB version supported by your system (screenshot). I don't have any experience with this software and don't know how to get to the respective page/window showing that information, though.

And finally, if the drivers don't report any issues and seem to be working, you should be good to go... (and cross fingers that the crapfest that is Windows 10 doesn't screw it up anywhere else...)