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

I FINISHED MY CASE!!!

Looks good. Its almost done, i just gotta make another small hole for the PE4's cable. And then i plan to put some feet on it and paint it RED.

Ill post some pics of it in a few minutes. I dont have the graphics card yet. but i measured and it fits perfectly in there. But i do have the PSU in there.

 

FrX,

There's absolutely no misunderstanding.
My Frame Grabber comments relate to nando's post.

Driver rewrite would not work due to the fact that you'd waste around x1 2.0 of your expresscard/minipcie slot capacity just for the video feed. How are you planning to use the measly remains of bandwidth???

Frame Grabbers would not work as all the output is set to go to the external card and if you plug your external card into a framegrabber -> the output is still going to go out of your external card -> you won't see anything on both screens. It can be fixed with custom drivers but noone does them within Frame Grabber scene.

LVDS conversion is something i am planning to utilise as part of MXM project. You can just pull a controller board out of any recent FullHD lcd monitor so you have full range of resolution support. After you'd still need to convert that particular controller board's LVDS output to the MXM standard LVDS output.

 

Ok, here are the pics!!!

I took em with my phone, so the whole slideshow is here...
http://pictures.sprintpcs.com/share...MUph7U5x&shareName=MMS&messageState=RETRIEVED

I decided to make the top that grate, which you should see that it slides in and out. This is so that the card and PSU will have open air to get and suck in, instead of being in a closed box, with no air.
The back is where the PSU goes, where you see the two circles. one for the fan, the other for the power cable.
The front is the wide rectangle hole, where the front PCI bracket will be, so the plugs can connect through there.
The side is the long side p) with the small rectangle hole in the right side, where i am putting two fans.

So... Whatd ya think?
I think its awesome.

 

Excellent news guys! I had a faulty gpu !! lol it will not give any output signal, BUT I got it fully recognized on windows 7! lmao! with full resource allocation. Ill use more cards, Im pretty sure that it will work .

Note: In some laptops like mine, you will not get the vidock or DIY vidock to work if you have 2 sodimms, you must have just one. >512mb and <4gb.

 

Great!

I just did the "paperclip trick' on my PSU to get it working... Now im just waiting for the PE4H and the graphics card to arrive. Got a nice 120mm fan to hook up as well. 88CFM.

 

Thanks for looking into it nando. It is a shame that powering the internal laptop display isn't a proper feasible option. I feel that having the laptop, external display, external keyboard and mouse and vidock would mean more clutter than a normal desktop lol so it wouldn't be for me lol. If only the lcd were easily powerable then one wouldn't need the extra screen or keyboard.

Still it is an awesome project and best of luck to those pioneers; mexican snake and ahl395

 

Toshiki, oh I though you were talking about that part to me (I saw my name ).

Well, lets me go and try to answer the first part of the question:
Frame grabbers are sending one data to its host and by using x1 that's mean 250MB/s. The problem here would be that we need that bandwidth to feed the graphics card with the real data to process and sharing them would mean less performance and at the time of writing that I was thinking of how could nVidia cards doing an sli without bridge (link) - which turned out that it will make use of all available PCI-E bandwidth instead of using the bridge. In this way with any laptop with an AMD 780 chipset and combined with an ATI integrated solution and by using a card that support the Hybrid Graphics Solution this mean that the performance would be doubled (x2) with the help of ATI integrated card and eliminate the need of anther monitor. ([?]I don't think this will require any driver modifying as it all ready supported by the chip[?]). One of the problems that I can see it from this solution that you can use only low-end cards which really I am sure it doesn't worth the efforts. On the other hand , as I was more referring to use an integrated solutions (like intel X3100 and others) I was thinking if it was possible to change these integrated solution to make them act as an bridge between the external graphics card and data that been feed by the computer (I mean here the only card that is doing the rendering is the only external card and not the internal)

This where I am thinking a direct linking to the laptop screen is better than wasting it on grabbing the output, but again we aren't talking here about sharing the bandwidth so we can let the framegrabber into its own pcie-port and this wont give us any lost (right?) as you are going it full 250MB/s of bandwidth (The downside here that you wont be able increase the graphics card bandwidth to x2)

I don't have a lots of backgrounds/information about MXM ,so I can't advice or suggest you anything about it ,but I wish you good luck in your own project

Here is MXM documents/specifications if you want to have look into them (requires a registration) : MXM_Link

 

FrX,

ATI Hybrid Graphics:
It's a feasable solution but you'd need to confirm that it works over ExpressCard/Mini-PCIE slots(could be limited to MXM only). I presume that you'd set your integrated card as primary for video output.

