T420 and eGPU SUCCESS!

WOOHOO!

Hi there! I'm here to preach the good news that my setup, comprised of the Lenovo Thinkpad T420 4177, Corsair CX430 PSU, PE4L 2.1b/c, and Nvidia GTX 560 TI are together working famously. I am able to play games that my good ol' Thinkpad could never have surmounted before! Whilst playing some of my favorite graphic intense games I ran tests and wrote them down in a handy dandy notebook, which I will happily transcribe for you guys here:

ALL GAMES AT MAX RESOLUTION(for my monitor () 1440x900.
Battlefield Bad Company 2: ALL HIGH AA ON: 45-100 FPS
Battlefield 3: ULTRA (AUTO): 22 - 60 FPS. (Usually is around 40-45 though, depends on the scenery, but still very playable.)
Portal 2:HIGH 60 FPS (I guess I left VSYNC on haha)
Fallout New Vegas: Max Settings 100+ FPS <-Was very surprised hahaha.
Diablo III: High 50-70 FPS

The card also maxed my Windows Graphics Score. It is now the highest score in my system.



Here are some more pictures of what I did with my setup, making handy a used USPS box.... hehe

 

uhhhhh....

 

I am digging the high tech fire proof case.

 

This is probably the craziest thing I've seen for a while. I give it 3 EEKs!:

 

cool..definitely calls for a higher res monitor.

how much did the whole setup cost?

 

That's so impractical, I love it!

 

A GTX460-1GB (336 cores) is the highest bang-per-buck card. Can get all the parts for an implementation for b/w $180-200. Eg:

+ PE4L 2.1b $81-shipped
+ 2nd hand GTX460-1GB (336 cores) $100. Also check craigslist.
+ 12V/16A (or more) ATX PSU at business district dump $0 or $18-shipped from newegg.

 

Ever heard of these?
Recompute - Sustainable Cardboard Computer
Recompute: a closer look at the sustainable, cardboard PC -- Engadget

Also cardboard has a much higher ignition temperature than most plastics on the market today. Of course I looked into the thing before I built it.

 

Corsair CX430 - $30 shipped!
PE4L 2.1b - $90 shipped!

Thats basically all I spent but the GTX 560 TI I bought for $200 for my desktop rig, and as I am a college student at UC Davis and live in San Jose, whenever I want to game I basically just unplug my 560 TI from my desktop computer at home in SJ and bring it up to Davis and plug into my PE4L hahaha. Its pretty nifty

 

I wonder why no one except me uses a GTX550Ti.

It's as strong as a HD5770, but much cheaper, or at least it is where I live.
You also get a 500 Series Card which means you get to use FXAA.

A good alternative if the GTX460 is too expensive. Here in Germany, the GTX460 still costs about 200€ (250$) whereas the GTX560Ti costs only 150€. My GTX550Ti cost me 100€.

It's enough to play Skyrim on max. Details @ 1920x1080 (PE4H v2.4), in case anyone would like to know.

 

No offense but it looks like a used US Postal Service box. And I don't trust anything they make or do.

 

I use a GTX 550Ti for the same reasons you do on my T420!

 

Just curious but would a set up like this work with the T400/X200 era of TPs?

 

Yes, Peformance isn't as good as with a Sandy Bridge Notebook though.

 

Would this work with my t420 that has the optimus tech?

 

I had a couple of questions for you guys since you have done it successfully.

1. What are your normal temperatures before and after running a game on the ThinkPad?

2. Would I be able to use a ATI card instead of Nvidia? (I'd prefer ATI.)

 

1: 90°C. now 55-60°

2: Yes, but you will have worse Performance and 2D will lag (surfing the web etc.) There is no Reason to buy an ATI for an eGPU Setup except for the price. In Germany, ATI is more expensive than NVIDIA, so getting an ATI will only gain you Disadvantages.
In the US, I believe, ATI should be cheaper though.

 

yes it will, if you enable Optimus and connect an external GPU, you will have 3 GPUs and will be able to connect, 6 monitors tested and works!

 

I am using a GTX550Ti , I also live in Germany and due to the same reasons that you said I decided to bought this card.

In general I can play all my games on High (Starcraft 2, Diablo III, Civilization V (this one is a resource monster, with a Precision M4400 and a Quadro FX 770M I could run it at low settings), Warhammer 40k Space Marine, Serious Sam 3 BFE, etc).

I only have some problems with the Space Marine, at some stages there is a strange lag, have you had that kind of problem???

 

That lag is down to the low Bandwidth (due to 1x PCIe connection). You only get around 500MB/s with a Sandy-Bridge Notebook. That's the disadvantage of an eGPU. Desktops have a 16x connection, so the amount of information that can be sent is much higher. Each Game is different, but most are still playable with a 1x PCIe connection.

 

Thanks for the answer and actually that is the only game with issues... and it is not always, so for me it is OK.

Anyway the eGPU is a huge improvement comparing with the Intel HD3000, hehehe.

 

Thank you for the insight makes things a lot easier on me. I want to make my ThinkPad last as long as possible while still playing games.

 

I found a program that allows to cap FPS of any program, look this post:

https://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4210122218?page=1

the program is called MSI Afterburner, one can add a game and create a profile, then a FPS cap can be assigned to a specific game. I tried this with Warhammer 40k Space Marine (I caped the FPS to 50) and the lags totally disappeared... give it a try!.