DIY eGPU experiences

Can someone update me on the total cost of one of these systems (including graphics card) to get performance about on the level of a desktop 6850 / 5830-5850? I'm assuming you'll need a slightly beefier GPU.

 

@dualbios,

Dell_E6400 have ExpressCard slot (54mm), you'll need PE4L+EC2C (EC2C = ExpressCard 34mm). PE4L is cheaper than PE4H but PE4H have sturdy base & can hold the graphic card. If you not from US, you can get PE4H/PE4L from BPlus &.

Next, PSU & desktop graphic card - choose which Nvidia Fermi desktop graphic card you want to use (for x1.Opt) then PSU to drive that graphic card.

 

@nando4, I search many information about this (sorry for my english) but I see that you can use Expresscard for link 1.0 speed.

but you can use USB3.0 port too?

if not I must remove my WWAN card from y Elitebook 8540p for for link to 2.0 speed using two cards? mPCIe and Expresscard slot?

regards!

 

Look here. They are working on it!

 

got a PE4H have my power supply got a ASUS GeForce GT430 1GB Low Profile for the time being to test with.

 

i wil need to get the express slot card though as the one i bought is the smaller of the 2

 

Dell_E6400 have ExpressCard 54mm slot. You can plug-in ExpressCard 34mm card to ExpressCard 54mm slot. "The 54 mm slot accepts both 34 mm and 54 mm cards. A diagonal guide in the rear of the 54 mm slot guides 34 mm cards to the connector." (Source: ExpressCard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )

What is the PSU specification, especially the +12V max current?

 

Hi, I have problem with Setup 1.x (grub especially)

So:
- I boot computer
- choose Setup 1.x menu-based (system recognize my egpu)
- do 32bit compaction on all devices (free 256mb)
- chainload mbr...

then I have error: Missing operating system

When I choose chainloader win7 I only get grub\ with command line

I relly don't know what to do, recently I reinstalled win7 on my HP 4330s with M4 Crucial SSD...

my configuration:

Win7 Pro SP1
HP 4330s
4GB ram
Zotac Geforce GTX 560Ti (through PE4H via Express Card) powered by Corsair CX-430

Thank You for response and all that work at DIY eGPU, I really appreciate it!

 

Hi damogari,

Very nice to see that you and I have a very similar set up. The only difference being the GPU, mine is GTX 460.

My eGPU worked straight away on my 4330s when I plugged the laptop in when windows has already booted. (8GB ram) no errors 12 when installing the drivers. Have you tried that the simple plug and play method yet? Also try stopping windows booting up by pressing F8 during post as suggested by Nando4, that method also worked for me. Good Luck!

 

i have a 750 watt corsair so np with power. looking at my express port on the laptop it looks to be the same width all the way down with pins all the way across aswell

 

I notice that you set this up on the same machine as mine... An Inspiron 1520. I'm trying to get this going on Windows 7 x64 and can't seem to get past the error:

"IRQARB: ACPI BIOS does not contain an IRQ for the device in PCI slot 0, function 1. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance."

I have tried everything I could find in these forums; I was hoping you may have seen the error before.

Thanks again!

 

Hi cosmo,

The problem is the eGPU is not detected at all. The problem might be the connection (faulty mini-HDMI cable), insufficient power or faulty graphic card. HD5670 power requirement is 64W. So, your power adapter, [email protected]=79.2W should be able to drive the HD5670.

1. Does the fan on the HD5670 spin very fast after power-on the eGPU?
2. PE4L or PE4H?
3. Does LED(s) on the PE4L or PE4H light up?
4. Do you have ATX power supply? If you have, try using it.
5. If you have a desktop computer, test the HD5670 on it to confirm it does not faulty.

 

so with that post booter what will i need to change for the e6400?

 

No need to change anything. Did you tried connect eGPU to your notebook?

 

I see all this new updates over thunderbolt and usb3.0 etc.
BUT couldn't just be made a pci-e 16x to mxm connector? since it works using pci-e 2.0 16x it wouldn't have any bottleneck. sure in most notebooks in single graphic card configuration it won't be much good but not much worse then adding cables to a mini pci-e slot. but for dual graphics notebooks it would be great. if expresscard and mini pci-e are already developed why not a mxm to pci-e????