Frame Grabbers:
- Trying to connect external card to a framegrabber on the same computer is going agaist the concept of framegrabbing - it's to record feeds from external sources disconnected to the computer which hosts the framegrabber.
You get closed loop: video card -> grabber -> video card -> grabber.
Looping the video feed back into itself.

- Raw DVI output is about 4Gbit/s which is equivalent of x2 1.0 or x1 2.0 hence an ExpressCard 2.0 frame grabber could do a good job as a video input solution for laptops (not for feeding laptop's video out back into itself).
Desktop frame grabbers aren't too expensive but ExpressCard ones are.
HWTools's RDlist is showing ECHD as a possible low cost ExpressCard frame grabber.

MXM project is mostly worked out and needs to be acted on - i need a little time.

 

idk if you guys knew this but there is an expensive solution called MAGMA EXPRESS

Look it up, I thought I was going to create a laptop capable of CRYSIS two years ago before I knew the technical barriers hahaha

 

Thank you.

And yeah, i think someone posted before about the Magma Express, but it is like $800.

 

Yeah that was me
haha

 

Oh. my mistake.

 

OMG ! ! !

The results are amazing!

Someone needs to make a DIY kit for sale on eBay ASAP :]
Once everything is sorted out and neatly done...
Just need to buy your own GPU and PSU


I don't know what I am fathoming, but, what about PCI-E 3.0 specs...
What's that going to do for us?!

 

Another updated from Gerry/hwtools, copied into progress link and duplicated below. PE4H is not yet finished and last response *appears* to allow a second lane input to allow x2 1.0 link mode.

2009/8/18
Before setup PE4L. with heavy power loading VGA card. Please prepare 2 things as below yourself:

1. A POWER supply enough power watt for your VGA card such as GTX260, HD4890(suggest 500W), see IMAGE_4951.jpg

2. A paper clip. Connector PIN4(green), PIN5 (black) to POWER ON, Please be carefully. See IMAGE_4931.JP

For light power loading VGA card a AC/DC 12V/6.67A adapter. please see IMAGE_4901.jpg


PE4H should finished design tomorrow.


​

 

@Toshiki:
I see your points ,anyway I still think the right way to do is by modding laptop screen and adding a switch to make it able to accept both of LVDS/DVI signals through a converter.

Good news, nice the progress is continuing.

About no1 there is one thing is right here which is the 500W part. 500W is needed when your power supply is feeding your motherboard,cpu,ram, etc... with power + your graphic card. In our case here all of the above (Except graphic card) are powered by the laptop. So 200W or 250W power is more than enough to power it

You can go to http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html and select everything (with integrated graphic on motherboard) , take the value then select which card you want to know its watts , after that go and subtract - 26w (integrated graphic card).
Graphic Card (Watts)= (Power Consuming of system with card - Power Consuming of same system with integrated card) -26w

Here is the list that I did. Before you jump into it I have to warn you that I didn't do any research about nVidia cards (you have to make sure about its power *google*) and about ATI cards for some cards I saw reports that show, these cards are consuming more power then what is written below. To be safe I suggest adding 15%~20% to the number (multiply the number by 1.15 or 1.2). If you will take my suggestion I see 250W power supply is an overkill and would be perfect

ATI:

• ATI HD 4890 - Requires - 195W
• ATI HD 4870 - Requires - 143w | Exact value turned to be: 165w
• ATI HD 4850 - Requires - 91w*
• ATI HD 4830 - Requires - 91w*
• ATI HD 4770 - Requires - 52w**
• ATI HD 4650 - Requires - 20w***

nVidia GeForce:

• GTX 295 - Requires - 324w
• GTX 285 - Requires - 213w
• GTX 280 - Requires - 255w
• GTX 260 - Requires - 185w
• 9800 GTX Requires - 130w
• 9800 GT - Requires - 85w
• 8800 GTX - Requires - 195w
• 8800 GT - Requires - 117w

Hint by ahl395: Make sure you contact the cards manufacturer first,for the requirement power.

