I want to install a graphics card in my laptop as an eGPU using the EXP GDC Beast Dock, what do I need to know to do this?

[yrypGzhq]

I plan on installing a graphics card in my laptop using the EXP GDC Beast, but what do I need to know first in order to do this? How do I know which graphics card my CPU will support without it being bottlenecked, and what else could potentially be bottlenecking it? I have no experience within this, so I would appreciate any sort of aid.

[yrypGzhq]

2 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

What laptop do you have and if possible post a specs list, either through piriform speccy or even just what right clicking "properties" on my computer tells you

And what interface? mini pcie or expresscard or what?

I have a mini PCI-E right under the keyboard, so I plan on using the PCI-E cable if I do end up installing the GDC.

[yrypGzhq]

Just now, Genwyn said:

Well this is the simplest straight to the point guide on this kind of thing:

https://forums.tomsguide.com/faq/how-to-instal-and-setup-an-exp-gdc-beast-extrenal-graphics-card-dock-on-your-laptop.188427/

If you know what cpu you have i can recommend a gpu that will work well for this over pcie x1

I have an AMD A8-5545M APU, 1.70GHz.

[BleachedFur]

7 minutes ago, yrypGzhq said:

I have an AMD A8-5545M APU, 1.70GHz.

If you are using an HP laptop it will not work. HP has whitelists for mini-pcie cards.

[yrypGzhq]

14 minutes ago, BleachedFur said:

If you are using an HP laptop it will not work. HP has whitelists for mini-pcie cards.

Nope, it's a Dell.

[yrypGzhq]

17 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Other issue, that is a very weak processor from a CPU performance standpoint.

Youre close to a desktop Athlon 5350 or Core2quad Q6600

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-A8-5545M-APU-vs-Intel-Core2-Quad-Q6600-vs-AMD-Athlon-5350-APU/1971vs1038vs2195

I'm aware it's a weak processor, that's why I'm still very limited to the games I can run.

 

17 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Use those as a cpu baseline for looking up what games perform on that processor. Things like CS:GO and Minecraft wont have any problems, more demanding titles will likely stutter heavily or may not run at all.

GPU wise any older midranged option will do. GTX 750 or 750ti, R7 260 or 260x, 650ti, 560ti, etc

 

 

Id suggest a GTX 750. Theyre cheap used, pair well with the above mentioned processor performance tier and would be a massive step up from the apu.

 

So something along a 750 will do? To be honest, I really don't plan on running anything intense, so this might actually be fine for the time being.

 

19 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Note that with gpus at over 75w of power draw the board power adapter is not enough and you will need a power supply for pcie 6 or 8 pin connectors.

 

So I have to get a power supply for this? Any sort of tips on this? I'm really bad at power supplies, I don't understand much about them. Any recommendations on which power supplies would be good for this setup?

[yrypGzhq]

1 hour ago, Genwyn said:

The 750 or equivalent, the 750 is common to find online.

The 750ti would work just the same and is also pretty common to find.

 

As for a PSU, the brick should involve a power brick like for a laptop.

So if it doesnt come with one, you can try and find a 120w laptop power adapter or something and that will do the job.

You could also use an ATX computer power supply with a pcie 8 pin power connector to power the board. Some of the listings im seeing for the dock have a little adapter for a pcie power input and a 24 pin to jump the PSU to start.

Or if you went with a higher power consumption card like a 560ti (that would perform about the same as a 750ti) then you would need two 6 pins anyway, so you would need an atx psu.

 

So tl;dr, if under 75w like a GTX 750, use any 100w+ laptop power brick.

If over 75w, use an atx psu.

 

If you decide on a higher wattage card and need an atx psu, there is a PSU tier list in the cases and power supply section of the forum.

Though really any name brand psu with the required connectors will do. Even a cheap one like a corsair vs450 would be fine powering most gpus by themselves.

 

I just don't wanna get something that's overkill, or even something that won't work at all. As long as it's something that works and works well, and that I have no problems with.

 

Also, now that I think about it, should I really bother with something like a 750? If I'm not gonna get the full performance out of it, should I just get something that I could get the maximum performance out of instead? And by the way, I heard that using an external monitor for your laptop when using the GDC dock is almost mandatory in some cases, but I have no idea if any of this is true. Do I have to use an external monitor? Would that provide any benefits?

