DIY eGPU experiences

How exactly can you confirm if Optimus is enabled/working. Is it as simple as right clicking on a program and seeing (or not) the option to run it on a specific gpu?


EDIT (You know if Optimus is working when you can right click on an executable and the context menu displays the option to run it on a specific GPU)

 

Thanks Kizwan, I'm going to mess with the PE3A with a multimeter and figure out if I can find what isn't working, and I may try my friend's PE3A and see if his will detect. And trust me, I will be getting an actual gaming PSU sooner or later, whether I get the thing to work with the one I have or not. Until then, I will rely on being creative with one or two crappy ones Frankensteined together

 

no idea what a stupid moderator is raging around here but seriously get a life kiddo.

p4e or whatever are you discussing around here, is also not in topic headline and also i see no difference between both. both have enclosure and same connection drivers etc, and iirc this thread was called few weeks ago "dyi vidock smth". so seriously stop being stupid, and consider this to be my last post in this greetful forum. if somehow some iq jumped back into your head miraculously, you can send your sorry to [email protected]

 

Whaat? Otherwise, good riddance? Ha.

 

Hi guys,
I didnt want to start new thread, so i have simple quick question about possibilities of DIY Vidock on my lappy.
Its stats:
Model: HP dv2915nr
GPU: Internal x3100
CPU: Core2Duo 1.83Ghz
RAM: 3GB

Is there any chance to run some new games (eg Battlefield3) using DIY Vidock?
thanks for replies

 

No need to buy gaming PSU. Just buy reliable brand. It doesn't have to be expensive. Regarding you said earlier that FAN does spin, does it spin very fast?

 

Thanks so much for the advice. I just ordered up a refurbished dell e6520 cause I see a bunch of them on the list in post #1, and this ebay seller ships immediately. I already have a power supply and a 5970 laying around so thats why I am using that card instead of a cheap one. Going to put my SSD in there with 32bit windows too. Now I just have to order up the expresscard thing and I'm done right? I am confused about the difference between pe4h and pe4l and which options I need with it.

 

A 5970 won't work, its a dual gpu card.

 

@sethsethseth,

5970 is a dual GPUs card. Few people already tried in the past but failed to get it to work. Single GPU card required 256MB PCI space. Dual GPUs card supposedly need 2x256MB but even on notebook with 512MB PCI space, dual GPUs card still failed to work. You may try of course because you already have that card.

 

I would say that the graphics is not your only problem, but the processor as well. A statement that seems common on this forum is that you need a processor with enough power to adress the graphics card and increase performance. I might be wrong, though. Could someone verify this?
I suppose you know already that the project requires an express card slot.

 

I made up a nice enclosure using a whole bunch of scrap parts.. The following goes into the build


- NVidia GTX 560 Ti
- PE4H
- Some sheet aluminum: 5mm and 2.5mm offcuts (free)
- A power supply from a recently retired Dell 1850 server: 12v at 44 amps (free)
- A box from another video card that I installed in the missus PC (free)


The first step was to modify the power supply enough to solder some power cables off the 12v connectors, and also solder on some tails onto the PS On / Off control pins (thanks to one of the RC forums for the pin-out)




The second step was to wire up a dodgy test setup to enable a functional test.





The third step was to make up the chassis from aluminum. The 5mm sheet was for the base and I made some support brackets from the 2.5mm. I needed one for the PSU, and 2 for the video card (to set the correct height). I installed a power on switch on the rear GPU bracket






The fourth step was to mount the GPU and PSU and fit in inside the box. I let on the back plate on the GPU for protection.The box is matte black cardboard with a clear top and some foam support. I put some foam supports under the chassis for padding and to protect the cardboard box.





The firth step was to build the final wiring setup with correct length wires, and all mounted securely on the base.





The sixth step was to shape up the foam padding and modify the plastic top to allow ventilation and the mini hdmi cable to attach.





And here it is running.

 

AWESOME!

If i had a 1U PSU i would have done the same i like it very much

+ rep

 

I'll just buy up the cheapest card that will run 3 30" monitors then. As long as it handles 4800x2560 with some bezel compensation (portrait) and plays a video fullscreen its fine. The last time I looked at it a year ago, the 5770 was the cheapest card that could do this, but I'm not familiar with the 6xxx line. Is there another one I should check out? It needs 2 dual link dvi connections and a displayport or minidisplayport. Also, I will send a bitcoin to whoever helped me the most as a thank you

 

The 5770 is probobly still the cheapest card that can do this, as I know the 6670 can't. If you are okay with used, its really cheap.