*ATI 4830/4850 suppose to use 91w but reports show it can go up to 110w (Max)
**ATI 4770 suppose to use 52w but reports show it can go up to 80w (Max)
***ATI 4650 suppose to use 20w but reports show that at ideal and 40w (max), one site reports for OC card an idle of 96w & load at 172w

 

You have got to be kidding me...

What about the ASUS MARS? That houses TWO 295's OC'ed
700w!?

 

Rubbish, thats the total draw from the system not the card.

 

I haven't visited this thread in quite a while, but it appears you all are coming along pretty nicely.

so, is it possible to run that desktop 260 GTX card yet?

 

I don't know if your statement is an expression of ironic or you are referring to the number as inaccurate number.
About this MARS card , from Engadget "The ASUS Mars 295 Limited Edition is quite the unique beast, rocking a pair of GTX 285 chips that are viewed by Windows as a GeForce GTX 295" so according to this we will need to consider the power of GTX 285 (213w x 2) = 426w for GTX 285 x2. Add to the number the fact its over clocked so more power would be needed and don't forget that I noticed 10% to 20% more power is required than of the value you can obtain from Newegg. The total power should be between 469w to 512w (take overclocking in consideration you will need to neglect the 469w and its going to require more watts than that)

By the way, I already mentioned that nVidia users should do their own search for the power to be more accurate before deciding to go for power supply and one more thing, using two cards on 1x or even 2x bandwidth is really a waste of money.

If you need any thing , feel free to ask. : )

 

So, if it will be finished tomorrow, does that mean it will also be available shortly afterwards?
...or a chance we could email them to get one before official release?

AFAIK though, this can differ between the Actual card. these are most likely for the reference card.
Example, under this list, the 4870 is listed at 143W. But ive emailed Sapphire directly (who the manufacturer is of my card) and it will take up to 165W. So, make sure you contact the cards manufacturer first. Because in this situation, if i tried to use a 150W PSU, it could be the diffeence between working or not.

 

That's why I suggest adding anther 10%~20% to the numbers unless you want the card to be idle all the time : p.
Also, Thanks for the exact value.
Now I am going to update it

 

FrX,

Check out my MXM Project thread for laptop LCD input ideas.

450W Drive Bay PSU and the like seem like the best compact solution for neat external boxes.

 

Hi guys,

I've been folowing this thread silently from the beginning (I just didn't have much to add unfortunately), impressive work!

What about using 5.25 external storage enclosures as boxes, like this one:

http://www.cooldrives.com/dubayesouca8.html

Would these type of power supplies work? I know this one in particular is only 80W and wouldn't be enough, but I'm asking in general.

Thanks!

 

that ^^^ is very nice. Also 80W should be enough for a 4670.

personally I will build a custom case because I want to watercool the GPU (as I will be overclocking and I like cooling).

 

I have a request for HWtools.

It would be good if the PM3 could come with some test points/pads to make it easy to test those 8 reserved pins for the extra 1x lane.

Just 8 or so pads on the adapter that would make soldering wires to it easy.

 

Hi!

I have been reading alot of the pages in this thread.
So just to get things stright:
I have an old Pci express graphics card lying around, and my Dell Xps m170 notebooks' videocard just died.

I have a garbled screen with weird letters and stuff..

Can i take out the old dell graphics card ( its a dell so it can be done), and buy the PE4, and use it with the pci e graphics card as my main video card and still play 3d games like cod4? ( of course that depends also on the graphics card itself, but is there anything that is being slowed down in the conversions procees?)

my graphics card is an asus en8400gt http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=eZUUjmujLGdZmzmI
A Pci express x16.
i know its not a great card, but its what i have.


i use win xp, but could also be using win 7


And whats the status on this project?
It still says "engineering sample now"... anybody done this?

thanks alot!

