Let's figure out how to make a DIY eGPU (previously DIY ViDock)

So for the thinkpad t420s eGPU which of the adapters do I need, the PE4H or the P4HL? Also where can I order one of these? Do you guys know of a good cheap power supply to use as well.

 

I saw somewhere you have done this with thunderbolt. Any guide on how to?

 

DIY Vidock , My experience if anyone is interested,

$500 Toshiba Vista P305D AMD TURION X64 RM70 Dual Core 4 GB DDR2 17in, Wei Graphics score 3.7.

I basically spent about a month reading, learning and trying to get the parts to work, after a lot of trial and error and taking my stuff to a computer shop and giving them $120 to spend 3 hours of their time on it and have it still not work. I never gave up, and I finally got it to work ,and my Graphics score is now 5.9, my lowest Wei score is the AMD rm70 processors at 4.8.

I guess everyones experience may be different, but in my case it ended up nearly being plug and play. the key was 2 or 3 factors I believe.

Windows7, 3 gigs of Ram instead of 4, and updates for both W7 and the Nvidia GT430 card that I picked because of the low 85 watt power needed.

I didn't have to run any of the 1x setup or Pci tools for memory allocation, error 12 or 14 etc.

I wish I had read in BIG BOLD PRINT try 3 Gigs of Ram 1st, and upgrade to Windows 7 will be more than worth it, even if you never get this DIY thing to work.

It was a real challenge, my next idea is to try and run an external DIY RAID 0 controller card using the same PE4H or Mini PCIe card slot, Is there a Forum on that subject, comments welcome.

AMD users try 3 gigs of Ram 1st ......Sincerely ....Bob

 

is the front page instruction for the DIY version still current? i want to utilize my soldering skills to make my own plus its cheaper, then i can use the money i save to get a sweet case or something to house it

 

Hi, since my laptop is kind of dieing atm I really need to start getting a replacement;


i also havnt been using desktop cpus for ages; regarding the powersupply. How many cables do actually need to be connected? I thought only 1 to the Graphics card and 1 to the PCI adapter;
http://imageshack.us/f/861/mafiaiiint.jpg/
on that pic there seems to be a third black one above another one (or are they one plug?). And he also seems to wire all the cables from the powersupply to one hub before he wires them into the card/pci adapter again. What does he do that for?

edit: I also wonder if its not possible to get a PCI 2.0 to Usb 3.0 adapter and just buy a cheap notebook with a few usb3.0 ports and use those to get PCI 2.0 speed?
As in; if you got 2 usb 3.0 ports, get 2 PCi 2.0 to usb3.0 adapters to get 2x 2.0 speed?? That'd only work of course if those adapters even exist, I find plenty of Express cards with built in usb 3.0 ports but no pci 2.0 express slots which can be pluged into an usb 3.0 port... I found this on a german site but it seems to be an usb 2.0 adapter and not a 3.0 which would be needed.... http://www.elv.de/DeLOCK-Adapter-USB-20-zu-Express-Card-3454mm/x.aspx/cid_74/detail_10/detail2_23284

 

Hey guys would this help at all?

2 x USB 3.0 to PCI-E

PCIDV - Adapter Card & Box - Mini PCI/PCIE/MXM

 

Sorry for jumping right into this, but I just cant figure that out..

On my AsusG51J-A1 that has a PM55 chipset and a i7-720QM Processor which both say that they have a PCI Express Revision 2.0 ,
doe's it mean that if I get a USB 3.0 Expresscard or a ViDock it won't be bottlenecked by a 2.5Gb/s but by a 5Gb/s ?
I got confused after web searching for all the info about the ViDock..

**I think i got my answer here..

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...-out-how-make-diy-vidock-150.html#post6511544

I'm using the GTX460 Performance setup that Nando suggested on pg.150#1500. I haven't found any particular information on how to hook up the power supply to the PE4H & GTX 4601GB. The Corsair CX430 only has one (wrapped) cable with the larger 4-pin connectors (3) on it, but I should need 4 of those connectors to use with the 4-to-6-pin adapters that came with my PE4H. Are there any wiring diagrams or clearer images that I can use to help me hook it up? Thanks!