 

okay mate will install the new os tomorrow and give it a go

 

Thanks kizwan,

In response to your inquiries:

Does the fan on the HD5670 spin very fast after power-on the eGPU? -No, but if I disconnect the express card or m-HDMI cable the fan does spin up, it slows down when it is connected again.

PE4L or PE4H? - PE4H + EC2C Ver. 2

Does LED(s) on the PE4L or PE4H light up? - 2 green lights.

Do you have ATX power supply? I'll give this a shot, I'll borrow the power supply from another machine.

If you have a desktop computer, test the HD5670 on it to confirm it does not faulty. -Tried this, card works great.

The card is being detected ...if I have device manager open when I plug in the card I can see the "Standard VGA adapter" appear briefly below my onboard intel card, after a minute or so it disappears and I can find about 12 identical errors in the event log for it. (Error shown in original post)

I can see that some other people have had this machine working with an eGPU, so I must be missing something small here.

Is there a tutorial anywhere that I can use to try and get eGPU Setup 1.x to reallocate the resources necessary for it to detect the card? Is that the right step to be taking when the card is not detected by eGPU setup?

Thanks again!

 

If the graphic card detected briefly & then disappeared, this means the graphic card is not detected. Since you already tested the graphic card & it turn out OK, next try using ATX PSU. If with ATX PSU the problem still persist, might be the mini-HDMI cable is faulty.

Code:

"IRQARB: ACPI BIOS does not contain an IRQ for the device in PCI slot 0, function 1. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance."

This error means device in PCI slot 0, function 1 have problem. In addition to this error, you should be able to see the problematic device with exclamation mark (!) in Device Manager. If not, this error can be safely ignored.

 

I will try this when I get home from work in a couple hours. Thanks.

What are the chances of that cable being bad? I ordered this stuff online and only received one with the package...I don't think I'll be able to find one around my city anywhere.

I will definitely try the power supply first thing. As far as the IRQARB error goes; I am pretty sure it is the card itself. I have read all sorts of things telling me that it could be safely ignored but in this case I'm thinking it shouldn't be.

I will let you know how it goes with the power supply. Thanks again for everything!

 

Also,

Does anyone have any suggestions as to where I could order a replacement cable? preferably something a little longer? I've been digging around in google and can't seem to find anything that doesn't involve daisy chaining a couple adapters together.

 

On the scale of 1 to 10; 1=less likely & 10=most likely; I say 3. You can buy mini-HDMI cable from DealExtreme. However, it might take a month to arrived at your doorstep.

You shouldn't worry with this error because even IF this error related to the eGPU, this error is not the one preventing the card from detected. The eGPU is missing in the Device Manager means the eGPU is not detected at all. For the time being, you'll need to get eGPU detected first. After that, then we can worry with the error message in Event Viewer.

 

Well I hope it will be a matter of plugging in an atx power supply and having it work. Let's hope. I'll let you when it's done.

 

Just ordered an HP 6460b with an i5-2540 and a 500gb HD (not that that matters for eGPU purposes) off of HP's refurb site. Thanks to Nando for the link to the refurb site for this great deal! Can't wait to get it in and for the 2.0 compliant adapter from Bplus to be released so I can set it up and hopefully give you guys some good data along the way. Hopefully this notebook coupled with the 2.0 Express connection, the fast i5, and a GTX-560ti will post up some good numbers. Cheers!

 

Thank you for help!

So I try to hot plug egpu to laptop, and...

IT WORKS!!

too easy to be real, so I try 3dmark06, and get this:



and all things connected



thank you so much for help, and thanks to community on this board!

 

I've been researching for awhile now and just stumbled upon this thread. I was hoping someone here could lend some advice.

I'm planning on buying the x220 for school, but if I want to try an e-gpu setup in the future would you recommend i3, i5 or i7 ?

 

to JordanM: x220 has TOLUD issues - you can't use more than 3GB in order to be able to connect eGPU.

to all: could I install 2x4GB into x220, install 32bit windows and use eGPU?
I've tried running 4GB in my 8510p win 32b windows xp - in windows I saw 3GB of RAM but I could still attach rest of the RAM to a RAMdisk to utilize it. Couldn't be something like this done with x220, 8GB RAM, eGPU?

 

Well, it works wonderfully with the desktop power supply. I am wondering if the power supply I purchased is bad, or if something else is up. The power supply I bought was recommended in this forum here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...ds/418851-diy-egpu-experiences.html#pros-cons

You'll see the 5670 (My card) listed and a link to an ebay search for a 72W power supply.

