Meridean

ahhh, i can see issues with that already, while the first one you linked is m key, its an x1 not a standard x4, and the second one is an x4, but the price is the same as the bundles i linked, and the one you linked appears to be tethered, making it alot less versatile. i linked a bundle that comes with the dock, the cable, the power brick, and the 6 pin splitter, and detailed text and picture instructions to set it all up, there are also cases available for them on ebay as well. it appears in comparison you get what you pay for, and 130 dollars roughly for a setup you can use in a limitless amount of laptops seems like a good deal to me. and with a case, and dell power brick (standard in those bundles), and an unpluggable dock would clean up nicely and look nice on a desk, or under a screen etc, it also contains a usb. so with a usb splitter you could have your whole desktop setup seperate from your laptop.

theres an m.2 x4 version of the beast egpu external dock, it supposedly has no performance loss. theres also an m.2 x2 version, which is supposedly the same speed as the mini pcie version which is also available, they lose 20% performance roughly from what it says. the former blanketing most laptops since 2007 making it excellent. but the m.2 x4 might be a superior solution to this external problem, since its available cheaper than thunderbolt 3 for starters, and if it truely doesnt lose performance, its excellent as well. im not sure on the metrics since i dont own one myself yet. from the videos ive seen with the mini pcie version, it seems to lose a little performance from what id expect on a desktop. the framerate on most games is still very playable for the card in question with little to no noticable drop from what id expect in native x16. so i dont see why m.2 x4 wouldnt completely negate any possible drop in performance flawlessly. id like to see a comparison some day to shed more light on it. although essentially m.2 x4 is pcie 3.0 x4 i believe, so it should be fast enough to support a full gpu with no issues natively. i could be wrong about that though, as some laptops say pcie x4 (m.2 m key 2280) and some dont, similar to how some usb type c has thunderbolt 3 and some dont. also, considering some laptops have 2 mini pcie slots, and considering its just slimmed down pcie x1, i wonder if you could sli graphics cards with this. for anyone looking for it, i searched V8.0 EXP GDC M.2 X4 Version, its the first link, banggood. if you scroll down it lists links to all the different versions, m.2 x2, mini pcie, mac and expresscard. pretty awsome seeing this kind of thing finally. keep in mind the mini pcie version on banggood isnt bundled with the power adapter or 6 pin splitter. but you can find the same thing on world taobao in a bundle. theres also cases available on ebay for this dock. https://www.banggood.com/M_2-X4-Version-V8_0-EXP-GDC-Beast-Laptop-External-Independent-Video-Card-Dock-With-Power-p-1109912.html X4 version bundle https://world.taobao.com/item/37107780625.htm?fromSite=main (translate this site with google chrome or equivilant) mini pcie version bundle https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2047675.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.XEXP+GDC+BEAST+case.TRS0&_nkw=EXP+GDC+BEAST+case&_sacat=0 Cases translated the taobao website gives pretty comprehensive instructions to set it up, and a pretty long list of helpful information.

i would have to press on it and twist it to work, maybe that would fix the problem... considering even with the lever pushed down i could pull the cpu out with my fingers, not easily, but not to difficult to do either. i no longer have a warranty on the mobo, i guess its fine though, since when the heatsink is fixed in place the cpu isnt going anywhere. (you would think amd would rethink their socket and cpu design a little, considering theres no plate to hold it in place at all, so its left up to the pins being secured in place and thats it)

for that to work i would have to have spaghetti fingers

so yea, i didnt really know where to put this, but i thought i would ask, i use IC Diamond thermal paste on my amd FX 8120 cpu, and when removing the cooler there is one huge problem, the cpu gets ripped out of the socket with the cooler, afterwards i can easily pull it off, but it seems (unlike intel brackets) the amd bracket is a peice of junk that risks your cpu whenever you replace the thermal paste, and on top of that, amd cpus have pins, increasing the chance of damageing your processor. there hasnt been a time where i have removed my cooler without the cpu getting torn out of the socket. so im wondering, why? just why?

ok, so i have a serious problem overclocking manualy, the auto oc on this motherboard dosnt quite cut it, i use it, but its not good enough for me. so my problem is i cant find out for the life of me how to manualy overclock my FX 8120 on an Asus M5A97 board. not the R2, the stock. anyways the issue is this board seems to not have any of the same settings as any of the other boards ive seen have, it has to many settings making it really hard for me to overclock my cpu at all. if someone could give me some info, and perhaps help me over skype to walk me throguh what im missing, since i cannot find any documentation on what im suppose to do, seeing how ive never seem as many settings on any other board as i do on this one its got me stumped. if i set it to manual or DOCP mode it just explodes with options, more then i need or want.

i got way better performance out of changing it to realtime priority, i used process lasso to force it to always start in realtime.

ahh yea, i changed it to realtime priority, works significantly better

i have been having some serious problems with watch dogs lately, im sure it has to do with my cpu creating and artificial bottleneck in the game. my gpu will be running around 50% at all times, near ultra. thats all fine and stuff...... but the real problem is frame dips and spikes, depending on what im doing in the back ground, seems all normal until you see what % your cpu is running at, all cores without anything running while ingame are around 50-60%, and ill be getting bad performance, 30-40 fps, horrible.... while driving even worse, i was forced to turn down my settings in order to play.... its obviously some sort of cpu limitation since my friend who has an i7 3770k is running smooth everything at its max 60 fps or more, but what i noticed while messing around is that if i ran a program that forces say, a 10% workload on my cpu while running the game it will bump all or a few cores up to 70%, but then it gradualy goes back down to 60%, and my fps drops even further, as if there where some sort of usage per core limitation built into the game itself... im not sure if this is the case but if so its quite infuriating, seing how i cant use my hardware in their games, or their newest games to its full potential. it seems like it would impose an unnesascary reason to buy more expensive hardware to play a game that should in theory run just fine on my current hardware if it werent running my cpu as if it where a pentium. again im not sure, but from what i saw it was not taking full advantage in any way shape or form of my hardware. their previous titles far cry 3 for example on max ran smooth 60 fps took full advantage of my cpu did great. but with their current reputation, and horrible handicapped performance in this game i wouldent put it past them to have intentionaly put a cap on what it can use in order to force people to purchase more expensive hardware. but if thats not the case can anyone explain to me why its lagging so horribly on my 7970, also the processor is an FX 8120 overclocked to 4.5 ghz