 

There are three power inputs provided by your ATX PSU to the PE4H/GTX460:

* 75W to the PE4H provided by the four-pin floppy molex input on the PE4H
* 75W to the GTX460 via the 6-pin pci-e connector #1 on the GTX460
* 75W to the GTX460 via the 6-pin pci-e connector #2 on the GTX460

Then all that is required is the PE4H to connect to your notebook. Do that by attaching the mini HDMI cable b/w the PE4H to the EC2C (expresscard) or PM3N (mPCIe) in your notebook.

 

Hi all,

I have a HP TC4200 tablet with Intel GMA 900. No Expresscard slot just PCMCIA.
Could I use an external vidcard trough internal LCD somehow? A PCMCIA - Expresscard adapter could help? And if yes, which one i should use - PE4H-EC2C perhaps? Any solution is better than GMA900.

 

It uses a mini-pci rather than mini pci- e wifi. Means no chance of a DIY eGPU. Sorry. If you want a nice tablet eGPU on a budget then consider a HP 2730P. There's a great example of a setup at DIY eGPU on Tablet PC's: experiences, benchmarks, setup, ect... .

 

Hi, I am going to buy a laptop soon and hope to do the PE4H x2 solution. What requirements must my laptop meet so that this will be an option for me? I looked at both of the DIY external card threads and I'm a bit lost here.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: With an Expresscard 2.0 slot, could I get performance equivalent to a x2 solution but with only one lane and one connection. Would Optimus' speed boost then be available because it would detect only one lane in use?

Second edit: I've done some more reading and I've come to understand that there currently are no external PCIe 2.0 cables, and it may not be possible to make them (at least not passive). So then, my best bet would be two 1.0 1x lanes with the PE4H solution, or Optimus with one 1.0 1x lane. I am under the impression that two 1x lanes provides better performance than Optimus with one 1.0 1x lane, but how large is the difference?

 

Thanks for the reply, nando. There is a 6-pin (+2 optional pins) pci-e connector which I just plugged in without the extra pins. The other connector is a 4+4 Pin EPS 12V connector which I'm not sure is used for.

Newegg.com - CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 V2 430W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

 

Hey guys, quick question.

My current PSU is Antec TruePower Trio 650w. Its 12v has 19ampere each.

I'm looking to buy EVGA 560TI, but according to its spec, it requires 30 ampere. "Requirements
Minimum of a 500 power supply.
(Minimum recommended power supply with +12 Volt current rating of 30 Amps.) "

So given my PSU, is it impossible for me to pull this setup?

I'll appreciate any help.

Thanks.

 

EVGA's recommendation is based on total system power draw considering that a single PSU is providing all the power needs. The TDP for NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti is 170W. Your power supply should output a theoretical 228W on a single 12V rail which realistically means ~182W at 80% efficiency under load (if it's relatively new, performance degrades over time). Hooking multiple rails to a single card is one possibility but if the PSU uses a truly independent rail design (most aren't) the results could be disastrous. Long story short, you should be fine but there is little head room left on that PSU. Consider upgrading to a high quality single rail PSU especially if you are planning to overclock your GTX 560 Ti.

 

I have just bought an X220 and want to set up a eGPU. But I am having a very difficult time finding the parts in the UK, does anyone know where I might find the parts?

 

Hi,

First of all, sorry if I post in the wrong thread - I tried to find the specifically dedicated one about eGPU feasibility/configurations but it seems that there is not .

I'm totally newbie with eGPU solutions (but I already read the major knowledge base about DiY eGPU) and I'd like to know if my laptop is a good candidate for it.

I own a 5-years old vaio vgn-fe11m (i945pm ICH7-M - t2300 - geforce 7400 go). As a big dissident of "planned obsolescence", I already upgraded it to a t7200 +3GB ram and installed the bios hack for vt and ahci.