 

people have tried it, just a few pages back in this thread.

read page 34 and 35:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=397667&page=34

 

i was wondering on how about using the esata port on laptops. Doesn't it have a higher bandwidth than the express card slot.

 

The port has to have a PCI lane. esata doesn't have access to one.

So it wont work.

expresscard and miniPCIe are the best options (if not the only options).

Edit: Doesn't your notebook have an exresscard slot or a miniPCIe port (usually has wifi adapter in it)?

 

yup they do. I was just wondering thats all. Also how much bandwidth does a new high end graphic card use.

 

thanks for the links.

I got an email from hwtools saying:

Dear Sir,
Thanks for your inquired,
I would like reply your questions as below:
1, Our PE4 will separate into PE4H and PE4L two types, because marketing inquired,

The different between PE4H and PE4L

A, H: use 16X connector, L use 1x connector

B, the design point of view: H can use AC/DC adapter from 12V to 20V, But L only can use 12V also USB must connect

C, H is double speed than L, because H support two PCIe signals,
In the other words, The PE4L is cost down version of PE4H
2, Status: PE4L is available now , but PE4H is still under developing right now
3, Regarding your video card support, Can you tell me what kind of OS you use it right now? Vista or Win 7?
4, The unit price of PE4L is USD$35 and PE4H is USD$50,
Would you tell me your detail address and zip code,

I need estimate the delivery fee
Best Regards,
Mason Tsai."#close quote.


Sounds really good! the only thing is that i cant wait for the PE4H version

I have some questions for all of you, thanks in advance
Question 1:
Can you make a video card with x16 connections work on a x1 port, by removing the end of the x1 port? (right now im planning on using an old 8400gt card, but i migth upgrade in the future.... maybe newer cards will need all the bandwith??)
Or is that just plain stupid because you loose bandwith? and is it even possible?

Question 2:
My dell xps m170 only has cardbus and not express card
- does it mean i cant use the hwtools stuff??


thanks!

 

yes it will work, no problem.
That's how I will be doing it.

HWtools has two options, express card (which you don't have) and they also offer a product for miniPCIe ports (which you must have).

The miniPCIe port usually has a wifi adapter in it, so you have to take out the wifi.

 

dang it!
i dont have a mini pcie - only mini pci!!!
so its a no go for me... might as well through the dell out then

 

they call it miniPCI, but it's really miniPCIe.
So you do have it

If you want to be sure, post a photo of the port here and I will tell you if it's the right one.

 

wiki mini pcie and mini pci: (scroll down a bit)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_Mini_Card



here you go:




thats without the wifi card.

thanks!

 

ok, that is not the right port.
I guess I was wrong, there is a big difference between miniPCIe and miniPCI. Your port uses a 33mhz PCI bus.

Sorry to say it won't work

Edit: Any chance your VGA card is removable?

 

It is, but its not the xmx port as far as i know. Its a dell laptop -so i think they have their own standard. The old graphics card was a nvidia 6800 ultra go.

thansk!

 

Is it a dell m1730? Maybe you could upgrade from 6800 to 7950 go

 

looks like m170.

Edit: check out this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=49524

It seems that it's not MXM, but very simmilar.
Perhaps it's possible to modify an MXM card to make it work with your dell?

 

yep. a dell xps m170
And i contacted dell and got a price for a new card, and a new graphics card would cost about 70% of a new cheap laptop, that i could mod - by using hwtools stuff - with a better graphics card than the 6800 ultra!

So i guess some time in the future i'll just get a new laptop and get the PE4L/H.

DANG!!!!

 

i was wondering. I was just going through the whole thread to keep myself updated on the progress and i noticed that it was mention that it is possible to increase the bandwidth to 4x. I checked my mobo spec and saw that it has two minicard slot. Is it possible to gang this up together with the expresscard slot to increase the bandwidth.

 

ICH8M/ICH9M datasheet tell us this is possible to gang your port1-port4 to form a x4 link. Now the question is, what are port1-port4? To use two mini pci-e slots to get a x4 link, you'd be hopeful that the vendors has:

- wired up the reserved 2nd lane on the mini pcie- port
- there is no whitelisting applied to effectively disable the port OR you'd be happy to hotswap in a non vendor specific device after bios has booted up and preferably before the OS has booted up. HP Business notebooks use whitelisting on their mini pci-e ports. Not sure who else does.