Sapphire Technology ATI Radeon HD 5770 1 GB - Excellent Condition | eBay

If you've got 2 PCI-E connectors on your PSU, your golden.

Forgot to mention, I built an enclosure out of a shoe box. I will build a nice aluminum/smaller box later, but I won't have time for about 2 weeks. I'll upload pics and a summary of my benchmarks soon.

 

Is there any performance difference between PE4L and PE4H?
When using an external monitor?
PE4L ist capable of a x1 link (with PE4L-v2.1 a pci-e 2.0 link)
PE4H is capable of a x4 link using 4 cables - is it correct that there is no performance difference when using only one link cable?

 

Yes, that is correct.

 

Hello,I've decided to make a diy vidock with a pe4l and a ati 5670 but I have a problem.
my laptop is an asus x52d with an amd athlon x2 p320,8gb of ddr3 memory,wireless card (mpci).
I have buy a pe4l(with pm3n),the ati 5670 and a 12v/120w power supply.
When I plug the pm3n in place of the wireless card and connected to the pe4l,the power supply connected (with jack,not atx),any leds are lighting (on the pe4l) but the led d1 and d2 (on the pm3n) are lighting.
When I boot my computer,the gfx does not appear,like this I had nothing plugged.
help me please!
(sorry for my bad english but I am french and I use google translate)

 

Did you connect 6-pin cable to the graphics card? Read this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...8851-diy-egpu-experiences-30.html#post5964738

 

Hey guys so I just bought a EVGA gtx 560 1gb for my diy vidock. Could anyone confirm if this card supports Optimus?

 

every 400-500 (and i think upcoming 600) series card support optimus

 

Congratulation for successful DIY eGPU setup! It's really nice setup.

Yes, with combination of Intel HD Graphics/3000 it will support Optimus. GTX560 alone will not enabled Optimus.

 

not because I do not have a 6 pin connector on my graphics card.

 

When it comes the choice of laptop candidates for eGPU, you guys seem to avoid the Sony Vaio. I looked at the forum's review of it and it seems great to me, just the hard drive and the monitor that gave it a slight minus.

Is the Sony Vaio less suitable for an eGPU? Is there any points that I've missed? How do I know if the iGPU is switchable or not?

 

There are no pci-e 2.0 (5GT/s) capable Sandy Bridge Vaios with expresscard slots. Need to go back one-gen and then you get pci-e 1.1 (2.5GT/s), so not recommended if you want best performance. See the thin-and-light link in my sig for suggest eGPU candidate notebooks (eg: 12" Lenovo X220, 13" Toshiba R830, 14" Toshiba R840 (900P) or Lenovo T420 (900P/NVS4200M, 15" Dell M4600 (1080P/FX2000M) ).

 

For any 2011 13inch or 15inch macbook pro owners, I will soon be testing this set-up:

Macbook pro 2011 13inch + PE4L 2.1 + 400w PSU + EVGA 560 + Sonnet thunderbolt/expresscard adapter. Hopefully this works and I'll have up numbers a few days after the 20th!

 

Very anxious to see your results EpicBlob! Good luck.

 

Well, these are my final overclocked results on 06.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-2520M Processor,Dell Inc. 0D1CTR score: 16475 3DMarks

I've got it OC'd to 925/1157. I have HD Audio disabled, along with my SD/SmartCard reader, which were shown to be on the PCI Bus. I had a mouse & keyboard plugged in during the test.

Any thing else I could do to up my score? As I see this, this puts me as the second fastest 460 1GB, and faster than one with a 2540M, a faster CPU, just barely behind an i7-2620M. If I decide to keep this, I'll get a PE4L 2.1 soon.

Edit: 3DMark11 score: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2741696

Internal 11:
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2743468

 

Hope you can make it. Are you sure that the 560 will work on OSX? I mean over the 560ti.

 

I'd think he'd be testing it under Windows? Although maybe it'll work on Mac.

 

Quite nice setup! Props!

 

Well I know that most Nvidia cards don't work under os x, so my initial tests will be under Windows 7. But if it actually does work, I'll buy a cheap card thats highly compatible with mac os x. I will try to get the 560 to work (some people have the non-ti working) but chances are I'll get a second card to try it on.