Considering the following screenshot (in French - "Vide" means "Empty"), I was wondering if it is possible to configure my laptop to do a 4x1.0 pci-e link (PE4H + PM3N) after removing the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG card (as my laptop is really old, I'm not 100% sure setting up an eGPU would be the most adequate solution rather than buying a new laptop... but the price is indeed attractive).



(in terms of feasibility, the 3945ABG card is physically located under the keyboard and as far as I checked, it could be possible to pass the PM3N compatible cable under the laptop's hull and make it out near the dvd drive...)

However, I was wondering what are the major drawbacks of eGPU monopolising the 4 pci-e ports. For instance, can I still use my WiFi usb key as replacement for the integrated intel card (actually, I don't know if the usb ports will still be available) ?

Finally, assuming doing a 4x 1.0 pci-e link is possible, would I need 4 PM3N cards (it would seem so... thus it's most probably not achievable physically - a 2x link would still be possible however) or the 4x link is simply enabled via the BIOS settings ?

Best Regards,

Benco

 

@benco - for x2 link speed you'd need to confirm that port4 is the expresscard slot. The DIY eGPU Setup 1.x software would be used to set x2 link mode.

Before undertaking such a venture I'd strongly recommend you consider the following Sandy Bridge Lenovo E520 as a system upgrade. It can do a x1.Opt (NVidia Optimus) installation. The overall solution would be easy to manage and totally eclipse anything your 5yr old Sony could muster.

€300 15.6" Lenovo E520 B940 2.00 4GB 500GB W7P *expresscard slot*

 

@nando4: thanks for your reply! I don't know why but I was expecting this kind of answer ...

But If I switch to a new laptop, maybe it'd be better to wait for 2012 thunderbolt-powered pc (even though Windows seems not to support it properly for now) and pay the top price to keep it long enough.

I will think about it... Anyway thanks for your help!

 

Hi,

I have dell vostro 1510 laptop without any graphic card. I want to attach graphic card to laptop for playing pc games which require graphic card. I'm very noob to technical stuff and I need serious help to achieve this task.

Sorry for repost.

Thanks.

 

Edit: wrong thread.

 

Will eGPU work on dell vostro 1510

Thanks

 

Has anyone in the UK managed to do this? where have you got the parts from?

 

So I am trying this out with an Acer 6920 with dGPU nvidia 9500 GS and eGPU nvidia GTX 560 DCU II OC and using the PE4H-E2DC setup. I have spent literally dozens of hours smashing my head against the wall with it and at this point have managed to get the GTX560 appearing in device manager with 275.33 desktop driver installed. However my laptop is still using the dGPU with standard VGA drivers to render things, and isn't detecting the new eGPU as an extra monitor, even though I have hooked up an LCD screen to the card directly using a HDMI cable.

Initially I was getting code 12 errors but managed to fix it (I think?) using setup 1.x and PCI compaction (32 bit, all pcie devices). I will not here though that I never got a bootable PCI allocation that left more than 128 MiB free. Code 12 went away with that, but not sure if its enough for the card anyway...

Incidentally I also had to muck around with the Load + function on 1.x to get it to chainload without BSODing at splash - im assuming its do with the card being 'unconfirmed'

I am not really sure what to do now, as it is all hooked up for a 1x connection but nothing else is happening D:.

Some random notes on my experience:

After the initial detection of the card, my computer does not detect the card in device manager if my dGPU has a recent nvidia driver installed - anything over standard VGA and suddenly upon reboot my gtx 560 is invisible in the device manager other than on AIDA64 where it shows up as an occupied pcie port.

I realise I have an nvidia eGPu and dGPU so I may have issues - but I tried what was suggested on the troubleshooting FAQ (uninstalling both, installing one driver hoping it does it twice) but it never worked out for me. The installation process only ever happens once, depending on if I am using a desktop or notebook driver file. Also Nando's hacked driver with the copy/pasted inf file did nothing but break the setup process after I tried it once.

Please help!

 

Is there anyway to construc this myself rather than buying the pe4l/pe4h from hwtools?

i.e. are the schematics and parts readily available?