The adapter I ended up with is listed as a Mini-ITX power supply, is it possible that this adapter is incorrect for this application? I can't think of any reason a 12V DC signal would be any different other than the poles being reversed...

Anyway, the system works great with no need for Setup 1.x; I just boot to windows directly, drop into sleep mode and plug the card in. When I resume from sleep both cards work great in dual head mode.

I tested a few games and they looked great.

Now I need to find a permanent solution to my power woes, I'd really like to find a solution that does not involve a desktop power supply. It's really the reason I went after the card I did...It has very low power consumption.

I'll keep everyone posted, and I'll get some benchmarks run soon!

Thanks for everything.

 

So...according to this post I can't make a PE4L work with a 12V DC adapter?

Is there a way to have this work with just a DC adapter? without buying too much more?

The adapter I have is designed for a mini-ITX motherboard; it makes 12V at 6.6A (~80W).

I don't mind making some mods to the board if needed...has anyone tried this? Do I need that 5V rail if I just try and get it hooked up to the floppy drive connector on the PE4L?

If all I need to do is connect the 12V and Ground to that floppy connector, wonderful!

Anyone with some experience with this please let me know!

 

Hi everybody, I have a p7805u gateway laptop and was wondering if I would see notable improvements over my stock 9800mgts graphics card if I were to use one of these egpu methods. I have seen 2 other members ask the same question, but not really get solid responses. Can someone please clarify this for me? Thank you in advance!!!

 

Hello fellow laptop-dudes!

I own a Lenovo T500 type:2243-7RG
I have an ExpressCard slot, and then of course 2x mPCIe - the wifi and wwan slot.
My chipset is: Intel GM45/GM47

I've got 4gb DR3, Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, and a Seagate Momentus XT 500gb harddrive.

Will it be possible to play BF3 on my laptop with an eGPU?
Can I use a relatively new gfx, like gtx560ti?

Has anyone had an eGPU setup on a T500 before?

i'm all new in this, so bare with me.

Rasmus

 

ptuy, i too have an intel gm45 chipset and 2x mpcie slot. I also would like to play battlefield 3 on full settings!!!

 

I have a Inspiron 1525 with the intel chipset/integrated graphics 965 express. Has anyone been able to show that this will work on my laptop? How can I check myself if the ports I need are free? I don't have any express cards to test it with. See my profile for my details on my current setup.

 

Please see mangos47's eGPU benchmark results - Sager NP8662, [email protected], 4GB DDR3, dedicated GPU (dGPU) Nvidia GTX 260m 1GB, PM45 chipset. You can see in that post result of GTX460@x2 & GTX580@x2.

You can do eGPU x2 link setup if your notebook meet this requirement:-

• The two mPCIe ports are PCIe port [#1 & #2] or [#3 & #4] or [#5 & #6].

Please post screenshot of Device Manager. Set View to " Resources by connection", expand the Memory tree & take the screenshot.

 

I finally figured out to search just this thread for 1525 instead of entire notebookreview.com website and I see that Hanming was able to successfully get it to work. Now I have to still figure out what the best option for my setup is and how to tell on my win7 what ports I can use.

 

You can check available mPCIe ports by opening the memory/wifi compartment located underneath your notebook. Base on the Inspiron 1525 specification, to get the best performance from your notebook is to implement eGPU x2 or x4 link setup. According to Review Dell Inspiron 1525 Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews , it have 3 x mPCIe ports & 1 x ExpressCard 54mm slot. You can do eGPU x2 link setup using combination of [ExpressCard + mPCIe] or [mPCIe + mPCIe]. Whatever connections you use, x2 link setup only possible with either PCIe ports [#1 & #2] or [#3 & #4] or [#5 & #6].

You also can do eGPU x4 link where it should provide better performance than x2 but you'll need to use all 3 x mPCIe ports & the ExpressCard slot in condition they are PCIe ports [#1 + #2 + #3 + #4].

How to know the PCIe port number assignment
You can use AIDA64 to know the PCIe ports number. Move the wifi card to another mPCIe port & check in AIDA64 which PCIe port # it connected to. The one PCIe port who keep reported as free, that should be the ExpressCard.


Please post screenshot of Device Manager. Set View to " Resources by connection", expand the Memory tree & take the screenshot.