I mean if this set-up works under windows, no reason it shouldn't work with a compatible card under os x.

And I just hope that if it doesn't work, my items have a good return policy

 

Since your Sonnet adapter requires a thunderbolt extension cable wouldn't be cheaper a PE3A- R adapter? You can also grub a 10$ eSATA pci-e card to test if it works before adding the GPU.

 

Timohour,

Could you send me a link to the PE3A-R adapter? Cant seem to find it. And how would I use the esata pci-e card to test if it works? Would I have to open up the macbook and find a place to connect it? And what exactly would I be testing? The PE4L?

 

Hi, could you please go to my youtube channel and see the problem that I'm having now with PE4H? go to this link below:
Problem with PE4H - YouTube

 

<strike>You didn't connect floppy power connector from PSU to PE4H.</strike> Wait... Sorry, when I look closely, the floppy power connector already connected to PE4H.

(P/S: Please separate your graphic card from PSU. Put a book between graphic card & PSU.)

 

Quick question, why would you need to separate the PSU and GPU?

 

The advice in my previous post doesn't related to eGPU or PSU operation, nor solved useafo problem.

 

Chilled water benchmarks!

So I got liquid cooling for my 580 and put the radiator in the window to chill the water. The outside war was 11F. At one point the water started to freeze, so the water was at 0C. My best clocks were 1085/4950 for 3dm11 and 1080/4950 for vantage. Vantage completed once at 1085, but for some reason the score was lower than at 1080. I tried it several more times at 1085 but it hanged every time. What I hate about the 1080 score is that I accidentally left firefox open from when I ran 3dm11, so the CPU score was only 19.4K, while on the runs without firefox open I got 20.2K.

With 3 fans from the radiator blowing 11F air into the room, the room obviously cooled down considerably. This is a problem because my ES CPU has a pre-release stepping that coldbugs at 67F, which is incredibly high for a coldbug. So basically when I wasn't running a benchmark I was running ATITool to heat the CPU some and to keep the water from freezing. Benchmarking ended when I let the CPU get too cold and it crashed. It'll still POST when too cold so I can let it sit in the BIOS to warm up, but I didn't want to wait that long so I just turned the system off.

I only did vantage and 3dm11 because I only wanted to do GPU intensive benchmarks. I should have done heaven too, but like I said the system crashed on vantage.

3dm11: 7356
3dmv: 26408

You may be thinking that these are impressive clocks, but considering that I am running at 1.3V with load temps in the single digits, they really aren't. From what I've seen, my card is actually a little on the mediocre side. At these temps and voltage a high quality 580 would hit 1.2ghz.

 

Sorry for not being clear but PE3A-R is a custom adapter based on the PE3A along with a riser. It requires minor soldering skills. Check the above links on how to do it.
Before you add your GPU to the pci-e converter (PE4L or PE3A) connect a mac compatible pci-e x1 eSATA card, like this or this, just to now if your Sonnet Thunderbolt to Expresscard and Expresscard to pci-e x1 works successfully (in case a eSATA card won't work you don't have to buy a GPU). Although I don't think it won't work for me it was an easy way to find out if the gear that I had (PE4L, PE3A, or cabling) was the defective. If it will work with a eSATA card there is no reason not to work with a GPU...
Feel free to ask anything else. Even if I am not able to answer there will be maybe someone else who can...

 

Well I won't be waiting for the PE4L 2.1 (long story but I'm buying the Vidock 4+ instead).

Timohour,

Do you know if I could use that set-up if I took the essentials out of the Vidock case? I mean essentially they are the same thing, so that extender should work. And The Sonnet adapter has been said to work OOB with os x lion, so that is a big plus. But if this does work, the only set-back is that the Vidock is not 2.0, so I'll only have pci-e 1.1 with Optimus enabled. I wonder if the PE4L would fit into the thunderbolt enclosure.. (given I make an opening for the PSU). Would be interesting to try out.

And this also means I should have numbers much sooner (will be releasing a full-fledged review of my tests asked for by Vidock).

 

I used to be able to run 3dm11 no problem.. I tried today, and no matter what I do, it stops the benchmarks after a second or two and I get an error saying that it's lost exclusive access to the keyboard or display..

any ideas? I've tried restarting the computer both with and without the egpu plugged in.. no go.. I tried to see if there were any strange services running, but I didn't see any.