 

Holy crap, this thread is still alive!!!???

 

yeah somebody soldered wires to a pci-e card, it's buried in this thread somewhere

 

Could you kindly help me to find this out? This thread is of 170 pages long!

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/5478262-post890.html

 

I asked the HWTools guys if they can give me some informations about upcoming PCIe 2.0 versions of PE4H, release dates etc. [ PE4H PCIe 2.0 might be ready to buy somewhere in November! ], I thought I should share this; here is what I got in response:

 

I wonder how much it will cost if they are continuesly increasing the price of the old ones, and they add an eclosure as well. I will probably near Vidock I guess. Also, if the 2.0 bandwidth will not give that big boost, I don't think it will be worth to buy. But we'll see!

 

Hi all,

Great, great thread. Nice to see how far things can come because of something like this.

I have what may be an ignorant or simple question...

I travel a lot, and do not want to build a DIY ViDock. I am willing to spend the money for a ViDock to have the packaged deal.

I've read through a lot of pages with info about using the Optimus drivers or other adapters to route the video back to my Dell Latitutde E6510's internal LCD display... but only when doing a DIY build.

My question is can I purchase the actual ViDock but only use my laptop's built in display (using Optimus or whatever tweaks needed)? Or am I forced to use an external display?

Thanks for your help in advance.

 

Hello all, here's my first post and wanted to make sure I was working out my solution correct on the eGPU setup. I have a dell XPS 1640, and according to my research has listed a 1-4, 6 pcie, and a x16 pcie link for the internal graphics card. The ports have WLAN, WWAN, Expresscard, and UWB. The schematic says 1-4 are those, and says 6 is a Lan broadcom. Not sure why it doesn't have a 5 labeled. Its a ICH9 chipset. Out of the 3 mPCIe slots one is a half hight being the wifi card.

I purchased the PE4H ver 2.4a set from HIT for a x1 set up but can I do a x4? If so I want to try. I have a HD 4850 card I want to start out with from my old desktop and go from there. I was also trying to figure out if I can use a 12v 120W AC/DC adapter instead of the PSU atx setup. From what I could find the card pulls up to 110-115 W peak.

Also I'll need to take the whole bottom off my laptop and if i got 3 cords coming out the bottom is that safe or do I need to modify the bottom and put in holes for the mini hdmi cable to run out of. Not sure about shorting out stuff?

Thanks and any help is appreciated. Good work on making this stuff work.

 

I am looking to purchase 2 24" monitors in the end of the month.. I currently have a AMD 5650 with eyefinity.. It seems tho I still have to get display port dongles? I don't understand though, if amd says I have eyefinity shouldn't I be able to disable my laptops internal monitor and hook up the 2 external monitors using HDMI and VGA? Can any1 help me out on how I can go about doing this?

 

can i use this for my system:
acer aspire 5733z-4851
intel pentium P6100
intel HD graphics
4 gb Ram
500 GB HDD

i want to use PE4H+PM3N
what the maximum graphic card that i can use.
please reply..thnk u

 

I love these, and I'm trying to gather the parts to build my own. Fortunately for me, I have an Inspiron 1440 just like the benchmarks were tested on.

If I want to have my laptop to have access to the x2 bandwidth instead of just x1, I would need a PE4H of course. What i'm a little cloudy on is the connections from the PE4H and the laptop.

For just x1 I can just use the EC2C between the PE4H and the laptop, but to get x2 I also need to connect the PE4H to an internal mPCIe card slot via a PM3N? Is that accurate?

