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    Dell XPS 15 (L521X) and MSI GTX 660 Ti Power

    Discussion in 'e-GPU (External Graphics) Discussion' started by jnorland, Sep 14, 2012.

  1. jnorland

    jnorland Newbie

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    So this is my first shot as this, I’ve been reading through the forum for the last week or so and decided to give it a try. I could really use some help making sure I'm on track. I realize this may be overkill but I'm making the most of my situation. I am currently deployed and did not want to bring my desktop; that being said I needed to upgrade the Graphics card for it and it wouldn’t hurt to upgrade the power supply. Hense, the MSI GTX 660 Ti and the Corsair 850.

    For the deployment I bought a new Dell XPS 15 (L521X); the issues people are having with these laptops are currently the wifi and the GPU/CPU shared fan, creating to much heat. So I thought killing two birds with one Stone; I could use my Desktop upgrade as a EGPU while deployed and I wouldn’t run into heat issues with the laptops GPU and just because it sounds awesome to have better graphics.

    I already have a Netgear N900 Wireless Dual Band USB Adapter to replace the Wifi if I need to pull it out of the mPCIe. I’m 99% positive the l521x doesn’t have an expresscard slot. Note I have not received the laptop yet, a friend is bringing it over in a couple of weeks.

    System:
    Dell XPS 15 (L521X)
    Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit
    i7-3612QM processor
    16 GB DDR3 1600MHz Memory (DIY G.Skill Install)
    128 GB SSD (DIY Crucial M4 Install)
    NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM
    Intel© Centrino© Advanced-N 6235 & Bluetooth 4.0

    eGPU & PS:
    MSI GTX 660 ti & Corsair 850

    I just purchased the PE4H-PM3N ver2.4 from bplus and I believe I now have all of the hardware required headed my way. Once I get everything I plan to hook it up to the mPCIe port the LAN card is using, I believe I read the WWAN port will not work or it will be slow. I’ll download the drivers for the video card and that is about as far as I understand. I’ve bounced around the main thread and I just don’t know if I’m tracking everything I need to do to get the most out of the system. I understand there are tweaks you can do to make it run better, I’m just trying to put it all together so I know the right steps and procedure for this setup. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I apologize , I know the information is out there, I just don’t know if I have it all lined up correctly. Thanks for any help, advice, or direction.

    So I just read a quote from another post from Nando:

    I realize this is a different system but I can't see how I wouldn't run into the same issue. Does anyone know if the PE4H will limit me to Gen1 performance?

    Note: Thank you Mod for cleaning that up.
     
    jnorland, Sep 14, 2012
    #1