 

Is it necessary?

 

Well, here's my write up on the Dell E6220 eGPU.

The setup was relatively simple. Just booted and plugged it in as the POST logo went away. Drivers were installed easily at the start. However, I couldn't, for the life of me, get the Optimus drivers to install. So, I clean swept everything, and tried again. I eventually got Optimus working. I ran some preliminary benches and they weren't that good. So, I toyed around some more and got up to a decent score.

These scores are OC'd to 913/1150, at 1.087V. I'll be overvolting a bit more, seeing as I only hit 55C in the enclosure.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-2520M Processor,Dell Inc. 0D1CTR score: 16475 3DMarks

Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-2520M Processor,Dell Inc. 0D1CTR score: P3549 3DMarks

I tried running Vantage multiple times, but it always crashes at the last CPU test. I also ran Res5, but forgot to take a screenshot, so I'll edit the post with that in a few.

After all of this, I decided it was very cumbersome to have random parts spread all over my passthrough. So, I made an enclosure. This is possibly the cheapest, easiest to make enclosure ever.

I simply put the PSU in the box, taped it down with Gorilla Tape, then secured the GPU to the top of the PSU. I then stuck the SWEX to the spare space on top of the PSU. I cut the sides of the box up to match the sides of the PSU and GPU as close as possible, and cut the openings for the PSU fan/cord and GPU cables/fan. I then cut the top down to size, and cut holes for the fans, the HDMI cable, and to reach the SWEX.

The result is a very unprofessional looking, but incredibly useful, enclosure.





So here's a picture of the whole setup I have.



Monitor, Laptop, eGPU, PS3, Turtle Beach PX21, RAT7, and a crappy keyboard.

Another pic, showing the laptop itself connected to the eGPU.



One last picture, with all the clocks, validation and so on.



I'll be doing a full review of the E6220 soon, as well. Thanks to everyone for helping me to get this running well, and especially to Nando, for helping me pick a notebook and organinzing this awesome thread.

 

Well, there is a rumored Vidock 4 ++ system in the works, which is made in response to customers who want to put GTX 580 or Quadro cards inside.
I suggest you check out their facebook product page.
From what I read before, it would be a stop-gap measure to be released before the truly next gen Vidock G4 products get released in the fall or summer.

What card are you trying to connect to your system?
I currently have a GTX 560 TI installed in my VIDOCK 4 PLUS connected to my ThinkPad W520 at PCI-E 2.0x1.
So I am not sure where you got the info about the ViDock not supporting PCI-E 2.0.

Now my recent adventure with the AMD Radeon HD 7950 is a whole other story that I would probably say EPIC FAIL.

 

i got my PE4L(from HIT) without the setup 1.x cd!! shouldnt i be getting it along with it? is there any way to get it for free?

 

Setup 1.x is distributed electronically. Email HIT asking for your copy as part of the PE4L purchase.

 

Sorry, did not realize the Vidock was 2.0. Thanks for the heads-up. And I guess that means that I don't have to worry about messing with the Vidock .

And I already have a EVGA gtx 560, so power shouldn't be an issue. Only issue I will have is getting the card to work under os x (but windows 7 should be fine).

 

That's good news. I hope they apply a special price for you since they asked for a review.
Further questions regarding your Vidock product can be asked on the Facebook Vidock page. (I am not in facebook so I can't provide links)

 

So, I'm going to build DIY Vidock in this week with my friend.
Laptop specs are:

Acer Aspire 5755G
i7-2630QM @ 2.0ghz
8GB RAM
Intel HD3000 + dGPU NVidia GT540M 2GB with Optimus
Only mPCI-e slot (WLAN-slot)

Components are:
PE4H 2.4 + PM3N
300W ATX
eGPU Zotac GTX 560 1GB

So few things what I've thought; I should disable the GT540M to get optimus with the Setup 1.x? And do you guys think that the mPCI-e slot is whitelisted in this laptop -> can I unwhitelist it with the Setup 1.x?
This should be plug&play but we'll see.

Ps.
I've already tried to pm to HITRC couple days ago to get the coupon for the Setup but no answer, so how to get that?

 

ViDock | Facebook

Meanwhile i'm writing a review about the PE4L solution for an Italian community. I should have the v2.1 @ home before the next weekend (damned customs ). So more tests and videos and photo gallery are coming on next sunday i hope)

Simone