Put a Desktop GPU in a LAPTOP… The CHEAP WAY!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,409 words · ~7 min read
0:00
I love the idea of external graphics cards.
0:03
At their best, they allow you to have a super light
0:05
and portable laptop that you can easily convert
0:08
into a shockingly potent gaming system
0:11
when you have time to sit down
0:13
and you happen to have an outlet nearby.
0:16
But the main complaint we hear about them is,
0:19
come on you guys, you can get the same level of performance
0:24
with a PCI Express card for way less.
0:28
But how do you put one of these in one of these?
0:33
Ha, the answer is with one of these.
0:38
Meet the EXP-GDC or The Beast,
0:42
the cheap and dirty way to boost your laptop's gaming power.
0:48
Today's video is brought to you by PIA,
0:51
the VPN service that encrypts all your internet traffic
0:54
and uses a safe, protected IP.
0:56
It's got a ton of other useful features as well.
0:58
You can check it out at the link
0:59
below.
1:09
So there have actually been quite a few iterations
1:12
of The Beast, but the previous ones
1:15
never really appealed to us,
1:18
mostly because they connected to the system,
1:21
either to external ports like Express Card,
1:25
a dying, if not completely dead standard,
1:28
or to internal ports that couldn't be spared.
1:31
Most laptops only have a single mini PCIe slot
1:36
that is usually taken up by the Wi-Fi,
1:38
a fairly essential component of the mobile experience.
1:43
But thanks to NVMe, version 9.5 here has some big advantages.
1:51
So first, it gets four times the number of PCI Express lanes,
1:58
four of them here running at Gen 3 speeds.
2:01
And second, some mobile devices actually have
2:05
more than one M.2 slot, like this.
2:07
Like this one.
2:09
So you should be able to have both a high-speed boot drive
2:14
and an external GPU connected at the same time.
2:18
Furthermore, because there's no protocol overhead,
2:21
it should actually perform better
2:24
than Thunderbolt 3 enclosures like this one
2:27
at a significantly lower cost, in theory.
2:32
So, to put that to the test, we are hooking our Beast up
2:36
to the de-bottlenecker feature.
2:37
We've got a GTX 5,000 here, a powerful desktop
2:41
with all three of the connectivity methods
2:43
that we want to evaluate.
2:45
We also grabbed a GTX 1080.
2:47
So, this thing is obviously much more powerful
2:51
than any laptop on the market,
2:54
but we need this combination of a fast CPU
2:58
and a high-performance GPU to help us identify
3:02
which interfaces, if any, are causing a bottleneck
3:06
that will adversely affect
3:07
the performance of our overall system.
3:10
This is pretty trippy.
3:11
This is like, I don't know,
3:14
just having your graphics card like out here.
3:15
It's kind of like, it's like if you had like a human body
3:18
that's totally normal and then the heart is on the table
3:22
next to it and it's just connected
3:23
with tubes and wires and stuff, but it works.
3:30
So, in graphically intense games,
3:33
you can see the performance of the Beast
3:36
ends up about where we would expect,
3:39
between the Razer Core with Thunderbolt 3
3:42
and a graphics card running at full 16X speed
3:44
plugged directly into the motherboard.
3:47
Although it should be noted that in older CPU-bound games
3:50
like CSGO, the FPS was comparable for all three.
3:54
Okay, so that all sounds pretty great.
3:59
If you've got a laptop then with a spare M.2 NVMe slot,
4:04
like this one that we mentioned before,
4:06
you could get better than Thunderbolt 3, like I said,
4:08
and you could get a Thunderbolt 3 levels of performance
4:10
on the cheap-ish.
4:14
However, I still find myself asking,
4:17
who is this actually useful for?
4:19
Like, are you really gonna go out and buy a brand new laptop
4:23
then literally cut a hole in the bottom of it
4:27
for the Beast's cabling that will still need to be run?
4:31
But, consider something a little older, like this MSI GL62.
4:37
It packs a GTX 960.
4:39
It's got a 740 M which, I mean, is better than nothing,
4:43
but barely.
4:45
So, if you're looking to play modern games,
4:50
you're basically plum out of luck,
4:52
even though your CPU is still decent, unless...
4:59
Ah, yes, there it is.