[yrypGzhq]

10 hours ago, Genwyn said:

You wont really get maximum performance out of anything, pcie x1 is really limiting to even the weakest of cards.

A 750 through x1 will get you around GT 730/740 performance in the end. Which is adequate for a lot of stuff. But starting with a GT 730 is gonna limit that card down to lower performance and so on and so forth.

 

Thats why i recommend a GTX 750, you wont get that performance, but if you get a lower end card you wont get the performance of that card anyway.

And as you go lower end the price margins get real small, a GTX 750 is about 40$ USD

https://www.ebay.com/itm/173981865854

While GT 730's are about 3

 

Do you know what's a way to minimize the amount of bottlenecking from all this and attempt to get the maximum performance I can? And if I do get a 750, an ATX PSU is mandatory?

 

Is there a difference between the versions of the EXP GDC Beast? For example, there seems to be a V9 and a V8, and other versions as well. Do you know what any of these versions mean?

[yrypGzhq]

40 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

If you get a 750 or any other card that only requires pcie slot power you don't need an atx power supply, just a laptop power adapter will do.

The pcie slot can provide 75w of power, if a card needs more than that it will have extra power inputs on it and will require the wattage from an atx psu. 

As an example, the above mention GTX 750 has just pcie power required. 

But an R9 280x would require two 8 pins.

A 75w card vs a 300w card.

Any laptop power supply? Or a specific one? I hope I don't have to resort to a power supply, because that's a whole other I have to worry about, in terms of making sure it's the right one, it works, and all that. You know what I mean.

 

And apart from the mini PCI-E slot, will the CPU be bottlenecking the card? I want to get a card that's not too overkill, but works. It's going to be bottlenecked in this situation no matter what, but I want to get a card where I can use as much performance out of it as I can based on the CPU I have and my overall laptop.

[yrypGzhq]

Just now, Genwyn said:

The CPU will bottleneck the card slightly. The Q6600 or Athlon 5350 are very commonly paired with the midrange GTX 7xx cards. There are hundreds of videos on "Q6600 + 750" benchmarks out there if you want to see how the combination performs. The 750 will have its performance reduced on pcie x1 but it shouldn't make anything too unplayable.

 

With all the bottlenecking, what should the 750 run like?

[yrypGzhq]

4 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Expect it to match GT 740 performance through the pcie x1 slot and then be slightly bottlenecked by the CPU.

Youre looking at performance kind of like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwDq1lOCzRo

 

Q6600 + GT 740 (the bad DDR3 one too, 750 is GDDR5) getting smooth, stutter free gameplay in GTA V at 720p normal settings.

GTA Online would perform better with the reduced CPU overhead.

 

Expect about the same out of Fallout 4, a similarly performing game. 

 

Let's say I decided to use a card that the CPU can handle the most. I obviously can't use a 2080 or something, not that I even would in general. But anyway, is a 750/750 Ti or something equivalent the most I could go? Or would anything further just be a waste of money due to the weak CPU?

[yrypGzhq]

2 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Pretty much, even the 750ti is bottlenecked slightly by the Q6600 and it's equivalents. You could put other higher end old cards like a GTX 770, 960, etc and you wouldn't see much performance difference.

You could egpu with an RTX Titan and still get about the same experience as with a 750ti.

Say I get a 750Ti rather than just a 750. Should it still run similarly to a GT 740?

[BleachedFur]

19 hours ago, yrypGzhq said:

Nope, it's a Dell.

Dell has been known to whitelist too.

The mini pcie slot in a laptop is literally a pcie bus, just a different physical connector.

 

the CHEAPEST way to do this doesn't need the expensive ass EXP GDC shit.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FVPITN8/

 

And, don't get a 750/750ti. They consume WAY too much power for the laptop.

The absolute best way this can turn out with the least bottleneck is with a GT 1030. Gigabyte makes some dirt cheap ones that run cool and quiet.

 

https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-GeForce-GV-N1030D5-2GL-Computer-Graphics/dp/B071DY2VJR/

 

the GT 1030 natively runs off a PCIe x4 interface, so x1 won't kill your FPS too much.