 

Thank you very much kizwan!!! One last question, would it be possible for my pc to implement the x4 link method you just mentioned. If not, do you think my pc would hold out better than mangos47 because i have an x9100 dual core cpu that I can overclock to 3.5gz?

 

After I post this I will be shutting down the laptop to examine the memory/wifi compartment and will post another picture.

 

Just got my setup running!
Using a Fujitsu t5010 w/ Intel Core 2 Duo P8600, 2400 MHz
PNY 460GTX 1GB, PE4L-PM3N

My 2nd pcie slot wasn't cooperating (white-list issue?) so my current method of booting up is kind of long:

boot through bios with wifi card in
get to setup 1.x, hotswap wifi with the pm3n (wont recognize if i just boot with pm3n)
boot into windows

going to look into figuring out why the other slot wouldn't accept my card (would recognize the wifi card in that slot but not function properly), i don't currently understand the setup 1.x software perfectly.

used the Verde 275.33 + nando's nvam.inf and am using an external monitor, so I guess I'm running 1.opt? (laptop has an Intel GMA 4500MHD)

About to benchmark, I'll report back on my findings!

 

PCI Express Controller
PCI-E 1.0 x1 port #1 In Use @ x1 (Marvell Yukon 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller)
PCI-E 1.0 x1 port #2 In Use @ x1 (Dell Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card Wireless Network Adapter)
PCI-E 1.0 x1 port #5 Empty


According to Aida64 Extreme trial edition this is what I have. Does this mean I can't do a eGPU 2x link without losing my wireless card?

 

For x4 link setup you'll need four ports of PCIe x1 (ports #1 & #2 & #3 & #4) & this ports are either 4 x mPCIe or [3 x mPCIe + 1 x ExpressCard]. Both mangos47's & your notebook have the same chipset (PM45). You have better CPU but you'll get similar performance with what mangos47 got. CPU play small role in GPU performance though. If your notebook unable to do x2 link, eGPU is not good idea. Anyway, mangos47's eGPU benchmarks result will be able to show you what kind of performance you can get.

Good news! Your Inspiron 1525 have " Large Memory" (above Memory). Referring to this post, TOLUD will not be an issue if " Large Memory" is available.

 

It looks like you can't do x2 at all. The ethernet controller is likely soldered in place and not removable. It's odd that you appear to have 2 free phyical ports, but aida64 only reports 1. Even if it did report one more port, you still couldn't do x2 since you need 3 and 4 or 1 and 2 to be free. A free port 5 is kinda worthless.

 

Right now, wireless card is connected to PCIe Port #2. Your notebook have two empty mPCIe ports. Try move the wireless card to the empty mPCIe port & check with AIDA64 where the wireless card is connected to now. This is the way to know the port number for the other two empty mPCIe ports.

 

3 & 4 are the other two ports according to the found new device window.

 

Did you checked with AIDA64? Great! You can do x2 link with the two empty mPCIe ports (PCIe port #3 & #4). <strike>And you still can use wireless card since</strike> wireless card is at PCIe port #2 (according to AIDA64). PCIe port #5 must be ExpressCard.

EDIT: Sorry, my mistake. Can't use WIFI because when enable x2 later, the PCIe Port #2 & #4 will need to disabled (stability issue).

 

I had to reinstall AIDA64 sorry it took so long to reply; it matched the found new device program after I reinstalled it and reran it again for the two extra ports.

So what do I need to buy in order to get this working? I want to spend less then 350$ and get the best I can. My goal is to be able to play Portal 2 and UT3 on this notebook. Will I be able to output this to the built in monitor or will I have to hook it up to an external monitor to do this?

I'm done for tonight, will finish it tomorrow night.

 

Dell Inspiron 1525 have Intel GMA X3100 iGPU. So, can't do x1.Opt setup. That's why I recommend doing x2 link setup to get best performance. You'll need PE4H + [2 x PM3N mPCIe cards] + [2 x mini-HDMI cable]. You will need external monitor. And also PSU.

 

Ok, it looks like I have the option to do x4 seeing as I have 7 listed pci bus when I do the Device Manager view connections and check the memory tab? Am I correct in believing this?

 

No. That is not correct.

 

What can I do to find out if x4 is possible? Ill take a picture of any settings in my computer if that helps. Sorry to bug so much, I just wanna make sure I can get the most performance out of this egpu kit if I take this route. Thank you guys once again for all the help, especially kizwan!