 

Hi, my laptop doesn't has a PCI-E Port, and i'm kind of a noob in this kind of things so i was thinking if this whould work:


- A EC03 (USB 3.0 to ExpressCard 2.0 Adapter - http://www.bplus.com.tw/Adapter/EC03.html);

- Connected to a PE4H;

- Connected to the Graphic Card


I know that probably i whould not be able to use all the power of the Graphic Card because the USB 3.0 has a speed of +/- 600mbytes/s and the PCI-E x16 is 8GB/s but i just need a "push" to play some games. Thanks

 

--moved to the other thread--

 

Emailed them as I've been looking forward to the new PE4H, I have an Expresscard 2.0 compliant laptop and wanted the extra bandwidth to shove something like a GTX 580 in

Got this response

 

Can anybody offer any advice about setting up a GTX 560Ti in conjunction with the PE4H in x2 mode? If possible, one Expresscard/54 and one mPCI-e connection.
My laptop is the MSi GT627-216US

 

Suggest read the Pre-purchase FAQ item 6. (Performance) Can my system do a PE4H x2 or x4 link as shown in PCIe Scaling Analysis?

 

My laptop schematics are giving me headache lol, I can't understand it at all. It is an MSi GT627-216US, which follows the GX620 motherboard (1651), and I read somewhere around here that it IS able to pull off x2 Link. I'm not really sure about how to go about it though.

 

I cannot seem to set up x2 on my MSi GT627-216US laptop. If anybody has this setup with this laptop, or knows where mPCI-e slot #3 is on the motherboard, please let me know.

 

Hi all - I tried using a PSU out of an old mothballed desktop pc and it wouldn't power on. After checking around a bit, it appears these PSUs require some sort of 'power up' message to come from the motherboard.

Since I want to use the PSU standalone, connected only to my video card via 6 & 8 pin connectors, how to I get it to turn on?

Or, is there some brand/model of PSU that I should be specifically using?

 

Answered in your other thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...o-card-external-power-supply.html#post8280927

 

^ Got it. Mucho thanks.

 

Just curious, has anyone on here tried the second method outlined in the original post - making the dock out of $20 of parts, plus lots of blood, sweat, and tears? I've got all the parts and am considering it - but advice would be great - flipping back through 200 pages for reports is kinda hard, but I've not seen anyone else try it so far.

This would mean soldering wires from a blank mini PCI-e card to a full PCI-e riser card, and wiring a power supply in there somewhere too. However, I'm unsure of the schematics - they seem to conflict with what I've seen elsewhere.

Thanks - experience beats guesswork any day!

 

Done a self-made PE4L adapter, just PCIe to ExpressCard, here ;-)

Here the pin assignment, PSU unit must be similar to miniPCIe!

 

i still havent bought a p4 there is still a lot question i need to ask and i really cant find answer in the fourm

i have a HP G60-230US

CPU:intel T4200 2.00GHz going yo upgrade to T4900 2.8
OS:win vista going to ugrade to 7
Ram:3gb going to upgrade 4gb

GPU:4-series chipset intel 4500MD

what i understand is it is best that i use a nvida card

i have my eye set on MSI N450GTS-MD1GD3 GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit DDR3

my question are should i get a p4 or p4H

how much power would i need because i want to overclock and use the afterburner

what is the opt1.1 and 1.2

and how will my build will preforme

thanks

 

I am new in this forum, so please do not upset with my question. I have searched this forum for any experience or issue with the F3SV and eGPU, but didn’t find any.

I have built an eGPU using guidance from your forum. I have used PE4H ver2.4 with EC2C and HD6540 graphic card to build this eGPU. Once I connected this eGPU to my ASUS f3sv laptop (and an external LCD monitor to the eGPU) it recognised by the laptop and asked me to install the graphic driver. After installing the driver I can see ATI HD6450 is active in the list of display adopter in the device manager with no error and no conflict with the resources allocation.

But when I try to select the 2nd display (via Windows Display Control Panel) to re-direct the display output to the external screen via the windows display property screen then the only screen is available is the laptop screen. Could someone please help me to resolve this issue.

My laptop spec is given below:

Model – Asus f3sv
Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 / 2.2 GHz
C2D T7500 2.2GHz, 800MHz, 4MB On-Die L2 Cache
2 x 1GB DDR2 667 MHz SDRAM
1GB NAND Turbo Memory
15.4" WSXGA+ Colourshine
nVidia Geforce Go 8600M G 256MB
OS - Windows® 7 professional

I really appreciate for your help.

Thanks in advance.