 

You won't need an external power supply if you use the 1030. The 750/750 Ti will likely drive your laptop's power consumption through the roof and you'd need a better laptop brick. Dell makes them up to 250W, but you should be fine on 95W.

[yrypGzhq]

18 hours ago, BleachedFur said:

Dell has been known to whitelist too.

The mini pcie slot in a laptop is literally a pcie bus, just a different physical connector.

 

the CHEAPEST way to do this doesn't need the expensive ass EXP GDC shit.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FVPITN8/

So this will work the same way? This won't change the way it works/the graphics card runs?

 

18 hours ago, BleachedFur said:

And, don't get a 750/750ti. They consume WAY too much power for the laptop.

The absolute best way this can turn out with the least bottleneck is with a GT 1030. Gigabyte makes some dirt cheap ones that run cool and quiet.

 

https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-GeForce-GV-N1030D5-2GL-Computer-Graphics/dp/B071DY2VJR/

 

the GT 1030 natively runs off a PCIe x4 interface, so x1 won't kill your FPS too much.

So this is the highest power graphics card that I can run with my laptop based on my CPU with the least bottlenecking possible?

[BleachedFur]

31 minutes ago, yrypGzhq said:

So this will work the same way? This won't change the way it works/the graphics card runs?

The GT 1030 runs in PCIe x4. This will run the card at PCIE x1, but that is a hard limit that cannot be changed. Aside from that, I'm using a GT 640 in a Dell Precision M4300 (Latitude D830), so it shouldn't be any different on yours.

 

31 minutes ago, yrypGzhq said:

So this is the highest power graphics card that I can run with my laptop based on my CPU with the least bottlenecking possible?

That is the most powerful card in its power consumption class.

 

It's rated for 30W, and is only 4% slower than the GTX 750, which is rated for 55W.

[yrypGzhq]

47 minutes ago, BleachedFur said:

The GT 1030 runs in PCIe x4. This will run the card at PCIE x1, but that is a hard limit that cannot be changed. Aside from that, I'm using a GT 640 in a Dell Precision M4300 (Latitude D830), so it shouldn't be any different on yours.

So what you're saying is the card is PCIe x4, but the actual adapter is PCIe x1? How much bottleneck would there be total? 

[BleachedFur]

Just now, yrypGzhq said:

How much bottleneck would there be total? 

Just on the link itself, it would not be noticeable by the user. For your CPU, the GT 1030 is a perfect match.

[BleachedFur]

Just now, yrypGzhq said:

but the actual adapter is PCIe x1?

No, the connector on your motherboard is x1. The adapter just changes the physical slot shape.

[yrypGzhq]

50 minutes ago, BleachedFur said:

Just on the link itself, it would not be noticeable by the user. For your CPU, the GT 1030 is a perfect match.

I see. So to put this all together, the GT 1030 is mildly weaker than the 750, but has way less power consumption. And with the GT 1030, a power supply is not at all needed. The port on my laptop is a mini PCI-E x1 slot, but the black port on the adapter is a PCI-E x1. Using the EXP GDC, that has a PCI-E x16 instead of an x1 like on the adapter. But this does not make a difference when using the EXP GDC or the adapter because it's still passing it through an x1 which the slot on my laptop. Am I missing anything here? Is that all right?

[BleachedFur]

11 hours ago, yrypGzhq said:

I see. So to put this all together, the GT 1030 is mildly weaker than the 750, but has way less power consumption. And with the GT 1030, a power supply is not at all needed. The port on my laptop is a mini PCI-E x1 slot, but the black port on the adapter is a PCI-E x1. Using the EXP GDC, that has a PCI-E x16 instead of an x1 like on the adapter. But this does not make a difference when using the EXP GDC or the adapter because it's still passing it through an x1 which the slot on my laptop. Am I missing anything here? Is that all right?

Yeah, seems like you're grasping all the info pretty well. The EXP-GDC is better for more powerful cards like the GTX 960 or whatever, that physically weighs more too. But for a small, low power, physically unimpressive card, that small adapter I mentioned should work just fine.

In the event that you do need additional power the adapter has a connector for a floppy drive power connector.