The expressport is only has a x1 link. No reserved 2nd lane. It's only 26pins as shown here. I guess it could be used to form a x3 link together with a mini pci-e card which has the reserved 2nd lane wired.

Note too you'd want physical port1-port4 to be lane1-lane4. A document I've read suggests there is some flexibility with lane reversal if the attached pci-e card supports it., eg: port1 connected to pci-e card's lane2 works with some pci-e cards. mini pci-e is 52 pins so has capacity to accomodate the reserved 2nd lane as part of it's spec.

We're likely to find out more as the PM3N/PE4H make their way into our hands.

 

Well i am not sure about the whitelisting part but here is the specification mention by the vendor:
One ExpressCard /54(/34) slot
Two MiniCard slots with USB & PCIe interface (1st for WLAN module, 2nd for Intel® Turbo memory / 3.5G module).
My laptop is the clevo m860tu. How could i check if the the second lane is wired to the mini pcie slot. Sorry for all the questions i am a bit of a noob but hoping to learn more.

 

[/TD]

How to check if the reserved 2nd lane is connected on your mini pci-e slot First clue as to whether the second lane is connected would be to: Do continuity tests on the GND pins for the reserved second lane pins with a DMM. The spec says that the reserved pins should NOT be connected (ie: unterminated) unless they are bein used as described in more detail here. SO the GND pins gives an indication whether they have or haven't hooked up the 2nd lane. The vendor may have also enabled the ports in the bios to perhaps give a second clue [ this can be manually enabled using baredit anyway]. See here for a lot more insight into doing this. If clues suggest the reserved 2nd lane is connected could prove it to be the case by masking pin 23,25,31,33 as shown left on your wifi card, then solder tiny leads from the very edge (a little unmasked) to the corresponding 39,41,47,49 Plug her in and see if the OS works with it.Note the yellow overlay in the above pic is an estimate of what I believe the pinout of the 2nd reserved lane would be since I don't have any doco to give the precise pinout. PC-SIG want's $3000US annual membership so I could get PCI Express Mini Card Electromechanical Specification 1.2 that might give some more clues. We have access to PCI Express Mini Card Electromechanical Specification 1.0 which was used to obtain the image on the left.

 

Well i tried connecting my wireless module to the second mini pcie slot and windows detected it and it works fine. I do not know if this method can be used to check as i do not want to do soldering work just yet.

 

Hello Nando and everyone involved!

Some really awesome work here, I didn't expect to see this much progress. I'd like to help out as much as I can with the project and my greatest skill is graphic design, so if you need some packing designs, logo designs etc. send me an email at [email protected] and I'll create what you want.

Best of luck with everything!

 

Thanks , I will keep my eyes on that thread

@ jamesbond007:
I suggest an easy task.
Open Device Manager => Go to (View -> Devices by Connection)
After that go to search for ICH8 ports (and expand them)
You can know , now which port is which

From here , you can see port 1 is my lan card, port 2 is wireless (minipcie) and last one is only left to be express-card.

You can replace your cards if you want an extra work to locate port1 & port 2/3 which I don't see the point of doing it in your case.

@ voxmodder:
Why not going a head and show us some of your impressive work?
Contributing in anyway is so much appreciated.

@ Everyone:
I see that now people are considering boxes/cases for this DIY. Have anyone though of using some PS2/PS3/xbox cases or similar?
I saw some of these cases going for cheap price

 

Yep, i built one.... Here are the pics.
im yet to paint it though.
http://pictures.sprintpcs.com/share...MUph7U5x&shareName=MMS&messageState=RETRIEVED
The top is a grate so air can flow freely throughout i

 

Nice peace of art! The most thing that I like in your design is the top (more airflow + Easy to get a fan for it)
I might as well suggest for a paint that gives you a metallic effect (It will looks better + Expensive), add to the metallic effect + black/sliver paint will do it.

 

I do have my old broken PS2, I guess I have a new use for it