5:02
Even though this is a couple of years old
5:04
and our config of it actually used a slow mechanical hard drive
5:10
the GL62 does feature an NVMe-capable M.2 slot,
5:16
which means that, thanks to that still-decent
5:19
quad-core CPU I mentioned, and the upgradable RAM,
5:23
remember upgradable RAM, you guys?
5:25
With a beast and something like a GTX 960,
5:29
you could turn the GL62 into a gaming-ready machine again
5:34
for just a couple hundred bucks, at least in theory.
5:38
We have tried everything with this machine.
5:42
BIOS updates, disabling the integrated graphics,
5:46
disabling the dedicated graphics,
5:49
newer drivers, older drivers,
5:52
older cards, newer cards.
5:55
It just won't work.
5:58
So the working theory, based on some discussion
6:01
over on the eGPU forums,
6:03
those guys are awesome, by the way,
6:04
is that passing a PCI Express signal
6:08
over a fairly long couple of HDMI cables here
6:13
leads to a fair bit of signal degradation,
6:16
which was fine on our X299 motherboard
6:19
because the M.2 slot is physically close to the CPU socket
6:23
and has a strong signal,
6:25
but might cause problems in laptops
6:29
where the PCI Express signal might be within spec,
6:33
but a little bit lower.
6:34
Now, some folks suggested that a shielded,
6:38
M.2 to PCIe 4X adapter might actually do better in this case,
6:44
and they might be right,
6:45
but at 70 US dollars plus the cost of power
6:50
and some kind of a mounting mechanism,
6:53
we don't consider that a viable solution
6:55
outside of rare edge cases,
6:57
like recycling an old laptop
7:00
as a no longer portable ghetto gaming desktop either.
7:06
With that said,
7:07
let's say that you were trying to do that.
7:08
What kind of compatibility could you expect?
7:12
As it turns out, not that great.
7:15
Even the Dell Inspiron Gaming,
7:17
a machine that this approach could make sense for,
7:20
requires a custom BIOS,
7:22
and the rest of our efforts basically went
7:25
a little something like this.
7:43
So yeah, we gave up because to get the beast to work
7:48
with the Triton 700, for example,
7:50
we'd need a custom BIOS with RAID disabled,
7:54
and PCI Express hot swap enabled
7:57
in order to get compatibility
7:59
with anything that would be faster
8:00
than what's already built into it.
8:02
So a 10th gen NVIDIA card.
8:05
So there are people out there
8:08
who will happily fork over 100 to 150 bucks,
8:14
like the owners of the aging laptops
8:18
that we alluded to before,
8:19
or I mean, another good example would be someone
8:22
with like a mini ITX desktop,
8:22
like a mini ITX desktop,
8:23
like a mini ITX desktop,
8:24
like a mini ITX desktop,
8:24
like a mini ITX desktop,
8:24
like a mini ITX desktop,
8:24
like a mini ITX desktop,
8:24
who wants to add 10 gig networking
8:26
or something along those lines.
8:28
But for everyone else, the compatibility,
8:33
both physical and in firmware,
8:35
the user unfriendliness, the general flakiness,
8:38
the lack of documentation,
8:40
the fact that you need to reboot
8:42
to plug and unplug it from the system,
8:45
and the fact that you'll probably end up
8:47
voiding your warranty are going to confine this product
8:50
to a niche within a niche within a niche forever.
8:54
It's been forever since we've done a spot for Corsair.
8:58
Introducing Corsair's unplug and play series.
9:01
The dark core RGB SE mouse is quick,
9:03
features one millisecond, 2.4 gigahertz,
9:06
and low latency Bluetooth connectivity.
9:08
If you opt for the wireless charging model,
9:10
you can charge with Corsair's NM-1000
9:12
or any compatible Qi wireless charging pad,
9:15
and their K63 wireless gaming keyboard
9:18
features the same low latency connection options,
9:20
as well as cherry MX red switches and a blue LED backlight.
9:24
Check out their entire lineup through the links below.
9:29
So thanks for watching guys.
9:30
If this video sucked, you know what to do,
9:31
but if it was awesome, get subscribed,
9:33
hit that like button or check out the link
9:34
to where to buy the stuff we featured
9:36
in the video description.
9:37
Also linked down there is our merch store,
9:39
which has cool shirts like this one,
9:40
and our community forum, which you should totally join.